conversiondnd-3.5epathfinder-1etome-of-battle
How would I convert the Tome of Battle Swordsage for use in Pathfinder?
Things I have thought about:
Concentration. Since it is no longer a skill in Pathfinder, maybe make it like a Wisdom-based caster? (Class level + Wisdom bonus.)
Convert relevant 3.5 skills to Pathfinder.
Anything with special combat actions going to CMB and CMD?
This answer basically covers a lot of potential options for Factota, not all of which are even that good. The basic premise is, Factota generally come in 1, 3, 8, or 20 levels. Factotum 1 or 3 can be added to a lot of builds. Factotum 20 is pretty straightforward, and works well.
The tricky part is Factotum 8, to take advantage of Cunning Surge on some other type of character. The best options for this seem to be:
Ardent, Psychic Warrior, or War Mind – for hustle, and general awesomeness
Assassin, for Int-synergy, spells to use with Cunning Surge, and good damage bonuses.
A martial adept, pact magic, or incarnum class, since these systems just multiclass elegantly.
Chameleon, for increased versatility, but note that Chameleon and Factotum conflict more than they synergize.
Iaijutsu Master,* for rather considerable damage output. Suffers badly on versatility though.
Possibly with dips in Cleric, Shadowdancer, or Swashbuckler to taste. Dips in the above classes also work well. This is all discussed at length at the end of this answer.
This answer begins with a discussion of the four main options for Factotum levels: 1, 3, 8, and 20. It then covers a bunch of Feats that many Factota find useful. Finally, other options for multiclassing on a Factotum 8 are discussed at length.
Factotum is most useful for 1, 3, 8, or 20 levels. It’s also, hands-down, the best “other class” in a Gestalt game.
Basically, you’re doing this for the “all skills are class skills” thing. For the purposes of max skill ranks, once a class skill means always a class skill, so if you have Factotum 1, you can max out any skill in the game. If you have the Human subtype, the Able Learner feat (Races of Destiny) allows you to buy cross-class skills for 1 skill point per rank, like class skills, which means that a Factotum 1 with Able Learner can treat every skill in the game as a class skill for his entire career. This is not a bad use of a level and a feat.
You’ll barely use Inspiration Points, so don’t worry about them.
Factotum 3 gets you Brains Over Brawn, which adds Int to all Str-or-Dex-based skill and ability checks. That’s a lot of skills, and furthermore Initiative is explicitly a Dexterity check, which means you get to add Int to that, too. Very, very solid ability.
Able Learner remains a good choice here.
You have a little bit more use for your Inspiration Points, but nothing huge. Again, not a great concern.
Cunning Surge (Factotum 8) is one of the best class features in the game. The ability to get an extra Standard Action in a turn is very rare, and for very good reason. Combine it with hustle, and you could get two full-attacks in a single turn, a feature usually reserved for high-level martial initiators (time stands still is the 9th-level Diamond Mind maneuver, Island in Time is the capstone of the Eternal Blade prestige class). It also allows great use of spells and other features.
The problem is that Cunning Surge requires a lot of Inspiration Points (and at this point, it’s not the only thing you’ll want them for). The answer here is Font of Inspiration, a feat that can be taken repeatedly, and grants Inspiration Points quadratically with respect to the number of times you take it. If you are only going for Factotum 8, you’re going to want a lot of this feat.
Able Learner is a bit more debatable for a Factotum 8 – at this point, you should have the 5 or 8 ranks you probably want for some of the more obscure skills, so you probably won’t need cross-class skills from wherever you go next, or might do better with other ways of getting them in-class, that have other side-benefits.
Factotum is a great class. It is totally viable to take 20 levels of it. You have tons of class features, and with twenty levels, you do not need Font of Inspiration so much. It’s still a great feat, but you may need those feats more badly for something else. Able Learner, of course, is completely pointless to you.
What you do need is a source of damage. Cunning Strike does not, by RAW, stack with itself, and even if you rule that it does, you’ll burn a ton of Inspiration Points that way.
The best solution is to use the Gnomish Quickrazor,* an Exotic Weapon from Races of Stone. This weapon automatically resheathes after an attack, which means you can use it with Iaijutsu Focus,* a skill from Oriental Adventures that can give you extra damage on your first attack after drawing a weapon. You still need to make your target Flat-footed, which is harder than simply denying its Dex bonus to AC, and the damage caps at +9d6, but a Factotum is not a primary combatant: this is just enough to keep you relevant in combat.
These will vary based on how many levels you will take, what other classes you use, and so on, but some common feats used by Factota:
This feat, from a web enhancement, is one of the most divisive feats for the Factotum. It grants you Inspiration Points equal to the total number of times you’ve taken the feat. So the first time, it’s just +1 IP. The second time, it’s +2 IP, so you get +3 total. The third time, it’s +3, and you’re up to +6 total. As a result, your Inspiration Point gain is quadratic with respect to the number of times you take Font of Inspiration.
A single Font of Inspiration is not worth it. Two is not really a great choice. Three is now taking a lot of your feats, but you’re getting a lot of return on that. More, and you get a lot of Inspiration Points from it. The question then becomes, how many Fonts do you need?
With only 1-3 levels, Font of Inspiration is of only dubious utility. The best class features at those levels don’t require Inspiration Points.
With a full 20 levels, Font of Inspiration is nice, but your base Inspiration Points is already pretty good. If you take it at all, take at least 3. Three feats is an awful lot, though, and pure Factota are definitely looking to give themselves more abilities with their feats.
If you break at exactly Factotum 8, you are looking to use Cunning Surge a lot. To do that, you need a ton of Inspiration Points. So you’re looking at taking literally as many Fonts of Inspiration as you possibly can.
If you are single-classed, but expect to play at only mid-ish levels (from roughly 6-14 or so), three Fonts of Inspiration is probably the sweet spot. If you are Human (which is desirable here), grabbing two at level 1 can get you pretty far.
Cross-class skills have two drawbacks:
They cost 2 skill points per rank
They are capped at half the usual max for class skills
However, these two drawbacks function differently with respect to multiclass characters. For rule 1, the cost depends on whether or not the skill is in-class for your current class, while for rule 2, the max depends on whether or not the skill was in-class for any of your classes.
Any character with one level of Factotum, in other words, has the class skill max for every skill in the game, even when he takes other classes, so rule 2 is covered and you only need concern yourself with rule 1.
Happily, Able Learner from Races of Destiny fixes rule 1 – it allows cross-class skills to be taken at 1 rank per skill point. It doesn’t do anything about the maximum, but as already explained, Factotum 1 handles that.
Able Learner does require that you be a Human or Doppelganger, but Races of Destiny explains that any race with the (Human) subtype should be able to qualify as a Human. Changelings from Eberron Campaign Setting are effectively half-human, half-doppelganger; the rules do not mention it but I have yet to meet a DM who would ban it from them.
This weird weapon from Races of Stone is used by flicking it out of its sheath, attacking, and resheathing it again immediately. This motion requires Exotic Weapon Proficiency, and the weapon gives you penalties if you use it without resheathing it. It grants bonuses to concealing the weapon.
Meanwhile, Iaijutsu Focus is an extremely obscure skill from Oriental Adventures; aside from the Factotum, only a few classes specific to that setting (such as its version of the Samurai) get it in-class. The way it works is, when you attack a Flat-footed target immediately after drawing a weapon, you roll an Iaijutsu Focus check and deal bonus damage based on the result. The damage varies from 1d6 to 9d6.
This is most likely the best source of damage for pure Factota, and not a bad supplemental to any Factotum who took Able Learner. Multiclassed Factota do tend to be feat-starved, however, so the EWP feat for this should be considered carefully. Since most Factota are not starved for skill points, it’s not an awful idea to throw points in Iaijutsu Focus even if you lack the quickrazor; you can get the damage bonus once, at least.
This feat from Complete Champion is pretty simple: make a Knowledge check, get attack and damage bonuses against creatures of the type(s) covered by that skill. You’re a Factotum, so something is seriously wrong if your Knowledge checks aren’t excellent. The damage isn’t as good as Iaijutsu Focus, but they stack and Knowledge Devotion is more reliable anyway.
Note that you can get this for basically nothing by taking Cloistered Cleric 1, and trading its free Knowledge Domain for this, as per the Complete Champion rules for Devotion feats. Unlike most Devotion feats, though, Knowledge Devotion is not fueled by Turn/Rebuke Undead, which makes it perfectly viable even for a pure Factotum.
Factota have a lot of skills. Skill-monkeys are traditionally stealthy, and Factota can certainly do that. Anyone with an interest in not being seen really should take Darkstalker (Lords of Madness) – in one feat, it eliminates a lot of the “automatic” ways of spying on you. Make those Hide/Move Silently ranks count!
If you’re not a single-classed Factotum, you must have some other classes. Here are some decent options:
Swashbuckler 3 (Complete Adventurer) gets you Insightful Strike, adding your Intelligence to your damage. Damage is one of the few things you don’t get your Int to, so this is a good idea. More than three levels is not recommended, however.
These classes allow you to make great use of Cunning Surge, and use Intelligence even more than a Factotum does. Unfortunately, losing three spellcasting levels for Brains Over Brawn hurts a lot, and losing eight for Cunning Surge is torture. Note, however, that if you’re playing a Gestalt game, this goes from a mediocre idea to one of the most powerful combinations in the game.
Sadly, these classes also lose a ton of skill points.
Cleric spellcasting synergizes with Factota even worse than Wizards or Psions; the class is not worth taking for a Factotum looking for spellcasting.
What the Cleric does have, however, is Domains, which can, per Complete Champion, be traded for the excellent Devotion feats. You can even take the Cloistered variant from Unearthed Arcana for a free Knowledge Domain that can be traded in for the fantastic Knowledge Devotion. It also gains Turn or Rebuke Undead, which can be used to fuel the also-excellent Divine feats from Complete Divine, Complete Champion, and elsewhere. Plus, you do get some spells as long as you’ve got Wis 10, and even if you haven’t, they’re on your spell list so Spell Trigger items (read: Wands) no longer require a Use Magic Device check for you.
And all of this can be gotten for one measly level. Dipping Cleric 1 is so good, in fact, that it has an entire handbook devoted to it (the handbook is sadly down, along with all of BG, at the moment; let us all hope it will be restored).
The best options include Animal Devotion (several good options, including flight), Knowledge Devotion (damage based on your Knowledge checks – which ought to be stratospheric with the Int and skills you’re rocking), Travel Devotion (move as a Swift Action, letting you get a full-attack even while moving), Magic Domain (now all Cleric and Wizard wands are usable without Use Magic Device), and any Domain that hands you a feat you were looking for (and the options are quite broad). Trickery Devotion is also excellent. This list is a reasonably-comprehensive list of all the Domains and their benefits.
A base class from Player’s Handbook II. Largely in the same boat as Wizard or Psion, but with much better skills. Still not a great idea, and really a Beguiler is just not as powerful as Wizard or Psion, but by the same token you lose less by missing out on so many levels. It’s still too many, though.
Worth noting: if you’ve got Able Learner, EWP (Gnomish Quickrazor), and are going with the Iaijutsu Focus thing, Beguiler does get the ability to Feint as a Free Action if he’s got Improved Feint. That’s four feats (three if you can get Improved Feint as a bonus feat without needing Combat Expertise) and fourteen class levels, though.
Another base class from Player’s Handbook II, the Duskblade is interesting in that it gets to channel touch-attack spells through weapon attacks. It’s a pretty solid trick, though overall the class gives up a lot.
If you got 21 levels, Duskblade would be a lot better: Factotum 8/Duskblade 13 gets both Cunning Surge and the full-attack version of Channel Spell. Without that, Duskblade seems kind of lack-luster. Your spells are already well short of a full-caster, and you’re only falling (much) further behind by taking so many Factotum levels. Even with 21 levels, unless you’re starting there, you’ll have a long slog through mediocrity to get that cool feature.
Like the Cleric, Wizard, and Psion, an Archivist (Heroes of Horror) loses a lot by taking enough levels of Factotum to get Cunning Surge (which is the only Factotum class feature good enough to warrant consideration for a full-caster, from an optimization standpoint). However, Dark Knowledge is like a better version of Knowledge Devotion (which you can also take, of course), which makes a Factotum/Archivist an interest idea for an Int-based gish-type. Probably even better than the Factotum/Duskblade, considering that Cunning Surge plus full-attack Channel Spell is impossible pre-Epic. Also is probably more enjoyable to “play through” than the Factotum/Duskblade.
Basically, hustle pairs really well with Cunning Surge. Two standard and two move actions per turn is amazing, really. And, of course, these classes really do not suck to begin with. All three are Wisdom-based, which is something of a shame but not the end of the world.
Psychic Warriors and War Minds (both Expanded Psionics Handbook) get hustle as a 2nd-level Power. Both get those after 4 class levels. Psychic Warriors don’t have prerequisites, and get more (but lower level) Powers Known and bonus feats (either Fighter feats or Psionic feats, which is a great list). War Minds get full BAB, higher-level (though fewer) Powers Known, more Power Points, and the excellent Sweeping Strike feature. Also note that War Mind caps at 10, which means a Factotum 8/War Mind 10 has to figure out what it’s doing with the other two levels.
Ardents (Complete Psionics, one of the few good things in the book) can get hustle with just two class levels, since it’s on the Freedom Mantle as a 3rd-level Power, and Practiced Manifester allows you to add up to +4 to your Manifester Level, provided it’s less than your HD. So a Factotum 8/Ardent 1 takes Practiced Manifester (Ardent), has an Ardent Manifester Level of 5, and then qualifies for Hustle at Ardent 2, due to the unique way Ardents get to select their Powers. However, it then costs him 5 Power Points rather than 3 for the Psychic Warrior or War Mind.
Ardent grows a bit better, too, actually gaining a single 9th-level Power at Factotum 8/Ardent 12 (Ardent Manifester Level 17). The Ardent also gains dramatically more Power Points than even the War Mind, and the Ardent 10 alternate class feature Dominant Ideal is incredible. However, without Mantle Substitution (described in the same Web Enhancement as above), the Ardent misses out on a lot of key combat-oriented powers that the Psychic Warrior gets. Even then, if you’re mostly just after hustle, having to pay an extra 2 Power Points per manifestation is a big deal.
Rogues get even more skill points per level than Factota, and Sneak Attack shores up a serious flaw in the Factotum. A couple of levels for real Sneak Attack and the Penetrating Strike ACF from Dungeonscape seems quite nice, since so much of your potential damage is precision damage that doesn’t work on so many types of creatures. More levels are certainly viable, though personally I think Cunning Surge is somewhat wasted on Rogues. Rogue may be a better option for a Factotum 3 than it is for a Factotum 8.
Assassin (Dungeon Master’s Guide) hits a lot of high points for you: it’s Int-based, it grants some spells which gives you good use of those extra Standard Actions you’re getting, and it gives a much better solution to that damage problem than Iaijutsu Focus (though, of course, you could – and probably should – go with both). It truly has a lot to recommend it here.
I’d definitely want Spell Compendium, though, since the DMG’s spell list for Assassins leaves a lot to be desired. Spell Compendium adds a lot of very nice spells.
Note that the Avenger does exist for those who find the Assassin’s fluff prerequisites difficult to meet.
Shadowdancer 1 is not a bad choice for the very high-quality version of Hide in Plain Sight. Best when combined with, e.g., Assassin. The rest of Shadowdancer is OK, but not great.
These classes simply multiclass well. The Warblade, in particular, is Int-based, and going Anything 8 (like Factotum!)/Warblade 1 allows you to take with 3rd-level maneuvers and stances from Warblade 1 due to the way Initiator Level works. Swordsage is a good choice for the same reason; starting with 3rd-level stances allows you to get Assassin’s Stance for +2d6 Sneak Attack.
Pact Magic (Binder) and Incarnum (Incarnate and Totemist) are simply multiclass-friendly subsystems, which means a Factotum 8/Binder 12, Factotum 8/Incarnate 12, or Factotum 8/Totemist 12 are all great ideas. Binder and Incarnate make excellent skill monkeys, while Totemists can make devastating melee shredders.
You could even combine these in interesting ways: Factotum 8/Swordsage 1/Shadowdancer 1/Assassin 10, for example, gets Cunning Surge, a whole bunch of maneuvers, Hide in Plain Sight, 8d6 Sneak Attack (and potentially 9d6 Iaijutsu damage), Assassin Spells, and Death Attack. That’s quite solid. Replacing Swordsage with Cleric for Knowledge Devotion and Travel Devotion might be even better.
Binder is from Tome of Magic.
Crusader, Swordsage, and Warblade are each from Tome of Battle.
Incarnate and Totemist are from Magic of Incarnum.
This prestige class from Oriental Adventures is one of the few classes that’s actually written with Iaijutsu Focus as an explicit class skill. It gets Int to AC, which a Factotum will always like, but only while unarmored, which is less good. Cha to Initiative goes nicely with your Int to Initiative, and it also gets Cha to damage per Iaijutsu Damage die at Iaijutsu Master 5, which is pretty awesome. The remaining abilities (One Strike, Two Cuts at Iaijutsu Master 8 and Strike With No Thought at Iaijutsu Master 10) are both good, but both require that you use a katana, which is still worse than the quickrazor for the purposes of iaijutsu.
Actually, the ideal use of this might be a Factotum 8/Iaijutsu Master 10 that has a katana in one hand, and a quickrazor in the other: use the katana to start the fight (using Strike With No Thought), take full-attacks with the quickrazor, and then make a pair of attacks with the Cunning Surge standard action (using One Strike, Two Cuts).
The other option is to attempt to use an aptitude quickrazor (aptitude is a special weapon ability from Tome of Battle), but that’s pretty cheesy.
This very weird prestige class from Races of Destiny is incredibly flexible. It can fight, it can trapmonkey, it can cast divine spells, it can cast arcane spells, changing all these things around every day. It requires Able Learner, a feat that multiclass Factota love. Sounds a lot like the Factotum, no? And sure enough, the two are frequently paired together.
Personally, however, I find that the two classes are trying to do the same thing from slightly different angles, and they don’t synergize as nicely as you’d like. For one thing, Factota want to hit 8 before leaving, so they can get Cunning Surge, while Chameleons want to hit 2 ASAP to get the excellent Floating Feat (i.e. a feat you can change every day).
So unless you’re starting at 10th level, and thus can be a Factotum 8/Chameleon 2, I probably wouldn’t bother. Ideally, you’d be at more like 18th: Factotum 8/Chameleon 10, or perhaps Factotum 8/Chameleon 2/some spellcasting prestige class 8, if you can convince your DM to allow it. But at ECL 18... the benefits of these two classes at those class levels are a bit lackluster. It’s definitely viable, but I don’t think it works as well as a lot of people claim.
In short, as a Factotum you don’t want to give up Cunning Surge, and as a Chameleon, you don’t want to delay your class features. These two desires conflict very strongly, and no satisfactory resolution exists. You simply have to bite the bullet on it.
Ur-priest from Complete Divine is a 10-level prestige class, that gets 9th-level spells off the Cleric list. Yes, that means you can be a Factotum 8 – have Cunning Surge – and still get 9th-level spells. Yes, this is absurdly good.
I’m not aware of any class that has this sort of feature, and depends on Int,1 but for what you’re getting a little dual ability dependence is a small price to pay.
Really, I don’t recommend this. Yes, by being a Factotum 8, you delay Ur-priest and the like to the point that you don’t get 9th-level spells before a straight Cleric, Druid, or Wizard would, but any one of those classes would gladly delay their 9ths by a single level for the sake of getting a free better-than-Quicken on every freaking round.
Though I will say that if you actually manage, say, Changeling Factotum/Bard/Sublime Chord/Recaster/War Weaver (where you actually get Cunning Surge, 5 levels of War Weaver, and 9th-level spells), I will be impressed. That is one stylish and (absurdly) powerful build right there. I don’t think it’s actually possible though. (Sublime Chord is from Complete Arcane, Recaster is from Races of Eberron, War Weaver is from Heroes of Battle)
1 Beholder Mage (Lords of Madness) might, but that’s one of the top three most broken classes in the game (along with Illithid Savant – also Lords of Madness – and Tainted Scholar from Heroes of Horror), so... don’t do that. Any reasonable entry means cheesing your way around the Beholder requirement, and the only thing you’re likely to gain by doing so is some blunt force trauma.
There are DMs that do not allow Iaijutsu Focus for whatever reason. Plenty also object to the use of the Gnomish Quickrazor, and admittedly, the combination of these two things was almost certainly not intended. Plus, Oriental Adventures is 3.0 material. However, despite this, I’d argue that such DMs are making a mistake, for the following reasons:
The pure Factotum is going to have a difficult time significantly affecting combat without it. No, the Factotum should not be a mainline combatant, but without Iaijutsu Focus they come close to having no effect, which is not good for the game as a whole.
It is not an ability that is in any sense "free," requiring as it does a feat, a maxed skill, and a special weapon, not to mention how difficult it can be to apply. Flat-footed status is decidedly non-trivial to achieve. A pure Factotum is going to spend a lot of combats burning Inspiration Points to Cunning Surge and use Arcane Dilettante to force foes to be flat-footed, and then have to use a full-attack to apply the Iaijutsu Focus repeatedly – just to almost keep up with the Rogue.
3.0 material is legal for 3.5 if it has not been updated – but Oriental Adventures stuff has been, in Dragon vol. 318. Iaijutsu Focus explicitly continues to function as it did originally.
Level 12 Analysis
Your AC is very low. At level 12, AC 18 is essentially a death sentence. I'm going to assume you have a source of Mage Armour from a party spellcaster, giving you an AC of 22, and a further Ring of Protection or Amulet of Natural Armour or Barkskin or something to up that by +2 to 24. 24 AC is still incredibly low.
The lowest attack bonus I found with a quick peruse of CR 12 monsters is +18, the secondary Bite of an Athach. That hits you on a roll of 6. The most common number I found was +23, which would hit you on a 2. I saw lots of +26, +28 and even a +33. Those all hit you on everything but a natural 1.
In other words, your AC is too low if anything targets you for you to survive. The DM will have to pull punches not to kill you.
Valiant Stand improves this. By not by enough. Enemies are still going to autohit you. Best case is +4 stat boosters on dex and wis, mage armour, nat armour/deflection bonuses, and valiant stand - 18 base, +4 from enhancement to stats, +4 armour, +2-+3 nat armour/def, +3 valiant stand = 32. That's a hit on a 9 from the lowest common attack bonus I found on CR 12 monsters.
Your Attack Bonus Is Pretty Decent, For a Monk. You have +16 to hit without Smite. With Amulet of Mighty Fists +2, that's +18ish to hit. With Belt of giant Strength +4 or Bull's Strength, that's +20 to hit. Everything that has AC that is supposed to be a defense has 26+, which is good - you hit most of the time. Power Attack and Flurry are counterbalanced by Valiant Stand, which you should be endeavouring to have always active by use of Stealth, which you don't have maxed out, uh, why? Popping up out of nowhere for a flatfooted smiting power attacking flurry should be your opening round action in every combat. Even your iteratives have a decent chance to hit, with this hit bonus. Only decent, though.
Your Damage Isn't Great. 1d10+1d4+5 (where is that errant +1 damage coming from?) averages out to 13 points of damage per strike. With Power Attack, that's 19 damage. With Smite, against evil or chaotic outsiders/dragons, you get /+18/, so 34 damage per strike, which is actually level 12-worthy. Too bad you get 3 total attacks per day with that damage. Sweeping Smite carries the Cha-to-hit bonus, but not the damage from the 'first hit'. It's kind of like a really terrible whirlwind attack that way.
Most of the time you'll be attacking for 19, on average. Some stuff is immune to bleed, or has DR/cold iron and good, etc, so it might be less. If you move, you only have one attack, so your first round barring stealth will nearly always be one attack at best. Rounds after that, you can flurry for four attacks, each which might hit for 19 damage.
So a max damage on an ideal round of around 34+19+19+19 damage, or 91 damage in 4 hits. That's not terrible. It relies on getting a full round action, though. It also relies on hitting with iteratives, DR of the kind you can get past, no miss chances etc. Most monsters at this level have at least 150hp, so you won't be winning in hp races. But you will be able to contribute a bit at least to the usual team of four on one beatdowns.
Your HP gets eaten in a round. With your AC, most CR9+ melee monsters are going to kill you to dead in a round. 11 Constitution on a melee combatant isn't a great idea, but then, you're a monk and need wis and and dex and str and also cha for being a paladin, so eh.
Your Saves are decent. They could be better, but they could also be worse. Most DCs seem to hover around DC 23 at this level, going up as high as 28 but also as low as 21. With your +11/+11/+13, you should have a 50% shot at most saving throws, and although fear and poison aren't exactly the most common life-threatening things to save against, it's still nice.
Power Level: Fighter.
This character can be relied upon to be roughly as good as an unoptimized fighter. The DM will have to pull some punches, and tough encounters (CR +2 or greater) will have a good chance of one-shotting this character by accident. In a party with Rogue or better power levels, this character will feel notably weaker than the rest of the group.
Note
Evaluating something without gear is hard, because at the lower end of the scale, gear can have more effect on your ultimate spread of numbers than the classes chosen. If your gear is random stuff, you will be weaker. If you plug it all into boosters for your FOUR necessary stats (dex, wis, str, cha), rings of deflection and other stuff that helps boost your melee stats to make you 'great' at that rather than 'mediocre to good', which includes buffs from friendly spellcasters, you will be stronger.
Note
This build is stronger at lower levels, where a handy Mage Armour plus your defensive stats can put you out of reach of opponents attack bonuses, and things are easier to hit and easier to kill. Level 12 is definitely where things are starting to go 'downhill', and they will likely get worse as enemy AC and AB increase and every enemy has flying or spells and abilities.
Note
The build has no movement capability other than skills-based climbing, swimming, jumping. I'm assuming again allied spellcasters will be patching that hole with buffs, especially since with the other gear i've assumed in your build you don't have the money to buy gear to get flight or teleport or whatnot.
Suggestions
Your main problem is that you're playing a monk. Without serious optimization, monks are very weak. You've done a bit of optimization here, and pushed it up to unoptimized fighter level, but fighter is still not great if you're planning to be in a party with casters. Or if you're fighting caster-style enemies like many demons are.
Most of the tricks I know to make melee characters more competitive are in 3.5e. I'm assuming there's no backward compatibility in your group. So that's all out the window.
Paladin isn't giving you much other than flavour, either. You've got a decent Flurry and Attack Bonus, but you're way too fragile to make good use of it, unless your enemies come in the 'always attack the guy using the full defense action with the tower shield' variety.
In this case, i'd recommend Summoner. Synthesist Summoner. It slices, it dices, it buffs, it has level appropriate abilities, natural attacks, the works. It is, in fact, so good that you could mix it with a Paladin dip and still be relatively awesome.
Evangelist lets you keep advancing as a Summoner while also adding a divine feel to the class. It's also the only prestige I can find that advances your eidolon aka living armour, so.
Other. than. that... there's a good rogue-based fear build, but I don't know how relevant that is to your concept.
I feel like there's some way, between Fighter archetypes and the Hungry Ghost Monk monk archetype, to create kama-wielder who reaps ki from his opponents and uses it to chain-stun them with a huge Wisdom and Dex, just whittles them away with flurries of weak, ki-reaping attacks and then spends the ki on stuns. There's too many damned archetypes though.
Even if you're taking summoner, it's kind of worth dipping monk as well. You have to be unarmoured to use your synthesism, so you could benefit from a high wisdom score to your AC. Not worth going Hungry Ghost, because the ki-drain only comes at level 5. Just a one, or at max 2-level dip. Probably after you have 1 or 3 levels of synth summoner.
Yeah I cannot find anything that is about punching people that isn't just a Fighter or Barbarian with a 2-hander sword that is any good. There's some rogue stuff that is nice, there's an alchemist archetype that gets sneak attack and would make a murderously effective hand to hand combatant with the mutagen and the buffs. But nothing based around jumping on things and punching people except synth summoner. Yeah. That's my advice.
Synthesist Summoner 20.
Optional; Monk 1.
Optional; Evangelist.
Best Answer
The basic 3.5–Pathfinder conversion rules cover the swordsage class itself. None of the class features of the swordsage, aside from the maneuvers, need special care in Pathfinder. The basic conversion guide covers class skills, CMB/CMD, and so on.
The maneuvers themselves are fine in Pathfinder, mostly.1 Only the Diamond Mind discipline, with its emphasis on Concentration, is a problem.
Handling Concentration basically has three options:
Use spellcaster-like concentration checks, rolling d20 + initiator level + ability score. This has a few sub-choices:
Which ability? Wisdom would be the closest to the spellcaster style for a swordsage, but Constitution would be closer to the functioning of 3.5 Concentration.
A skill would have a +3 bonus over what this check does. Should the swordsage get a +3 bonus for this?
Create a new, Constitution-based, skill that’s basically just for Diamond Mind and the feats in Tome of Battle. On the one hand, that’s a really niche skill. On the other, unless you were going for a swordsage gish, this is pretty much the same story as the 3.5 swordsage had—it’s not like the 3.5 Concentration skill was ever used for anything else anyway. Call it “Focus” or something. This new skill is a class skill for all three initiating base classes.
Use an existing skill—Sense Motive is a common choice. Optionally swapping the skill’s ability score for Constitution when used with Diamond Mind. Whatever skill you choose should be considered a class skill for all three initiating base classes.
Which you choose kind of depends what you’re aiming to get.
The first is most consistent with Pathfinder as a whole; personally, I would favor basing it on Constitution (after all, Diamond Mind is also available to warblades), and I would put in the +3 bonus—Tome of Battle is well-balanced, and balanced around that. This approach does save the Diamond Mind user a skill point per level compared to 3.5, and prevents other classes from potentially contributing as much (only half-level, when in 3.5 they may have had Concentration in-class and been able to contribute full-level), which are concerns.
The second is probably most consistent with Tome of Battle itself, but is very awkward with multiclass initiator/spellcasters, and really, the new skill is super niche. That is awkward.
The third is probably the most popular in my experience, but it also has issues. If you don’t change the ability score to Constitution, you end up with Diamond Mind losing potency for warblades, and potentially becoming even better for swordsages. It also is at least a little awkward for multiclass initiator/spellcasters.
My personal recommendation is to use a Constitution-based Sense Motive check for Diamond Mind Concentration checks, and for Concentration as used in Tome of Battle feats. This seems to me to cover the most bases and fit the game the best.