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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tales and Chronicles" data-source="post: 8325197" data-attributes="member: 6871653">Nice find:''A master of martial maneuvers, the swordsage is a physical adept - a blade wizard whose knowledge of the Sublime Way lets him unlock potent abilities, many of which are overtly supernatural or magical in nature. Depending on which disciplines he chooses to study, a swordsage might be capable of walking through walls, leaping dozens of feet into the air, shattering boulders with a single touch, or even mastering the elements of fire or shadow. Whatever his specific training, a swordsage blurs the line between martial prowess and magical skill.To you, a sword is not simply a sharpened length of steel. It is the wisdom of the smith, the fire of the forge, and the shouts and ringing blows of your battles. It is your teacher and your student, your life and your death. When your mind is tempered like the blade, no feat of combat prowess is beyond you. You can run on the weapons of your foes, strike an enemy unseen, and flip insouciantly away from the frustrated riposte. Through it all, you seek to understand the secret knowledge of combat. Every blow is a revelation, and every wound an apocalypse. In the end, you and your sword are nothing without each other.Your training began when you won an apprenticeship with a mentor - either an individual hermit swordsage or an instructor at an ancient swordsage temple dating back to the Battle of the Shadow Tiger Horde. You knew that winning a swordsage apprenticeship would not be easy - that in fact, it would be an ordeal designed to test your worth in some unusual way.The masters of the Harad Devin Temple are known to make the young boys and girls wishing to undertake training wait in the courtyard for seasons on end, through rain, snow, and the acid cloud storms of reth dekala attacks. Occasionally the masters might send a pot of porridge to the courtyard for the aspirants, and even more occasionally - never more than once per season - they select one child to enter through the Ivory and Horn Gates. The Eighty Empresses have a different selection process for their protégés. The masters bring each young lady separately into the Dressing Room of Opala I, whose walls, mirrors, incense lamps, pots of rouge, and songbird cages are draped with 1,080 shimmering gold, red, pink, orange, and fuchsia silk ribbons. The girl is allowed to stay as long as she likes in the dressing room; she has but to give a signal when she is ready to leave. After she is led away, one ribbon is removed from the room. Then she is brought back. If she can name the color of the ribbon that was removed, she is accepted; otherwise, she is turned away forever.You and your fellow swordsages adventure for a plethora of reasons. Neither the religious fervor of the crusader nor the honor quest of the warblade causes you to travel the world. More than faith, more than glory, you seek truth. Whether you find that truth in the burbling acid swamps south of the Deluge Jungle, in a screeching jungle harpy roost, or in the gullet of a purple worm, you are driven to uncover it, learn it, and master it.Rather than rushing into combat with the mindless rage of a barbarian or the foolhardy courage of a warblade, you assess your opponents and try to achieve tactical supremacy through position and martial maneuvers. Your lack of armor proficiency means that you are best suited to a skirmish-style attack - one in which you can use your high mobility to flank an enemy and strike hard and fast. However, you are perfectly capable of standing toe to talon with vrocks and wyverns when necessary, parrying fang with blade and using your martial maneuvers to cut a path through your enemy's front ranks.''So a Wis-Int based Monk-like with maneuvers ala BM + 4e monks and 1/2 spellcaster.</blockquote>

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