Well, you *could* combine the two. If you want "bigger, brighter than life", and voodoo, use the Swashbuckling Adventures rules for most stuff, but use the Voodoo rules from Skull & Bones. They should be interchangeable. They both use D20 spellcasting....it's just that SA uses sorcerers, whereas Voodoo is different. But in both cases, they use a combination of innate abilities, and D20 spells you can get in the PHB.....it's the mechanics of how they cast their spells or get effects etc. that differ. But it does not mean that they are incompatible.
I'd go with Skull & Bones' suggestion that metamagic type feats are no longer available. Both games have a rarity of your typical fireball, lightning bolt, disintegrate type magic, from what I remember. This also works within the setting feel.....magic should be more subtle. I agree with the post above that if your guys can breath water, fly, and throw fireballs, it's harder to make a swashbuckling game.....who's afraid of a pistol, when Shazam here has a wand of 10d6 fireballs?
Swashbuckling Adventures does have a supplement called Midnight Archipelago that has their equivalent of Voodoo in it, which does have redeeming qualities. But I like the flavour of the Voodoo from Skull & Bones better. On the other hand, the rules they've got for fencing etc. that are in Swashbuckling Adventures I find to work better. In the Skull & Bones system, when fighting unarmored, you defend yourself by parrying...but have to give up your attacks to do so. So you can defend or attack, but not both. The SA method is more simplistic, but I think it works better in a game, and makes high-lvl swashbuckling games more feasible, IMO.
The world of 7th Sea is pretty fun to play in as well.
Banshee
