Swordsage & natural weapons?

[glass]

I don't believe any of the styles has anything more specific than "unarmed attacks" listed in their allowed weapons, though I'd love to be proven wrong on this case.

Also, 'unarmed strike' is the weapon. 'Unarmed attack' is the attack.


glass.

 

[Ambrus]

Therefore, Discipline Focus (Tiger Claw Weapon Focus) would provide you with the equivalent of Weapon Focus with the list of weapons associated with the Tiger Claw Discipline - kukri, kama, claw, handaxe, greataxe, and unarmed strike.

Wow. That's kind of, uh, interesting. My character has never even seen a kukri or a kama, but he's suddenly great at using them. How... curious. Thanks for the clarification.

I think you'd be pushing it to say you select a strike at first level before you select a stance, so you would probably be restricted to 1st level stances at first level.

I wouldn't have thought that would be an issue. As long as you also take the prerequisite maneuvers at the same time why would you have to wait? The only indication of which you got first is the order in which you write them on your character sheet. Granted I might be wrong about this, but I've always played it that if you gain two feats at once that you could take a feat along with its prerequisite feat at the same time. Have I been doing it wrong? Is there anything official about this in the RAW?

 

[ohGr]

On the stances issue, thanks to some unfortunate wording (or entirely deliberate wording, depending upon how you interpret designer intent), you can only take a 1st-level stance at swordsage/crusader/warblade 1, regardless of your initiator level.

The first sentence of the swordsage's Stances Known entry on page 16 says:

You begin play with knowledge of one 1st-level stance from any discipline open to you.

It specifies a 1st-level stance; unless you want to make the argument that "begins play" is a reference to 1st-level characters only (which i would disagree with), i don't see any way around the specific wording in this case.

 

[Ambrus]

i don't see any way around the specific wording in this case.

My DM pointed out to me the feat that non-adepts can take that gives them access to a stance. It says that the initiator level is equal to your level in martial adept class + 1/2 any other character levels; the same as it is with multi-class martial adepts selecting maneuvers. It doesn't necessarily contradict the Stances Known entry, but it would seem to point to it as being an unfortunate choice of wording as you surmise.