I commented on all your objections, which were silly.
This is roughly like saying Glitterdust is a bad spell because it will hit your party. Quite simply, you either position people correctly, or better yet just make the entire party immune (Necropolitan is easiest, especially with a Necromancer already in the party).
By level 12, you teleport places anyway, so who cares? Nor does movement speed matter much out of combat, and in combat the party isn't slowed down.
When you really need stealth, you can either leave them behind or make use of extradimensional space. Heck, if flight will get you past whatever you wanted to sneak by, the flying dragon actually makes that easier.
There's a Shrink Collar you can buy in A&EG to handle this if it comes up significantly. Makes any creature small. Note this also fixes your stealth questions, since you can now fit everything in extradimensional space.
Sudden Leap lets you jump as a swift action. More importantly, you have to jump really high to make it work... the stance makes this work, because of the +10ft bonus to jump distance. Just jump up. Monk can't.
It does not matter whether sudden leap is activated as a swift action. A character using it still moves after a charge, which he usually cannot do (SRD:
You must move before your attack, not after.). Moreover, if after a charge you cannot move , you cannot use any martial maneuvers since those require the ability to move (ToB p. 38).
And the monk can in theory take this stance as well at level 12, making him much better at jumping than the swordsage due to his higher movement bonus.
Hunter's Stance would let him roughly know where the dragon is, which is better than your Monk. And it's pretty much the only first level stance I'd ever take.
scentYou need to look at the maneuvers more. They let you do things like teleport next to the opponent, or jump before charging, making the Swordsage far better at charging that a Monk.
Lucky the Swordsage can make touch attacks then, eh?
How? I think you do not mean the setting sun throwing maneuvers, nor the ranged touch attacks for this battlejumping-the-dragon-for-massive-damage-tactics. And note he has already used a swift action for the sudden jump for battle jump activation and charge for the rest.
Also, I miscalculated the damage. It's much higher. Power Attack alone with Leap Attack gives +36 damage with a two hander at BAB 9, and then the damage is tripled by Valorous + Battle Jump to +108 per attack. Even just Pouncing Charge + Sudden Leap gives three charging attacks, no multiclassing necessary. With multiclassing you'd have Whirling Frenzy and you'd be pouncing on both charges, so that's actually 6 attacks. Instant kill.
Shadow Jaunting still skips 11/12ths of the spaces you'd otherwise be in, making it VERY unlikely to hit any given trap. And he has a chance of not alerting anyone, which the Monk (and Adept) lacks.
In the case of whole areas trapped (which is quite likely the case for a huge creature), it does not matter whether you move through the area in a straight line or hop into one section of it, you still trigger. So this swordsage short-teleport advantage may not be as big as you think. And once traps are triggered, the monk at least has blink and thus escapes (at least) half of any trap effects. Close call....
There's no counter attack due to the dragon being flat footed and not ever seeing the Swordsage. Also, as a Dark Whispergnome (thanks to the collar) he's got quite a significant hide score.
I'm just throwing out options. A fire swordsage, a stealth/ninja swordsage, and a charger swordsage. You could combine two of those if you wanted, but these are just showing some of the basic options.
He kills one, alerting everyone, and then arrows rain down and kill him. Game over. The Swordsage, unlike the Monk, is never seen at all, and can thus do this right in front of all the enemies.
Still...anyhow again the adept's chicken wights are way ahead. And as for the slave resistance movement...the adept's domination tactic also has to be surpassed by the swordsage somehow.
No, it really doesn't. That's not how this works.
Ah yes, the Monk was alone (hence being easy to take out with a single grapple, unlike the Adept) and you were shocked that a smart dragon might build his house according to his own abilities. Truly shocking.
blink, Blink, BLINK,
BLINK
