I am a complete noob to DnD3 and feel overwhelmed by the number of factors considered when reading various builds. I almost always play some sort of a mage on a first playthrough of any RPG and hoped to play some sort of an arcane spellsword, with a slant towards fighting as it's reputedly more needed for the original campaign. Wizards have a synergy with duelists, swashbucklers and eldritch knigths of course. I don't want to gimp myself in the talking department but don't know what and how much is needed for the campaign. I was thinking something like:

- 3 levels of Swashbuckler for fluff, better hitpoints and more skills than wizard;
- 3-5 levels of Wizard (or whatever is needed for EK);
- 10 levels of EK (allegedly it's an all-or-nothing class);
- Wizard to level 8 to get the highest level spells
- finish of with Duelist (in Mask of the Betrayer, most likely).

A race with Wizard as a preferred class will be required, so unfortunately some sort of an Elf; Sun Elf would be preferrable, but I hope I do not really lose much in such a build by choosing a Moon Elf for role playing. Is the +2 level penalty of the Drow really bad? I like them for fluff reasons, likely because of the encounter with Viconia years ago ;)

Is this a sensible progression and what I must take/do for this to work? Or would I be better of by forgoing swashbuckler completely and going with a simple Wizard 8 + EK 10 + Duelist 10, with an added bonus of a wider choice of classes?