[koz-ivan]

a bard i was working on...

drow male.

str 8
dex 16
con 8
int 20
wis 8
cha 20

the idea was that the bard would serve as party talker, alchemist, lore, backup spell caster, archer, and use songs in support - while having some stealth skill and maybe some pickpocket, and the 10 ranks of spellcraft.

w/ the primary goal of helping the party kill things, instead of killing things for the party.

the low con was really the only blind spot on the build, however the liberal use of mirror image mitigated that (and staying as far as possible from hand to hand combat)

long term i may of mixed in some wizard levels depending on how he was going once all songs were attained.

the nice thing about this build is that it allows the rest of your party to more or less forget about the talking skills & the lore skills.

drow adds some nice perks - free bow feat, magic resistance and faerie fire which also gets used quite a bit.

(alternately, one could choose human, and get just as many skill points w/ an 18 int, have a slightly higher con, a slightly less dex and cha, 2 extra feats and use x-bow instead)

feats - rapid shot, sf & gsf enchantment, lingering song all fairly important. rapid shot most of all.

spells - mix of buffs / protections and enchantments and cromatic orb. used cro orb, hold person and slow alot.

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tactics wise:

stayed behind the front tanks, sang most of the time to begin combats, switched from bow and spells from there. used a lot of "x uses per day" magic items / music instruments. if the party was facing a creature resistant to piercing damage would go back into sing mode to support other party members.

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other bard that worked well was more of a ftr type dwarf, would use ftr levels to pick up intimidate in class, feats, and weapons spec. lesser focus on secondary skills, still focused on talking and the lore skills.