Archetype building

[BreakinStuff]

I have a player who is interested in playing a bard with a more martial focus on combat. Since she's wanting to give up the entire bard capacity for spells I am actually having a hard time figuring out what would be an appropriate thing to replace it with. she wants to have the performances and such.

So what's the bard's spellcasting worth? It's not as great as a sorcerer, sure, but I'm guessing it's worth slightly more than occasionally getting rogue talents in return.

I'll be running the game, and I like the concept. Adding to the mix would be the character would be an UNARMORED combatant, but I already figured out how to handle that unless someone here dazzles me with brilliance or manages to baffle me with bulls**t.

[Captain Zoom]

If you want more responses, you should probably try posting this under Advice or Suggestions/House Rules/Homebrew. This isn't really a rules question.

My advice, first have the player look at the Bard Archetypes which are more martial in nature and pick one of those if possible. If one of them is "good enough", it's probably best to avoid tinkering.

If none of the existing archetypes work for the player and you are willing to create a new archetype, approach the exercise with caution. Look at the existing archetypes to see what they do.

Good luck!

[Claxon]

Look at the dawnflower dervish bard archetype. Doesn't give up spell casting, but is more combat focused.

[Eltacolibre]

Dervish bard as suggested above is pretty much all you need. Bard has a strong list of spells, would benefit an unarmored combatant even more so with spells like mirror images providing all the defenses that someone could ever need.

The other possibility, is simply to play an Exemplar (Brawler archetype), they get bardic performances and using Teamwork feats, have no magic, full bab and martial flexibility to use feats whenever you need. Kamina from Gurren Lagann would be an example of an exemplar to me.

[Chess Pwn]

Take a look at the exemplar brawler, you get inspire courage and you're a full martial class.