Captain Odair's page

I have used a DMPC since I began DMing, we have a very small D&D group of just me and 2 others. So we don't have a lot of options and most of them don't want to play multiple people. And 3 person groups are a little more balanced. We have never had a problem as the others do this too when they DM.

What we have found is sure don't make the DMPC the star of the campaign, but you can have them have prominent roles at points, story lines that revolve around them. Its good for players who like to see where things go, or want to hear and play in a good story overall.

But again you can't forget about your other players, share the time with them as the main characters, the overarcing storyline should be theirs not yours.
Though I tend to not pre-plan to much and come up with a lot of my hooks on the fly with how our RP rolls out, organic RPing with a bit of framework done to start us off and give us a rough ending spot.

Its really how its used, and the players and DM involved.

Ok so I wanted to play a Bard character, because I freaking love Bards and just how cool they can really be.

But with the new VMC I wanted to try tagging on some aspects from the Magus onto the base, and sure it gives up feats but I can handle that I think, Bard only needs a few feats to really bring a type of build online.

So I was thinking of using Human for the Bonus feat. But making that bonus feat amateur swashbuckler for Parry and Riposte.

Well at level three I trade my feat for Arcane Pool, which is nice because now I can work on buffing my sword up and then further buff it by buffing the party and myself up.

At level 7 I can take an Arcana which would be Flamboyant Arcana. At this point I will retrain amateur swashbuckler for Extra Arcana and pick up Precise Strike. At this point I can actually start throwing some very nice damage with my bard while buffing and screwing with people as a bard typically does.

If I didn't go human and we started later I would eat the CR 2 and go Leprechaun which nets me all kinds of ability score bonuses, Improved Initative and Weapon Finesse as bonus feats and loads of Spell-Likes that are just gravy for a Bard to have spares of.

That would allow me to take Fencer's Grace at level 5 taking Weapon Focus at level 1 and bringing on my Dex to Damage plus Precise Strike build a little easier.

We typically do start at level 5, by then I could buy off 1 CR down to being a CR 1 + Class Levels by level 5. But that is just an idea which I thought might be kind cool.

With the now super limited feat progression how can I best build the bard to make use of the deeds, as well as be a great party buffer.