As the tittle says, I have joined a campaign, and he wants to only run core, with a ton of little rulings he has made an not letting anyone one know about till they hit it in game; such as, you can't power attack while charging (Don't ask me why). I know this sounds a little bitter, but I am still glad to just hang out with him.
So I had an idea where I could revive my Hexblade character I had as bard/EK.
For yet another twist, I was thinking I would have my character use 2 shields as weapons in TWF. I would have sword and board, but the game doesn't support that sort of weapon use.
Focus on the intimidation is also a point.
It is a 32 point buy game.
So any suggestions would be great.
Well if you are sticking with core, I am assuming you are also using xp penalties. So you will need to consider what race you'll use and what martial class in addition to your bard class in order to qualify for EK. You have:
Human, half-elf, gnome: bard and any martial class
Dwarf: bard and fighter
Half-orc: barbarian and bard
Elves and halflings don't really work for this build, though you could ask if NPC classes could be treated as favored (they were in 3ed, but they left out the text in 3.5 for some reason). If the DM will allow it, they could use aristocrat or warrior to qualify for the class for the halfling or elf.
My suggestion would probably be either half-elf or human and go ranger and bard into EK. The flavor works nice with that combo (of course those are my favorite two base classes so I could be prejudiced).
Keep in mind the earliest you could possibly qualify for the class is 9th level (7 bard levels to have a chance to cast 3rd level spells and 1 level in martial class to get martial weapon proficiency).
As for the two shield, I'm not sure if that is the greatest choice. Maybe heavy shield in on-hand a light weapon in off-hand? Remember you'll need a hand free to cast spells. And you don't want to have to unstrap a shield to get that hand free. Also shield bonuses don't stack (though other magic abilities might). Sword and board works in 3.5, it just is very weak, but if power was what you were worried about, you wouldn't be using bard.
Simple and obvious question: Why would you go Eldritch Knight?
What does it possibly bring you? You lose a level of spell-casting. You get a bonus feat, but that's counteracted by needing to take Militia to qualify for EK (In fact, I don't think Militia is a core feat, so you don't qualify for EK, period, as a straight bard). You get no advancements in bardic abilities.
Core bard is basically a gish-in-a-can, so why toss in EK anyway?
As for any kind of two-weapon fighting: To be any kind of effective, it requires a whole slew of feats that you don't have the time for. Not to mention that shields don't do a whole lotta damage. TWF is generally considered sub-optimal.