Bard (Archaeologist) critique

[revaar]

I have not played Pathfinder ion a few years, and my GM is running our group through the Shattered Star Adventure Path (no spoilers please!). It has fallen to me to be the in the rogue roll. I have chosen to accomplish this by being a Bard with archaeologist archetype. Here is my character at 1st level:

Half Elf Bard (archaeologist) 1
Str: 10
Dex: 15
Con: 12
Int: 18 (+2 H/E)
Wis: 7
Cha: 16
25 pt buy

Alternate Racial: Drow Magic to replace Muli-talented and Adaptability
Traits: Vagabond Child (disable device) and Prehensile Whip
Feat: Weapon Finesse

Skills: Appraise +8, Disable Device + 7, Escape Artist +6, Knowledges Dungeoneering, Arcane, History +9, Linguistics +8, Perception +4, Sleight of hand +6, Spellcraft +8, UMD +7

Spells:
0-Detect Magic, Mage Hand, Daze, Light
1- Cure Light Wounds, Sleep

Equip: Whip, Short Sword, Short Bow, Leather Armor, Assorted Mundane Equipment

In combat I am mainly going to be attempting to Trip and Disarm with my whip, avoiding AoO with my reach. To this end, in future levels I am intending to pick up the Whip Mastery and Serpent Lash Feat Trees. I am considering dipping into Fighter (Lore warden) to help speed that up, but i am worried that doing so will damage my skill and magic progression.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

[Avatar-1]

I ran into major problems doing a very similar build to what you're doing - read over this thread to look at the advice I got.

I initially wanted a whip, but I think it was too feat-intensive to work well (with the whip mastery feat chain). The big problem with your CMB tripping (or disarming) is the bard's BAB doesn't climb fast enough at the higher levels to match up with the CMD's you'll be facing.

Also by multiclassing, you'll hit the higher levels with very low spellcasting (which is slow enough as it is without multiclassing) - level 7 or 8 with only level 2 spells hurts.

[Wasum]

18 int? Why?

[Makarion]

I'm playing an archeologist bard, and I went for a strength build. Int 12 as a human is plenty skillpoints to fill the rogue role just fine, and you don't have the feats for fancy fighting styles. Lorewarden is neat, but it delays your spells too much to be worth it to me. Now, dragon disciple is another story, since you actually gain quite a bit of prowess out of that in exchange for the 1 level of spells you lose (assuming no more than 8 levels of DD).

[Lanitril]

I know Vagabond Child gets you Disable Device, and Prehensile whip is totes super cool kinda... But check this out. The trait "Fate's Favored". When you're under the effect of a luck bonus, like the one from an Archaeologist's Luck, increase the bonus by 1. Half Elf. Extra round a level? Check out Arcane Strike too. Definitely worth checking out. This is from my experience of Combat Maneuvers not being worth it on a bard though. It may be considerably more useful in your game. Depending.

[revaar]

The 18 Int is mostly because I like having the extra Skill points to divide between Bard knowledge and the skills I need for being the team skill monkey.

Are Maneuvers really that bad? With my stats, I don't really see me ever doing a whole ton of damage, so i figured i could still contribute in combat by opening enemies up to more AoO from the party front liners.

Fate's Favored is a pretty nice little trait. At low levels it would basically double my bonus. I might take that instead of prehensile whip, as improved whip mastery basically gives the same "Use a whip as a grappling hook" bonus, though it does come a bit later in the game.

[Lanitril]

You probably have enough skill points, even though, like me, you probably will never feel like you have enough. You can probably hold off a little on some of the knowledge skills, since you can use them untrained anyways.

The problems I came up with in my Maneuvers build were this: We don't have enough feats. Not at all. Our BAB is low. Insanely. By being Dex based, that means we need yet another feat also. I think it sort of boils down to too much investment for not enough gain, and we quickly become outclassed by builds more capable of maneuvers.

I'd say you might wanna look into picking a few general feats and abilities at first, that you'll probably get anyways, and testing out the maneuvers without investing feats into them, then think about whether it might be useful to grab the feats. Maybe grab Lingering Performance or whatever else you might want to grab anyways.

Disarm I could see being useful most of the game, assuming it's still largely people and not monsters. A lot of monsters though... will be either too big to trip, flying, or have too many legs. As you gain in levels though, you'll probably see more flying enemies, including people.

Do keep in mind though, with everything I say, I have personal experience, and what you're reading might possibly be somebody who's game simply didn't work with what should have... Or it might be a bitter opinion from someone who retrained his combat expertise and improved trip.

But Lore Warden is actually pretty nifty for speeding it up... Even if it drastically slows down your spells, tricks, and luck. It probably won't mess too much with your skill points. If you dip too many levels though, you sort of risk being all about the maneuvers, which might work, but it sort of makes the Archaeologist a little... Inefficient. A Maneuvers build really has to be one first and foremost, I think.

Your spells really can be pretty useful though. They might provide more help to the party than the maneuvers. Maybe Grease could be handy early on? If your DM rules it okay, look into getting a Scorpion Whip instead of the regular one. See about maybe doing some semi-ranged damage with it, but keep the bow and sword anyways. Be the skillmonkey, be the spellmonkey... and don't forget to either damage or trip the enemy when you can.

[Avatar-1]

The maneuvers are fine (good, even) in the early levels as long as you invest everything you have into them, but later on, you won't be able to keep up.

CMD's really do go up drastically; I was having to roll a minimum of around 15 on the dice at 8th level even after heavy investment, and that was including two full BAB levels (fighter + gunslinger) on top of my bard levels, and combat expertise/improved trip which I only really needed for the bonus, not to avoid AoOs.

It might have more to do with the CMDs being explosively high in the bestiary rather than the bard's BAB; I can't say for sure. I think a Master of Many Styles monk does a good job of it, but it's not something you can multiclass into very well.

[revaar]

Some good points. Here's an update:

Str: 14
Dex: 17 (+2 HE)
Con: 10
Int: 16
Wis: 7
Cha: 15

Traits: Vagabond Child (disable device) and Fate's Favored
Feat: Lingering Performance

Skills: Appraise +7, Disable Device + 8, Knowledges Dungeoneering, Arcane, History +8, Linguistics +7, Perception +4, Sleight of hand +7, Spellcraft +7, UMD +6 (dropping escape artist)

This will give me, at the cost of one skill point and 1 Spell DC, +3 to my CMD, +2 melee damage/attack, +1 ranged attack, gives a huge boost to my archaeologist's luck (double the bonus, pretty much triples the number of rounds useable). 1st ability increase goes to Dex, second to Cha. I'll test the waters with maneuvers before devoting any feats to them, and if I decide it is worth it, I'll only go up to 3 levels of Lore Warden, and not until I get second level spells at least.

[wraithstrike]

Once you get to between levels 10 and 12 it gets really hard to make manuevers work, even if you have a full BAB class dedicated to them. Now if your GM uses more humanoid than monsters, then it wont be so bad.

[LoneKnave]

One level of Magus gives you some amazing versatility. It lets you spell combat with about half of your spells, and it lets you cast true strike+spell combat, which means you can trip/disarm with a +20 for a first level spell slot. It's great!

[Lanitril]

Well, actually, it would only let you Spellcombat with Magus spells. There are some good ones though. Never heard of taking a level dip just to be able to cast true strike before your attack. Now though, I'm sort of surprised I don't hear about it more often. Another level would get you Spellstrike with Magus spells, but I think there are probably some diminishing returns after getting a +18 to hit as part of your attack. That sounds like it could make a lot of things viable. For as many magus first level spellslots anyways.

[LoneKnave]

Any spell on the Magus spell list (unless this had been overruled, I remember a topic but I don't remember seeing the conclusion).

The big one for a melee Bard is Bladed dash, but even without that, you can benefit from it by being able to cast haste and full attack at the same time, for example.

Also, pearls of power for lvl1 spells are dirt cheap.

[Victor Zajic]

2 levels of fighter early on really helped my archaeologist build work wonders. You need the feats pretty desperatly, (I was going weapon finesses with an aldori dueling sword), and martial weapon proficiency is good for letting you use weapons that you find in the adventure path, since I doubt there will be an overabundance of magical whip, especially at low level. 2 levels worth of d10 HD help survivability too.

I went

Bard 1
Fighter 1
Fighter 2
Rest in bard)

You also might want to rethink being half drow. Drow are super, duper, extra rare in Golarion, and your GM will be well within his rights to have there be serious social repercussions for playing a half drow, if he allows it at all.

Your stats seem all wonky to me. You really need more than 10 con.
Try something like Dex 16, Str 12, Int 14, Cha 14 to free up some points for dex, and not dump statting wisdom (wisdom draining monsters will kill your character very quickly at wis 7, and will saves at -2 is a huge liability.

[Makarion]

Con 10 for a frontline character? You might as well start with rerolling, since that's not likely to survive - especially since your fort save is not a strong suit to begin with.

Just settle for Int 12-14, it's plenty as a human. Con 12-14. Dex is fine at 14 (that's AC 17 with a light shield and chain shirt at level 1). Should allow for Strength 16 and a decent enough charisma, especially if you will mainly pick spells without a save to them, such as buffs. Saving Finale is very, very good, for one.

[Dragonchess Player]

Some advice: Pick up the sift cantrip ASAP. Don't bother with more than a single skill rank in Appraise; with a magnifying glass and the ability to take 20, you can automatically hit DC 25 except in time-critical circumstances (which are not very common for Appraise). You can probably drop Dex to 16 to bump Wis up to 8 (or higher, if you're willing to drop another score a bit; maybe 10 Wis and 14 Cha); for a rogue stand-in, your Perception should probably be higher. If you're using your favored class bonus toward hp, you can possibly get by with a 10 Con, but a 12 is usually my minimum.

14 Str, 15 Dex, 13 Con, 16 Int (+2 race), 10 Wis, 14 Cha is probably sufficient, since bards can use shields, to function within your concept. One advancement should go toward Dex, and all others in Cha.

[strayshift]

Unwitting Ally as a cantrip has everything daze gives you plus no level limit, tactical opportunities for flanking and you can cast it repeatedly - in my view it should be a 1st level spell. Take that not Daze.

Fate's Favoured boosts your luck bonuses by 1 - which is massive for the Archaeologist as others have said.

Vanish is better than people say IF you seek to move to flank or attack spell-users. If you had a Cleric I'd forego CLW's.

I'd lower Int too - raise wisdom. Will/Perception will haunt you in game play more than less skill points.

All of these would give you a viable flanking type bard.

[Jacob Saltband]

If your trying to fill the trapfinder role your low perception will hurt alot!

[Cap. Darling]

LoneKnave wrote:

Any spell on the Magus spell list (unless this had been overruled, I remember a topic but I don't remember seeing the conclusion).

The big one for a melee Bard is Bladed dash, but even without that, you can benefit from it by being able to cast haste and full attack at the same time, for example.

Also, pearls of power for lvl1 spells are dirt cheap.

To the OP Make sure your GM dosent consider this reading to be cheasy and remember that it will cost your BaB even if it gives you arcane pool(that cost a swift action to activate on the weapon same as the luck thing)

Also in some games an extra full hour of morning prep may be nothing but in most of the games i play in it would be somthing of an obstacle.

[strayshift]

Cap. Darling wrote:

LoneKnave wrote:

Any spell on the Magus spell list (unless this had been overruled, I remember a topic but I don't remember seeing the conclusion).

The big one for a melee Bard is Bladed dash, but even without that, you can benefit from it by being able to cast haste and full attack at the same time, for example.

Also, pearls of power for lvl1 spells are dirt cheap.

To the OP Make sure your GM dosent consider this reading to be cheasy and remember that it will cost your BaB even if it gives you arcane pool(that cost a swift action to activate on the weapon same as the luck thing)

Also in some games an extra full hour of morning prep may be nothing but in most of the games i play in it would be somthing of an obstacle.

The problem with that is you only have 1 swift action a round so you can't have that and Archaeologist's luck.