Well, yeah, your AC sucks because you're wearing light armor with 13 Dex. You're pretty much just going to have to suck that up. Though, I suppose eventually you can get Medium Armor Proficiency and a Mithril Breastplate.
Actually, with only +1 Dex, why bother getting a Mithril Chain Shirt? You'll never hit that Dex cap anyway. Just make it a +1 Chain Shirt instead, and get the extra AC.
I agree that in a typical party, polearms are safer than having more AC, but using a shield will allow you to double dip enhancement bonuses to AC, which are the cheapest bonuses to AC.
Oh, and while it won't help your AC now, it will eventually when you can get a Jinghasa of the Fortunate Soldier--the fate's favored trait will bump your Archaeologist's Luck feature, an I highly recommend it.
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Okay, first thing I see is your low-ish DEX on a light-armor character.
You don't need that 12 INT when you already have 6 skill ranks per level and scaling bonuses to all Knowledge skills (which are all also class skills). Taking that back down to 10 will let you put your DEX at 14, giving you +1 AC.
Additionally, if you went from standard human to dual-talent human (costing you your bonus feat—I'd drop either Power Attack or Extra Performance and just pick it up later—and your kind of superfluous bonus skill rank) then you'd get a +2 to a second stat. Put it in DEX, and there's another +1 AC.
Next up is armor. Why are you in a mithral chain shirt? You've got enough carrying capacity for the weight, you're nowhere near caring about the increases max DEX to AC... what's going on there? If you make it a (normal steel) +1 chain shirt, that's about the same price but with +1 AC and no real downside.
So right off the bat, you could currently have an AC of 18 instead of 15 at this level.
Now, looking at the road ahead...
You'll eventually want some mithral pseudo-medium armor (since it will count as light, letting you have full movement speed and no restrictions on your casting). There's two ways to do this: one is to take the Armor Expert trait and get a mithral breastplate (you'll technically be non-proficient, and therefore take its -0 ACP on your attack rolls), and the other is to pay slightly more money for elven chain. Either way, you get better AC without much drawback.
Additionally, remember to put AC-boosting items in as many different slots as possible, as this gives you a far better return for your money than simply upgrading your armor. Go for the Ring of Protection, Amulet of Natural Armor, Jingasa of the Fortunate Soldier...
...Which reminds me, consider the Fate's Favored trait. It boosts any luck bonus you get by +1. Once you get the Jingasa, that's another +1 to your AC. At the same time, Fate's Favored will be boosting the power of your Archaeologist's Luck by +1 for your entire career, which is just all kinds of awesome.
And eventually, if you have the feat to spare, you can take Dodge. :)
Hope that helps!
If you don't have a reason for the 12 Int, you can drop that do a 10 and bump your Dex to 14, for +1 AC. (You have Uncanny Dodge, so you will almost never lose your Dex bonus.)
You shouldn't be having any encumbrance issues and you don't have a high enough Dex to waste an extra 1K for mithral. Swap that for a +1 buckler and you armor class goes up by 2. (Later on, save your money for a mithral breastplate.)
The biggest problem with the reach weapon is that you won't have a hand free to cast, and a couple of the best bard spells are off your turn. You'll have to choose between threatening and casting. (For flexibility, you'll be better with a one-handed weapon that you can use with two hands to get 1 1/2 times your strength bonus; one that does two damage types is even better.)
Other possibilities:
- Put some points into Use Magic Device and get a wand of Shield (+4 Shield bonus)
- Potions of Barkskin until you can get an amulet of natural armor
- Potions of Shield of Faith until you can get a Ring of Protection
- Pick up Dodge for your next feat
- Dip into Fighter/Unarmed Fighter or Monk/Master of Many Styles to pick up Crane Style, then always fight defensively at only -2 to attack
Eventually, you'll want to look for:
- Ring of Protection (deflection bonus)
- Mithral breastplate (up your armor bonus)
- Dusty rose prism Ioun stone (insight bonus)
- Jingasa of the fortunate soldier (luck bonus)
- Amulet of natural armor (natural armor bonus)
Also, don't discount things like mirror image and blur and displacement--those are huge.
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If you went archivist instead your performance would count towards AC on you and your allies within 30 feet when you identify an enemy creature. You'd lose most of your rogue stuff but keep disable device. If you went aasimar you could use the favored class bonus to bump the level of the performance faster.
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The biggest problem with the reach weapon is that you won't have a hand free to cast, and a couple of the best bard spells are off your turn.
Please explain this. You only lack a free hand to cast spells that take longer than a Standard Action. Are there some really good Full Round bard spells? What are they?
He's meaning the immediate action spells. Like Timely Inspiration, but those are only Verbal and I don't think they realized that.