Best bard / psychic build for OoA to support an all martial party

[_shredder_]

We will hopefully start next week playing outlaws of alkenstar and I'm really excited. My PC will be a kashrishi enigma bard who got shot in his horn by a gunslinging bandit, started to channel his innate psychic powers into beautiful music by playing his horn like a flute, travelled to alkenstar to find the owner of the gun and meet his muse again but got wrongfully arrested for being a member of a thieves guild.

Everyone else made martial characters, so I want to build him as a utility, support and knowledge focused bard who can also offensively target will saves. I plan to go multifarious muse(maestro) and get psychic (silent whisper) as my free archetype to get amped daze and later message. I have played both a bard and a psychic before, but always with at least one other caster in the party.

Are there any feats/spells that will be especially useful as the only caster? Would another psychic conscious mind be a better choice? Amped produce flame, ray of frost, shield and guidance sound all really nice. How much should I invest in INT? I would like to be good at bardic lore and occultism checks as the only PC besides the spellshot who didn't dump INT, but starting with more than 12 seems to make me terribly MAD.

The rest of my party will be
- human triggerbrand gunslinger/rogue with a triggerbrand
- half-elf champion of calistria/marshall with a whip and a shield
- kobold spellshot gunslinger/alchemist with a jezail
- poppet thief rogue/thaumaturge with shears and later a mirror

[The Raven Black]

Not very familiar with psychic, but Swashbuckler MC for One for all is a good buff to add to your Bard's repertoire.

[gesalt]

One caster is all you need and you've chosen the best of them so there's no issue there.

Unfortunately, knowledge bard doesn't really work because bardic knowledge doesn't scale like other skills, you can't get an item bonus to it and you can't afford int boosts in the first place. If you want to make any kind of knowledge character, they're more-or-less forced to be a rogue or thaumaturge.

With that out of the way, let's move on. Silent Whisper is ok, but amp daze is still bad and amp message can lose value in a party where every character already has good reactions (champion/AoO, opportune backstab, fake out x2). You might get more value out of guidance or shield, but it's up to you. Regardless, your most common use of focus points will probably be lingering composition from maestro muse.

As Raven Black mentioned, swashbuckler dedication is great for one for all. Consider taking it at levels 8 where psychic doesn't have anything for you.

You don't have electric arc or scatter scree because of your ancestry so telekinetic projectile is probably your best choice for cantrip offense. However, you can also consider using an air repeater in one hand and hold a staff of illusion (illusory object) or divination (true strike) in the other.

For full spells, focus on illusions and debuffs. Illusory object, calm emotions, hideous laughter, synesthesia, maze, it's all fairly obvious. Grab what buffs are available too. Wall of flesh isn't all that useful as a wall since it can be crit down easily, but it's still the only wall you have until wall of force. You should also consider signature soothe so you have a combat heal.

For feats, you're taking multifarious at 2, so reach spell at 4 and dirge at 6 followed by using your level 8 class feat together with your free archetype slot on swashbuckler dedication/one for all. Level 10 doesn't have anything particularly interesting, 12 is your focus recovery feat and master reflex from swashbuckler archetype. 14 is expert psychic casting and maybe earworm or another archetype. 16 is studious capacity, 18 is expert casting and studious capacity, 20 is another 10th level slot or something.

[Pixel Popper]

gesalt wrote:

... If you want to make any kind of knowledge character, they're more-or-less forced to be a rogue or thaumaturge...

Or Investigator.