I recently had the pleasure of playing a bard. And yes, it was very fun. I know everyone jokes about how bards are useless, but you'd be surprised - this guy pulled his own weight and contributed to fights in a significant way. Conversely, in another game, our party has a bard that is pretty much useless. You can tell this is the case when he literally cannot find something to do on most rounds. Virtually every character (except maybe a summoner) doesn't have enough actions to do everything they want in a round, and if you can't find things to do to take up your actions in a round (like our current bard is doing), you are doing it horribly wrong. So this is a short guide on how to do a bard right.

HOW TO BE A BARD

Class Features

d8 Hit Die: You won't be quite as durable as a fighter, but you're not far off. You're on the same level as the rogue, so going into melee is totally an option; just don't try to be the party tank.

Class Skills: You get 6 per level, and you get a wide variety of skills. You will be something of a skill monkey, but keep in mind the skills of your other party members. Also remember that you get the fantastic class feature of Versatile Performance. These will effectively make your Perform ranks affect two other skills, allowing you to use points from, say, bluff or diplomacy on appraise or stealth. To this end, you will probably want to put ranks into three different Perform skills. Make sure at least one of these is for flavor, not optimization. If you wanted pure optimization, you wouldn't be a bard. Bards are designed to have a ton of flavor and RP potential, and if you focus solely on numbers, your bard is going to suck.

BAB - Medium: Your BAB isn't as good as a fighter's, but it's still workable. You'll hit a fair amount, so don't shy away from weapons.

Saves: bad Fort; good Reflex; good Will: Two ain't bad, and your Will is probably the most important because you dumped Wisdom.

Weapon and Armor Proficiencies: Let's start with the weapons. You get all simple weapons, plus the longsword, shortsword, rapier, sap, shortbow, and whip. These give you TONS of options. The longsword, shortsword, and rapier are all fairly solid melee weapons. If you have a strength setup, pick up a longsword or longspear. If dexterity, a shortbow or rapier. And if you want to do combat maneuvers, get a whip. All are viable.

As for the armors, you get light armor and shields, plus the freedom to cast in light armor without penalty. So put on that chain shirt and get to work!

Spells: Let me explain this stuff right now: you don't do damage spells. You barely do control spells. What you actually do are buffs, debuffs, and especially interrupts. You get haste, slow, invisibility, mirror image, all the usual good stuff (and these can really ensure that you survive for a long time in melee), plus the almighty SAVING FINALE. As an interrupt,, you end your bardic performance and allow an ally to reroll a failed save. You cannot quantify how useful that is. You can prevent TPK's with this, and it's a level 1 spell that only bards can do. And on top of that, you have Liberating Command - as an interrupt, an ally gets another shot at breaking a grapple, with a bonus to the check equal to your caster level. A bad grapple will end a character because so few characters are capable of dealing with them - especially casters. If your caster finds himself in the path of a Black Tentacles spell, then you probably just saved his life because he doesn't have a hand free to cast Grease. Again, do not count on your spells to do damage or control the battlefield. They're designed to get your party out of bad situations and apply some very nice buffs and debuffs (mostly buffs though). Except for Saving Finale, you won't do it better than a wizard, so don't try to - free up his slots to do more of the spells that only he can do.

Bardic Knowledge: This is decent, but not amazing unless your party really doesn't have anyone with knowledge skills. If you are the designated enemy identifier, then yeah, this will be a godsend. But if not and you want an archetype that replaces this with something else? I wouldn't lose any sleep over its loss.

Bardic Performance: Here it is, your bread and butter. Well, kinda. There are several different songs that come in this package, but only a handful are actually useful. For most of your career, it's Inspire Courage. Bonuses to attack and damage for your party - can't go wrong with that. Inspire competence may be good if you -really- need to work on a skill check, but in many cases Aid Another will be just as good. The rest either come very late into the build or are way too situational, like distract and countersong. Focus solely on Inspire Courage.

Versatile Performance: As indicated above, this is a good way to maximize your skill points. Get a variety of perform skills and enjoy applying them to several different skills.

Lore Master: Like with Bardic Knowledge, if your party really needs someone to do knowledge checks, fine, but otherwise don't feel bad getting rid of this in an archetype.

Jack of All Trades: By the time you get this, you've got ranks in all the skills you want. It is highly unlikely that you'll be using this to pull off a trained skill in which you have no ranks.


Pulling it All Together: Builds

As much as you might want to be the dedicated skill monkey and leave the combat to the other guys, Pathfinder (and 3.5) is a combat game. You are expected to pull your weight in battle, so make sure you know what you'll do once initiative is rolled. Here are a few possible setups that work for a bard.

Archer:
This is probably the classic setup. As a bard, you really don't have a lot of feats that you absolutely MUST pick up. That leaves you a lot of room to develop your own combat style. In this case, you'd be spending about 6 feats to pick up all of the big archery feats (Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot, Manyshot, Deadly Aim, Improved Precise Shot), ending up doing very respectable damage with a bow. You'd be prioritizing DEX and CHA for this setup, possibly a bit of STR if you can afford it to get some extra damage out of your composite bow. This was my personal favorite because the damage I did kept up well with the melee attackers, and I was able to help everyone do extra damage with my buff spells and songs. You'll have a slow start because it'll take you several levels to pick up all of the archery feats, but the end result is a very solid character.

Melee:
Prioritize STR, CON, and slightly CHA for this one. Your bard spells (mirror image, blur) will give you some very nice combat protections, so long as you've got time to cast them before battle. You probably won't be doing as much damage as an archer setup, but remember that you have lots of feats to work with. You could very easily set up a teamwork feat build with an ally thanks to your Coordinated Effort spell, or multiclass into something like rogue to do bonus damage. You -can- just do a basic "hit stuff with sword" route, but it will be subpar compared to the other melee attackers. Remember, the best thing you can do as a bard is to make everyone else better while still doing a decent job yourself. Focus on things that will improve both you and someone else (like teamwork feats, combat maneuvers, buff spells) before focusing only on yourself.

Mid-line Reach:
This setup relies either on the longspear, whip, or another reach weapon if you spend the feat to get proficient with it. The point of this setup is to stick a little back from melee so that you aren't as likely to get hit, but can still contribute. This can include any number of things, from combat maneuvers, to combat reflexes to get more AOOs, to just plain poking enemies with the longspear. Now, two things should be noted here. First, the whip is extremely handy for combat maneuvers, and with reach, you can do them safely. However, you'll still typically want to invest in the feats for them, and at that point you might as well do it in melee. A second thing to note is the Banner of the Ancient Kings, which is an item that gives several buffs if it's attached to a long pole and brought into battle. Specifically, it gives bonuses to saves, initiative, and makes your Inspire Courage better. A longspear is probably the only weapon you can use with this thing, and that means you gotta attack at reach. One other consideration is using a net. You would have to invest a few feats, but you could reliably use a net to entangle and trip foes - not amazing, but still quite potent, especially against a caster. For this, you'll generally want to emphasize STR and CHA, giving you some more freedom with the others.

Combat Maneuvers:
As indicated above, you have feats to use. And one of the most versatile ways to mess with a foe is with combat maneuvers. Grapple, disarm, trip, sunder, steal, dirty trick....all of them can really mess with an opponent and make them lose their turns. You'll want to focus on STR, CHA, and CON here, and put your feats towards improving combat maneuvers. Teamwork feats may also be good here because a few of them greatly expand on combat maneuvers too. As mentioned above with the whip, you may even be able to do these at range. You won't be doing much damage with this, and you'll probably never kill anything on your own, but your fighter is going to love you when every round you're tripping the enemy barbarian, who can't get a full attack because he's spending every round standing back up. Or you've sundered his greataxe.

Magic Items:
This is not a setup for low-level characters. You must be at least mid-level before attempting this setup because otherwise you can't afford the items for this set. Basically, the idea is to get numerous items that cast spells on activation, like scrolls, wands, or other wondrous items, and then basically use those every round. The benefits: you can focus primarily on CHA and then be whatever you want after, possibly DEX to help with your ranged touch attacks or CON for more HP; you never have to worry about weapons at all; you come to develop an arsenal of cool magical effects, many of which are reusable. The downsides: you're never threatening a square, so you can't help your allies with flanking or AOOs; the magic items you need are expensive, so you'll be noticeably behind others in terms of magical passive benefits; there aren't that many feats that complement this build, so you'll most likely waste a few; if you face a magic-immune enemy or are out of charges for your stuff, you're useless for the rest of the day; you waste valuable actions swapping between magic items as needed. I really don't like this concept as it restricts you to a handful of spells and effects, and at any time you could waste a round by failing your UMD check.


Keep in mind that the point of a bard is to find a balance between effects that benefit others in the party and effects that improve yourself. You want to do as much of the former as possible, while still remaining decent at the latter. You will never be a better caster than the wizard or a better warrior than the fighter, but with your help, those classes will be doing far better than they could on their own. And then after you've over-optimized the rest of the party, you take out your weapon and provide some respectable damage on your own.

Beyond Battle

The above sections were all about what bards should do in battle, but they didn't address what the bard should do outside of combat. Typically, you will be the party's face. You should do your best to make friends with NPCs, and your perform skills will be spectacular with this. Diplomacy is one thing, but you probably won't need it after doing an excellent performance on stage and the crowd loves you. Make use of Bluff too. Be suggestive, boast a little, and talk up NPCs to reveal information that they wouldn't have otherwise. Ultimately the specifics of these are up to each individual bard, but no matter what, you are really good when it comes to other people. Try to do a lot of spontaneous RP about things. Never just spend a night at an inn, do a performance too! Take someone to bed with you! Compare favorite drinks and have drinking contests! As a bard, you are in a unique position with all of your knowledges, social skills, and performances, that you can just make people have a good time pretty much whenever you want. Practice some jokes, spend time on your wardrobe, overly describe your actions...your place is supposed to be in the spotlight, so make the most of it!