Currently, the bard is a trainwreck of feats.  So, FOTM SWF Half Elf Swashbuckler with evasion & Paladin Dill is the target.  Thinking 12/6/2 Bard fighter rogue.  Displacement, haste, DDoor, 11 feats.  Bard only has Fatesinger maxed out at the moment.  Anyone have a rough template along these lines?

I read that shield feats were getting nerfed with SWF?  True/False
Also, thinking Stalwart for shield goodness bonuses.  Do they mesh Ok with buckler?

is your bard currently pure, or do you have to dance around levels?

I am currently trying the same thing (see here http://www.ddovault.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1407151914)

I ended up with 12/6/2 Bard/Fighter/Rogue and have something like

18
12
16
10
8
12

Level 1 (Rogue)
Feat: (Selected) Toughness

Level 3 (Fighter)
*Feat: (Selected) Power attack
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Shield Mastery

Level 4 (Fighter)
*Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Precision

Level 6 (Bard)
Feat: (Selected) S Weapon Fighting

Level 9 (Bard)
Feat: (Selected) S Two Weapon Fighting

Level 12 (Fighter)
*Feat: (Selected) Improved Critical: Slash Weapons
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Improved Shield Mastery

Level 14 (Fighter)
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Greater SWeapon Fighting

Level 15 (Rogue)
Feat: (Selected) Force of Personality

Level 18 (Bard)
Feat: (Selected) Empower Healing Spell

Few thoughts.
1.) Power attack and Precision cant be run at the same time (ditto with stawart def I think).  I was running the enhancemnt to give +5 dmg with Precision. This is cause I did not think out everything and thought the to hit might help over the loss with power attack because I was going to weapon finesse and use Cha for Dmg. But ended up maxing str, so I think I'll trade out percision for cleave and Force of personality for Greater cleave, opening up overwhelming crit for epic.

Still trying to figure out Epic feats, but remember inspire excellence requires 15 bard levels, so that is not an option.

the Dmg with Swash and going into Kensi seems pretty good.  I'm currently pretty heavy into WC tree as well, but the chants are underwhelming (6 dr is nice, but does not stack with much, so underutilized) although the rage is nice (its much longer 4+min then the tool tip says)

Also not sure the Empower healing is the best choice, but I really wanted this guy to heal decently. Might switch some points from WC to Spellsinger for stronger scrolls and longer songs.

Please let me know what you end up going with, I'm sure there is alot of room for improvement in my build.

Aeolwind wrote on Aug 11^th, 2014 at 10:53am:


you dont need str for OC soon, so dont build for it unless you plan to TR/ETR it in the near future. Unless ofc your already planning to use Str for dmg instead of Cha for dmg via swashbuckle tree. (Use Cha for dmg, same as str for dmg. Downside: nothing really boosts cha clickie wise, so str will always be higher if you min/max, however you can go PDK and gain 1/3 your cha mod to tacticals, which is great. the upside: GSWF allows the same bonus that Str does to 2hf, 200% ability bonus to dmg, which makes the use of Cha, Int, or Dex useful. (I only add Dex because its possible to sustain higher dex non-buffed than it is str atm ))

Aeolwind wrote on Aug 11^th, 2014 at 10:53am:


After thinking about it a bit, I did not do Cha for dmg, because I really did not see the benefit.  Your to hit will be lower (even if you spend the feat and get weapon finesse, so you at least get some synergy between reflex/evasion and to hit) and it will never max out as high.  Your cha skills are going to be strong, but if you really want to focus on that, you should go with more levels in bard imo.

Agree with WC being less appealing. Gonna mess around with my enchantments, but going 21 points seems like a good cut off

+4 str from rage
+2 group dmg
some HP, extra songs and some cold dmg might be worth it.

Aeolwind wrote on Aug 11^th, 2014 at 8:06am:


Yes they do, you get full effect from Stalwart with a buckler.

I think it will work even if Shield Mastery feats won't, because they are different thing altogether. Loss of Shield Mastery feats is painful mostly due to loss of Legendary Shield Mastery (though currently if you twist it without the SM feats, you still get full benefit, but I doubt it's WAI) and overall Doublestrike.

Oyster wrote on Aug 11^th, 2014 at 3:13pm:

My feats were the problem.  I was originally a spellsinger, changed to Warchanter, with a horribly broken mishmosh of feats that I cannot change with 50 trips to Fred.  And, I want evasion.  Splashing fighter was just an idea to make sure I could squeeze all the feats in & stalwart.  Half Elf Bard with Paladin Dill nets some pretty nice saves.  All the CC I need are songs from what I've seen so far.

Rubbinns wrote on Aug 11^th, 2014 at 3:53pm:
Half Elf Dilettante can do many things, make me a dwarf isn't one.

Aeolwind wrote on Aug 11^th, 2014 at 5:13pm:

Good point;p Str or dex give better returns than cha based.