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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jasin" data-source="post: 2537858" data-attributes="member: 7531">Just consider that singing leaves your hands empty for a buckler and a longsword, while performing on an instrument likely takes up both. This is the reason I never seriously considered instruments for my 3E bard.Then again, he was supposed to be a combat, swordsman bard. If your thing will be staying behind the lines and inspiring an harassing with spells, yet another +1 to inspire courage might well be worth giving up your longsword attack that won't hit anyway. (But bladeweave seems so nice, and no bladeweave if no blade... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />)Grease is nice. Hideous laughter is deadly if you meet lots of creatures of your type (humanoids, presumably), but not so good against others (they get +4 to the save). Swift expeditious retreat from CAdv is good for a melee bard (I think, never tried it): it's expeditious retreat, but you can cast it as a swift action and it only lasts for 1 round.Cantrips are... well, cantrips. Pick whatever you want, they're not going to be what makes you or breaks you. Detect magic and read magic are, of course, useful, but the true spellcasters are bound to have them anyway. Message is the only other thing that stands out; it's like a (very <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />) poor man's telepathic bond. Summon instrument is kind of cool if you use an instrument.What's your first choice? I missed that, and now I can't seem to find it.Combat Expertise and Improved Disarm are nice. With a whip, that's +6 to disarm right there, over and above your normal attack bonus. And when you don't want to be hit, you can use Expertise to the max and still have a decent chance of hitting AC 10 (for aid another) or touch AC (for that daze effect, with bladeweave).Heighten Spell is good if you plan on using offensive spells. At 16th-level, you could still be blinding people with glitterdusts and making them drop weapons with greases, with 6th-level spell DCs.Two more feats that need to be mentioned (you can't take them at 1st, but they're definitely something to be considered for later) are Doomspeak from Champions of Ruin and Haunting Melody from Eberron. Doomspeak lets you impose a -10(!) penalty to pretty much everything for 1 round on a single opponent that fails a very difficult (DC = 10 + character level! + Cha) Will save. Haunting Tune lets you make enemies within 30 ft. shaken (standard Will save). Both use up one use of bardic music, of course. However, Doomspeak also requires 8 ranks in intimidate, so a single class bard can take it at 15th level at the soonest, but a Ftr/Brd or a Rog/Brd can take it at 6th.There's one that allows rushed diplomacy checks at -5 instead of -10, IIRC.There's also another one that gives you something like the dragons' frightful presence. When you attack or cast a spell, Will save to avoid being shaken... something like that. Could be useful, since the DC is, of course, Cha-based...Let us know if you find any other that are useful!The value of Extra Music depends heavily on how fast you expect to level, I think. If you'll be 2nd level for a significant amount of time, Extra Music is great: it more than doubles your music/day, right? But as you go up in levels, it becomes less and less useful. I played my bard 7th-9th and IIRC I ran out of music just once, and I was using Snowflake Wardance, which means another use every time I personally got into a fight.Mind that when you can afford a mithral buckler, that's 0% ASF.Even considering you're planning to use the mw instrument rules that let you tweak the music bonuses, you might still want to trade that mw instrument back for a mw weapon (whip, or whatever)... and then just buy a mw instrument! A mw instrument is 100 gp, while a weapon is 300 gp, after all. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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