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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 6346949" data-attributes="member: 18">First off, thanks to everyone for their help! Great stuff and I think I'm sorted now on that. I may make another thread with general PF/Golarion questions, since this got moved to builds.Your assessment of it seems to work on the understanding that it merely substitutes the skill ranks, but that's not how it works. You substitute the skill bonus.<a href="http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/bard#TOC-Versatile-Performance-Ex-" target="_blank">http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/bard#TOC-Versatile-Performance-Ex-</a>For example, in your article, you assert that using Perform (whatever) to replace Sense Motive, if your Perform skills are such that you're only getting one skill each out of them via Versatile Performance, is not a net gain.That would be true if it worked the "skill rank" way, but it's unlikely in the extreme to be true because it actually works the "skill bonus" way. As you're a Bard, you are unlikely to have much in WIS (even rolling, it's unlikely to be a priority - CON, DEX and INT are likely to come before it). Sense Motive bought directly will be thus WIS MOD + Skill Ranks + Class Skill, and WIS MOD is probably between -1 and +2. Sense Motive via Versatile Performance will be CHA MOD + Skill Ranks + Class Skill. Likely +4 or much more. So there's a net gain even using Versatile Performance clumsily for non-CHA skills. Even with Animal Handling, which is a CHA skill, if you get it before all skills become class skills, then you're getting an effective +3 from that factor.You're right that you will lose out a bit if you get to high levels, but it's not a big deal imo, and you can still pick up a lot of skills that way. The bigger deal is whether the DM will let you retrain skill points that are effectively invalidated, because you will need to plan very clearly and operate without some fairly basic skills if he won't.Plus I'm pretty sure both the 2E (esp. post Complete Bard) and 4E Bards had plenty of mojo, more than the 1E Bard, who required some bonkers dual-classing action and ultra-high stats. <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=":)" /> Flavour is a matter of pure taste, but mechanically? Those guys kicked ass.Totally agree that it's really odd that all the higher-level abilities have nothing to do with Perform, though!</blockquote>

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