Hello, everyone, Acothea here. I'd appreciate a bit of advice, or help...

I've been thinking about making a Rakshasa for quite a while, it's one of the only Shifter epic shapes I've never had sucess with. I like making somewhat unique Shifter builds, thus I'm trying to do something a little different from the usual Monk Rak build.

My question is this...would a Bard give enough to make up for the massive loss of AC? Bards get Ice Storm, so you can go, say, 25 bard and use their caster level for casting the Ice Storm. You'd pick up the wide variety of Bard buffs. The only issues I can see are:

1) You pretty much waste the wisdom required to get Rak shape, since you're not taking monk for the AC bonus.
2) Many of the bard abilities, such as Bard Song, Curse Song, Keen Weapon, and GMW, are only really useful for a melee build, and not so much for a caster.

Can anyone analyze for me whether it's even possible for a Bard Shifter to compete with a Monk Shifter using Rak shape?