I've been trying to sort this out in my head for a while now but I can't get it right. Basically, I want a really tough Bard / AA character who can deal plenty of ranged damage and also take advantage of his high dex at later levels to wear little or no armour. That means he can take advantage of the Bard spells in combat.

I don't want to lose out on the excellent bard skills either, and a Con of 12 + Toughness is mandatory or he will die too often.

For feats, I'd want Lasting Inspiration for sure, so that means 20 levels of bard at least, and possibly Epic Skill Focus Perform too. Rapid Shot and Toughness are also required, and Weapon Finesse would be nice too.

I was thinking of going half-elf and taking Bard / Fighter / AA for the extra feats and weapon specialization, but I couldn't seem to get the stats right.

If anyone could help me out I'd be very grateful. iirc you dont need 20 + levels for lasting inspiration. Im sure ive seen or might even have done a build that didnt. I could be mistaken of course.

Syrath
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It's SHADOWDANCER, dammit, shadowdancer!!! Lasting Inspiration definitely needs 20 Bard levels on the PW I'll be playing this on. Not sure about normally, though. It might be worth swapping ftr for barbarian, so you get uncanny dodge. Bard/SD/AA is a stong candidate.
You get class skills, spells and song bonuses from Bard. You get 4 attacks, extra AB and damage from AA. You get HIPS, evasion and uncanny dodge from 2 lvls of SD.
The feats and skills you need to qualify for the two prestige classes serve the character well.

It won't do as much raw damage as a fighter with epic weapon spec, a rogue with sneak attack, a ranger with bane of enemies, a RDD with mighty or a divine archer with divine might.
But you have a very good archer with good survivability, who can handle most situations. With a good bow it will do decent damage as well.

Oh, and yes - you can get LI with 20 bard lvls, but you need an epic character to get it.

Edited By Mick Dagger on 04/14/05 10:40

I forgot to mention, the server I play on his some pretty weird extra requirements for SD. As well as the normal pre-reqs, you need either 4 levels of assassin, 6 of rogue, 15 levels of ranger or 20 levels of monk. I should have mentioned that in my first post, an SD archer is my favourite type.

I've whittled it down to two similar builds now, but I can't make up my mind as to which one to go for. I'll post them here tomorrow, when I have access to the plan I wrote for them both.