[PF] Bard Archetype Guide?

[Laniius]

I know of Treantmonk's guide, are there any out there that are more up to date?

[Coidzor]

There's a guide to what archetypes can be combined that discusses what bard archetypes can be combo'd together, but as far as I've been able to find, there's not been a new guide or update to Treantmonk's guide.

Pathfinder in general seems to have both repulsed the handbook writing community and a good slice of the dedicated pathfinder community as I've seen it seems to be comprised of the kind of people who are hostile towards the idea of optimization and handbooks, unfortunately. So most of the people who would use such a handbook are more likely to be doing 3.P, so the combination of Treantmonk's work, an understanding of the changes, and the old 3.X material tides them over sufficiently.

[Krazzman]

There is Novawurmsons (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=233029) guide to the guides.

Sadly no there's only Treantmonks.
But as Treantmonk puts it. You can participate a bit in melee or in archery or in "casting". Bard might not be the uber class but can be fun for everyone... except me. My bards have bad luck or die horribly.

[Laniius]

There's a guide to what archetypes can be combined that discusses what bard archetypes can be combo'd together, but as far as I've been able to find, there's not been a new guide or update to Treantmonk's guide.

Pathfinder in general seems to have both repulsed the handbook writing community and a good slice of the dedicated pathfinder community as I've seen it seems to be comprised of the kind of people who are hostile towards the idea of optimization and handbooks, unfortunately. So most of the people who would use such a handbook are more likely to be doing 3.P, so the combination of Treantmonk's work, an understanding of the changes, and the old 3.X material tides them over sufficiently.

If true, that's unfortunate. Treantmonk's guides are well done, but not updated; I would like to see someone's take on the new archetypes for the bard.

I wonder why the community is seen as anti-handbook? I don't peruse the paizo boards much, but I personally prefer Pathfinder in almost every way. I don't play 3.P though as my group feels that Pathfinder and 3.5 are different enough that mixing them would be difficult.

[Coidzor]

My understanding is that it's a combination of two things. One, they got older and mostly moved on, since the work was largely completed for 3.5, and the other is that [bad stuff] happened back during the Beta. My understanding is that a number of members of the online 3.5 community who were handbook writers or contemporaries of them made some suggestions to fix glaring problems that Paizo had completely overlooked. A number of hardcore fans decided to Oberoni fallacy all up in it, which started a flame war which resulted in the group of people proposing changes to the Pathfinder Beta getting banned from the Paizo boards, even the ones who were not actually flaming(!), which left them with only the people who didn't care about balance or game design or were outright sycophantic in their support of unbalanced/bad game design.

What I've gleaned from this is that this action rather poisoned a fair component of the optimization-minded, mechanics-minded, and balance-minded individuals.

I believe one indirect result is that Doc Roc and others on these boards grew disgusted with the people who were getting paid to make bad game design decisions, so they instead went grassroots, recruited a team from this board and BG, IIRC, and created Legend.

[Blisstake]

I go on the Paizo boards every now and then, and there are quite a few guides on it, but not as many as were present during 3.5, I'd imagine.

About the [bad stuff]...

I wasn't there during the Pathfinder Beta, but I've heard from plenty of people who feel they were unfairly banned from the forums, to the point where I was shocked something like that happened, and lost a lot of faith in Paizo as a company.

It seems like they learned from what happened, thankfully. Most of the balance issues encountered in the Advanced Races playtest were pointed out, and it seems like they managed to get an accurate count of the serious problems when Paizo summarized the results of the playtest. Hopefully this trend continues, and it becomes more friendly toward people pointing out the flaws in the system in the future.

[Qumi]

Actually... Treatmonk's guide to bards is not the only one. Here you have another decent one: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ogz8HL6GeguT-tN3-6HxXiF_G7mg_tyAQ59V9kPg6g4/edit

[StreamOfTheSky]

Not a guide, but depending on what you want to do, IMO the best Bard archetypes are:

Chelish Diva
Dawnflower Dervish
Dirge Bard
Archaeologist


Chelish Diva mostly loses stuff you don't care about, gains ability to eventually cast in full plate, can burn extra perform rounds to boost certain performance save DCs, and gets a no-save frightening effect at level 8. Probably the strongest all-around archetype.

DD gets right at level 1 a feat to use dex for attack AND damage, making this a great 2-stat (with some con as 3rd) class. It also gives you double inspire bonuses for the price of self-only and starts w/ move action initiation time, making this a solid fighter replacement who also is a 2/3 caster with bardic Suggestion performance.

Dirge Bard lets you dumpster dive other lists for necromancy spells, trades your worthless well-versed feature for a bonus against death/fear/necro effects, can affect undead with mind-affecting spells, and to cap it all off, can recreate the Thriller music video. Very nice for covering up a major weak point of normal bards - undead.

Archaeologist gives you self-only inspire bonuses as luck bonus and activate as a swift action, making it very archer-friendly. The rounds/day is tiny, but you can fix that by taking Lingering Performance and just turning it on for 1 round every 3. You get evasion, rogue talents, pseudo- (actually superior) trapfinding, and...just in general become a rogue with spells and self-buffing instead of sneak attack (good trade!). Ironically, you have to give up versatile performance, the reason normal bards actually beat rogues for # of skill points/level, but oh well.

EDIT:

I should also add that Arcane Duelist is commonly seen as a good archetype, but IMO it is a trap. You cannot both buff your sword and inspire the group, and if you want to buff your sword, Magus class does it much much better and has spellstrike and spell combat. Arcane Duelist lets you choose between being a gimped magus or a gimped bard, but only one at a time. As if the regular bard didn't have enough of a "...master of none" stigma already.