PF:Making a good support character.

[rmnimoc]

I'm thinking of playing a supporting character in a new campaign with mostly novice players (fighter, rogue, cleric, and wizard). I'm thinking bard because I've never tried one and they seem fun, while still being relatively hard to carry a party as. I was thinking on focusing on bardic music, since I have a bad feeling if I focus on the magic or combat I might unintentionally outshine the specialized classes (since their players are new) without realizing I'm doing it. Any advice for bulding a bard into a decent support?

Or building any type of class into a supporting role on that note, I tend to fall into a one-man army style of build. Not entirely bad if everyone else in the party is too, totally different story with new players. I'd rather not make the DM have to focus on shutting me down so the other players can save the day (happens sadly too often).

Edit: I'd prefer to just use pathfinder, but it isn't all that difficult to convert something from 3.5 to pathfinder.

[(Un)Inspired]

Are you aloud to use 3.5 material or just pathfinder stuff?

[Kudaku]

PF Bards are pretty awesome, a straight bard will work just fine.

If you want something with a little more oomph, there's the Evangelist cleric - it gains Bard Performance but loses a domain, some proficiencies and a few other things.

If you want something that focuses on the healing aspect of support the life Oracle is most likely the best healer in Pathfinder - the Oradin build in particular has a lot of potential.

[Corlindale]

You could go the classic route with bardic music to buff allies and Dazzling Display to debuff enemies. Coupled with a good selection of buff spells that should give you something useful to do on the first few rounds of any combat. Be an Assimar for the favored class bonus to Inspire Courage if you want to power things up a bit.


You probably still have to decide what you want to do once all the buffs are applied - offensive magic/more debuffs, melee, combat maneuvers or archery. You should have feats to spare to focus on one of these, at least - becoming good at bardic music and buffing is not particularly feat-intensive in and of itself (and requires no stats besides the minimun needed Cha score to use the spells).

[grarrrg]

PF Bards are pretty awesome, a straight bard will work just fine.

If you want something with a little more oomph, there's the Evangelist cleric - it gains Bard Performance but loses a domain, some proficiencies and a few other things.

If you want something that focuses on the healing aspect of support the life Oracle is most likely the best healer in Pathfinder - the Oradin build in particular has a lot of potential.

Agreed.
There's also an Archetype of Monk that gets Performance as well. Sensei (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/monk/archetypes/paizo---monk-archetypes/sensei)'s other high point is that you can use WIS to attack.
The downsides are that you lose Flurry, all Evasion, and most of your bonus feats.
Sensei is a good way to help the party while _really_ not stealing the spotlight.

As far as Oradin goes, I'd go with Holy Tactician (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/paladin/archetypes/paizo---paladin-archetypes/holy-tactician) for your Paladin side.
You get a weaker version of Smite, but everyone can get a Smite bonus now.
At 3rd level you can share a Teamwork feat with everyone.
And at 8th you can spend a Move Action to give everyone an extra 5ft. step.

[khachaturian]

+1 on bard. in addition to bardic music, there are quite a few pathfinder-specific immediate action spells that allow you to say nope to the dm.