Bard/Druid Gestalt?

[Gwazi Magnum]

How viable is such a build?

My plan being to use Melodic Casting with Bardic Music so I spend the first round using Bardic Music, and then future rounds summoning Greenbound Natural Allies.

[Dread_Head]

Greenbound turns your summoned creatures into the Plant Type which are immune to Mind-Affecting effects which includes bardic music unfortunately. There is a feat called Green Ear in Complete Adventurer which lets bardic music affect plants but it requires 7 ranks in perform so would take a few levels to acquire. You could skip the Greenbound step and just use bardic music on normal summons which would work.

In terms of how viable it is, it's going to be strong because both classes are strong. They don't particularly complement each other though, you won't be able to activate most Bardic Music while Wild Shaped for example and both classes are feat starved. They both have different main stats making the build somewhat MAD and both are fairly active classes so would be competing for actions.

Short answer is they aren't really viable as they don't complement each other that well. You will have a character slightly stronger than druid but not significantly so. If you aren't careful with the build choices it could actually play worse than a straight druid. But since druid is already strong this doesn't matter much and if you want the class combination for flavour then it can work but be sure to focus your feats on being good at one or two things rather than spreading yourself weakly.

[Ellowryn]

Viable? Yes. Optimal? Not really.

If you really go all out and optimize the Bard part you can buff the crap out of your animal companion, but doing that takes away from what your druid part can do each round, so you end up having to split your actions in combat between the two which takes away from both. To be honest your actions in combat should really be Summon a handful of creatures first round, and then buff them all with DFI and Inspire Greatness/Courage and then rain BFC spells from above while wildshaped into a bird for the rest of combat.

For feats, Natural Spell, Melodic Casting, Greenbound Summoning, Dragonfire Inspiration, Words of Creation, Dragon Wild Shape, and Natural Bond (for your fleshraker companion because to be honest, a fleshraker doing and additional 8d6 fire damage each round is scary).

Edit: forgot about the plant part, be human for the extra feat and grab Green Ear. And who says you can't do bardic music while wildshaped? You just need to toss a Wild Clasp on the musical instrument and you are good. There is nothing at all strange about a bird playing the bongo's.

[Grod_The_Giant]

you won't be able to activate most Bardic Music while Wild Shaped for example and both classes are feat starved. They both have different main stats making the build somewhat MAD and both are fairly active classes so would be competing for actions.
Ehh... you can pick Perform (Dance) or (Percussion) or something you could still do as an animal easy enough. You don't need much in the way of Charisma for the bard if you're mostly using it for Bardic Music-- you might even give it up after a level or two and just Song of the White Raven it up. And Druid literally only needs one feat to be a top-line class. You might want a few summoning feats, but the bardic music should make up for their loss easily enough.

Your feats would probably be something like:
H-- Melodic Casting
1-- Dragonfire Inspiration
3-- Song of the Heart
6-- Natural Spell
9-- Words of Creation

[Bronk]

Sounds like a pretty good match to me...

You could use your bardic music in wild shape using a 'pearl of speech', and there's a feat somewhere that lets you use your bardic music uses to offset metamagic costs.

You might want to look into the "Rashemi Elemental Summoning Feat" from UE... having air elementals with a "cone of cold" SLA is pretty nice.

[Gwazi Magnum]

Ok, so it's fairly action and feat intensive to even get the basics down? :/

Alright, I'll keep this all in mind if I decide to still go with the build.
Thanks. :)

[Bronk]

Well, it could be a bit less action intensive if you also took the 'subsonics' feat. You could have a regular Inspire Courage up indefinitely without anyone noticing, then drop it and whip out your Dragonfire Inspiration in an emergency.

[Mystral]

You could use that one homebrewed feat richard burlew created for making druids with charisma score casting. Very nice and flavorfull.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=10546562

[maniacalmojo]

You just want to be in a country bear singing group.

Dont lie >.>

[ExLibrisMortis]

You can do some things with theurgic prestige classes, that increase your options even further. Arcane Hierophant//Crusader or Warblade with Song of the White Raven will advance your druid casting, bard casting, inspire courage and wild shape, while providing full base attack, good fortitude save and maneuvers.

[Grod_The_Giant]

You can do some things with theurgic prestige classes, that increase your options even further. Arcane Hierophant//Crusader or Warblade with Song of the White Raven will advance your druid casting, bard casting, inspire courage and wild shape, while providing full base attack, good fortitude save and maneuvers.
You actually can't, since Gestalt rules prohibit dual-advancement PrCs.

[ExLibrisMortis]

You actually can't, since Gestalt rules prohibit dual-advancement PrCs.
The rules are unclear on the matter. This is the only bit there is:

"Prestige classes that are essentially class combinations - such as the arcane trickster, mystic theurge, and eldritch knight - should be prohibited if you’re using gestalt classes [...]"

First, the 'should be prohibited' is not nearly as definitive as the usual D&D rules, and could be said to be a suggestion, rather than a solid rule.

Second, the question is: What is a 'class combination'? There are only examples to go on. You can try to figure out what is meant, but there are no solid guidelines. How many casters levels do you have to pay for full base attack, to avoid becoming a 'combination' prestige class? Not to mention that the 'good' prestige classes all have better features than base classes, that's the whole point.

Third, banning 'combinations' doesn't particularly help (or hurt) balance. Mystic theurges and eldritch knights are perhaps slightly better in gestalt, but they do still take up that prestige slot. Full base attack doesn't make a caster all that much better. Etcetera. And, as the book says:

"Gestalt characters look superior compared to standard D&D characters, but that's a false comparison. With this variant, such 'standard' D&D characters don't exist."

It's all relative, and as long as you allow prestige classes equally for all players, and limit cheese equally, it'll work out just fine.

[dascarletm]

Ability scores might be a bit tight, though with the option to wildshape later on it may not be so bad.

With 32 point buy I'd go something like:

Str 8
Dex 10
Con 10
Int 10
Wis 18
Cha 16

Though you could spare to go 14 or less on Cha and just pick up a cha booster before you get 5th and 6th level spells.

I think a lot of the benefit of this is you have bardic music + Summons + Druid casting in combat and survival situations, and you have all of the bard stuff for social interactions.