Is it Possible to Play a Bard without things like Inspire Courage?

[Masakan]

I'm currently working on a Fey Touched Dancer bard with a heavy focus on Snowflake War-dance.
(And before you ask yes I already got Beauty's Bounty)
This would mean I would have to forgo Things Like Inspire courage, and optimizers never like that.
I know it can and will work, but I just can't find the one thing to mesh it all together. Namely a good Prestige Class.
Keep in mind I still want a Decent Spellcasting base
Right now the best I can come up with is 2 Levels in Lyric Thaumaturge, and then the rest in either Swiftblade or Sublime Chord.
Can people give me some advice?

[Troacctid]

A Crusader or Warblade multiclass would let you use Song of the White Raven to inspire courage as a swift action, making it easier to incorporate it into your combat style. Also, you'd obviously get a bunch of maneuvers to make you better at melee.

If you use the animal companion variant, you could just go single-classed Bard and have your animal companion wade into combat at your side.

Swiftblade is a fine choice for a melee-focused arcane caster.

Sublime Chord is the most powerful thing that a Bard can possibly do, so pretty much no matter what plan you're on, you should be trying to get into Sublime Chord ASAP.

[A_S]

It's certainly possible to build an effective Bard without focusing on Inspire Courage. The Bard spell list is quite strong, and PrC'ing out into Sublime Chord keeps you competitive with tier 2 casters at high levels. There's even an ACF called Inspire Awe which replaces Inspire Courage, and it can be combined with the Doomspeak feat plus a focus on spellcasting to make a very effective control-focused spellcaster with an emphasis on fear stacking.

However, the type of character you're describing is exactly the type of Bard on which I absolutely wouldn't skip Inspire Courage. If you're focusing on Snowflake Wardance, that means you want to do lots of melee fighting, right? You know what's great for melee fighting? Large bonuses to your attack and damage rolls!

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Inspire Courage questions aside, your class selection is pretty reasonable. Swiftblade especially is going to be very strong for a gishy fighting Bard. Sublime Chord's casting is great at high levels, but its class features are almost worthless; what you want to do is enter it as soon as possible and then advance its casting with another PrC rather than actually taking levels in Sublime Chord. There's a recent thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?425528-Jamming-Sublime-Chord-and-Swiftblade-into-one-build) about fitting both Swiftblade and Sublime Chord into a single build that you might find helpful.

Finally, if it's not too late, don't take Beauty's Bounty! It's a really bad feat, because it only provides bonus HP at level 1. You're basically never going to get much more than 10 HP total out of it. A feat for 10 HP is a terrible trade, when that feat could instead be getting you, say, four extra uses of Bardic Music (remember that Snowflake Wardance burns these), or one of your prerequisite feats for Swiftblade, or something else valuable.

[Hiro Quester]

why does this require giving up inspire courage?

Most folks will take just one or two levels in sublime chord(the second level ability is pretty good) then a PrC that advances SC spell casting. Bard swiftblade SC is good for a gishy bard.

Make sure you take melodic casting (replaces concentration with perform check for casting in combat), and let's you sing or dance while casting.

If you take another that has one level that does not advance casting (like swiftblade) take that before SC. E.g. Bard7/swiftblade 3/sublime chord 2/swiftblade 6 or 7/abjurant champion 1 or 2 (depending on whether you want the final swiftblade ability).

Another bard PrC that's fun is heartfire Fanner. Full casting and bardic music advancement, plus music that grants allies fighter feats and free metamagic.

[Masakan]

It's certainly possible to build an effective Bard without focusing on Inspire Courage. The Bard spell list is quite strong, and PrC'ing out into Sublime Chord keeps you competitive with tier 2 casters at high levels. There's even an ACF called Inspire Awe which replaces Inspire Courage, and it can be combined with the Doomspeak feat plus a focus on spellcasting to make a very effective control-focused spellcaster with an emphasis on fear stacking.

However, the type of character you're describing is exactly the type of Bard on which I absolutely wouldn't skip Inspire Courage. If you're focusing on Snowflake Wardance, that means you want to do lots of melee fighting, right? You know what's great for melee fighting? Large bonuses to your attack and damage rolls!

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Inspire Courage questions aside, your class selection is pretty reasonable. Swiftblade especially is going to be very strong for a gishy fighting Bard. Sublime Chord's casting is great at high levels, but its class features are almost worthless; what you want to do is enter it as soon as possible and then advance its casting with another PrC rather than actually taking levels in Sublime Chord. There's a recent thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?425528-Jamming-Sublime-Chord-and-Swiftblade-into-one-build) about fitting both Swiftblade and Sublime Chord into a single build that you might find helpful.

Finally, if it's not too late, don't take Beauty's Bounty! It's a really bad feat, because it only provides bonus HP at level 1. You're basically never going to get much more than 10 HP total out of it. A feat for 10 HP is a terrible trade, when that feat could instead be getting you, say, four extra uses of Bardic Music (remember that Snowflake Wardance burns these), or one of your prerequisite feats for Swiftblade, or something else valuable.

Wait what? I thought Beauty's Bounty Effectively Replaced your Con Modifier in regards to how much HP you get per level. Your telling me that isn't the Case? If what your saying is True, Than Silverbrows are the only Race in the game that could even make a build like this work, Because I would Desperately need that Dragon-fire Inspiration.

[A_S]

Wait what? I thought Beauty's Bounty Effectively Replaced your Con Modifier in regards to how much HP you get per level. Your telling me that isn't the Case? If what your saying is True, Than Silverbrows are the only Race in the game that could even make a build like this work, Because I would Desperately need that Dragon-fire Inspiration.
It only replaces your Con bonus with your Cha bonus when calculating the HP you gain at first level. After that (levels 2-20), you use your Con bonus as normal, but gain one bonus HP each time you gain a point of Cha.

So, if your Con is 10, your starting Cha is 20, and you put all 5 of your stat increases into Cha, you'll gain 10 bonus HP over the course of your career (+5 at level 1 due to replacing your +0 Con bonus with your +5 Cha bonus, then +1 each at levels 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20 when you put stat increases into Cha). That's where I got the "10 HP, tops" number from.

The text of the feat is here (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fey/20030815a) if you want to check it.

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Silverbrow Humans probably are the best bet for DFI-focused Bards (really, humans are just way too good at everything), but they're not required. Remember there's always the Dragontouched feat if you want the Dragonblood subtype on something else.

[Masakan]

It only replaces your Con bonus with your Cha bonus when calculating the HP you gain at first level. After that (levels 2-20), you use your Con bonus as normal, but gain one bonus HP each time you gain a point of Cha.

So, if your Con is 10, your starting Cha is 20, and you put all 5 of your stat increases into Cha, you'll gain 10 bonus HP over the course of your career (+5 at level 1 due to replacing your +0 Con bonus with your +5 Cha bonus, then +1 each at levels 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20 when you put stat increases into Cha). That's where I got the "10 HP, tops" number from.

The text of the feat is here (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fey/20030815a) if you want to check it.

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Silverbrow Humans probably are the best bet for DFI-focused Bards (really, humans are just way too good at everything), but they're not required. Remember there's always the Dragontouched feat if you want the Dragonblood subtype on something else.

Except other races are kinda Featstarved as it is, Even with Flaws.
And why would I waste a feat on getting a subtype, that I can get by going silverbrow or spellscale for free.
The only exception I would make for this is if I had nothing else to spend the slot on.

Jesus Christ...back to Square 1 then.