Character Creation

[SteveRogers]

I'll have to take another look at it.  I wasn't sure what I was doing with the skills and feats sections.

[TheTick]

For Bards, you have 3 important skills - Perform(some instrument) which is for your Bardic Music, Diplomacy since high Charisma characters are often the ones that do the talking, and Use Magic Device, which lets you use all sorts of scrolls, wands and other helpful things.  Feat-wise, look at ones that help your important things - music and spellcasting.  Extend Spell is great for that, as a Bard's casting is heavy on buffing the team.  Beyond that, it can depend on how you plan to fight - a melee bard, fighting with a rapier or some such (like Elan) may want something like Weapon Finesse, assuming your Dex is higher than Str.

[SteveRogers]

This is more or less what PC Gen automatically spat out for me.   Does this look acceptable?

[TheTick]

Looks about right to me.  I'm recovering from a severe bout of 'all my kids got sick at the same time' so I'll maybe move things forward a bit tonight.

[SteveRogers]

Don't stretch yourself too thin if it isn't necessary.   :)

I'm likely going to be a bit of a burden at first because I'm going to need to have some of the roll mechanics explained as we go and other things like that.  This will literally be my first D&D experience.  Aside from this and the episode of Community about it.

[Lotofsnow]

No worries. Just stand behind the barbarian and sing your bardy songs.

Note, though, that "Extend Spell" isn't useful to you at this point. To use it, you have to take your entire turn to cast the spell as if it were a level higher, but you can't cast spells higher than level 1.

I think you'd be better off with something like "Improved Initiative" which gives you a +4 bonus to your initiative roll (that determines who goes first in combat) for a total of +6 with this character.

[Lotofsnow]

Also, your armor and weapons seem to be "medium" sized, but your character is small. It is throwing off some of your numbers. Not sure how, but you might want to go into PCGen and see if you can re-size your armor, quarterstaff and dagger to the "Small" size.

[SteveRogers]

I'll have to take a look in PC Gen and fiddle with it some when I get off work.

Edit:

I hope I can get it to work.  I'm getting really excited about this.  :)

[SteveRogers]

I just sort of picked some weapons, so I may have just selected the wrong things.  I'll have to take a look at it.

Is there something which would better suit a gnome with the stats my character has?

[Lotofsnow]

Well, you probably want to avoid going toe to toe with enemies, but that doesn't mean it isn't going to happen. You actually get a bonus to AC for being so small, which is pretty cool and helpful for those times you do have to engage an enraged owlbear.

I suggest a melee weapon (dagger or shortsword), and a shortbow with 30 or so arrows for ranged attacks.

Here's the deal though: there's no "wrong things." No one is going to rag on you for anything you pick. I just made the points on Extend Spell and the medium sized equipment because it has to do with rules stuff that might not be immediately obvious. In fact, there's nothing wrong with Dwarf Bard either, if you decided to return to that.

[SteveRogers]

I'm actually perfectly happy with the gnome race now.  I just wasn't sure if there are some weapons a level one character can use or can't use.  And stuff like that.   :)

[Lotofsnow]

A bard is proficient with all simple weapons, plus the longsword, rapier, sap, short sword, shortbow, and whip. Bards are proficient with light armor and shields (except tower shields).

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/bard.htm

[SteveRogers]

Blast.  See, I've done most of my reading and research at work, and a lot of the links to D&D sites are blocked because they're "Games."  And I don't want to take the time to try to explain to IT that it's just articles about a game, not an actual game.

[TheTick]

They probably wouldn't see a difference to be honest.

I love using the rapier for my rogue-ish characters just for the look in my head.  But I tend towards swashbuckler types.

[SteveRogers]

I'll have to try to tidy some things up on the character sheet after I get off work and have you guys take a look at a second draft.

I'm to the point now where I'm just fleshing out the character's backstory in my head.   ;D

Edit:

There were some weapons it just wouldn't let me pick at all on PC Gen.  Like the rapier.  Don't know why.