Bard Starting Points

[Brynnag]

should reroll Halfling rogue, put points in str

[NegaStoat]

The big answer would come back to - "What gear sets will I be wearing pre-planes?"

A bard will focus on two different "every day" gear sets in my humble opinion. A group might need you for Crowd Control duty, so you'll need to consider what Charisma you want to shoot for and what slots are best suited to provide it.

In other instances you might not need Charisma based songs for your tasks and would really prefer a heap of strength + stamina with some dex to just plow through things (assuming you're not swarm kiting here).

Deity becomes a BIG factor if you're thinking of stamina gear for more durability. Bards gain slightly more than 4 HP / Sta point up to 115, so Rallos Zek or Brell Serellis chain both look good for numerous slots. Even past 115 stamina, the gains are big.

honestly... You could just dump it all into Stamina and not make a mistake. If you are absolutely stressing over trying to reach a 200 Cha for charm / mez, then I guess you'll have to look gear choices over and review the "all sta" decision.

Edit - My wood elf bard went Rallos Zek back on old Fennin Ro for role play reasons initially (I wanted to be a D&D Warsinger bard) and ended up loving the hell out of it due to the later implimented Cultural smithing. That plate armor was damn burly. It was handy for Kael faction in Velious later on, too.