kmonster: As long as you take the lingering song feat your bard will be fine.

Armored Arcana is nice to have, late in the game when songs have become so powerful that there's no reason to use a crossbow the magical shields offer good bonuses.
Dash is always nice to have. So is the extra AC from Dodge. If you have 13+ int and don't attack physically consider taking expertise for bonuses to defense. Spell focus enchantment helps with some spells but since the songs are so powerful there is no need for doing other than singing during battle.

Kohleran: I'm starting my first run. Even with research, I've done the beginning of the Prologue 5 times when I find something I'm not happy with and would rather remake my group and start the Prologue over than be stuck with it. I would plan on the same.

My bard is Halfling, more for roleplay purposes than anything else.
Stats
Str 10 (0) - After dumping this stat to some degree on other starts, I am really loathe to drop Str on any character below 10. The load carry is so low that I'd not be able to carry anything and might not be able to equip items I'd want to during the game.

Dex 14 (+2) - I get a bonus to AC and Reflex, qualify for the Dodge 1AC feat, and a plus to hit with range weapons which is especially good during the early game.

Con 12 (+1) - Bonus 1 to Fort, Bonus 1 to HP.

Int 14 (+2) - I qualify for the Expertise feat which I can sack to hit for AC, I get much needed points for skills.

Wis 08 (-1) - The will save negative hurts a little, but I justified it because the Halfling gets +1 to all saves thus elimintating the -1 if you look at it that way. Couldn't think of any other reason to have wis other than the save bonus, which is important, but I'm not sure how important on a bard it would be (versus like a damage dealing tank for instance).

Cha 18 of course for obvious reasons.

Feats at level one: Lingering Song just to get it out of the way and Dodge.

Thats my suggested distribution. Mix Con/Wis if you wish and if you don't plan on ranged weapons, could drop dex some and forgoe the "single 1 AC by spending a feat" feat. Dodge is actually not my favorite feat, but its there.

I'd not drop str below 10, cha below 18 or int below 14 (unless you don't use skills, but even then Expertise is very nice).

Me
<Sounds like your much more experienced with the game than I, so grain of salt I guess.>

Kohleran: With limited points, my Halfling, not sure. If I were to make a change on the Halfling (besides power gaming and going for a different race), it might be to lower Dex and forget about the limited value Dodge feat and put the points into Con instead. It's just that Dex affects allot of things. Either way I guess. I play on normal.
I see on Wis. I have no knowledge of items in the game to come. I'm sure an extra heal is nice. Not got the points to spare for a single heal per day item, although I'm sure those items have other stats as well.

Right now I'm stuck on the game anyway. The hospital tent had someone that wanted some Braeug, and having just did a drink contest I knew where to go get it, I thought. The guy doesn't have any for trade. I tried pickpocket and get no Braeug. So I am guessing one of the mods I installed messed with his inventory and I'm looking to either forget the quest and hope no more quests are effected, or go through without mods, starting the game over yet again, or reinstalling the game, and just use the simplest of mods and trying yet again. sigh

kmonster: I like Kohleran's build, wisdom could be lowered even more since at level 5+ there'll always be a +3 to saves because of Tymora's melody and later in the game failing a reflex or fortitude save can have even worse consequences than failing a will save. Will saves are overrated because of a few hold person spells early in the game, there's a feat which grants +2 to will saves (as useful as 4 wis) but I never take it.

For the bard I prefer spells which are useful when cast before or after battle since during battle there are powerful songs available. I wouldn't pick Summon Shadow or Greater Shadow Conjuration since there are more powerful summoning spells on level 5 and 6.

Jigby: I currently have a playthrough going on with a bard on board. Now the bard is taylored more towards of a frontline fighter/mage type of a role rather than a support class standing in the back, but I'll post it for the sake of argument.

Human Bard(x) / Fighter(5)
Strength: 18 (+4)
Dexterity: 18 (+4)
Constitution: 16 (+3)
Intelligence: 3 (-4)
Wisdom: 6 (-2)
Charisma: 15 (+2)

Apart from the bard, I also have in the party a Diviner and a Monk. Playing with Tactics and Light of Selune installed. Currently in chapter 4 and the bard has been working beautifully so far. Level 1 perks were Lingering Song and Rapid Shot. Roles that the bard fullfilles:

a; Focus firing things from behind. With his high dexterity and strength and usage of slings and Rapid Shot he has very decent damage right from the get go. In chapter 1 we get Sling +2 as a reward from saving Branson in the Orc Fortress. In Chapter 3 we get returning flaming bullets from a random drop (drops in AR5030 are easy to grind, although the drop chance for the flaming bullet specifically is low)
b; Offloading some of the spells from the diviner, namely Mage Armor for the Monk, Emotion:Hope, Cat's Grace
c; Frontline fighter once he has Brazen Bands and Mirror Images. Mirror Images mean he can absorb AOE damage spells like Horrid Wiltings and with decent AC also regular attacks. The fighter levels are inserted 1, to get us some bonus feats, more specifically the bard springs to life in chapter 2 with ambidexterity and 2-wpn fighting because of the brilliant short sword you can acquire there. Power attack +5, brilliant short sword in the main hand and Belib's Everlasting Torch in offhand make a good pair. (in Light of Selune Belib is classified as small blade, but it should work well in vanilla as well). and 2; to get to 11BAB quicker by a level (5fighter 8 bard gets there at 13, whereas 4 fighter 10 bard gets there at 14). If you don't mind the delay of getting the 3rd attack, you could just go for 4 levels of fighter I suppose.
d; Using chromatic orbs and sleep for crowd control. Yes, the chromatic orbs are not of the highest quality, still it's better than nothing. Charisma 15 is chosen because we can get a winter wolf hat in chapter 2 for +1 Charisma.
e; Party talker - this might seem counter-propositional, but you can completely forego Concentration as a skill. The spells we will be casting are either super quick to cast (Mirror Image), or we cast them outside of combat (Mage Armor, Emotion: Hope). So a bard with 0 Concentration is just fine. This allows us to turn Intelligence into a dump stat, and with the bonus skill points from picking Human, we can develop directly 2 skills (Bluff, Diplomacy). Note that fighter has Intimidate as a class skill, therefore during the fighter levels actually develop Intimidate instead. That means the bard has all 3 talking skills at a competent level with +3 Charisma modifier (and +5 with Eagle's Splendor).
f; Singing songs - after all of this mentioned, the bard still has one role left! Singing songs! With Fighter 5/ Bard 12 (or Fighter 4/ Bard 12) you even get to sing War Chant of the Sith.

Overall I'm very content with how the bard has been performing so far. That said, this bard past chapter 2 goes toe to toe with his enemies, he does not need to cower behind.

Edit: Also while this bard can't use the harps, I think better than going for Wis 13 for the harps is to go Wisdom 8 and then use every god ring to get you to 13. You can grind every god rings from Saablic Tan, he and Wanmok have a pretty good chance of dropping it. So technically, if you can find those 2 stat points to raise WIS6 to WIS8, this build can use the harps as well. Maybe potion of holy transference?

powerhouse5000: Fascinating build, I'll admit. The only issues for my current party with such are these:
1) The Every Gods' Ring is intended to go to either my Paladin/Cleric or my Druid. That is sold by Nathaniel, not looted from the enemies you named. You're thinking of the (High) Tyrannar's Band. That is also supposed to go to the party members I mentioned 2) I also aim to use the Potion of Holy Transference on said characters (more likely the Pally/Cleric).
3) I have an entire 6-member party as I linked at the start of this thread. Various roles will be filled otherwise.

powerhouse5000: I have NEVER seen any item that good as a random drop. He'll, I've practically never -between the original version and the GoG version- seen a magical item if even any past +1 enchanted weapons or armor or such a worthwhile accessory. I don't know if it's because I play without mods or not. Then again, I've heard of mods for this game coming into conflict with gameplay before, so I've been loathe to download them. The only items I've been able to rely on are the ones that are bought by a vendor/merchant, are quest rewards, or are officially scripted to drop or be looted from various container.

powerhouse5000: Did you read what I posted in this thread about The Unstrung Harp?

Jigby: It's vanilla behavior. To get those drops you have to grind for them though. What is generated on random drops is decided the first time a map is loaded. Meaning you make a quick save before you transition into the map and then you just reload until you get the drop that you wanted. The Saablic Tan/Wanmok encounter is a good place to grind random drops because the battle begins right after you transition into the map, so basically you just:

1. Transition into the map
2. Ignore regular mooks, just kill Saablic and Wanmok and check their drops.
3. If they have Every God Ring great, if not reload and start over

The chance of them dropping the ring there is something like 1 in 27 on average. You might get the ring in 10 minutes or you might get the ring in 120 minutes depending on how lucky you are :)

kmonster: Yes, but I don't think it's worth 10 attribute points. If it had something like "str -2, dex -4, con -4" in its description barely anyone would use it. It's even worse. Valuable attributes are lowered from the beginning of the game while there's no benefit until very late in the game.