New Character for a Pathfinder Game

[Dmitri]

So I am building a bard for Carlo's Pathfinder game. We have an odd party design currently...

1 battlefield controller/debuffer witch
1 ranged DPS ranger/sorcerer/arcane archer
1 summoner/supporter necromancer/cleric/mystic theurge
1 of whatever I am

So I was looking at bard, for several reasons.

1) HP bumped to d8 with Toughness (also reworked for PF), my one HP for favored class bonus, and a CON of 14 gives me a nice 14 HP at level one - pretty much fighter spec.

2) We need a trapfinder, and Carlo will give it to me for nothing just to help the party since it fits the rakish bard theme pretty well. Just chews up skill points...

3) I am addicted to casters of some stripe.

4) We need a party "face" so a decent CHA with some skills seemed useful.

5) The bard can hang in melee, especially if the casters do a good job of control/debuff/summoning.

So my questions are twofold:

Using a 28 pt build like I did for Alba, how would you stat this guy out? My current spread, using human, is:

16 STR (+2 human stat bump here)
12 DEX
14 CON
12 INT
10 WIS
14 CHA

I had thought about doing it with the +2 in CHA, but I do need to be able to stand up in a fight and hit. I plan to use a longsword as my primary weapon, and situationally a shield.

At level one, with Arcane Strike (very reworked from 3.5) I consistently have +4 to hit and +4 or +5 to damage (one hand vs two hand), and that is without any other buffing or bardsong or whatever.

Secondly, is the Arcane Duelist kit from the Advanced Players Guide (found here paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/advanced/coreClasses/bard.html) worth the cost? Basically I give up and get:

1) Bardic Knowledge gets replaced by Arcane Strike (frees up another feat slot for me at level one)

2) Versatile Peformance and Well Versed get replaced by Bonus Feats (less skill based and more combat features)

3) Suggestion and Mass Suggestion get replaced by Bladethirst and Mass Bladethirst (out of combat stuff in exchange for combat stuff)

4) Loremaster gets replaced with Arcane Bond (lose Knowledge stuff to get an extra casting of a spell and your weapon bonded)

5) Jack of All Trades replaced by Armor Training (lose skill stuff to get casting in better armor)

The kicker is you can't cherry pick from the kit - its an all or nothing proposition. I love 1, 4, and 5... but 2 and 3 just HURT...

Watcha think? And I am not trying to put together a 20 level build or anything, I want this guy to grow a little more organically, but I do need him to be viable in a melee role.

[grond]

I know situations usually call for more dynamics than for balance, but are there a small handful of feats you can pick from that will give you viability as a melee support/backup fighter without cutting so heavily into what seems to me to be the real backbone of bard-dom?
I suppose that the rest of the party is fairly well out of combat competent as far as magical options, and the combat build (arcane duelist) looks like it stacks up rather decently next to a fighter (a little better than 3.5 core fighter, maybe not as rockin as barbarians) for a nearly front-line combat sort. I guess it depends on how often the summoner can summon a front-line fighter type each day. If he can summon something as combat able as your dude 4 or more times per day without breaking a sweat, I'd stick with the more bardish guy. But if the DM is going to punish out of combat abilities by being really brutal with the combat encounters, the Arcane Duelist is probably the better idea, it will just cost your party a little bit of finesse that the Bard might bring to the table.
Those are my 2 cents, don't spend both of them in the place.