Really debating Arcane Duelist versus standard Bard. I gain quite a lot of combat durability, for not a ton lost. The biggest drawback seems to be losing Jack of All Trades.

Also, I've been going over stat breakdowns. It looks as though I'll want Charisma to be maxed, since it's my primary ability, granting me extra spells and working with many of my skills. After that, I've been considering melee viability, mostly focusing on Strength and Dexterity. Wisdom looks like a perfectly viable dump stat, and I'm thinking of taking Constitution as another, so I can boost my AC and Damage more. It would make me a bit of a glass cannon, but I'm interested to try.

So that'd give me this:

Str 16
Dex 14
Con 7
Int 11
Wis 7
Cha 18

I'm wary about hurting Int, since it will apparently hurt my rate of Skill gains, but I haven't seen anything stating how many skills you get per level per point of Int, so... Might be worth using that instead of Con, or just making it 9 so I can boost my Dex up to 15. There are too many things the tool just doesn't explain in basic enough terms for me.

Anyway, could someone tell me how this would work, if it's suicidal, and how many skill points per level I'd get with it? Because I'd like to know so I can plan things out a bit.