The newly revised Bard class in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game has some nice new features, however I’m not certain how thoroughly they were all thought out. In particular, I find that the Versatile Performance class ability falls a bit short.
Versatile Performance allows Bards to substitute their Perform skills in place of various skills. Each Perform skill is associate with two of the following skills: Acrobatics, Bluff, Diplomacy, Disguise, Fly, Handle Animal, Intimidate, and Sense Motive. The ability is gained at 2nd level at which time the Bard selects one Perform skill to stand-in for its two associated skills. Every 4 levels thereafter, the Bard may select another Perform skill.
At first glance, this is a pretty cool ability. It lessens the old “skill tax” on the Bard and rewards them for investing in multiple performance types. Where Versatile Performance disappoints is in how it interacts with skills in which you already have ranks — in short, it doesn’t. Any ranks that you already have in an associated skill are ignored when making a skill check with this ability.
Waiting until 2nd level to use a couple skills isn’t too bad. However, it would be rather odd for a 6th or 10th level Bard to have no ranks in some of the aforementioned skill simply because they quite understandably don’t want to waste precious skill points.
House Rule
IMPROVED VERSATILE PERFORMANCE
The synergy of your past training and current versatility enhance your performances.
Prerequisites: Versatile Performance class ability, and at least one rank in each of your chosen performance types’ associated skills.
Benefit: When using your chosen Perform skills to make skill checks in an associated skill, your effective ranks in the Perform skill are added to by the number of ranks in the associated skill. Additionally, any bonuses in the associated skill are applicable to the Perform check.
Normal: Ranks and bonuses in the associated skill have no bearing on the Perform check.
Restrictions: The total effective number of ranks used in the skill check cannot exceed your current hit dice. Ranks that would be in excess of your current hit dice are ignored. Bonuses in the associated skill overlap with bonuses of the same type in the Perform skill.
On second thought, I might just say that players can redistribute the points in the associated skills so long as points first go towards ensuring that their ranks in the Perform skill are at least equal to the higher of the two associated skills. (Thanks to Kae Yoss on the Paizo boards for this idea.)