Depends what sort of Bard you want - do you want a Bard who's great at supporting the party and has a ton of skills (i.e. a Lore Bard) or a Bard who's more focused on dealing damage in melee and ranged (Swords Bard)? All Bards are actually pretty good without multiclassing and multiclassing can delay the good stuff you get from your Bard progression (e.g. Extra Attack, Magical Secrets, Font of Inspiration), but there are some builds with quite nice synergy e.g.

Warlock 2/Lore bard 10 (gives you the more powerful version of Eldritch Blast for consistent ranged damage)

Paladin 2/Swords Bard 10 (for lots of Smiting)

Paladin 6/Lore Bard 6 (lots of Smiting, Paladin Aura, still get level 6 Magical Secrets, eventually)

Draconic Sorcerer (White Dragon) 1/Swords Bard 11 - this is actually the build I'm currently running with, gives to access to the Shield spell, Armour of Agathys, and Magic Missile, as well as a bunch of Sorcerer offensive cantrips and +3 AC unarmoured. Still gives access to a 6th level Bard spell as a capstone. If taken at first level also replaces your Bard bonus to Dex saves with the Sorcerer bonus to Con saves, which is very handy to help maintain concentration on spells during combat - but you do need to pick a race that gives the weapon proficiencies you need (e.g. Drow or maybe Wood Elf), as otherwise you only get the very limited weapon proficiencies form Sorcerer - I went for Drow, which gives you proficiencies in Rapier, Short Sword and Hand Crossbow (Sorc gives you Dagger, Staff and Light Crossbow, Swords Bards gives you Scimitar proficiency).

Fighter 1 /Swords Bard 11

Cleric 1/Swords Bard 11 (pick a Cleric domain that gives you access to Martial Weapons and perhaps Heavy Armour)

For ability scores, for my Sorc 1/Swords Bard x I went for:

Str 8 Dex 16 Con 14 Int 8 Wis 12 Cha 16

For skills I have: Perception (from Drow), Performance and Acrobatics (from Entertainer background), Insight, Persuasion (picked at Sorc level 1) and Deception (picked at Bard level 1), with Expertise in Insight and Persuasion (for dialogues).

Lore X / Life Cleric 1

I tend to like just straight 12 Lore Bard.

Mostly because I'm not a huge fan of playing super overpowered builds. They tend to make the game very stale for me very quick. But Lore Bard is a controller type character who can do some big AoE damage at times that feels like it is powered about how it should be.

Swords Bard is obviously busted and is involved in just about all of the best builds in the game. But I just don't find that entertaining.

I’m partial to swordsbard10 paladin2: divine smite upcast for big hits, melee flourish for multi-attack, and magical secrets from bard10 is such a killer combo. It’s gotten to the point where I struggle to build bard or paladin any other way.

Depends on your play style. But between bardic inspiration double attacks and super upcast divine smites, you’re going to end up doing a ton of damage either way.

It’s also really nice to have bard support spells like silence and plant growth. Great for engagements where “it’s not me trapped in here with you, it’s you trapped in here with me”

As a great fan of sorcerers, a 6/6 lore bard split is great, since you get magical secrets and elemental affinity from draconic bloodline, but I feel it isn't what you are looking for.

This build is probably what you want.

If you are not in honor mode, 7/5 bard/warlock will give you a third attack and will enable you to use any weapon doing damage based on your charisma (so don't need to use the dex gloves and can dump strengh)

I thought this would be a more popular option but seems you're the only one so far among melee and full caster bards. I like my skillmonkey oriented variant with 6 swords bard / 3 thief / 3 ranger, a bit less combat burst but 3 more skillpoints than the fighter dip (covers sleight of hand, arcana / history and one more random pick) and provides some small amount of extra spell slots and utility spells.

I just did a 2 warlock 10 sword bard with devil sight and darkness themed group. It was pretty busted lol especially once you get shar spear.

All 12 levels into Lore Bard. No multi-classing.

Zariel Tiefling- the free Thaumaturgy is awesome for passing intimidation/performance checks, you can’t go wrong.

As for subclass, Lore Bard is great if you don’t mind taking more of a support role to your allies in combat - the free three skills synergies nicely on a brainy bard (just make sure not to pick any of those skills in character creation, or you’ll double up and the game doesn’t let you re-pick).

The combat Bards look fun, seems like Valor is the easier to play of the two but I haven’t created a character from either of those subclasses yet.

Swords. Bard.

I remember last time my chance to hit my enemy's was rarely above 50% with melee so I was wondering how I could avoid that so I can actually hit the enemies and do decent damage as well

Depends on your weapon and stats. Generally, melee weapons use STR while ranged weapons use DEX. Finesse weapons use DEX if it's higher than STR. The corresponding ability modifier is added to your attack rolls, so the higher they are, the more likely they'll hit.

Probably not the best, but 10 bard/2 paladin is a huge amount of fun. Smites are just crazy good damage, and College of swords gives good damage output with flourishes (and increased chance for opportunity smites), while also allowing you to operate as an effective caster too. But as a part time paladin, you have to remember, ABS. Always. Be. Smitin’.

I’ve leant into dex focused armor (Yuan Ti) and dual wielding short swords, but can see myself picking up heavy armor and a polearm soon I think.

Lore bad is lots of fun! Look into Fear, Hypnotic Pattern, Plant Growth, and other control spells. You can do a bit of damage with cCloud if Daggers, Shatter, and Thunderwave but that will be your weak point. Consider a two level dip into Warlock for eldritch blast, or using a staff that comes with an attack cantrip like Firebolt or Ray of Frost. The Potent Robe is great if you go the warlock route. 

Some good magical secrets options are Fireball, Hunger of Hadar, Haste, and Counterspell, but feel free to grab something else if it catches your interest. 

Bard is for sure the character with the funniest/ sassiest dialogue options, but it isn’t gonna be constant. Most of the humor in the game is environmental or party banter. 

Obligatory c4b plug:

https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/comments/1bzwvqi/the_devil_tongue_102_lorelock_honor_mode_support/

In my opinion, the best lore bard takes one level in wizard. This allows you to learn spells from spell scrolls, significantly increasing the spells you can learn. One level of wizard is enough to learn any wizard spell for which you have a spell scroll. And there are a ton of wizard spells that don't care about your Int.

Endgame build is probably 1 fighter / 1 wizard / 10 lore bard. This is a support character who can fulfill all of your needs and is customizable to whatever you want it to do via magical secrets. You can even make a radorb lore bard and have it function like a cleric but with bard support.

This is better to do as a companion rather than as Tav. All of the companion voice actors have lines recorded for cutting words / vicious mockery. Turn the reaction on by default to have Shadowheart, for example, randomly call your enemy a cuck.

This isn't the best bard build. The generally agreed strongest options are 2/10 smite swords bard and 1/1/10 ranged swords bard. Those builds can be found with a simple search. Both of them are exceptionally good for your main character and are in the top five builds for any class in general in terms of their power and party contribution. The only downside is SSB requires some evil choices if you want to unlock its full power.

Lots of good suggestions in here, and just want to share a piece of info you may not have learned.

Early in the game, you will gain access to unlimited respecs for 100 gold a piece (which is very little, gold is plentiful in this game). You can't change your race/background, but you can reallocate stat points and even change your class entirely if you wnat. So if you find your character isn't doing everything you want, it's easy to make totally new builds. You can respec your companions too :D

I am 6 sword bard 4 thief 2 fighter. Pew pew.

Edit. Pew pew pew pew pew pew pew pew pew pew.

4 attacks. Action surge 2 attacks. 2 bonus action attacks

Gith bard is also good

Swords bard 6, paladin 2 and the rest in bard again for a dps build (you can go 6 x 6 but i dont like personaly) Life cleric 1 or 2 and the rest in lore bard for a suport / healler type Swords bard 6 and warlock 6 for another mix of dps Valor bard 6 and battlemaster 6 for a tank/suport type (make sure to take some of the suporttive manouvers) Any bard to 12 its viable on themselves Bard bring a lot of utility and a rly strong capability to be the face of the party, just have in mind that they get some spells from other classes in some lvls, that being 6 and 10 for lore bards. And lvl 10 for swords and valor bards. To get the most of it just make sure you have the pros and cons of what you will be gainning or losing for each build, for exemple the swords 6 and paly 2 you will have full spell slots progression + the lvl 10 bonus spells + the paladin smites for some absurd burst dmg and so on...

Depends on how you're wanting to approach it. If you want close range combat, most take Swords for high damage. If you want more spellcasting/control, Lore Bards have great versatility. You can also dip into Sorcerer for Metamagic, allowing you to do great debuff/crowd control.

School of swords Bard with dips into a paladin for high level spellslot smites.

The last two levels of bard aren't that great, spell-wise, etc. So, you could start with Warlock at level one to get wisdom saves which are handy, then lvl 2 bard/lvl 3 warlock/rest lvls bard. This gives you hex which is an awesome stat remover for enemies, and Eldritch blast. 2nd lvl of sorc gives Eldritch Invocations : Agonizing Blast, (Repelling Blast or Devil's Sight).

Your other option is to take two lvls of fighter to get that action surge. Both good options.

10Bard/2Paladin

Warlock is just a waste, you get better spellslots in this setup for the purpose of smiting, better damage on your flourishes and magical secrets which while I think people overrate it in a melee based build for this game, is still very good and better than anything you get from a dip into warlock.

Use mobile flourish to both enhance your mobility to always be able to get into melee range on an enemy and to get 2 enemies together to cleave.

Stack crit based items, crit fishing (especially with ability to cleave) is key for this build.

Take an ASI and then savage attacker as that will boost your damage a shit ton overall.

I find that there are other melee builds that on paper pump out more damage, but this is the one most reliably on target if you can use mobile flourish proactively, and it is close enough in overall damage that having a single turn more of doing full damage rather than being stuck doing ranged damage or expending a resource to get on target makes up for any difference and then some.

If you are using haste you may find that you have plenty mobility on your melee characters, but if you are using haste literally nothing is weak and everything in this game turns into absurd easy mode, so talking about optimal and haste sort of gets redundant as you are talking about does everything die in 1 turn or 2.

Bards are naturally pretty close to busted. A swords bard with 2x hand crossbows by itself is extremely potent. Full caster progression, Heroes Feast abuse, mixing two weapon fighting and casting for extra value, the ability to make 5 attacks in a turn with Ranged Slashing Flourish.

Pretty godly for a single class build. It can be even crazier if you use/abuse titanstring bow and special ammo (although I would say that is not a controller friendly build).

Edit: oh and magical secrets is really good too.

https://reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/s/dzdlJwLO1f

TLDR:

Sword bard 6 -> fighter 1 -> thief 3 -> sword bard 7 -> fighter 2 with archery style and sharpshooter.

Equip the band of the mystic scoundrel and helmet of arcane acuity. Those are essential items so if you didn't find the helmet or if you already dealt with Akinator and forgot the ring, you fucked up.

The basic strategy is to stack arcane acuity with arrows, then use your bonus action to cast spells. You deal high damage and control enemies at the same time. Highly effective.

If you are looking for raw damage, you can just get 10 levels in Bard for Banishing Smite, use an auto-crit with it for 10d10 force damage. You also have your ranged flourishes + Sharpshooter for more damage. Band of the Mystic Scoundrel + Helmet of Arcane Acuity to bonus action cast invisibility or any enchantment/illusion spells (Banishing Smite also takes your bonus action, so not on the same turn). Just going 12 Bard allows you to get a feat like Alert so you are basically untouchable, or you can multiclass into Fighter for Archery Fighting Style + Action Surge.

6 Swords Bard w/ Sharpshooter + Literally anything is more than enough to beat the game with.

In the end it really doesn't matter but ideally you should be taking a race that gives you something you don't have.

EG if you play to be a valor bard human is worthless cause you get shield+martial anyway. Tiefling on other hand gives a elemental resistance and some free spells. Orc is basically useless cause you won't be critting that often and if relentless endurance is proccing you probably already lost the fight and should be reloading your save lmao. Dragonborn gives you resistance but also lacks darkvision.

Like i said in the end at like level 12 with cracked items it really doesn't matter but some races are better objectively simply because they provide useful stuff while others give nothing. Not bad but just give nothing

Everything is viable and you can just pick what you like based on lore / style.

All races offer some nice advantages:

• Gnome has a nice saving throw bonus. I took the subrace with double proficiency in history myself.
• Halflings are lucky which is always useful
• Humans and Half-Elves gain shield proficiency which is huge for lore bards!
• Githyanki and Shield Dwarves for medium armor proficiency if your lore bard does not plan to invest more than 14 in dex (which might allow you to get more constitution or int)
• Tiefling for the cantrip that grants advantage to intimidation
• Wood elf if you want extra movement, stealth, perception
• Drow for perception and a free faerie fire and darkness spell each day
• Dragonborn for an AoE attack and some resistances
• Half ork to resist oneshots and for stronger crits (swords / valor bards)

Just take your time, I'd take a look at Lore Bard, it's the most "bardy" of the options gets extra skills and spells, just make sure at the startyou don't have the skills you gain from taking lore bard and read spells before picking them up and you can do amazing monoclass and maxing CHA, then having 16dex/14 con or the like.

Expertise in Performance+ preferred CHA skill and talk your way out of the shit you get into.

Race matters the most for roleplaying. There are optimal choices, like picking human for shield proficiency, githyanki for medium armor prof and jumping powers, halflings for Lucky etc. None of these bonus are going to make or break your build, but they can be nice to consider if you have a particular build archetype in mind

Do whatever you want to do and have fun.

This isn't a game about minmaxing, especially for a first run through.