So I currently have a bard with...

Music 97.5
Meditation 91.3
Archery 81.7
Provocation 78.9
Tactics 62.5
and some other skills under 50

I was thinking about going...

Music 120
Provo 120
Disco 120
Peace 100
Archery 100
Chivalry 80 (Do I need it this high?)
Tactics?

I am an old returning player so I don't know as much anymore, would it be better to go back to being a mage/bard?

Is archery a valid choice?

Are there any of the skills in different builds that aren't worth getting to 100+?

What are the pros and cons of the different builds? I am so lost sometimes. I notice most go magery and I just had magery to almost 90 and saw someone with archery doing really well so went that route, now I am confused again. I have been gone since at least 99. Help!

Just curious, where are you getting all your skill points? You are showing 760 PLUS Chivalry, which probaly puts you well over 800. W

I was incorrectly putting too much in some of the skills, could I get an answer though and not just a correction on my post? I am not trying to be rude, really I'm not. But that isn't helping me at all and I really am kind of lost in the whole thing.

Well I apologize for asking. Because people ask what you feel are silly questions when you're frustrated and confused does not mean they are not trying to be helpful. Since you've been gone since '99, you may not understand a LOT of things about UO these days. There ARE ways to go WELL over your base skill points and I thought perhaps you had done that with jewels and/or armor pieces, which could have an affect on the template as a whole. Silly me.

If you want a bard archer, I would go with the following template, assuming you have a 720 point cap. I don't know that of course, which was another point I was getting to in my original post, but oh well:

120 Archery
100 Tactics
100 Anatomy
90 Healing
120 Music
120 Discord
70 Chivalry

Heal/cure with aids and Chiv. Forget peace, disco is much more powerful. With 70 chiv, you will fail Divine Fury occasionally, but not enough to worry about too much. If you need to make up points, you could drop Archery to 110. I'll apologize in advance if this post isn't what you wanted to hear, and I will refrain from trying to help in the future.

As I said, and you evidently missed, I was not trying to be rude. I noticed it had been days since someone had posted in these forums and was a bit worried I wouldn't get an answer at all. I did not mean to offend you, or make you unwilling to assist me.

I can use jewelry (not sure if skills are ever on anything but jewelry) just not sure if it is actually a good template or if magic is even better. Can't you pretty much lock a mob down with Peace? Hit, peace, hit, peace...etc.?

I am genuinely sorry if I offended you.

By the way, I am not even sure how many points over 720 you can get with items.

I have a mage/bard. He is 120 in the four barding skills, plus 120 in magery, eval, and med. I rarely run him as a pure bard, I generally run him as a mage bard, with only two bard skills on him plus music. Either is good. The problem is there are very few skills that fail more often on high end mobs than the barding skills. Even at 120, you will fail a LOT on higher end stuff. Yes, you can peace, but as an example, with 120 music and peace, you will only hit on a greater dragon about 1 out of 6 attempts. So it's not like you shoot, peace, shoot peace. More like "fail peace, run, shoot, heal, fail peace, run some more, heal again...whoa that 80 hp firebreath was wicked, shoot, peace, shoot, shoot, shoot, fail peace, run" ....well you get the idea. The difference is disco knocks a lot out of them, allowing you to take them down anyway. Once you hit them, as long as you stay reasonably close to them, it stays with them and you can focus on the fight at hand. You can use either, you're choice..if I was a fighter I'd prefer disco...it's a personal preference.

You can gain stats/skills on a lot of things other than jewels....arms of tactical excellence (as an example) give +12 tactics. So you can gain a lot by being astute in your jewel/armor selections. As far as exceeding your cap, you can run with as much as you can jewel/armor/arty up. I personally know someone who runs 810 skill points, on a very specialized template. It is done with a lot of artifacts making up the armor. The best idea I have for you is to go to TC and try out various templates...see which one works for you. That will give you a chance to compare a bard/mage to an archer/bard and see what works better for your playstyle.

I appreciate the help, I feel kind of stupid cause my bard already had 90 magery, 92 meditation, and 60 eval. I changed to archery because it just seemed that I wasn't doing much damage and finding good resist armor with 100% LRC seemed near impossible.

I will have a look at Test Center. How does that work by the way? Never been to test before, not sure what the difference is there or how to get to it.

It allows you to create a character and change skillsets in a heartbeat. You type in something like "archery 1200", and you have legendary archery. I don't play there much, but if you look on Stratics you should be able to find the link that shows all the commands to get what you want. It is the cheapest, easiest way to test out different templates. There is even a command to give yourself all the arties, valorite hammers, basically the works.

As far as damage on your mage bard, that is being dictated mostly by your eval, which is your lowest shown property. The higher your eval gets, the more damage you will do. Slayer books for the mob your hunting will help too. The will give you double damage. Personally, I'd keep the mage bard and work his skills up...he doesn't look too bad other than the low eval. Trust me, you get eval at, or above GM, use a slayer, and you WILL notice a difference in damage.

No question armor is tougher for the mage bard. My bard's suit is 103% lrc, 46% lmc (40 cap), 9 MR, and is all 60+ resists with 2/6 casting. It was nowhere near as expensive as my necro mage suit, but still not cheap. Keep working at it. I have never seen GOOD armor pieces as low in price as they currently are after the runic changes. When I bought the sleeves for my necro mages outfit, they were 27 million....I'd be lucky to get 10 for them now, and they are awesome. It's a great time to be shopping armor. Better yet, if you have a good crafter, give it a go yourself.