Giant in the Playground's Increasing Size, Effective Size, Unarmed Damage, Reach thread is of some limited utility.
Minmaxboard's Grappling Handbook, Hulkamania is runnin' wild, is of somewhat more use.
From your current position, I suggest the following.
Option 1: Sorcerer
No, really. Enlarge Person as a spell gives you +5 to your grapple modifier. It comes in a cheap wand at your level. Babau Slime increases your grapple damage with a bunch of acid (scales with caster level, buy a higher CL wand). Fearsome Grapple is a level 2 spell, so 4500gp, i.e. 'you can afford it', and adds +4 to your grapple mod. Another level 2 is Balor Nimbus, 6d6 to anyone grappling you per round. Corrosive Grasp creates multiple touch attacks, so you do normal grapple damage and it sets off the touch attack for +1d8 acid each time. Fist of Stone gives +6 enh to strength and a natural slam attack, but only for a minute. Of course, timing all this short-duration buffing requires an ambush on your part, so why not buy a wand of Chameleon to help hide, or Invisibility for sneaking around.
You'll also have an Octopus familiar from Stormwrack, for another +3 to grappling.
Sorcerer avoids having to make use magic device checks to use the wands - if you have a friendly arcane caster willing to sneak along with you and buff you for your grappling ambush, then you can forgo this option entirely.
Option 2: Warblade
Non Tome of Battle classes count as half initiator level for determining eligibility for maneuvers. So a level in Warblade with your 11 other levels counts as a 6th level Warblade, meaning you can select 3rd level maneuvers. A 3rd level maneuver (it's a stance) is Crushing Weight of the Mountain. It gives you the Constrict ability. Other than a Soulmeld, this is one of very few ways to get Constrict in the game without changing shape. Constrict is amazing, because ANY TIME YOU ROLL A GRAPPLE CHECK, even to /enter/ a grapple, to do unarmed damage, when they try to escape, WHATEVER, you get to do Constrict damage. Yes, in addition to your unarmed strike, yes, in addition to entering the grapple damage, yes every time they try to escape. You just squeeze the life right out of them. Crusader provides a better chassis, and also has Crushing Weight of the Mountain, but warblade has access to Iron Heart Surge which is very barbarian.
Option 3: Totemist
At level 2 in Totemist from Magic of Incarnum, you grow an extra pair of arms and add your essentia x 2 + 4 to your grapple mod. At this level, with the Expanded Soulmeld Capacity (Totem) feat, that's +12 to grapple. Also grants extra natural attacks from the arm, and other stuff from other soulmelds (short-range teleport, Spell Resistance, Natural Armour, Fire Resistance, etc).
Doesn't really do much for you this level, though. A good choice to take after you've dipped the low-hanging fruits in Warblade and/or Sorcerer.
Feat: Scorpion's Grasp
From Sandstorm, this feat lets you basically have improved grab for unarmed strikes and one-handed weapon attacks. It lets you punch someone, grab them, succeed on a grapple attempt, punch them again, and still have the rest of your actions free to punch people. The best part of Improved Grab, however, which is grappling at a -20 to count as not grappled and building a big ball of weak enemies that you carry around with you and use as a melee weapon, is sadly absent.
Feat: Snatch
Requires claws or bite, MMII. Gives Improved Grab, and the ability to fling creatures 3 sizes smaller than you far, far away. Totally awesome.
Feat: Open Lesser Chakra (Arms)
Combined with a level in Totemist to get access to Kraken Mantle, binding the Mantle to your newly opened Arms slot will give you +2 to grapple per Essentia placed in (max 3, for +6 to grapple untyped).
Item: Gloves of Titan's Grip
From MiC, 3/day activate to get +8 Enhancement to Grapple for 7 rounds. Strength boosts are usually enhancement, but nothing really enhancements grapple except Grip of Iron, so this is great. Totally great. Buy it.
Item: Scorpion Claws
From Sandstorm. Exotic weapon that grants +4 to grapple checks. Well worth it, possibly even if you're not proficient.
Notes
Scaled Horror prestige class from Savage Species requires the 'Aquatic' or 'Reptilian' subtypes. You could make an argument that as a Dragon Disciple, you're kind of doing that. If so, it picks up Improved Grab at first level. Warblade -> Scaled Horror would be a great power boost.
Black Blood Cultist from Champions of Ruin is normally great for grapplers, but you're too high level and it overlaps with Dragon Disciple, also your alignment is wrong. Avoid it entirely.
Psychic Warrior is a great class for grapplers, but at this level you get too little benefit and too few power points to be of any use. The two key powers are Grip of Iron and Expansion, but they both want Augmentation to be great. There are more Wizard/Sorc spells that benefit grappling than there are powers, so even if you grabbed some Dorjes, it wouldn't be as worth it as a Sorc dip. Check the second link for more spells/powers that help out grappling.
Aberration Blood - This feat sets you up for Inhuman Reach, a natural reach increaser. It also adds +2 to grapples. At this level, it's probably sub-par.
Your ability scores don’t really match your character description. You have little-to-no use for that Strength, that I can tell, and it sounds like your Charisma really ought to get an 18, since you’re staying on the back lines and focusing on song and spell.
Also, please consider my general recommendations for the bard class, as I’m going to avoid repeating myself.
And immediately breaking my claim that I’d not repeat myself: you don’t list Dragonfire Inspiration. You should; it is one of the absolute best feats for a buffer-bard, and is a very good reason to make your human character specifically a silverbrow human. Both Dragonfire Inspiration and silverbrow human are found in Dragon Magic.
Feats You List
Obtain Familiar/Improved Familiar
Decent, but you have to pay attention to your familiar, i.e. remember it’s there, maintain its stat-sheet, and so on. And then there’s the risk of it blowing up in your face and costing you a bunch of XP. Can be quite good, but I’d generally pass.
Song of the Heart
Very good, remember that you can get it as a bonus feat at Bard 3 instead of Inspire Competence. This is generally seen as a good trade, though Inspire Competence is OK enough that it can be worth it to take Song of the Heart as a feat so you get both.
Haunting Melody
By the time you can take it (6th), you’re starting to be really worried about the “mind-affecting, fear effect” aspect of the feat. The effect is decent, but not amazing at the levels it’s available, and it will become dead weight at high levels.
Lingering Song
In my experience, combat rarely lasts long enough for this to matter. The feat does nothing until, at the earliest, round 7, and most fights don’t last that long. I would pass.
Melodic Casting
The ability to cast while performing is eh for much the same reasons as Lingering Song. It’s better than Lingering Song, but ultimately it’s not much more likely to come up.
But that isn’t why you take the feat: you take the feat to replace Concentration with Perform. That is amazing for any bard, an ASAP pick up for almost all of them.
Versatile Spellcaster
It’s definitely not bad, but ultimately bards aren’t the best option for it. You just have fewer spells per day. Definitely don’t bother until high levels.
Lyric Spell
Meh? Ultimately, you almost-certainly will end up with way more daily uses of bardic music than you know what to do with, and this is a good way to burn through those – but you’ll burn through them fast. I like it better than Versatile Spellcaster, though, and would not take both.
Ironskin Chant
By 9th level, 5 damage is just... not a lot. If someone is surrounded by a bunch of low-damage, many-attacks enemies, then it can be golden, but a feat is a lot to spend on that possibility. Better for people to just, ya know, avoid getting surrounded. If it were immediate, you could argue it’s awesome for sudden ambushes, but as a swift you need to see the situation coming.
On the other hand, you do have a lot of uses of bardic music available after a while, and swift actions can be cheap. There are better options but it’s not bad.
Doomspeak
If this is worthwhile for a 6th-level character (and I’m not sure it is), it’s definitely not worth your 15th-level feat. You could spend another feat to get Intimidate in-class, but that’s way too much work for this. Pass.
Metamagic Song
Metamagic cost-reducers are one of the tried-and-true ways to true power in 3.5. This has far more sensible restrictions than Divine Metamagic, so I won’t call it out as definitively overpowered, but it is really strong.
The other issue is that the bard doesn’t really have the clear-and-obvious choices for metamagic that other classes do, and doesn’t get any as bonus feats. You have very limited feats to use for this.
Warning Shout
Reflex saves are the least-important of the three, but this is a pretty sizeable bonus, as an immediate action, and the cost to use it is not unreasonable. I’d definitely consider it.
Combat Panache
I love the name of this feat. And every time I read it, it disappoints me. Don’t bother.
Dragonsong
You really want to try to avoid mind-affecting effects if you can; too many things are immune. This bonus is small and niche. Pass.
Snowflake Wardance
This is a great feat, but if you’re not melee-focused, then it serves no purpose. Your ability scores are not exactly ideal, either, though the fact that you will be getting the largest cloak of charisma you can, and at high levels probably using wish or tomes for Charisma, mean the difference is going to wind up much higher than +2.
Sound of Silence
Deafening is not that bad a condition; the cost to inflict it here is just too high.
Point Blank Shot
Pure tax, plain and simple, and a bad one. The only reason to ever take this is just so you can take the actually-good things that require it, and you don’t need those that I can tell.
Precise Shot
If you are looking to use a lot of rays (not really a bard thing but you could), consider the rod of magical precision that allows you to buy Precise Shot for cheap. It’s in Complete Mage.
Aside from that, you only break out a bow when the battle is won and you’re taking potshots to pick people off. Don’t burn feats on that.
Battle Dancer
Tiny bonus is tiny. This is not worth a feat.
Disguise Spell
Here I disagree; Disguise Spell is awesome. And on a cowardly character? Perfect. Strongly recommend this.
Extra Music
You are going to have approximately 20 uses of bardic music in a day; for most purposes, Extra Song is pointless because you were never going to use all 20 in the first place. At low levels, it’s much better, though.
If you do go in for a lot of alternate uses of bardic music, particularly Lyric Spell and/or Metamagic Song, it becomes much more valid, but I still probably wouldn’t bother.
Extend Spell
Solid enough metamagic, reasonably priced. Good feat.
Sculpt Spell
Note that Sculpt Spell is not the same as the archmage’s Mastery of Shaping, nor does it make a spell (S) sculptable – it just switches area spells into other standard shapes (a cylinder, cone, ball, line, or series of cubes). This makes it rather difficult to use since you won’t be able to just pick and choose your targets, you still have to make it fit inside this shape. At +1 spell level, I’d much rather just cast a higher-level spell. Even with Metamagic Song, you couldn’t apply it to your best spells.
Other Feats
Chain Spell
This is an awesome feat for a buffer, allowing you to hit multiple people with usually-single-target buffs.
Charming the Arrow
If you are actually going to go in for that archery stuff, and can somehow finagle the Fey requirement, Charming the Arrow would be obviously-awesome for you.
Deceptive Spell
Fantastic opportunity for shenanigans, even more than Disguise Spell, but it costs a spell level.
Dragonfire Inspiration
Mentioned, mentioning it again. The feat is fantastic.
Enlarge Spell
is an awful feat you will most likely never use. That said, it is required for the excellent war weaver prestige class from Heroes of Battle – worth considering.
Invisible Spell
Possibly even more capable of shenanigans than is Disguise Spell.
Rapid Metamagic
This eliminates the casting-time increase of metamagic feats for spontaneous casting. If you are going to be using a lot of metamagic, you need this feat ASAP.
Unfortunately, taking it is another metamagic feat you aren’t taking. If you take this and Metamagic Song to enable metamagic, but only have one or two situational metamagic feats (like Extend and Sculpt), those two feats enabling metamagic are kind of wasted.
Reach Spell
Turn a touch-attack spell into a ranged spell, which can be very useful in conjunction with Chain Spell.
Song of the White Raven
You are not melee-focused, which makes this Tome of Battle feat seem odd at first, but there are more than sufficient opportunities to make this worthwhile. A single level of crusader gets you some excellent party-buffing options, like leading the charge and white raven tactics.1 Martial spirit and crusader’s strike or revitalizing strike also allow you to potentially heal allies if you ever do get in melee (or at least, use that whip), which seems appropriate.
But most of all, it allows you to take Song of the White Raven, which allows you to start your Inspire Courage as a swift action. That is a huge deal, and totally worth a level and a feat.
- Tome of Battle is, by far, the best-designed, best-balanced book in 3.5, but even the best books have problems. For Tome of Battle, the most notorious problems are iron heart surge and white raven tactics, but both are fine when used reasonably. For white raven tactics, simply disallow using it on yourself (as was likely originally intended), and it becomes strong, but not broken. For iron heart surge, should it come up, I like to just replace the entire text of the feat with BY CROM!! and then it seems to play fine.
Spellbreaker Song
Not a feat, but rather an alternate class feature replacing Countersong (which is absolutely useless), this allows you to disrupt other spellcasters. A good deal.
Talfirian Song
I don’t actually recommend this feat, but it should be mentioned. Combined with Metamagic Song, Talfirian Song allows bardzilla, very similar to a cleric’s use of Divine Metamagic. Even though it takes three feats instead of one, and is limited by the bard’s spell list, this is still overpowered for many games, particularly one described as low-power.
Recommendation
Assuming silverbrow human,
- 1st level
- Invisible Spell
- Dragonfire Inspiration (Human bonus feat)
- 3rd level
- Reach Spell
- Song of the Heart (Music of Creation bonus feat)
- 6th level
- 9th level
- 12th level
- 15th level
- 18th level
Best Answer
Race
Dragonwrought Kobold
A venerable dragonwrought kobold is near-certainly the optimal answer, or at least the start of it:
(Races of the Dragon pg. 39)
That means you get −4 Strength, +2 Dexterity, −2 Constitution, +3 Intelligence, +3 Wisdom, and +3 Charisma, along with Small size and the awesome slight build (count as one size category smaller than you are if it would be beneficial to you), for pretty substantial bonuses to AC, Hide, and so on. The penalty to Constitution hurts, but if we’re being cheesy,¹ you can always take Faerie Mysteries Initiate (Dragon vol. 319) to replace your Con bonus to hp with an Int bonus to hp, ensuring you’ll have plenty.
Note that Draconomicon says that creatures of the Dragon type—such as a dragonwrought kobold—can ignore the requirement of 21st level on epic feats. You still need to meet the other requirements—which may be very difficult or impossible for, e.g., skill ranks above 23—but there’s plenty of epic feats you can take at quite low levels wiht that.
If you want to push the cheese further, you could inquire about the greater draconic rite of passage and/or the loredrake sovereign archetype.¹ Those pump your sorcerer level, but maybe it can apply to your sha’ir level?
Planetouched, Lesser?
Aasimar hit some benefits for you, namely Wis +2 and Cha +2, with zero downside. Player’s Guide to Faerûn includes “lesser” variants that give up their Outsider type in exchange for being LA +0, which is a good trade even if you’re buying it off. Venerable dragonwrought kobold is better, but this saves you a feat and avoids the large Strength and Constitution penalties that you would want to deal with as a kobold.
Genasi are elemental planetouched, which might be more fitting, since genies are from elemental planes (though they aren’t elementals). However, their ability score adjustments are pretty useless to you: fire genasi get +2 Int, but take −2 Cha, and water genasi get +2 Wis, but also take −2 Cha, so that doesn’t really help anything, and the other two don’t touch mental scores.
Templates
Beyond that, you could get more bonuses with LA that you buy off.
Unseelie Fey?¹
Well, actually, I guess there’s at least one more piece of cheese we could apply before getting to LA: unseelie fey. Unseelie fey is a template from Dragon Compendium (originally Dragon vol. 304) that neglects to include its level adjustment in its description. Ordinarily, we’d assume it’s LA − and assume you can’t play it, but the Dragon Compendium write-up includes an example unseelie fey gnome warrior who is listed as LA +0. Ask your DM—the template is plainly overpowered at LA +0, but maybe they’ll allow it anyway.
Unseelie fey offers −2 Strength, +2 Dexterity, −2 Constitution, +2 Charisma—that much, at least, is not unreasonable for LA +0. You’re going to want to do something to avoid being paralyzed by Strength damage, though that’s relatively easy to do or to heal. And you’re gonna want to be very careful about your Fortitude. In addition to these ability scores, you also get flight, a “seasonal” supernatural ability, and scaling DR based on your HD.
Another thing to check with your DM: do HD-scaling template features scale only with racial HD, or all HD? RAW it’s all of them but it certainly seems like these sorts of things were designed around RHD.
As for the Su abilities, summer caress is permanent magic circle against non-(animal/magical beast/fey), and winter chill is an aura that applies a penalty on all saves made by creatures within 5 feet of you equal to your Cha, so pick one of those two because they’re flat-out insane. Obviously, winter chill requires getting close, which you may not want to do, but my goodness is that a powerful effect. Summer caress isn’t as ridiculous, but it also doesn’t force you to consider uncomfortable positioning, and it’s still extremely strong.
Half-nymph?
Nymphs are “usually chaotic good,” which makes an unseelie nymph sort of weird, but then, fey are weird. RAW, they’re compatible, and you can still work in Dragonwrought too, but the order matters: it has to be kobold, half-nymph (must target a Humanoid), unseelie fey (any living creature, changes type to Fey if you aren’t already), Dragonwrought (any 1st-level kobold, changes type to Dragon), in that order. Luckily, feats are officially chosen as the last step in your character, and you’re free to order templates however you like as part of choosing your race, so this order is perfectly legal. You wind up as a Dragon (Augmented Fey, Augmented Humanoid, Reptilian).
Anyway, the only reason we’re talking about this is the ability score adjustments: Dex +2, Int +2, Wis +2, Cha +4. Everything you want, a little more Dex which certainly doesn’t hurt, and it’s LA +2, which is really more than it’s worth but you are planning to buy it off anyway. The rest of the template is minor: low-light vision, count as Fey for Enchantments and using magic items (note you’ll keep this when Dragonwrought makes you a Dragon), and awesome beauty (Su)[mind-affecting, fear], which makes any Humanoid with 30 feet shaken for 1 minute just for looking at you (you can suppress this or turn it back on as a free action).
Saint?
If you want the most powerful template, it’s gotta be saint. I’m largely of the opinion that LA—even with buyoff—is basically crippling, but even so saint feels overpowered.
Anyway, saint offers Con +2, Wis +2, Cha +4 at LA +2—which is only okay at LA +2, but it does hit almost everything you want out of it. More importantly, that’s on top of Wis-to-AC (even armored), +2 to all save DCs, free 1d6 damage against any evil creature (1d8 if undead or evil outsider) that hits you with a natural weapon, damage reduction, fast healing, resist fire 10, immunity to acid, cold, electricity, and petrification, permanent tongues, permanent double-strength magic circle against evil, and permanent lesser globe of invulnerability, and a +4 bonus to Fort saves vs. poison.
On the other hand, sainthood is difficult to achieve. You need to be exalted, which means better-than-Good, and if you’re an unseelie fey, that means you are naturally “always evil.” That doesn’t actually prevent you—“always” doesn’t mean “always”—but it’s a thing to keep in mind. Then, on top of being exalted, you need three exalted feats—they pretty much all suck, but Nymph’s Kiss gives an extra skill point per level which isn’t terrible, Intuitive Attack will help your touch attacks if you ever make any, and for the last, I dunno. Knight of Tyr’s Holy Judgment gives you magical knowledge of the laws in any place you find yourself, which is kinda crazy and fun; could be really useful while planehopping.
Note that while saint has a lot of requirements to become one, it’s less clear that you must maintain those requirements after you are. Nothing really says it’s possible to lose the template; there’s nothing about “ex-saints” in Book of Exalted Deeds that I can find. You do lose your exalted feats if you cease to be exalted, so that’s a hefty price, though again, exalted feats tend to suck, so losing them may not be that great a price to pay relative to taking them in the first place.
Lolth-touched?
It doesn’t really focus on what you’re looking for, but it is one of the most efficient LA +1 templates out there: +6 Str, +6 Con, +4 Hide/Move Silently, and fear immunity. The only reason I mention it is because it can be hard to find that much for that little, and it does undo the penalties of kobold and unseelie fey and then some.
Lolth-touched does imply that you have been, ya know, “touched” by Lolth. That’s a scary proposition in the best of times, and for someone actively involved in planar politics, it could be a problem. Also, it’s really hard to imagine saint and Lolth-touched co-existing, for obvious reasons. Lolth is insane, but blessing an honest-to-goodness saint seems beyond even her.
Half-Janni? probably not
Just for completeness, there is an LA +3 half-janni template in Sandstorm. It’s trash (+2 to Str, Dex, Int, Wis; Imp. Init.; +1 natural armor AC; fire resistance 5; enlarge person, reduce person, invisibility, speak with animals each 1/day SLAs; 1/day travel with a party to the Astral Plane, any Elemental Plane, or any Material Plane for 1 minute/level after which you return whence you came), but maybe it’s fitting.
On fluff
On some level, an actual genie-related sha’ir feels weird to me: sha’irs use genies, they aren’t genies themselves.
And fey and kobolds as power brokers feel pretty right to me.
Fey bargains are, of course, a major narrative trope, and the seelie and unseelie often serve the role of go-between between the forces of Good and Evil since the fey courts are good and evil but not the way angels or fiends are.
And D&D 3.5e kobolds—particularly dragonwrought kobolds—are ripe for so many rule shenanigans that it has influenced their flavor in popular imagination, too. “Screw the rules, I’m a kobold!” is a thing.
So unseelie half-nymph dragonwrought kobold seems not outrageous for what you have planned, lore-wise anyway.
Saint is harder to fit in there, and Lolth-touched is harder still. But those are also less important. Just take care with your Fortitude saves, and protect yourself from Strength or Constitution damage.