To find out how to get the most Manpower out of a character, we need to gather some information. Some of this can be found in the game's readme.txt, but I found out most of it from playing, testing and observing. Grimnir's guide was a great help along the way and provided me some information I couldn't otherwise have yet.

How is a character's Manpower calculated?
This depends on the alignment of the character in question:
- Lawful: highest utility skill score. A skill's score is shown right below the skill's name.
- Neutral: utility score squared. A character's utility score is the number at the top right in the skill point distribution menu, below the Utility tag.
- Chaotic: second-highest skill score.
Some skill perks further increase a character's Manpower. Those are:
- Stamina (Labour 2): doubles Manpower. This also doubles the bonuses from the skills below.
- Reflexive (Thwart 5): adds 1000 Manpower.
- Mindspeak (Weave 5): adds (character level * band size) Manpower. The largest potential stronghold supports 69 characters. Reserving 16 spots for a full staff which don't count towards band size, this skill perk caps at a bonus of 99 * 53 = 5247 Manpower. (From here on, I'll consider Mindspeak's bonus to be 5247 Manpower. This guide is about maximization, after all, and it is easy enough to adjust the below calculations to your exact situation.)

How are skill scores calculated?
A skill's score is always equal to the product of its skill type and skill category scores. If, for example, a character's Force score is 5 and his Utility score is 3, that character's Labour score is 5 * 3 = 15.
This may seem a little backwards, but its the easiest way to explain the game's skill system: When you distribute a skill point into a skill, the corresponding skill type and category scores are each increased by 1. Due to that, distributing a skill point into a skill doesn't only increase that skill's score, but it also increases the score of every skill sharing the same type or category by a smaller amount. It is also worth noting that the order in which the skill points are distributed is irrelevant; the only thing that matters is how they are distributed among the different skills.

How many skill points can a character gain?
I expect a character to have accumulated 108 skill points at the current maximum level: ten skill points at level 1 and one skill point for each level up until the cap 99.
I wrote "expect" because I haven't actually confirmed that yet; my highest-level character is at around level 45, but so far, the above is correct.

At which skill scores are skill perks unlocked?
Skill perks are unlocked at the following skill scores:



That's all we need to get the number crunching started, so let's go: one alignment by one.

Characters of Neutral alignment need to devote themselves to Utility skills in order to provide Manpower. What's more, every single skill point put into those skills counts, whereas the individual skill scores don't affect Manpower. Because of that, maximizing Manpower on a Neutral aligned character requires you to spend all his skill points on Utility skills.

This, in turn, allows the character to unlock all the Manpower increasing skill perks without losing out on Manpower by distributing points comparably balanced. If you unlock all of those and spend all skill points on Utility skills, a Neutral character will provide 2 * (108^2 + 1000 + 5247) = 35822 Manpower.

The minimum amount of skill points you need to put into each skill for that is as follows:
Labour: 1 skill point
Thwart: 11 skill points
Weave: 11 skill points
By distributing the remaining 85 skill points between Utility skills, the relevant skill perks are unlocked for all three skills eventually. Because of this freedom, you can adjust the character to your immediate Utility needs within the party and, in the long run, even unlock all six skill perks for all three Utility skills, creating an incredibly good negotiator and challenge solver along the way. To unlock a tier six skill perk, you'll need to put at least 18 skill points into the Utility skill in question.

Depending on how you weigh your three Utility skills, you may even unlock tier one skill perks of either Force, Guile or Magic or of both Guile and Magic skills by putting skill points into Utility skills alone; this requires 50 skill points in the Utility skill of the corresponding skill type. If you are so inclined, you could also put some of the 108 skill points into other skills instead to, for instance, get more out of the "your weapon attacks cannot kill enemies unless they are already near death" effect of the Labour 6 skill perk Down To Earth. Be aware that moving too many points from Utility to other skills will increase the minimum amount of skill points necessary to unlock Stamina, Reflexive and Mindspeak; for instance, spending any less than 99 skill points into Utility skills increases that amount to 12 for Thwart and Weave and lowers the character's Manpower significantly; with 100 skill points in Utility skills, it already drops by almost 3500 points to 32494.

Like Neutral characters, Lawful ones need to devote themselves to Utility skills in order to provide Manpower. The difference, however, is that only the highest Utility skill score of a Lawful character contributes to his Manpower, which means that he has to stack one single Utility skill as high as possible.

Just doing that would not suffice to maximize Manpower for a Lawful character, though. Moreover, the amount of Manpower differs largely between the primary Utility skill chosen. Pouring all 108 points into Labour results in 23762 Manpower (which, thanks to Stamina, is a very good quick-and-dirty way to get lots of Manpower early on, though!), the same with Weave 17128 Manpower and with Thwart merely 12881 Manpower. Obviously, to maximize Manpower, a bit of splitting up to unlock the Manpower bonus skill perks is necessary while avoiding to specialize in Labour. Sorry, Bato, you're bound to get a level reset at some point.

Unlocking all three of them is close enough to the maximum Manpower to deserve mention, but it does spread the skill points and thus skill score a little too thin to be the actual maximum: With just enough points spent in Labour (1 skill point) and either Thwart or Weave (11 skill points) to unlock Stamina and Reflexive/Mindspeak and the rest (96 skill points) stuffed into whichever of Thwart and Weave has not received any love yet, the Lawful character will contribute 33422 Manpower. If you want to have points in Thwart on a Lawful Manpower provider, this is the way to go. Whichever of those you choose, you will unlock the tier one skill perks of each skill of your specialization's skill type (Hunt and Dodge for Thwart, Blast and Ward for Weave). While you are at it, you could also move up to two skill points from your specialization to the related Attack and Defense skills each. For every point you move there, you lose out on Manpower, but also unlock one more skill perk tier, i.e. up to skill tier 3 for both skills. It's up to you - you're not maximizing Manpower at this point anymore, anyway.

To actually maximize the character's Manpower though, there's only one invariable way:
Labour: 1 skill point
Weave: 107 skill points
This results in 2 * (108 * 109 + 5247) = 34038 Manpower.

That maximization build, like the full Utility spread above, is not suited for the game's early stages; the highly important Manpower bonus skill perks simply unlock far too late. Because of that, you'll most likely have a decently sized band including other Manpower providers by the time you build up a Lawful character like this (or are plain masochistic, maybe), so Weave is always going to be superior to Thwart in this constellation. The only variation you could do is, similar to the full Utility spread, playing around with moving a few points from Weave to Blast and/or Ward for cheap skill perk unlocks, but if you're doing that, you might as well choose the full Utility spread to begin with.

Take note that a Neutral aligned character can do all of the above as well while getting a higher Manpower rating. More on that in the Conclusion chapter.

To get to the point right away, Chaotic characters are the worst primary Manpower providers. The porcess of maximizing Manpower on them is similar to the process of doing so on Lawful characters, only that you actually need to increase two skill scores as much as you can. The best a Chaotic aligned character can do is this:
Labour: 1 skill point
Thwart: 53 skill points
Weave: 53 skill points
That leaves one skill point which can be distributed in any way you want. Whichever you choose is irrelevant, though - it makes no difference at all. Best put it into Labour to get Stamina at least a little bit earlier. This nets you a laughable 2 * (53 * 109 + 1000 + 5247) = 24048 Manpower. While the Lawful Manpower provider might redeem himself a bit by getting access to up to tier 3 skill perks in either Hunt and Dodge or Blast and Weave without giving up too much Manpower, it would be way too much of an investment for a Chaotic Manpower provider. So, basically... Don't do Chaotic Manpower providers.

Instead, make use of the freedom the way Chaotic characters contribute Manpower provides. You can create characters capable of actual combat that still contribute a nice chunk of Manpower quite easily. For that, you need to pick two skills from the same row or column that, when specialized in, make the character an asset in combat. The combinations Fight & Hunt, Fight & Guard, Guard & Ward and Blast & Hunt are all decent options. While there is a place for Labor & Thwart characters as negotiation beasts, non-Chaotic characters are simply better at that for their superior Manpower gain, so best skip that and any other dual Utility combination.

If you put 54 skill points into each of your two chosen skills, the character will already contribute 5995 Manpower. For a pure combatant, that's already quite nice, especially since this will also unlock the tier 1 skill perk for every skill in the same rows and columns as your two skills of choice. But it gets better yet.

Should you have opted for Fight & Guard, it suffices to put 54 skill points into either Fight or Guard, 53 into the other and 1 into Labour to unlock Stamina. This increases the character's Manpower contribution to 2 * (54 * 109) = 11772 Manpower - on a fully functional combat character!

A close second are combinations where one of your two chosen skills is a Force skill (or, technically, a Utility skill, but we already discussed that, didn't we). Investing 2 skill points into Labour will be enough to unlock Stamina as long as you distribute 53 points each into your chosen skills. That way, the character will provide 2 * (54 * 107) = 11556 Manpower.

Not as close are combinations where you have no Fight (or *coughs*Utility*coughs*) skill among your chosen two, but it is still good. You will need to spend 10 skill points on Labour to unlock Stamina, which leaves 49 skill points each for your chosen two and still gives a wonderful 2 * (50 * 100) = 10000 Manpower. That's way less than with a Neutral or Lawful character, but remember: Those have to specialize into Utility for this, this right here is on actual combatants!

As with Lawful and Neutral characters, these builds can be nuanced by moving some points from your two skills of choice to other skills for easy low tier skill perk unlocks. With a two skill secondary Manpower provider, you're hybridizing already and your Manpower gain is meraly supplementary anyway, so go ahead and experiment. Just remember to spend sufficiently many points on Labour to unlock Stamina and to keep the difference between your two skills of choice at zero or one.

As the above shows, Chaotic characters should not be used as primary Manpower providers. It's just not worth it. Instead, if you want to get something extra out of a Chaotic character, consider using a two skill build. This way, you could probably get through the game with one non-Chaotic pure Manpower character and a few Chaotic two skill build Manpower secondaries without ever needing more Manpower.

For truly pure Manpower contribution, Neutral aligned characters remain uncontested. As long as a Neutral and a Lawful character both distribute skill points into the same single Utility skill, they will always provide the same amount of Manpower. The moment the Neutral character spends points in other Utility skills and begins unlocking more Manpower bonus skill perks than the Lawful character, however, he immediately outperforms the Lawful single skill Manpower provider. Even if the Lawful character starts spending skill points on the same second Utility skill, he will fall behind even further because only his highest skill score contributes to Manpower.

No matter the exact build, the Neutral character always wins due to his freedom of distribution on Utility skills, especially as a Neutral character can easily become an enormous asset for challenges and negotiations by unlocking all Utility skill perks.

With that said, there is only one reason to ever consider a Lawful primary Manpower contributor, which is the lack of other choices during the early phase of a playthrough. Starting out, Bato is the best Manpower provider we get for his preset build and it makes sense to spend all his skill points into Labour. The moment you can replace him with a Neutral Manpower provider, however, it's best to take him to the Struggle statue. Might as well reset the Poacher to a character whom, you know. Actually has points in Hunt.

I have written a build calculator for Bastard Bonds. Try it out to better plan your Manpowerhouses! You can get it here.

You will only find Level 99 builds by character alignment for maximum Manpower here, none of the interesting and useful details above.
This is meant as a warning, you know. :P

Neutral
Labour: 1 skill points
Thwart: 11 skill points
Weave: 11 skill points
distribute the remaining 85 skill points among Utility skills
35822 Manpower

Lawful
Labour: 1 skill point
Weave: 107 skill points
34038 Manpower

Chaotic
Labour: 1 skill point
Thwart: 53 skill points
Weave: 53 skill points
distribute the remaining 1 skill point freely
24048 Manpower

2016-07-26:

• Added the section BBCalc: A Build Calculator.

2016-07-11:

• Upon re-checking my evaluation of a Neutral character's Manpower growth versus a Lawful one's, I spotted a grave mistake. If you've already read the guide, re-read the section Conclusion. It contains all the relevant information.
  
• The calculation of a Neutral characters maximum Manpower was wrong; it's now corrected from 2 * (109^2 + 1000 + 5247) = 36256 to 2 * (108^2 + 1000 + 5247) = 35822.
  
• "At which skill scores are skill perks unlocked?" in the Relevant Facts section got a facelift.
  
• Some wordings have been changed without altering the information provided.

2016-07-10:

• The guide was written and released!