I recently made an elven Magus using the Spell Dancer archetype. We are still level one, and I need to clear up how certain things are going to work with my DM before we get too deep into the campaign and he decides to not let me do any rebuilding. I have a few questions and am curious to hear what the consensus is on all of them before getting into it with the DM.
Question #1: The thing I am the most uncertain about is whether or not it is possible to restart your spell dance after you have already used your once per dance abilities such as the swift action dimension door, swift action fly, etc, so that you use those swift action spell-like abilities again. Since these abilities are useable only once per spell dance and the spell dance lasts for 1 minute, could you say...ROUND #1: spend an arcane pool point to start your spell dance, ROUND #2: use your swift action dimension door, ROUND #3: spend an another arcane pool point to restart you spell dance, and ROUND #4 use your swift action dimension door again now that you have started a new spell dance? If the answer is somehow no, then, as much as I like the flavor of the spell dancer, that would definitely make up my mind about the sacrifice of the ability to enchant your weapon for movementyness being entirely not worth it. Even if you can do this, it seems like a lot of fiddling around to make those dimension doors happen.
Question #2: After doing some looking into the workings of touch attack spells, it seems that one can, in a single round, cast a touch spell, move into range to attack a foe, then attack that foe using spellstrike. So my question is, could a spell dancer therefore use their swift action dimension door to move 5 feet away from a foe, then use a full round action to use spell combat and cast a touch spell while outside of the enemy's reach (thus avoiding an AOO), then five foot step in and begin attacking with their regular attacks and their spellstrike? This would obviously require the dimensional agility feat because otherwise dimension door ends your turn, but assuming you have that feat, as far as I can tell such a strategy would be completely legit. Dreaming about such glorious turns as these is the entire reason I wanted to make a Spell Dancer. I suppose you could argue that you cannot dimension door and 5 foot step in the same round, but that seems hard to swallow to me as the magic is instantly transporting you, and it would be not unlike casting any other spell. I saw a thread about whether or not teleportation magic counted as movement for purposes of not allowing you a 5 foot step in the same round and the argument was somewhat split, but most people seemed to agree with me.
Question #3: Am I going to horribly regret going with Spell Dancer down the line? My Magus is dex based and going to use the dervish dance feat, so I am fine with wearing light or no armor as some good bracers of armor and massive dex is going to get me about as good or better AC some day than even +5 mithril fullplate can, and I definitely like the insight bonus to AC from Dance of Avoidance, but it seems like such a massive sacrifice to not be able to add +5 enhancement bonus worth of buffs to my weapon basically all the time. The dimension door and the insight bonus to AC are pretty much the only things about Spell Dancer that seem worthwhile. Yeah, Spell Dancer keeps looking worse the more I think about it, but I would like to hear what others have to say about it. Has anyone played a Spell Dancer and found it to be worthwhile? If so, any pointers? Or does anyone have experience in just how terrible they are perhaps? Any and all thoughts on the subject would be welcome.