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I find the wording of the Battle Dance ability of Dervish Dancer Bards and Dawnflower Dervish Bards rather confusing. Could someone clarify?
- Does a Bard who gains the Battle Dance feature lose the ability to perform for the whole group, as per the default Bard?
- Are the Dervish Dancer abilities new forms of Battle Dance performance, or are they only active during Battle Dances, or are they always active? The wording doesn't specify. For instance: "At 8th level, a dervish dancer can use his battle dance to improve his weapons’ critical range."
- The Dawnflower Dervish gets double bonuses from using Battle Dance, as compensation for the lost buffing of their allies. That makes it much more worthwhile than for the regular Dervish Dancer. Is that going to be errata'd, or do these archetypes really have different mechanics under the same name of "Battle Dance"?
They lose the ability to buff allies.
They are new performances, so only one at a time.
Different abilities. Search James Jacobs posts for Battle Dance.
Different abilities. Search James Jacobs posts for Battle Dance.
James Jacobs (Creative Director): "the battle dance ability makes it so that the inspire courage, inspire greatness, and inspire heroics bardic performances are altered. A dawnflower dervish using these three specific applications of bardic performance only augments herself, not her allies (although she does gain twice the normal bonus, of course). All of her other bardic performances work normally."
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6
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I find the wording of the Battle Dance ability of Dervish Dancer Bards and Dawnflower Dervish Bards rather confusing. Could someone clarify?
- Does a Bard who gains the Battle Dance feature lose the ability to perform for the whole group, as per the default Bard?
- Are the Dervish Dancer abilities new forms of Battle Dance performance, or are they only active during Battle Dances, or are they always active? The wording doesn't specify. For instance: "At 8th level, a dervish dancer can use his battle dance to improve his weapons’ critical range."
- The Dawnflower Dervish gets double bonuses from using Battle Dance, as compensation for the lost buffing of their allies. That makes it much more worthwhile than for the regular Dervish Dancer. Is that going to be errata'd, or do these archetypes really have different mechanics under the same name of "Battle Dance"?
Dervish dancer abilities that refer to dervish dancing work only when dervish dancing. If you stop performing, you lose the bonuses. Lingering performance could stretch that out, however.
Yep, the two classes really have different mechanics, somewhat similar to how different spellcasting can get between two classes. Dawnflower dervishes get better straight-up bonuses, while dervish dancers get special abilities when they perform.