Despite Dawnflower Dervish giving up Bardic Knowledge, it still seems worth it. By level 2, I'll have 12-14 skill ranks even with a 10 in Int. That's more than enough to put ranks in Kn nature, local, arcana, planes, dungeoneering, and religion, as well as throwing 2 ranks in Bluff, 2 ranks in perform (act), a rank in diplomacy, and a rank in spellcraft.
I guess the real question is, since PotP has a 10 minute duration, can I activate Battle Dance while PotP is active or is that considered having 2 bardic performances active at the same time. Or is PotP an instantaneous performance whose effects last for 10 minutes?
Masterpieces count as Performances so you can't have one active along with a normal Performance (or anything that counts as one such as battle dance). So I don't think Dervish bards (neither normal nor dawnflower) would work well the PotP since they rely so much more heavily on their dances.
Regarding Versatile Performance:Act, I suppose that would work. PotP lets you use Bluff in place of any Int skill and VP would let you use Perform:Act in place of any Bluff or Disguise check. So Knowledge:Nature becomes Bluff which, in turn, becomes Perform:Act; Daisy-chain the substitutions. But I still prefer Perform(Dance) so you're not subbing one Charisma skill with another Charisma skill; that's a bit of a waste. Better to sub out a skill governed by a stat you're leaving low.
Going back to resource economy, you probably won't be making Craft, Appraise, or Linguistics checks mid-combat and Knowledge checks are more for either the beginning of combat or before combat starts. So you can get your knowledge checks out of the way right at the start, then drop the Masterpiece to pick up your normal performance if you need it. If you don't need it, leave PotP up for the fight and use up the remainder of your time doing something productive; write a forgery, use your Wand of Fabricate, Appraise your loot, etc. The only big thing you'd need to consider is whether you're going to be using Spellcraft in the fight to ID spells. But that would probably be your primary spellcaster's job; a Wizard, Witch, or Magus would be better at that anyway since they'll more likely have a counterspell.
And when this character is on the street
Depending on the street
I bet she is definitely in the top three
Good looking girls on the street
Kazaan wrote: Masterpieces count as Performances so you can't have one active along with a normal Performance (or anything that counts as one such as battle dance). So I don't think Dervish bards (neither normal nor dawnflower) would work well the PotP since they rely so much more heavily on their dances.
Regarding Versatile Performance:Act, I suppose that would work. PotP lets you use Bluff in place of any Int skill and VP would let you use Perform:Act in place of any Bluff or Disguise check. So Knowledge:Nature becomes Bluff which, in turn, becomes Perform:Act; Daisy-chain the substitutions. But I still prefer Perform(Dance) so you're not subbing one Charisma skill with another Charisma skill; that's a bit of a waste. Better to sub out a skill governed by a stat you're leaving low.
Going back to resource economy, you probably won't be making Craft, Appraise, or Linguistics checks mid-combat and Knowledge checks are more for either the beginning of combat or before combat starts. So you can get your knowledge checks out of the way right at the start, then drop the Masterpiece to pick up your normal performance if you need it. If you don't need it, leave PotP up for the fight and use up the remainder of your time doing something productive; write a forgery, use your Wand of Fabricate, Appraise your loot, etc. The only big thing you'd need to consider is whether you're going to be using Spellcraft in the fight to ID spells. But that would probably be your primary spellcaster's job; a Wizard, Witch, or Magus would be better at that anyway since they'll more likely have a counterspell.
I don't quite understand what you mean about swapping one Cha based skill for another. The idea of PotP and VP together is to consolidate as many skill checks as possible into a single skill to effetively give the character more skill points. If I have PotP and VP, all of my Int-based skills and Bluff are taken care of by the Perform skill whenever PotP is up. That way I can save my skill points for the Dex and Wis based skills I'll need. I'm thinking this character may work better as an archer, since PotP requires a move action to start. I can then use the standard action to get off an attack. Only problem is, archers are so feat intensive and I really wanted to spend some feats on things like Skill Focus to really pump my Perform skill up.
I mean that, if you're already pumping Charisma, then your Bluff check is already going to get a significant bonus. If you then swap out that Bluff skill with another Perform skill, you're only gaining the benefit of consolidating your skill points and you must weigh that against the prospect of not being able to significantly raise and consolidate two non-Cha skills using a different Versatile Performance.
If you put one token point into each of Acrobatics and Fly without VP:Dance, you get +4 for 2 skill points. If you put one token point into Disguise without VP:Act, you get +9 for 1 skill point. Furthermore, having 2 Skill Focus available by lvl 8, which can graduate from +3 to +6 bonus at lvl 10, you can put them into two significant abilities (Dance covering 3 checks and Bluff covering a multitude) as opposed to having Act cover a multitude and needing to apply the other one to only a single skill. If you're going Archer on this build, however, the low Dex isn't going to work in your favor so there's no point in the Oracle dip or leaving yourself at 10 Dex. But that lessens the impact of focusing on Cha and forcing so many rules elements onto that stat.
Yeah, I don't think I am going to go archer because it's too feat intensive. You almost have to have Precise Shot to be effective as an archer, and that would eat up my level 1 and 3 feats as a human with Focused Study. I'd almost rather be human, not take the alternate racial trait, spend one of my level 1 feats on Skill Focus (perform: act) and the other on Weapon Finesse and just use a rapier. Then I can take my Versatile Performance in perform (act) at level 2 and I don't have to put any skill points in bluff or disguise. Yes, I'm trading out one Cha-based skill for another, but I can always put points in perform (dance) and take it as my 2nd Versatile Performance at 6.
So I'm looking at a normal human with an ability array like:
Str: 13
Dex: 16
Con: 12
Int: 12
Wis: 8
Cha: 14 +2
I still have a +1 to will save at level 1, and now I qualify for Power Attack at some point. Looking at a progression something like:
1. Skill Focus (perform: act), Weapon Finesse
2. VP - Perform (act)
3. Weapon Focus (rapier)
4. Give up spell for PotP, +1 Cha
5. Power Attack
6. VP - Perform (dance)
7. Skill Focus (perform: dance)
8. +1 Cha
9.
10.
11.
12. +1 Str if this character gets to 12, but as a PFS character it probably won't
The other option is to drop Str to 10, bump Cha to 14, and take Dervish Dance at 3, and push all of the other feats back 1 step.
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