The obvious way to get the Bardic Performance ability is to take levels in Bard. For various reasons, I am looking for a way for a character to gain that ability without also learning to cast spells.
So far the only thing I have found is the Deadly Courtesan rogue archetype, which grants a rather limited sort of Bardic Performance at 2nd level -- and which requires your character to be a vishkanya.
Does anyone know of any more generally applicable ways to gain any sort of Bardic Performance without being a spellcaster?
There is the Sensei archetype for Monks
Or the deadly courtesan rouge.
Or uses one of the super genius game's bard archetypes and sacrifice spellcasting for it.
Ah, excellent! You only need one level of monk to qualify, and you get a useful assortment of bardic performance abilities with it.
Yes, Sensei all the way. And if available, you can get this ability and make virtually any kind of character you want with the Talented Monk.
What exactly are you looking to be able to do with the Performance? Sensei Monk has a limited form of it.
Battle Herald does too.
A Carvivalist Rogue gets a pet performance ability that works like Performance.
My intention was to make a Lyrical Summoner (prestige class from the 3pp Into the Breach: Summoners). The qualifications for that class include bardic performance, and eidolon, and the ability to cast 2nd level spells. The two obvious ways to qualify for that prestige class are with a Summoner 4/Bard 1 or with a Summoner 1/Bard 4. Since the bard and summoner classes are both spontaneous arcane casters, the result would be one class with relatively advanced spellcasting and one that is most likely stuck at level 1. For the sake of neatness, I decided to look for options that eliminated the Bard spellcasting.
So the Carnivalist Rogue works about as well as the Deadly Courtesan for this purpose (with the advantage of not being race specific, but with an extra "pet" added), but Battle Herald does not work because one of its prerequisites is Inspire Courage (usually available only as a bardic performance as well).
Are the Sensei and Martial Artist archetypes compatible with each other? I remember once looking in vain for archetypes that I could combine with Martial Artist, and I disregarded Sensei because one of its abilities required spending ki points that a Martial Artist wouldn't have. However, the Sensei archetype technically does not modify or replace the Ki Pool class feature, so there appears to be no overlap between the two archetypes -- just a major flaw in actually using the combination if you intend to advance to level 6+ as a monk.
Or uses one of the super genius game's bard archetypes and sacrifice spellcasting for it.
Or the third party Inspiring Commander cavalier archetype (its pretty good)
Sorry I didn't see these ideas before. Both of these are excellent ideas -- and they only require a single level dip into the class in question.