Several times I have seen posts from people saying that they loved their games with the Dervish Dancer.
I once considered the Dervish Dancer for my current game but settled on the Arcane Duelist. I realized that I couldn't use Lingering Performance.
In our game we are at 8th level and we have had about 7 or 8 combats before we got to sleep. I figure if I didn't have the Lingering Performance I wouldn't be using the Inspire Courage by this time.
It makes me wonder about those others who have the Dervish Dancers who have characters about the same level. About how many combats do you go before sleep? Do Society games allow more sleep than home games?
I am thinking of a Dervish Dancer, but I can't get over the lack of performance points.
You know Bards get 4+CHA at start and then 2 more each level ya? At absolute minimum you should have 18 rounds of Dervish Dancing. That should be enough 4-5 combats. Keep in mind you don't have to Dervish Dance against weak fights and can save it for harder ones. Or, you could invest in the Social Trait Maestro of the Society to pick up 3 more rounds of Dervish Dancer (another whole fights worth), up your CHA to at least a +6 Bonus (which should get you another 2 fights worth) and if you really need push for that 8th+ fight, you can use the Half-Elf or Half-Orc Favored Class Bonus to pick up an additional 8 rounds. If you can't make 35 Rounds of Dervish Dancing work some reason or another, it may be time to rethink your party's strategies, or your GMs encounters.
I played a Dervish Dancer bard in a Runelords campaign. I could still buff the party with spells, I had pretty good AC, did decent damage, and still do lots of other things. I think I dipped Paladin for 2 levels for the Save boost.
One of my favorite characters to play.
Had one in a game I ran, she rarely ran out of rounds after the first few levels. Although it didn't hurt that she got extra rounds as a racial favoured class bonus, number of rounds became mostly irrelevant by about fifth level anyway.
You are comparing to someone spending a feat (lingering performance) anyway, so grabbing extra performance isn't too unusual- that should be about 2 more fights per day.
After that...yeah, usual options depending on what you need. Maestro and more cha. Wouldn't go with the favored class bonus myelf, since bards end up a bit squishy. But the trait, cha, and feat should shore up your class's natural progression quite well.
Overall, it isn't too much of a problem. I mean...it is the exact same scaling as a barbarian. The only disadvantage compared to rage is that is it a move to activate, and that is only a problem for 2 more levels.
Not sure if dervish dancer is worth it though. Now dawnflower dervish... that is worth it for the double bonuses. That is a +4 at that level. As a word of advice- skip dervish dance (the feat one that dawnflower gets for free). Only swashbucklers really pull off the 1 hand/1 weapon well. Dawnflower dervish adds to each and every hit, so it is perfect for a TWF or archery build.
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Overall, it isn't too much of a problem. I mean...it is the exact same scaling as a barbarian. The only disadvantage compared to rage is that is it a move to activate, and that is only a problem for 2 more levels.
Plus it has the advantage of no penalty for turning it off. So even if you use it at the start of the fight, there's no reason not to turn it off once the fight is in the bag already. It lets you be a bit more efficient with it than a Barbarian.
Having your hand free for casting is nice though - just need to get a way of more attacks with one hand, such as some magus, monk, ninja, if you just want to be a combatant. Definitely go archery over twf though *shudders*.
Society play often does have more rests, to get to the OP question.
Saving inspire courage for some harder fights is also usual.
Eh, there are various gauntlet style of weapons though. The cestus has similar stats to a dagger, and lacks the language that messes wtih spells seen in brass knuckles (a similar weapon released at the same time). So spell casting can be fine. So you can make a fairly good boxing/dancing machine.
Heck, I am vaguely sure the cestus even lets you use a weapon in that hand instead (which could be useful to take advantage of your scimitar proficiency with 2 handing, and then take the cestus hand off and switch to TWF for full attacks; this is more of a ranger/slayer trick though- it is possible to get a TWF str bard on a 20 pt buy...but it HURTS)
But yeah- archery is always nice. Can't argue with that. Maybe try to grab arcane strike for either style too, since that adds onto any attack.