What are people's thoughts on going mouser or inspired blade for a halfling swashbuckler?
I love the mouser ability, but I feel like it is pretty easy to counter. Inspired blade has the benefit of dex to damage at level 1 and saves you a feat.
With the small overlap, I let my player combine the two, tossing a coin for the one conflict at level 11. If it's a home game and it's not a GM pet peeve, check to see if it's okay to stack them.
That out of the way, Mouser is probably more fun. Dashing into opponent's spaces and being a general nuisance is more interesting combat all around. I'd look at how long it will be before level 3. If you're confident you'll spend more time at level 3+, I'd go for Mouser. Otherwise, go for decent damage right off the bat and look into retraining at level 3 if need be.
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What are people's thoughts on going mouser or inspired blade for a halfling swashbuckler?
I love the mouser ability, but I feel like it is pretty easy to counter. Inspired blade has the benefit of dex to damage at level 1 and saves you a feat.
I think Inspired Blade is both stronger and easier to build, but that Mouser is really quite unique and therefore a more interesting archetype to build for.
A Mouser Swashbuckler fits a Halfling better flavour-wise, but I feel like the Mouser archetype needs the Human Bonus Feat to come online quickly enough for my own tastes, so I'd actually just go with a no archetype bog-standard Swashbuckler as a Halfling.
I second the "Inspired Blade is stronger, Mouser is more interesting" take. The question you should ask the GM is whether the "steal" combat maneuver is going to be something he or she minds/a thing that's going to actually be moderately useful. Since the Mouser gives up two of the best abilities the swashbuckler has (opportune parry and menacing) for "occupying an enemy square so everyone flanks" and "swift action steal." If both of those things aren't going to be useful (i.e. if nobody cares about flanking or there's nothing interesting or relevant to steal) then I would avoid the archetype.
This would be for PFS. These are all good points, my only fear about the mouser ability is that it takes 1 panache to enter the space and for fun to begin. The opponent can just eat the AOP and move away and now I'm a panache down. Is this an imaginary fear, or something that people experience often? Frankly, I really want the mouser to be a good choice. I just worry about how it compares to the very easy/safe choice of inspired blade.
More about the build for context: bodyguard focused and will eventually dip sacred shield paladin to further defend his party.
One thing that's sometimes overlooked with Inspired Blade is that you get no Panache for a killing blow. Normally a Swashbuckler can at least count on some panache for killing things, but the Inspired Blade that confirms no crits gets no Panache.