Dawnflower Dervish (Dervish of Dawn) Performance Confusion

[LonGrab]

I'm thinking of building a Dawnflower Dervish Bard for PFS play and am confused if I would still have standard Bardic Performance (for Inspire Courage in particular) available. The Battle Dance feature in the archetype says:

Quote:

When a dervish of dawn uses the inspire courage, inspire greatness, or inspire heroics bardic performance types as battle dances, these performance types only provide benefit to the dervish himself. All other types of bardic performance work normally (affecting the bard and his allies, or the bard’s enemies, as appropriate).

This ability alters the standard bardic performance ability.

Going strict RAW the "When a dervish of dawn uses ... as battle dances" certainly seems to suggest to me that the bard has an option not to use them as dances, of course using the same performance round resource pool and paying the action cost when switching from one to the other.

On the other hand, this reply from one of the designers (2nd post in thread) seems to make it clear that the standard inspire courage is replaced and not available.

But on the other hand (yes, I'm some kind of freaky alchemist with three arms) that post is quite old and I've seen recent PFS builds that use both performance options. In addition, Hero Lab (which usually gets it right) includes the standard performances as available in the Dervish of Dawn build.

Has interpretation of this changed over time? There have been other posts on this, but they seem to come down on both sides. I'll be happy either way--it'd be nice to have performance flexibility, but it'd also be nice to dance into battle without feeling guilty about not buffing my buddies.

Thanks.

[Secret Wizard]

You are right in one thing - those effects only apply when you perform those as battle dances.

What you are missing is that you can only perform those as battle dances unless you take levels in some other class with Inspire Courage.

[Gwen Smith]

I haven't seen anything to contradict that post, so as far as I know it's still in effect. I would ask the GM before each game and adjust my play accordingly.

[BigNorseWolf]

I think he wrote it, it can be read that way, AND its the least powerful option. For PFS those are the holy trinity of rules assumption. Just play it that way. If you must bother the DM, don't drop a rules question on them right before the game our brains are full

[Gwen Smith]

Also, you're supposed to have access to the actual source to use an odd feat or rule. Calling the archetype "Dervish of Dawn" will either a) confuse the GM since that's not the official name or b) signal to a GM that you don't have the necessary source.

[Nefreet]

Indeed. "Dervish of Dawn" is a name used by a certain third party site in order to avoid Paizo's copyright.

[Chess Pwn]

You can only do them as battle dances, same with the dervish dancer.

[LonGrab]

OK, thanks for the info all. I thought that was the correct answer, but I wanted to make sure I did it right. The main thing that threw me into doubt was that Hero Lab was including the standard performances into the archetype--they usually get it right although I have seen a couple other mistakes.

I included both names as I have seen both names referred to about equally online. I didn't know the source of the multiple names (thanks for that info Nefreet). I do own the source material in PDF (Inner Sea Magic IIRC), although honestly I almost always use online sources for reference as it is so much easier than paging through a PDF.

Once again, thanks for the info.

Edit: Oops, I guess I misspoke up there, while I have a bunch of the Inner Sea stuff, the magic guide was not in my downloads library when I checked. I'll make sure to pick it up if I decide to play the character.

[BigNorseWolf]

You DO have the other bardic performances available normally, ie countersong works for everyone.