Spirit Dancer Medium help

[Yrtalien]

I read this class and archetype since their is interest and am surprised to find the medium has almost no support even from 3rd PP. My games tend to be high fantasy and the other two players are a Wizard and Sorcerer... Will this have problem keeping up as well as being frontline for the group

I was considering offering my player a feat that increases the rounds she can spirit dance (much like a bards extra performance). Does anyone think that's overpowered?

Hints on this archetype's play style would be appreciated.I
Thanks

[Arcaian]

Spirit Dancer is a difficult one. A high fantasy game featuring a Wizard and Sorcerer doesn't automatically exclude a medium being relevant - mediums are certainly the most capable of keeping up with these conditions of the pure martial and 4th level casting classes. I do not think a feat that increases the round one can Spirit Dancer is overpowered, for what it's worth - the issue with rounds for a Spirit Dancer is that some tasks simply take way more rounds than you're getting. CHA mod + 2/level is a very large amount for in-combat roles; I'd be surprised if an average table's day had more than 15-20 rounds of combat, with many of those rounds being initial set up or mopping up a fight that has already got an obvious conclusion. The issue is skill checks and some spells - channeling the Trickster spirit for diplomacy bonuses is an issue, for example, as the vast majority of Diplomacy checks are at least 1 minute (i.e. 10 of your rounds already gone). Taking 20 on even a simple Disable Device check to pick a lock takes 20 rounds - more complicated ones will average closer to 50 rounds. Spells that take 10 minutes to cast are going to cost you 100 rounds of Spirit Dancing. Basically it means that the feat will mean the Spirit Dancer will be able to be more liberal with in-combat rounds, but most out-of-combat uses will continue to be out of the Spirit Dancer's routine use (provided the feat doesn't grant an insane amount of rounds).

Spirit Dancer's Role:

Essentially, Spirit Dancer takes the most versatile class in the game and makes it more versatile, at a significant cost. You'll be able to access any of the spirits in a day, allowing you to change from an effective front-line meat shield (guardian) to damage dealer (champion), skill monkey (trickster), or even caster (heirophant and archmage) on an encounter-by-encounter basis. Choosing the abilities granted at the start of the day, not when you channel them, prevents you from being too flexible - you still need to be making guesses about what you're going to be using. The cost of this flexibility is that you're limited to only being able to undertake short-term tasks using a spirit's boosts - you can be a frontliner for a combat, but you can't use your spirit to help you tunnel through a cave-in for 5 hours. You'll also not be as good as a dedicated specialist or even generic medium channeling the appropriate spirit in any of your fields; losing spirit bonus is a huge loss to the most effective spirits - until level 6, you'll be getting very little out of the Champion and Guardian spirits. The other part of the Spirit Dancer playstyle that is worth noting is a dramatically increased paperwork/tracking level. You'll need to note your choices for all 6 spirits at the start of the day, then track rounds for even non-combat uses, plus remember what your party members chose for their Shared Seance choices, and so on. Not a bad thing by definition, but only for some players to be sure.

Your player's spirit dancer will be able to keep up if your campaign is mostly focused on combat or short-term activities, or if you make a houserule for reduced consumption of Spirit Dancing rounds out of combat. I personally think that in a generic campaign, it's a downgrade on the unarchetyped medium - losing spirit bonus reduces your ability to specialize (a focused Champion-channeling medium will out damage the vast majority of characters typically), and losing the ability to do long-term abilities will affect your narrative power - you can't use trickster to gain an absurdly large Profession (barrister) and Linguistics check for the day when you're in a situation where the party really needs to prove their innocence, for example. I would recommend either encouraging them to play a less damaging medium archetype, or implement some house rules to increase their effectiveness. Possible house rules include:

House Rules:

1. Boosting the effectiveness of the Spirit Dancer outside of combat by reducing round consumption. A rule about the stress of combat demanding more power, and without it using 1 round of Spirit Dancing per minute channeling the spirit would not be absurdly powerful in my perspective, allowing you to perform long-term tasks more effectively. Could also have a similar rule allowing you to spend a point of Influence to channel a spirit for minutes/level or 10 minutes/level, for example.

2. Boosting the effectiveness through increasing flexibility - allowing decisions to be made about a spirit when it is channeled. This reduces paperwork as well as increases flexibility, keeping the niche of the Spirit Dancer as the ultimate character for fixing a problem as it arrives so long as the problem is able to be fixed quickly.

3. Boosting the effectiveness through increased numerical bonuses - allowing a point of Influence to be spent to give you a spirit bonus as usual for a medium of your level for a limited time might be appropriate, if not interested in the previous rules. This would allow the Spirit Dancer to perform a task well - spend a point of influence for the combat (of which they can't spend more than 1 freely and two more while maintaining fairly significant costs) to fight or tank well, would be the obvious uses.

Sorry this turned into a bit of a wall of text, I've added some spoiler tags to make it more readable - I just absolutely adore mediums, and vary rarely see them discussed. I swear about 80% of the Pathfinder material I've written has been about mediums! :P