Dervish
Class Description
“ Wild, exotic, and as dangerous as her whirling blades, the dervish epitomizes speed, quickness, and abandon. Her motions appear to be as random as they are graceful, but the steps of her lethal dance play out according to their own rhythm.
Nearly all dervishes belong to nomadic cultures. These nomads are not simple wanderers with no roots to call their own - they have their ancient traditions, and their societies simply do not consider permanent settlements an important part of their nature. They are gypsies, keeping their own traditions and forging their own familial and societal bonds while they move throughout the world. Often, these tribes adopt the attitudes and even some of the laws of the lands they live in - for the sake of expedience, if nothing else. The dervish treats fighting styles the same way. A dervish learns the dance of war as she grows up among her family and her tribe. She watches others as she travels, however, and brings new steps to the dance as she goes.
Fighters, rangers, and monks often take up the role of the dervish. Many paladins look at the wildness of the dance and assume it has some roots in chaos, but those who look past the seeming randomness can find things to learn. Barbarians seldom choose to learn the ways of the dance - the dervish depends on subtlety more than brute force. The way of the dervish has been known to appeal to some druids, bards, and even sorcerers - those who wish to learn a type of fighting that does not rely on heavy arms or armor find the class interesting.” – Wiki
The perfect mix of agility, accuracy, and art. Dervish truly tries to blend dance with death by leveraging the perform skill to gain boosts to attack and damage roles in addition to getting some dodge AC bonus and speed based feats.
Where it shines 
The class offers a nice mix of that art and fight similar to a bard by making use of the perform skill. While perform normally mechanically does nothing beyond RP (unless bard), this class uses it for fuel to make the dance last longer. The dance acts like Rage in which it has a duration that provides damage and attack bonuses, but at the end you are “winded” or in this case “fatigued” for 1 minute. Dance cap is 2 minutes, so don’t get more than 24 ranks in perform. Using the ability with two 1-Handed slashing weapons makes this class deadly fun as they both can receive the bonus. Comboing with a strength Tempest build, now you have Drizzt abominations popping up all over. The AC bonus is another big boon, an extra 3 free AC combined with spring attack and all the movement speed buffs is quite nice. Fast movement addition is great! A Thousand Cuts… Not sure where to put this one.. While its nice BG has upped the use’s to 3/day, it feel the ability itself is somewhat situational. Its great for those boss fights that require an extra umph.. if that’s the intended use, great.. leave it alone.
Pain Points 
Where to begin… so much potential that falls short.. The dance cap.. WHY?! If rage can get boosted with extended rage, Constitution, and get more uses per day with items.. why on earth cap this at 2 minutes. I understand the fear of getting a bard in there with 60 perform and having the dance last 5 minutes.. but who honestly cares!? They would need to invest feats and class levels to make it worth wild. Ditch the cap! If the intended use for A Thousand Cuts is anything else than above, I would suggest reworking the ability. I would love to see this on a timer similar to the new Orc War Drummer where it lasts a minute, but you can’t use it again for say 5 minutes with unlimited uses a day. That or make it tie into the dance, so when you are dancing, you gain an additional +1dX slashing damage.
Pros
• Dance +Hit/Damage
• Lots of speed buffs
• AC bonus!
• Perform/Martial hybrid
• A Thousand Cuts: Very Situational
Cons
• Dance cap at 2 minutes
• Dance Fatigue till class level 9, plan ahead
• A Thousand Cuts: Very Situational
Final Thoughts
The worst part about the Dervish is dance capping at 2 minutes. Honestly I have no idea why it would have a cap.. its good, but its no different than a rage timer other than this one is skill based and only affects attack and damage. It basically says don’t get more than 24 ranks in perform.. I could see this ability being MUCH better if it had no cap and could go for 4+ minutes. That alone would give the class an extra star. I wish more classes ran like the War Drummer with a timer instead of a use/day, but this is what you get with a lot of DND mechanics. I just feel they don’t translate well to video games and A Thousand Cuts is a great example. Thanks BG for giving us an extra 2 minutes of blades of furry, but it would be great if this was on a timer. All in all, the class has lots of fun little tricks, just needs some TLC and development IMO. I struggled to rate this one.. but honestly it came down to the movement speed buffs. The extra speed boosts gave it that last half a star.
Rating: 3.5/5
Special Thanks
Wiki for information and Kaedrin for class creation
