Dervish in E6

[Allanimal]

A fellow player in my D&D 3.5 group a few years back brought in a Dervish character after her last PC died. By the end of the 1st encounter with that character, it was dead - mainly due to the fickle dice.... she liked the character, but due to reasons we were unable to resurrect her.

Fast forward to now, and we are starting up a new E6 campaign. The group is discussing what character they will play, and she says "I want to play that Dervish".

We looked at the PrC pre-reqs... ugh, not easy, but doable at 6th level, for Dervish1 at least.

So, the current build is probably:
Swashbuckler-3
Fighter-2 (needed for the steep feat requirements)
Dervish-1
On a Whisper gnome chassis.
Probably: Str 12, Dex 18, Con 14, Int 16, Wis 10, Cha 6

Any advice on that build? Is there a better race? The stat bonuses, darkvision, speed are all good. She's not thrilled about the small size (at least for weapon damage) Anything that would work better?

We are starting with lvl2 characters, so it will be a slow buildup until she actually hits that Dervish level.

1st level will be swash for skill reasons, would you pick swash for lvl 2 or fighter? (DM says there are no multi class penalties)

One house rule that should be mentioned - Weapon Finesse is free if you have proficiency in the weapon. So the Swash bonus feat can be swapped out, probably for TWF. She really likes TWF, but other alternate feat suggestions fitting in the swash theme (DMs requirement) would be nice too.

She's not a super optimizer, but I want to make sure the character is enjoyable for the levels leading up to the Dervish level.

Thanks for the help!

[ComaVision]

I'm going to be DMing an E6 game whenever my current campaign ends and I think if anyone wanted to play a Dervish in my game I'd let them enter the class with no prerequisites, even as a base class. It doesn't get anything that is too powerful, may as well let them do what they want. I'd at least ask your DM about lowering the prerequisites a bit.

OK, assuming RAW, you didn't give any allowed/disallowed sources but I'd go:

Whirling Frenzy Spirit Lion Totem Barbarian 1/Swash 3/Warblade 1/Dervish 1 (Order doesn't really matter except Warblade should be level 5. I'd do the Barb level ASAP.)

Human for the race and flaws as necessary to make up for the lost Fighter levels.

Most importantly, this build will actually give the character a method of reliably getting full attacks. The Warblade level will be at Initiator Level 3 allowing the selection of 2nd level maneuvers, giving some other options when the character is only able to make a Standard Action attack.

[Allanimal]

I'm going to be DMing an E6 game whenever my current campaign ends and I think if anyone wanted to play a Dervish in my game I'd let them enter the class with no prerequisites, even as a base class. It doesn't get anything that is too powerful, may as well let them do what they want. I'd at least ask your DM about lowering the prerequisites a bit.

OK, assuming RAW, you didn't give any allowed/disallowed sources but I'd go:

Whirling Frenzy Spirit Lion Totem Barbarian 1/Swash 3/Warblade 1/Dervish 1 (Order doesn't really matter except Warblade should be level 5. I'd do the Barb level ASAP.)

Human for the race and flaws as necessary to make up for the lost Fighter levels.

Most importantly, this build will actually give the character a method of reliably getting full attacks. The Warblade level will be at Initiator Level 3 allowing the selection of 2nd level maneuvers, giving some other options when the character is only able to make a Standard Action attack.

Thanks for the ideas, we appreciate it.
Nobody in our group has a copy of ToB, so unfortunately Warblade is out.
I think we've got just about all the other WotC 3.5 books, and they are all allowed.
Dragon Mag is generally not used though the DM is pretty lenient.
So far, we haven't been using flaws, but we'll see if it flies.

We definitely like the idea about making it a non-PrC or else reducing some of the pre-reqs... that might work.
We already have a Barbarian character, and didn't want to step on any toes, but we will consider it.

Thanks again - any other thoughts?

[Grod_The_Giant]

The Travel Devotion feat (Complete Champion) will largely let you simulate Dervish Dance by combining movement and full attacks. You can pick it up as early as level 1 for one battle's worth of use, or acquire it via a Cleric dip (by trading out the Travel or Celerity domains) with an extra use or two, depending on your Charisma. (You can trade two Turn attempts for one minute of swift-action movement). Pair that with whatever class(s) you feel like; Scout (or a Scout/Ranger Swift Hunter build) is a classic, but really anything who likes attacks would work fine.

[Allanimal]

The Travel Devotion feat (Complete Champion) will largely let you simulate Dervish Dance by combining movement and full attacks. You can pick it up as early as level 1 for one battle's worth of use, or acquire it via a Cleric dip (by trading out the Travel or Celerity domains) with an extra use or two, depending on your Charisma. (You can trade two Turn attempts for one minute of swift-action movement). Pair that with whatever class(s) you feel like; Scout (or a Scout/Ranger Swift Hunter build) is a classic, but really anything who likes attacks would work fine.

This is pretty cool, thanks! It just might work.

[Doctor Despair]

BAB 5 requirement is hard to beat. If the DM lets you find one, you can pay a War Chanter to use their Inspire Legion ability during level up to give you like 14 BAB to qualify early. Likewise, if you can find a Heartfire Fanner or if the War Chanter has levels in HF, they could confer 1, 2, or 3 bonus fighter feats during level up to qualify for the prestige class. You could, in theory, take your first Dervish level as early as level 2 if chance and WBL allows, and since you only need to meet the prerequisites for a class to take your first level in that class, she would be set for the rest of the game.

Edit: OK, that would work for a standard 3.5 game, but I'm not quite sure how E6 works. I've read the PCs don't progress past level 6; is that true of all characters, including NPCs? In that case, War Chanter isn't viable, but you could still find a Heartfire Fanner to gain the temporary bonus feat to skip the dead level of fighter providing the HF had at least one Bloodline level to increase their max skill ranks.

[Grod_The_Giant]

This is pretty cool, thanks! It just might work.
Glad you like! More suggestions on the basic concept here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?473666-New-Scout-Handbook).

[Fouredged Sword]

Yeah, if I was building a "Dervish" in E6 I would do this

Whirling Frenzy pounce barbarian 2 / cleric 2 / monk 2

You get +5 bab with fractional bab. Take travel devotion at level 1. Extra turning at level 4 for an extra 2 uses a day and you end up with 1 free use and 7+cha turn attempts that can be turned into movement at a 2-1 trade so 4-6 uses a day total. Travel and Trickery sound fun. Freedom of movement for 1 round twice a day is really powerful. Walk out of grapples without a check needed. Whirl frenzy gives you extra attacks and lets you charge in, full attack, then move using travel devotion or delay using travel devotion until you really need it by allowing you to open up with a pounce.

On a chassis that gets wis to ac, boosts to dex and str, evasion, faster movement.

You can trade a lot of the defenses for some extra damage by going

barbarian 2 / cleric 1 / swashbuckler 3

or if you don't like the barbarian flavor (or have a DM that frowns on alignment shifts) I would suggest

Swashbuckler 3 / cleric 1 / monk 2

or

Barbarian 2 / cleric 2 / rogue 2

or

Swashbuckler 3 / cleric 1 / rogue 2 - take an item that grants =1d6 sneak attack and get the daring outlaw feat from complete scoundrel for extra sneak attack!

[Zaq]

Yeah. You've gotta look at what Dervish 1 will actually give you, and then you need to decide if it's worth it to put in all the effort to just get one level of results. So what do we get for our four obnoxious prereq feats? We get the ability to move and full attack for one encounter per day (but no more than four rounds, depending on skill ranks), we get Skill Mastery on Jump/Perform(dance)/Tumble, and we get the ability to treat scimitars as light weapons.

That's honestly kind of weaksauce for the investment, truth be told. For normal use, being a light weapon is only a benefit for TWF (yeah, there's a couple edge cases, but we don't really want to focus on those), and scimitars aren't really so much better than kukris (d4 vs. d6, so only an average of 1 point more damage) that it'll make or break the character. (Kukris can easily be refluffed as scimitars, if that's a sticking point.)

Dervish Dance is flashy, but again, it's a maximum of four rounds per day (and all of those rounds in a single encounter). I don't know about you, but I don't like the idea of spending four feats on something that's so limited in use, particularly because doing a dervish dance isn't inherently much more powerful than attacking normally. (There's some genuine use to be had out of moving and full attacking, but since it's a strange and limited form of moving while attacking, it's not always useful the way that, say, Whirling Frenzy is pretty much always useful.) So we can probably find a way to replicate this effect with less work.

Skill Mastery is genuinely useful, and it's not super easy to get in E6. That said, if you have a wide variety of sources to choose from, Hardened Criminal (City of Stormreach, pg. 95) can get you Skill Mastery with one skill for the cost of only two feats (itself and one prereq), rather than the four feats that Dervish costs. I don't know how deep into E6 you plan to go, but since feats are your main way of advancing after you gets your 6 class levels, that might be a lesser cost.

So if you play Dervish completely as written and don't just turn it into a base class or houserule a way to get more utility out of Dervish Dance, Dervish is probably going to be a losing trade in E6. How, then, could we replicate it?

The obvious answer is Binder. Now, Binder has totally different fluff than Dervish, but that's only a problem if the player chooses for it to be a problem. We're basically just going to always be binding Paimon, so we don't have to play up the whole "makes a different pact every day and has access to weird powers nearly on the fly" deal. We basically just write Paimon's abilities on our character sheet and pretend that they're permanent, because they basically are. Paimon is available with 5 levels in Binder or with 3 levels in Binder and one feat. Paimon's Dance of Death is both more and less limited than Dervish Dance; you can only attack any given creature once, but you make more attacks than your full attack routine would normally allow, and you don't take penalties for making iteratives or off-hand attacks. Also, it's usable once every 5 rounds (so basically once per encounter), meaning that it'll usually be something you can show off more often over the course of a normal adventuring day compared to Dervish Dance. Paimon gives other decent benefits as well (+4 DEX, free Weapon Finesse, +4 Tumble and P(dance), and free Whirlwind Attack—the free Weapon Finesse is less important with that houserule you mentioned, but maybe you could houserule something in its place). I'll emphasize this again: you only have to pay attention to the whole pact-making fluff if you really want to. If you just want to always have Paimon and ignore your other vestige options, you can totally do that, and you can totally call yourself a "dervish."

There are several other methods of moving and attacking, most of which have already been mentioned (Travel Devotion, Pounce, etc.). See, the big problem with Dervish's prereqs is that they force us to spend our critical class levels acquiring bonus feats and other prereqs rather than building a solid foundation for the character, and that's not really cool in E6. I would talk to your GM and see what concessions she or he is willing to make regarding making Dervish more accessible and/or more useful, and if you can't make the payoff worth the investment, I would look at alternate ways of building the same character.

[Allanimal]

Yeah. You've gotta look at what Dervish 1 will actually give you, and .... How, then, could we replicate it?

The obvious answer is Binder. Now, Binder has totally different fluff than Dervish, but that's only a problem if the player chooses for it to be a problem. We're basically just going to always be binding Paimon, so we don't have to play up the whole "makes a different pact every day and has access to weird powers nearly on the fly" deal. We basically just write Paimon's abilities on our character sheet and pretend that they're permanent, because they basically are. Paimon is available with 5 levels in Binder or with 3 levels in Binder and one feat. Paimon's Dance of Death is both more and less limited than Dervish Dance; you can only attack any given creature once, but you make more attacks than your full attack routine would normally allow, and you don't take penalties for making iteratives or off-hand attacks. Also, it's usable once every 5 rounds (so basically once per encounter), meaning that it'll usually be something you can show off more often over the course of a normal adventuring day compared to Dervish Dance. Paimon gives other decent benefits as well (+4 DEX, free Weapon Finesse, +4 Tumble and P(dance), and free Whirlwind Attack—the free Weapon Finesse is less important with that houserule you mentioned, but maybe you could houserule something in its place). I'll emphasize this again: you only have to pay attention to the whole pact-making fluff if you really want to. If you just want to always have Paimon and ignore your other vestige options, you can totally do that, and you can totally call yourself a "dervish."

That's pretty cool too - while we have access to the Tome or Magic, nobody in our group has ever used it in a game. But I like the idea. We'll see if the player and GM are up for it.