Inspire Courage, Risky Performance

Q: The skill challenge seems too good compared to the base DC progression.

Remember that the result of your perform check must still be 20 after penalties. So essentially you are raising the minimum skill requirement to 25 or 30 to get any bonus at all, in exchange for increasing the benefit. It’s potent, but it’s mainly of use for truly expert performers ... which is of course the point

Action type required for Inspire Courage

Using the Perform skill to Inspire Courage is a standard action to start, and a free action to continue once started, but the performing character can't do anything that requires speech while performing.