Cavalier/Samurai Orders
Description Source:
Advanced Player's Guide
At 1st level, a cavalier must pledge himself to a specific order. The order grants the cavalier a number of bonuses, class skills, and special abilities. In addition, each order includes a number of edicts that the cavalier must follow. If he violates any of these edicts, he loses the benefits from his order's challenge ability for 24 hours. The violation of an edict is subject to GM interpretation.
A cavalier cannot change his order without undertaking a lengthy process to dedicate himself to a new cause. When this choice is made, he immediately loses all of the benefits from his old order. He must then follow the edicts of his new order for one entire level without gaining any benefits from that order. Once accomplished, he gains all of the bonuses from his new order. Note that the names of these orders might vary depending upon the campaign setting or GM's preference.
Description Source:
Ultimate Combat
The following orders can be chosen by both samurai and cavaliers, although the former are far more likely to do so. Samurai can also select any of the cavalier orders presented in the
Pathfinder RPG Advanced Player's Guide.
 Order of the Penitent
Source Knights of the Inner Sea pg. 24
Not all knights begin their careers as nobles’ children or as squires. Some start out as thieves, murderers, or cheats, and only after they see the suffering caused by their crimes do they dedicate themselves to honorable service. Cavaliers who follow this order seek to make up for the crimes they’ve committed in the past, and do whatever they can to restore their tainted honor.
Edicts: The cavalier must be merciful to wrongdoers and show unfettered fairness whenever he passes judgment. He must assume that only the most heinous monsters are irrevocably evil, and must deliver all foes capable of fair trial to the appropriate local law enforcers.
Challenge: Whenever an order of the penitent cavalier issues a challenge, he receives a +1 morale bonus to his CMD against combat maneuvers made by the target of his challenge whenever he is threatening the target. This bonus increases by +1 for every four levels the cavalier possesses.
Skills: An order of the penitent cavalier adds Escape Artist (Dex) and Sense Motive (Wis) to his list of class skills. Whenever he makes an Escape Artist check, the cavalier may add his Strength bonus to the check in addition to his Dexterity modifier.
Order Abilities: An order of the penitent cavalier gains the following abilities as he increases in level.
Expert Captor (Ex): At 2nd level, as long as he has rope, the cavalier can tie up a grappled opponent, even if the opponent is not pinned, otherwise restrained, or unconscious, and he does not take the usual –10 penalty on his combat maneuver check to do so. When determining the DC to escape bonds secured by the cavalier, the cavalier’s Combat Maneuver Bonus increases by 1/2 his cavalier level.
Adept Disarmer (Ex): At 8th level, the cavalier gains Improved Disarm as a bonus feat. In addition, whenever he makes a successful disarm check, as long as he has at least one hand free and the dropped item can be held in one hand, he can automatically pick up the dropped item in his free hand.
Saving Grace (Ex): At 15th level, whenever he would strike a creature with a melee attack that deals lethal damage and would bring the creature’s hit points below 0, the cavalier can, as a free action, change the type of damage dealt to nonlethal damage. The cavalier can use this ability once per round.
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