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 Eclipse
Source Distant Shores pg. 32
Hobgoblins have long taken advantage of the tactical edge darkvision gives them when fighting in darkness, particularly against elves, humans, and samsarans. As the ruling class of Kaoling, hobgoblin samurai have adopted the benefit of darkness as a spiritual alliance that forms a guiding principle in not only how they fight, but every aspect of their lives. This has given rise to the order of the eclipse, a respected samurai order devoted to darkness itself. Although the order is not officially restricted to hobgoblins, its edicts make it difficult for any samurai without darkvision to operate in its ranks.
Edicts: The samurai cannot create light where it is not necessary—anything that can be done in darkness should be. The samurai must belong to a military organization (within Kaoling this is likely to be a warband commanded by a senior samurai, who in turn answers to Warlord Tsung-cha Kavangaki or one of the Council of Nine). The samurai must enforce his place within this order and societies that recognize its authority, obeying those senior to him without question and demanding total obedience from those beneath him. The samurai must take every opportunity to extinguish the lights of his foes.
Challenge: The order of the eclipse samurai gains a +1 bonus on all Intimidate checks made against the target of his challenge. This bonus increases by 1 for every four levels the samurai possesses.
Skills: An order of the eclipse samurai adds Perception (Wis) and Survival (Wis) to his list of class skills. In addition, whenever he makes a Perception check to notice an invisible creature or object, he receives a bonus on the check equal to 1/2 his samurai level (minimum +1).
Order Abilities: A samurai that belongs to the order of the eclipse gains the following abilities as he increases in level.
Dark Rider (Su): At 2nd level, whenever the samurai is on his mount, both he and his mount share any of the following senses if either of them possesses it: darkvision, low-light vision, scent, and see in darkness. This applies regardless of the source of the sense (including senses gained from spells or magic items), but only while the samurai is mounted. If the samurai and mount both have a sense but one has an improved version (such as a samurai with darkvision with a range of 60 feet riding a mount that has darkvision with a range of 90 feet), both receive the improved version of the sense.
Eclipsing Blade (Sp): At 8th level, the samurai can cast darkness on a weapon he is holding. The darkness does not affect the vision of any order of the eclipse samurai, or that of their mounts. The spell immediately ends if the weapon leaves the samurai’s hand. He may do this once per day, plus one additional time per day for every four levels he possesses above 8th (to a maximum of four times per day at 20th level).
See in Darkness (Ex): At 15th level the samurai can see perfectly in darkness, even magical darkness, as the universal monster ability of the same name.
|