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 Songbird
Source Heroes from the Fringe pg. 14
Samurai of the order of the songbird are artists, scholars, and poets. They treat battle as a beautiful art form; many of these samurai seek pacifistic means of defeating their foes. Even samurai of this order who kill their opponents do so with respect, considering such a fight to be an act of poetic tragedy. These samurai are most common in lands where beauty is treasured, such as Hwanggot, Jinin, and Tianjing.
Edicts: The samurai must never destroy art unless doing so is part of an artful act or performance of her own. She must respect the skill of her opponents and never desecrate or purposefully humiliate a foe. If she takes a sapient life, she must create a piece of art, performance, or poem in honor of the fallen creature or creatures in order to memorialize what she has taken from the world.
Challenge: An order of the songbird samurai gains a +1 dodge bonus to AC and a +1 sacred bonus on saves against the attacks and abilities of the target of her challenge. This bonus increases by 1 for every 4 class levels the samurai has. The samurai must be wearing light or no armor, not using a shield, and carrying no more than a light load to gain this benefit.
Skills: An order of the songbird samurai adds Knowledge (religion) (Int) and Perform (Cha) to her list of class skills. The samurai adds half her level to Craft checks and Profession (gardener) checks.
Order Abilities: A samurai belonging to the order of the songbird gains the following abilities.
Versatile Performance (Ex): At 2nd level, the order of the songbird samurai gains the benefits of the bard’s versatile performance ability with one Perform skill.
Poetic Inspiration (Ex): At 8th level, an order of the songbird samurai can speak a few words as a swift action, inspiring allies to great deeds. Allies within 30 feet who can hear the samurai gain a competence bonus equal to her Charisma modifier on attack and weapon damage rolls for 1 round. This ability can be used once per combat.
Beautiful Strike (Su): At 15th level, once per day when the order of the songbird samurai confirms a critical hit against the target of her challenge, she can declare it a beautiful strike without spending an action. The damage dealt by the attack becomes nonlethal damage, and the target must succeed at a Will save (DC = 10 + half the samurai’s class level + her Charisma modifier) or be charmed as per charm monster (caster level equals the samurai’s class level).
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