Secular Authority
You can use your authority within your city-state to order slaves to do your bidding, requisition troops, enter the homes of freemen and nobles, and have them arrested.
Prerequisites: Cha 13, Diplomacy 6 ranks, Negotiator, accepted into city-state's templarate.
Benefits: This feat grants four new uses for the Diplomacy skill. None of them functions during combat.
Requisition: You can draw upon the resources of your city, gaining the use of any slave, overriding the wishes of its owner.
Intrude: You can, at any time, search the home, person or possessions of a slave. You may search and impound any evidence of wrongdoing, if found. Your authority does not extend to confiscating items for personal use.
Accuse: You may have a slave imprisoned indefinitely, awaiting the gathering of evidence against him. You may only imprison one suspect in such a manner.
Judge: You may pass judgment on a slave. This includes setting fines, prison sentences, death sentences or anything else you wish, within the laws of your city-state.
As you gain more ranks in the Diplomacy ranks, you gain the authority to take these actions against progressively higher social rankings, as described on the table below.
Ranks Ability
2 Requisition slave
3 Intrude on slave
4 Accuse slave
5 Requisition troops
6 Intrude on freeman
7 Judge slave
8 Accuse freeman
9 Requisition gear
10 Intrude on noble
11 Judge freeman
12 Accuse noble
13 Requisition spellcaster/manifester
14 Intrude on templar
15 Judge noble
16 Accuse templar
17 Requisition property
18+ Judge templar
Failure to comply with these demands is usually sanctioned with fines, imprisonment, outlaw status, and possibly execution. Any of this ability can be contested by another person with the Secular Authority feat, and move to have the action reversed with an opposed Diplomacy check. If the challenger wins the opposed roll, the defending templar's action is reversed (for example an imprisoned freeman is set free). If the defender wins the opposed roll nothing happens. Secular Authority can be contested in a particular case only once. A defending character who loses the opposed roll may not contest the result. Nor can he use Secular Authority to repeat the action that was contested against the same target.
You may use Secular Authority once per day for every four levels you have attained (but see Special), but only within your city-state.
Special: A templar automatically gains Secular Authority as a bonus feat. He need not select it. A templar may use Secular Authority a number of times per day equal to his templar level, plus one more time per day for every four levels he has in classes other than templar.