[3.5] VoP Commoner vs Monk... Who would win?

[gr8artist]

My buddy often joked that the Vow of Poverty was practically its own class. So I wanted to get some feedback for a little hypothetical sparring.
Which class would beat the other in a competition? The competition would be several rounds, like this:
Round 1: Usefulness
Round 2: Combat potential
Round 3: Head to head combat

Round 1 would test the classes' survivability, usefulness to a party, skill checks and the like. Strict alignment requirements or action limitations would be detrimental here.
Round 2 would test the classes' ability to contribute to a team fight. How many goblins could they kill? How well could they protect a caster?
Round 3 would see which one would win in a fight. Assume no multiclassing, although a little PrC might be allowed for a few levels. No abstract or crazy races/templates/feats/etc. from campaign specific rulebooks.

Who would win?

[Spuddles]

Level and pointbuy?

Do animal/magical beast pets count as wealth of they have listed prices in the MM?

[jywu98]

Monk, because VoP sucks. Magic items are worth more than those measly bonuses.

1: Monk wins, because magic items
2: Monk wins, because magic items
3: Monk wins, because magic items

Even a straight lvl 20 commoner(without leadership) can beat a VoP monk, because magic items.

[ahenobarbi]

Commoner without VoP would be better than commoner with VoP in all of those (you can easily get whatever VoP gives you with WBL and have something left). Monk is better than commoner. Therefore Monk with WBL should easily beat commoner with VoP in all of those.

I could compare specific builds but you'd need specify a level (I don't have time to compare at all 20 possible levels).

[gr8artist]

Ok, well that was an abrupt response.
I didn't have any particular level in mind, as this was more a joke thread.
Perhaps we'll have more fun this way...

Can you make a VoP commoner build that can beat an equal level monk in the rounds mentioned? For approximate power, we'll use level ecl 10, so the commoner should have a little more hit dice. For point buy, assume standard or average... I'm not really familiar with the mechanic.

[jywu98]

Ok, well that was an abrupt response.
I didn't have any particular level in mind, as this was more a joke thread.
Perhaps we'll have more fun this way...

Can you make a VoP commoner build that can beat an equal level monk in the rounds mentioned? For approximate power, we'll use level ecl 10, so the commoner should have a little more hit dice. For point buy, assume standard or average... I'm not really familiar with the mechanic.

Yes. The commoner takes Leadership. :smallbiggrin:

[CTrees]

There *was* that commoner build thay domesticated the tarrasque...

[Derpldorf]

Frankly, VoP is terrible. I would only ever consider taking it on a Totemist that has enough Con to manifest enough soul melds to mitigate the power loss no magic items brings.

[Muktidata]

There *was* that commoner build thay domesticated the tarrasque...

Handle Animal is so broken. Better to just use white out on that section of the PHB.

[ahenobarbi]

Can you make a VoP commoner build that can beat an equal level monk in the rounds mentioned? For approximate power, we'll use level ecl 10, so the commoner should have a little more hit dice. For point buy, assume standard or average... I'm not really familiar with the mechanic.

I don't think that's possible. Once you've built the VoP commoner it's easy to make a better monk - simply replace all benefits of VoP with gold. Bam! monk is now better (higher attack bonus, saves, some class features and probably extra gold to spend).

EDIT:

There *was* that commoner build thay domesticated the tarrasque...

What stops monk from doing the same?

[Eldariel]

What stops monk from doing the same?

Handle Animal not a class skill :smalltongue:

[Story]

The only things that Commoners get that most classes don't are Chicken Infested and extra class skills, notably Handle Animal. Any 'optimzied' commoner build is necessary going to cheese at least one of them.