In a world that everyone has VoP as bonus feat...

[With a box]

How many would throw it and get items?

(It also automatically means no starting gold..)
And you won't find any market at all...

[eggynack]

Unless you can shuffle it, just about everyone. Some druids would maybe keep it around, because it wasn't the worst to start with and getting it for free helps it get a real edge during early levels, but most of the other classes that aren't quite so actively destroyed by VoP, like psions, aren't exactly made a crazy amount better by it either. Totemists have a bit of a shot too, as they're both helped by it and have some incentives to not use items, but they don't really have the base power level that druids do, so they can't shrug off the loss quite as well.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Literally everyone who is not interested in playing a VoP character would drop it. The feat can seriously hurt your ability to function.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Assuming there's absolutely -no- market for magic items at all (why?) it might be worth hanging onto for anyone that doesn't have to drop it for their class features to work (looking at you wizard and cleric).

That said, don't eliminate the magic market. It's a -terrible- plan that only screws over the non-casters. It also makes no sense whatsoever given the inherent value and usefulness of magic items, at least not in any world where a free market is a thing.

[ericgrau]

It's odd though because it depends what everyone else does. If monsters have it too, that means no treasure and no benefit to not having it since there's no way to get money and gear. If most people ditch it, then there's more treasure out there. Especially what gets donated by those who do have it. If monsters with treasure and/or natural gold & gem deposits still exist, then being the only guy without VoP means you're insanely rich. You're also the only one to donate to. So it seems like it would quickly topple as there's great incentive for the first few to ditch the feat, and then all adventurers would follow. Many NPCs and commoners would keep it, since they have less WBL. Depends how much people's incomes go up from all the super powered donating people.

[Forrestfire]

Given that the vow requires poverty, I'd imagine that the vast majority of normal people would toss it. Having a house, and more than one set of clothes, and books, and nice food... All pretty nice, no?

The only people who'd keep it are people inclined to take the vow anyway, people in a situation where there's no change whether or not they have it, and people who want the effects of the vow.

[Inevitability]

People wouldn't even have to throw it. They commit a single Evil act (such as, say, cheating at a game, or unintentionally betraying someone) and automatically lose it. Alignment is weird.

[ericgrau]

I think it would be pretty much limited to level 3-5 NPC soldier captains, elite and such who get less from WBL. Anyone who isn't a combatant wouldn't want the combat bonuses and at level 1-2 you don't get much.

[Extra Anchovies]

Adventuring druids and incarnum-users would probably keep it.

[Fouredged Sword]

Interestingly I think this would be an interesting world concept. Think of all the NPC commoners! Consider a whole civilization that has adopted a peace and poverty life cycle. Nobody need to eat, so nobody starves. Everyone is protected from the elements, so homes are unneeded. It takes rough saves to strike at anyone or harm another, so crime is non-existent and police are not needed. People become enlightned super smart/wise as they gain power through social and diplomatic encounters.

The whole civ can be nomadic as they need no land, nor really want to own land.

[Coidzor]

How many would throw it and get items?

(It also automatically means no starting gold..)
And you won't find any market at all...

All of the peasantry, because they actually have to farm to get their food rather than having it given to them or being able to hunt and forage for enough to keep themselves alive. Which would mean that there'd be a need for farming implements and tools which would have to be made which would make craftspeople have to give up VoP, because it violates the vow to use tools to make other tools.

Once people have thrown it and gained the ability to work land they'd eventually realize they could own land which would lead to others throwing it and trying to become large landowners or for the more successful small landowners to gradually absorb more and more land, becoming large landowners over time/generations

Any species that couldn't just live completely exposed or in trees or in completely unimproved caves or any groups that ended up in an area where they had to construct shelter to survive would also have to toss it.

[Sam K]

People wouldn't even have to throw it. They commit a single Evil act (such as, say, cheating at a game, or unintentionally betraying someone) and automatically lose it. Alignment is weird.

This is the key: even if you get the feat for free, you still have to maintain your exalted status. Once alot of people start losing it, they will probably have to start trading and producing goods (unless there's vast hordes of povetry-stricken non-exalted, which is actually a pretty interesting scenario), which means that suddenly it may not make sense for most people to maintain their wovs.

[Coidzor]

This is the key: even if you get the feat for free, you still have to maintain your exalted status. Once alot of people start losing it, they will probably have to start trading and producing goods (unless there's vast hordes of povetry-stricken non-exalted, which is actually a pretty interesting scenario), which means that suddenly it may not make sense for most people to maintain their wovs.

Definitely going to be poverty-stricken hordes of non-exalted. Honestly it's almost like taking everyone back to the state of nature, because at the start of it, no one owns any property whatsoever beyond maybe some clothing and sticks.

Or like making D&D into Minecraft, where everyone pops into existence with the clothing on their back and immediately have to find food and shelter.


Interestingly I think this would be an interesting world concept. Think of all the NPC commoners! Consider a whole civilization that has adopted a peace and poverty life cycle. Nobody need to eat, so nobody starves. Everyone is protected from the elements, so homes are unneeded. It takes rough saves to strike at anyone or harm another, so crime is non-existent and police are not needed. People become enlightned super smart/wise as they gain power through social and diplomatic encounters.

The whole civ can be nomadic as they need no land, nor really want to own land.

They only get to be food-independent at 5th level, so they need to be creatures with at least 5 RHD* in order to not need to eat. And they have to be at least 3rd level to no longer need shelter or to adapt how they dress to environmental extremes.

That, or they need to have all their low level members killed off, because any substantial group of people who still need to eat are going to eventually infect those around them with the idea of property.

*Or 4 RHD and always start with a class level, even as children, unless the mothers are mammalian and able to nurse their young up until adulthood in order to keep them alive to the point where they can take their first class level and no longer need food.

[icefractal]

Depends on how well people can gain levels. As mentioned, the benefits most valuable to a non-adventurer don't come in until 5th level, so if your citizenry is generally 1st-2nd level, there's not much benefit to the feat (you get armor for free, basically).

If 5th level is something people could expect to reach commonly, then I could see villages where most people have the feat, and a small class of "designated property owners" forgo it. This group would own all the tools and houses, lending them out as needed, as well as any handy items that were found (healing potions, for instance). The relationship might be entirely mutually beneficial, or it might be strained, but anyone becoming corrupt enough to be actually evil would be very hazardous in a world where any random person might have Touch of Golden Ice.

[pwykersotz]

Definitely going to be poverty-stricken hordes of non-exalted. Honestly it's almost like taking everyone back to the state of nature, because at the start of it, no one owns any property whatsoever beyond maybe some clothing and sticks.

Or like making D&D into Minecraft, where everyone pops into existence with the clothing on their back and immediately have to find food and shelter.



They only get to be food-independent at 5th level, so they need to be creatures with at least 5 RHD* in order to not need to eat. And they have to be at least 3rd level to no longer need shelter or to adapt how they dress to environmental extremes.

That, or they need to have all their low level members killed off, because any substantial group of people who still need to eat are going to eventually infect those around them with the idea of property.

*Or 4 RHD and always start with a class level, even as children, unless the mothers are mammalian and able to nurse their young up until adulthood in order to keep them alive to the point where they can take their first class level and no longer need food.

I imagine that the "Tool-users" would be outcasts from the purer impoverished. Rather than hone their natural abilities, they threw them away for simple shinies. Meanwhile, the "Tool-users" begin a culture of romanticizing the loss of the ascetic abilities, likening it unto virginity, something which must eventually end held onto only by religious zealots.

[Coidzor]

I imagine that the "Tool-users" would be outcasts from the purer impoverished. Rather than hone their natural abilities, they threw them away for simple shinies. Meanwhile, the "Tool-users" begin a culture of romanticizing the loss of the ascetic abilities, likening it unto virginity, something which must eventually end held onto only by religious zealots.

Well, food and the ability to survive rather than "shinies," yes, though the more extreme will lose Exalted status and lose VoP and have a rude awakening when they discover what hunger is.


Depends on how well people can gain levels. As mentioned, the benefits most valuable to a non-adventurer don't come in until 5th level, so if your citizenry is generally 1st-2nd level, there's not much benefit to the feat (you get armor for free, basically).

If 5th level is something people could expect to reach commonly, then I could see villages where most people have the feat, and a small class of "designated property owners" forgo it. This group would own all the tools and houses, lending them out as needed, as well as any handy items that were found (healing potions, for instance). The relationship might be entirely mutually beneficial, or it might be strained, but anyone becoming corrupt enough to be actually evil would be very hazardous in a world where any random person might have Touch of Golden Ice.

You can't even *use* tools as a VoPer, borrowing a hoe to use in even a community garden, or to help make a garden for an orphanage so they have a reliable source of fresh vegetables, will cause you to break your vow and lose your VoP forever. Which is yet another example of how silly VoP is.

They can't make or use any tools that aren't a non-improvised simple weapon. So you'd have to come up with some kind of dagger/sickle/quarterstaff-based agriculture without making said simple weapons no longer count as simple weapons.

IIRC, Fachards are simple melee weapons that are a scythe with the blade stuck on the wrong way, so there might be an inefficient way to harvest grain that's still more efficient than cutting stalks with a dagger or sickle, but they can't use a scythe that's a tool or even a war-scythe as a tool because war-scythes are martial.

The best of part of all though is that the agricultural tools that double as weapons are all exotic Monk weapons. Can't use a grain flail like a nunchaku, gotta use a club instead.

Housing, though, yeah, you could potentially work out some kind of deal where shelter is offered to level 1 and 2 VoPers by those who aren't VoPers.

Amusingly, creatures that survive primarily by hunting and foraging that only take VoP instead of any of the vows that prevent them from hunting, so, y'know, the savage races that are ordinarily adventurer fodder, are the ones most suited to being VoPers as a group, as they're adapted to live with little-to-no shelter and survive primarily by foraging and hunting because they adapted to not having any land to develop agriculture on.

So groups like Orcs and Troglodytes will have a higher relative population of Exalted VoPers than humans and elves and dwarves. Granted, Elves and Dwarves either couldn't survive without magical possessions or wouldn't be recognizable without tool-use.

Though one thing that VoPers would have holding them back would be their inability to organize a society beyond small clans or even family bands, while those who turned their back on VoP can actually have a bureaucracy that doesn't require a whole mess of dedicated psions and reliance upon the auto-hypnosis skill. Because, y'know, VoPers can't write. They may be able to read but they can't write due to not being able to use any tools to do so, though you also start to get into how they're able to eat since they can't use utensils, cutlery, or vessels.

[Urpriest]

The main effect would be a Celestia with almost no technology. Archons wouldn't want to break the oath even if they otherwise got no benefit from it, so there would be no Archons with weapons or armor, no buildings in Celestia, etc.