Vow of Poverty

[Harkone]

I'm sure this has been covered here before, but I'm going to ask anyway.
In the new campaign I'm starting, the Human Monk wants to take Sacred Vow and Vow of Poverty (from the Book of Exalted Deeds) as his 1st level feats. I've looked over the Vow of Poverty feat, and for a monk (who already doesn't need any equipment) it seems awfully powerful. What does everyone think? I've read complaints about the BED here before, so I suspect I already know the answer, but I'm still interested in hearing from you all.

[Mr. Moogle]

I have not yet purchased that preticular book. Could anyone link me to where i might find the discriptor of those preticular feats?

[Quietus]

General forum consensus is that while it's helpful, it's really underpowered compared to what you can buy with the money you're giving up. Namely, you don't get items that can give flight, or pounce, or large skill bonuses.

[Dhavaer]

You've come at a good (or bad) time, because that's been covered several times in the last few days. Consensus is that it's underpowered unless your DM gives you far less than the recommended wealth-by-level.

[goat]

Well, it's limited if you're not getting at least the standard WBL, UNLESS the game only takes place over about levels 1-5. In that range, you should be able to stand your own, and your party will be happy for the spare cash.

[Ramza00]

Its great for NPCs, Mounts (yes the Supermount Gold Dragon wants to take vow of poverty as one of his feats), animal companions, cohorts etc.

The rest of the groups fall in this catergory items can do it better but how much better.

It is decent for druids in wildshape. And semi decent but not as bad for shaper psions, and to a limited extent sorcerers.

It non optimial choice to sucky for everything else including monks.

In theory you can make it semi decent enlighted fist, or sacred fist, but in reality anything with items can do it better.

[Laurellien]

As has already been said. It is good in low treasure campaigns and is good for the first few levels, but then again, so is tougness...

[Jack Mann]

Monks are more equipment dependent than it appears at first glance. Though they don't need magic weapons or armor, they're strongly in need of things like stat boosters (given their MAD), AC boosters, and other miscellaneous items. Items can give you most of what VoP can give you, and more.

[Corncracker]

Why not Give it to the Incarnum Class's? With their Chakra Binds they can fill up all their Item slots anyway with Chakra Binds.

[Zincorium]

Why not Give it to the Incarnum Class's? With their Chakra Binds they can fill up all their Item slots anyway with Chakra Binds.

That's one of the few major reasons to use it.

The other is druids, who would normally lose the ability to use all weapons, armor, and wearable magic items when wildshaped. The ability is balanced by this in normal play. VoP bonuses stay, and you now have a super-bear ripping through everything and anything.

[Theodoxus]

I'm still convinced that a soulknife 10/soulbow10 would do wonderously with the feat. Adding in all those bonus exalted feats on top of their formidable magic arrows... yummeh.

Lots of dex, good con, decent wisdom, bonus str... jeebus, what's not to like... d10 hd, okish skills... happy happy feat selection.

Yes, have some :smalltongue:

[Ramza00]

Why not Give it to the Incarnum Class's? With their Chakra Binds they can fill up all their Item slots anyway with Chakra Binds.

It isn’t as good as you think it be.

Only charka binds take up item slots, and the speed you gain charka binds is extremly slow.

1 at lvl 1
2 at lvl 6
3 at lvl 10
4 at lvl 14
5 at lvl 18

Thus via the time you gain an amount of charka binds that it starts to force you to choose items or charka binds, what you gain out of VoP isn’t worth it anymore.

Also incarnates rely a lot on the skillful weapon enchantment for bab and iterative attacks. You can’t get it as a VoP incarnate. You can’t have magic items via VoP. You can get it via Kensai which requires alignments LG, LN, or LE. VoP only allows LG, NG, and CG. Incarnate though requires NG, NE, LN, or CN. These three combined allows no legimate alignments.

Now if you break out the houserule book and just forget alignments, you might as well break out the houserules and modify vop.

It is in the same boat effectively as monk, looks good at first, then isn’t so. A NG Druid/Incarnate Gestalt with VoP would be good but works with gestalt is different than what works in normal play

[JaronK]

Yeah, VoP gives a lot of raw power early on (levels 1-5 or so) but after that things start to drop off and your lack of flexibility begins to hurt. In a game that's giving less than Wealth by Level, VoP is strong, but otherwise, it's not. You basically pay two feats to be, in the end, just a little weaker than a normal monk.

That said, Monk 11/Kensai 9 with VoP is quite nasty.

JaronK

[Indon]

It isn’t as good as you think it be.

Only charka binds take up item slots, and the speed you gain charka binds is extremly slow.

1 at lvl 1
2 at lvl 6
3 at lvl 10
4 at lvl 14
5 at lvl 18

Thus via the time you gain an amount of charka binds that it starts to force you to choose items or charka binds, what you gain out of VoP isn’t worth it anymore.


I'm far from experienced in Incarnum junk, but aren't there feats that can increase the number of chakra binds you can take?

[Ramza00]

yes but now you are using your limited feat slots, and the most you can do at one time is even with the feats

Feats that allow charka binds
Lvl 6 (Crown Feet or Hands)
Lvl 12 (Arms, Brow, or Shoulders)
Lvl 18 (Throat or Waist)

Combine with the Incarnate class here are the total amount of charka binds you can have at once


1 at lvl 1 (Crown)
3 at lvl 6 (Crown, Feet via Incarnate, Hands via 6th lvl Feat)
4 at lvl 9 (Crown, Arms via Incarnate, Hands via 6th lvl Feat, Feet via 9th lvl Feat)
5 at lvl 10 (Crown, Arms, and Brow via Incarnate, Hands via 6th lvl Feat, Feet via 9th lvl Feat)
6 at lvl 12 (Crown, Arms, and Brow via Incarnate, Hands via 6th lvl Feat, Feet via 9th lvl Feat, Shoulders via 12th lvl Feat)
7 at lvl 14 (Crown, Arms, Brow and Throat via Incarnate, Hands via 6th lvl Feat, Feet via 9th lvl Feat, Shoulders via 12th lvl Feat)
8 at lvl 15 (Crown, Arms, Throat and Waist via Incarnate, Hands via 6th lvl Feat, Feet via 9th lvl Feat, Shoulders via 12th lvl Feat, Brow via 15th lvl feat)
10 at lvl 18 (Crown, Arms, Throat, Waist via Incarnate, Hands via 6th lvl Feat, Feet via 9th lvl Feat, Shoulders via 12th lvl Feat, Brow via 15th lvl feat, Arms via 18th lvl feat) Note you don't need to do Arms via your 18th lvl feat you have enough options, though if you want the soul at lvl 19 you must use your 18th lvl feat to get another charka bind.
11 at lvl 19 (Crown, Arms, Throat, Waist, and Soul via Incarnate, Hands via 6th lvl Feat, Feet via 9th lvl Feat, Shoulders via 12th lvl Feat, Brow via 15th lvl feat, Arms via 18th lvl feat)


Thus to do all the charka binds at once you must use all your feats from 6th lvl to 18th lvl feats.

Once again, not as good as you may think.

[Telonius]

I played a VoP monk from 1-18. It was a lot of fun, in fact one of the most enjoyable characters I've ever played. Mordechai the Monk basically endowed half of the Shackled City, and built about fifty orphanages. With his leadership feat, he had street urchin minions all over town. :smallbiggrin:

However, on the crunchy side of things, I did run into some problems. One particularly big issue with Vow of Poverty is the overabundance of feats it gives - and the relatively small number of feats you have to choose from. After about your fifth or sixth Exalted feat, there's really not much to choose from. Touch of Golden Ice is kinda so-so (only good against low-level mooks). Fortunately my DM ruled that I could take any feat in place of the Exalted feats after I'd exhausted the useful ones. If it hadn't been for that, the feat choices would have been between (literally) glowing in the dark and improving my non-existent spellcasting and smite abilities.

While I love the flavor of it, the crunch just doesn't work for a Monk. You'd have to seriously tweak it to make it competitive even with a standard Monk. Personally if I were to fix it, I'd either go with a beefed-up version of the bonuses, or redo it entirely. Give the current bonuses, but change "you can't own anything" to "you must donate 50% of all income to charitable causes" or something like that.

[Douglas]

your party will be happy for the spare cash.
What spare cash? You are required by the restrictions of the vow to donate your fair share of treasure to charity, not to the other members of your party.

[Ramza00]

However, on the crunchy side of things, I did run into some problems. One particularly big issue with Vow of Poverty is the overabundance of feats it gives - and the relatively small number of feats you have to choose from. After about your fifth or sixth Exalted feat, there's really not much to choose from. Touch of Golden Ice is kinda so-so (only good against low-level mooks). Fortunately my DM ruled that I could take any feat in place of the Exalted feats after I'd exhausted the useful ones. If it hadn't been for that, the feat choices would have been between (literally) glowing in the dark and improving my non-existent spellcasting and smite abilities.

I agree, thing is what you did was a houserule, a smart houserule but it is no longer VoP anymore as written, and since we don't have universal house rules you advocating your house rule version to a person who is going to do normal vop is false advertising.

I agree with the flavor.

Allowing you to keep 25% or 50% of your wealth would make sense for a redid version of VoP.

that or giving you new options such as special feats that grant mobility and allow you to upgrade your weapons (incarnum or something similar) would make since for a redid version of VoP

VoP as currently written is a bad idea, except the exceptions I have already said.

[Illiterate Scribe]

As I've said elsewhere, it feels like it should be a prestige class than a feat, given the effect that it has on a character.

[SpikeFightwicky]

Also remember that unless you have a party of goody-goodies, they may not jive well with an exalted character. It can cause a major clash of ideals (a VoP character will likely be inclined to spare an enemy rather than kill it, kind of like the Superman dilemma).

[Tokiko Mima]

If you have Races of the Wild (3.0, I know) VoP is also great to combo with the Forsaker PrC, because they already can't own magic items, and get a ton of attribute bonuses for it. :smallsmile:

VoP is a lot like the opposite of Polymorph cheese: It seems overpowered at first glance, but even under ideal conditions it best can be described as somewhere between underpowered to balanced.

[Illiterate Scribe]

Ah, the eternal VoP Forsaker idea - but there's a problem. Many of the forsaker's abilities are based on consuming/destroying magic items, which would break the VoP.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Its great for NPCs, Mounts (yes the Supermount Gold Dragon wants to take vow of poverty as one of his feats), animal companions, cohorts etc.

The rest of the groups fall in this catergory items can do it better but how much better.

It is decent for druids in wildshape. And semi decent but not as bad for shaper psions, and to a limited extent sorcerers.

It non optimial choice to sucky for everything else including monks.

In theory you can make it semi decent enlighted fist, or sacred fist, but in reality anything with items can do it better.

I hihgly disagree with Sorcerers. They need gear to bump their Cha score and will need a small library of scrolls and wands to be able to cover all the bases he can't cover with his limited spell list.

Other than that, yea... sub-optimal, even for a monk. Druids do better because they can at least wildshape and use Holly & Mistletoe as their divine focus, which is free. Then again, there's very little a CoDzilla can't do, even without any gear.

[Ramza00]

I hihgly disagree with Sorcerers. They need gear to bump their Cha score and will need a small library of scrolls and wands to be able to cover all the bases he can't cover with his limited spell list.

Other than that, yea... sub-optimal, even for a monk. Druids do better because they can at least wildshape and use Holly & Mistletoe as their divine focus, which is free. Then again, there's very little a CoDzilla can't do, even without any gear.

You get the ability scores from VoP till near epics, the scrolls I agree with. If you go the sorcerer route you should be polymorphing and doing a melee sorcerer/gish. I said its less than decent for sorcerers.

[Tokiko Mima]

Ah, the eternal VoP Forsaker idea - but there's a problem. Many of the forsaker's abilities are based on consuming/destroying magic items, which would break the VoP.

Not if they were in use by an enemy at the time, I should think. It does make you unable to use hoarded treasure for that purpose, though. :smallwink:

[Closet_Skeleton]

Not if they were in use by an enemy at the time, I should think. It does make you unable to use hoarded treasure for that purpose, though. :smallwink:

Which really just forces you to do to play a forsaker as how it's meant to be played.

Not that being novel is a bad thing, it can just get annoying when it seems like an out of character exploit.

[Indon]

Not if they were in use by an enemy at the time, I should think. It does make you unable to use hoarded treasure for that purpose, though. :smallwink:

Bringing the benefits of the Vow of Poverty to everyone!

[Jayabalard]

You've come at a good (or bad) time, because that's been covered several times in the last few days. Consensus is that it's underpowered unless your DM gives you far less than the recommended wealth-by-level.It also depends on how easily you can convert wealth into any particular magic item. If you can't count on converting wealth into particular magic items then wealth has less value.

[Piccamo]

Thats what they said: If you're not playing by the rules, the way the game was intended, then its not bad.