Understandable cases for Vow of Poverty donations helping the character?

[Morphic tide]

This is not a matter of the strict RAW where traveling logistics are a near-total no-go and door handles are on thin ice, but rather ways that the donated funds can end up returning value to the ascetic.

The strongest grounding I can think of is the ennoblement fluff backing of the Landlord feat having the rights and expectations designed to be compatible with ascetic knights as "managers", such that the few who take the full [Exalted] Vow of Poverty can apply the matched contributions to donating their share of the loot to fund infrastructure. It'd be rather involved to nail down the wording, and a lot of the things wouldn't apply, but there's still plenty of area-covering defenses and basic terrain changes that require obnoxiously torturous readings to deny the ascetic. Clearing easier paths and safe rooms are really low return on investment, but it's something.

The "this really should be a thing and the exact text should be bent over a barrel for getting in the way" case that inspired me to make this thread is having a Weapon of Legacy founded on a mundane item who's Rituals cover their cost with actively VoP-friendly expenses like religious ceremonies or highly specific public-use magical architecture. This would allow for a lot more functional Vow of Poverty characters by smuggling in sorely absent permissions like flight. For all that should have been covered by the [Exalted] bonus feats instead of having however ridiculously many quasi-Smite page-padding ones we got.

[Chronos]

I think the main thing is it shouldn't be transactional. That is, there should never be a price list anywhere that says that if you donate X amount, you'll qualify for Y benefit. Giving someone money should of course make them more favorable to you and your cause, but it should be in a vague way, and should be based on more than just the strict monetary amount.

[holbita]

Oriental Adventures Samurai tells you that some samurais use weapon other than the daisho. Be one of those whose weapon is compatible with your VoP character, usually a natural weapon, use your money to pray to your ancestors and in turn they will enchant your weapon.

[Ashtagon]

Oriental Adventures Samurai tells you that some samurais use weapon other than the daisho. Be one of those whose weapon is compatible with your VoP character, usually a natural weapon, use your money to pray to your ancestors and in turn they will enchant your weapon.

Although it's not strcitly written that its disallowed, the fluff strongly hints that the reason your ancestors can empower the ancestral weapon is because your ancestors themselves personally used that weapon. This isn't really compatible with natural weapons, unless I suppose you're using gramp's mummified fist as a cudgel to hit your enemies with.

Personally, I wouldn't count a samurai ancestral weapon as wealth for the purpose of VoP; even if it's technically wealth, it is not something that can be considered to have monetary value; the character would be condemned by his ancestors (a big deal for such a character) were they to intentionally part ways with the weapon.

[Oxylepy]

Personally, I wouldn't count a samurai ancestral weapon as wealth for the purpose of VoP; even if it's technically wealth, it is not something that can be considered to have monetary value; the character would be condemned by his ancestors (a big deal for such a character) were they to intentionally part ways with the weapon.

But at that point do you draw the line at Ancestral Relic? And once it's a magic item, is it valuable and thus able to benefit from Item Familiar?

[Morphic tide]

I think the main thing is it shouldn't be transactional. That is, there should never be a price list anywhere that says that if you donate X amount, you'll qualify for Y benefit. Giving someone money should of course make them more favorable to you and your cause, but it should be in a vague way, and should be based on more than just the strict monetary amount.
Perhaps the best example of my thinking on Legacy Ritual costs is the DMG2 Ritual of Theft, where you steal from somebody stronger than you but must give away at least as much as the magic item value you're gaining. The harder "Must be Masterwork, magic, or worth 100 GP" rule doesn't have a reasonable way to use exactly this with VoP, but you're specifically taking on extra risks to get the funds donated this way.

The most formal way to define "paying by risk, GP is a formality" like the Ritual of Theft would be aligning the ritual value with an encounter level, constructing an encounter of that level designed for the "expected" user, then having the loot of that encounter be actively difficult to work with "normally". Tying the Lesser Ritual to a location's trap gauntlet as a test of endurance specifically biased against spellcasters and in favor of Monks, for example, since traps do have Challenge Ratings for this.


Oriental Adventures Samurai tells you that some samurais use weapon other than the daisho. Be one of those whose weapon is compatible with your VoP character, usually a natural weapon, use your money to pray to your ancestors and in turn they will enchant your weapon.

But at that point do you draw the line at Ancestral Relic? And once it's a magic item, is it valuable and thus able to benefit from Item Familiar?
Kensai is a much "cleaner" way of accessing that model, as you pay only XP with Natural Weapons being an explicit option rather than pushing the boundaries of both donating and valid weapons. Though it is very technically a "magic item", it's literally your physical body parts being improved, and you aren't involving GP in it in any way.

[Troacctid]

The affiliation rules from Complete Champion only provide benefits if you pay tithes. If you're a member of a Good-aligned church, your donations should allow you to rank up your affiliation level.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Register the party as a charitable organization. If you regularly save the hamlet/town/city/kingdom/world without expecting payment but will take any offerings made, there is no reason not to donate to your party, since it's helping people with no expectation of pay, and that's the very definition of a charitable organization. Donating your part of the loot to the rest of your party and accepting your party's spellcasting services in exchange would basically be an "understandable case for VoP donations helping you." Especially if that involved magically enhancing your unarmed strikes or something similar.

[Troacctid]

Register the party as a charitable organization. If you regularly save the hamlet/town/city/kingdom/world without expecting payment but will take any offerings made, there is no reason not to donate to your party, since it's helping people with no expectation of pay, and that's the very definition of a charitable organization. Donating your part of the loot to the rest of your party and accepting your party's spellcasting services in exchange would basically be an "understandable case for VoP donations helping you." Especially if that involved magically enhancing your unarmed strikes or something similar.
That's explicitly disallowed, unfortunately.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

That's explicitly disallowed, unfortunately.Less than you might think.


Having a character in the party who has take a vow of poverty should not necessarily mean that the other party members get bigger shares of treasure! An ascetic character must be as extreme in works of charity as she is in self-denial. The majority of her share of party treasure (or the profits from the sale thereof) should be donated to the needy, either directly (equipping rescued captives with gear taken from their fallen captors) or indirectly (making a large donation to a temple noted for its work among the poor). While taking upon herself the burden of poverty voluntarily, an ascetic recognizes that many people do not have the freedom to choose poverty, but instead have it forced upon them, and seeks to better those unfortunates as much as possible.

If the party regularly puts effort towards saving people and bettering their lives (as many adventuring groups do as a matter of course), improving the group's chances of success IS helping with a charitable cause, and the section above only says that it "should not necessarily mean" that the VoP character gives it to the group, not that it can't give it to the group.

And what happens if, because the VoP character is a massive drag on the party's resources, the party fails and the hamlet/town/city/nation/world is enslaved or destroyed? How does that serve to improve the lives of the unfortunate?

[King of Nowhere]

Register the party as a charitable organization. If you regularly save the hamlet/town/city/kingdom/world without expecting payment but will take any offerings made, there is no reason not to donate to your party, since it's helping people with no expectation of pay, and that's the very definition of a charitable organization. Donating your part of the loot to the rest of your party and accepting your party's spellcasting services in exchange would basically be an "understandable case for VoP donations helping you." Especially if that involved magically enhancing your unarmed strikes or something similar.

So the party donates its own loot to itself; but then it again has to donate away all those donations coming to them, in a neverending loop where the whole party gets stuck in a blue screen of death.
Or maybe until the whole loot they keep donating to themselves is gradually eroded and disappears by handling fees. I mean, it's like you pay a courier to deliver that loot to yourself; then once you receive the loot you again pay a courier to bring it to you, eventually all the money goes to the courier.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

So the party donates its own loot to itself; but then it again has to donate away all those donations coming to them, in a neverending loop where the whole party gets stuck in a blue screen of death.
Or maybe until the whole loot they keep donating to themselves is gradually eroded and disappears by handling fees. I mean, it's like you pay a courier to deliver that loot to yourself; then once you receive the loot you again pay a courier to bring it to you, eventually all the money goes to the courier.Nah, only the VoP character would have to donate his share, but if he eschews taking any part of his own donation (because he's not supposed to accept such to begin with) and instead the donation is basically marked as a party resource, all he needs to do is just let the others use it as needed.

This isn't a PC game where a logic loop can scramble the universe, after all. I mean, it's not like taking level 10 in dragon disciple.

[JNAProductions]

Nah, only the VoP character would have to donate his share, but if he eschews taking any part of his own donation (because he's not supposed to accept such to begin with) and instead the donation is basically marked as a party resource, all he needs to do is just let the others use it as needed.

This isn't a PC game where a logic loop can scramble the universe, after all. I mean, it's not like taking level 10 in dragon disciple.

This also isn't a PC game where an obvious exploit is unpatchable.
The intent for Vow of Poverty is that your portion of the treasure goes to people outside the party-which is (supposed to be) made up by the significant bonuses the feat gives you.

If you want to use strict RAW, well, gotta use it across the board-and I believe it's you, MaxiDuRarity, who has pointed out the numerous issues with Vow of Poverty breaking basic functions for the player character.

[Morphic tide]

The "party" is not necessarily a distinct in-universe entity. While much more difficult to play out than a persistently coordinated adventuring group, you can have a campaign where the player characters routinely come together simply because they're the best readily available help for whatever DM-driven plot they don't feel confident handling alone. This could be a downtrodden or frontier settlement they all live in but have very different parts in society, or a low time pressure high travel one designed for incredibly inconsistent playgroups and multiple DMs.

In such a case, the ascetic is donating to "the local church" where the party Magic Mantle Ardent is part of the clergy. Eventually, the Ardent's abilities lead to them being handed control over the donations the ascetic is giving, and thereafter channels it into stocking up things that fulfil the general public good expectation but are also non-expended party utilities like buying Eternal Wands of mid-level recovery spells or crafting psionic tattoos for their Transducer to recharge. In the wider case the ascetic and ardent may well never actually meet until the settlement they happened to both stay around has become a portal hub GigaFortress some time after level 17, but there's still not an in universe organizational tie connecting the ascetic to the donations being used to bankroll party utilities.

[rel]

I'd say donating to the party directly so they can buy better adventuring gear is a bit shaky.

BUT

If the party face makes a big show of running a charitable organisation, and improving the lives of the needy then it's not unreasonable for the VoP character to donate to that charity.

And since that charity is under the direct control of the party face, they can quietly take the bulk of the donations for themselves as administrative overheads, wages, backroom deals with suppliers, and so forth.
The VoP character is doing the right thing, giving their money away to a legitimate (if arguably inefficient) charity. In fact between the faces prodigious skills at performance, diplomacy and so forth and the VoP characters 0 ranks in sense motive and 0 ranks in profession (accountant) there's no way the VoP character (or anyone else for that matter) will ever even realise the face is skimming off the top.

The face then spends (at least some of) the extra funds on the party and on the VoP character.

[Ashtagon]

Giving money to a charity that you know is inefficient and that you personally are benefitting from through personal connections might be charitable in a legalistic sense, but I'm not sure the powers that be would consider it charitable in the capital-G-Good sense.

[Eurus]

I get the idea -- if your party is killing Dark Lord Diabolus or whatever, yeah, that's probably going to help the poor peasants who would otherwise be conscripted into his horrible legions of undeath. From that perspective, maybe buying the barbarian a new magic axe genuinely is the best use of your charitable funds at the moment.

...But Vow of Poverty is a mechanical construction. Its RAW is kind of dysfunctional, but its intention is pretty clear. It gives you far more in terms of raw numbers than any other feat, and that's supposed to compensate for what is otherwise an extremely harsh building restraint, and therefore enable some character concepts that would otherwise be difficult. It's not very effective at that role, but that's what it's for. If your character's money is still going to enhancing the party's combat effectiveness, they shouldn't really need a superpowered feat to replace their items.

[Morphic tide]

I get the idea -- if your party is killing Dark Lord Diabolus or whatever, yeah, that's probably going to help the poor peasants who would otherwise be conscripted into his horrible legions of undeath. From that perspective, maybe buying the barbarian a new magic axe genuinely is the best use of your charitable funds at the moment.

...But Vow of Poverty is a mechanical construction. Its RAW is kind of dysfunctional, but its intention is pretty clear. It gives you far more in terms of raw numbers than any other feat, and that's supposed to compensate for what is otherwise an extremely harsh building restraint, and therefore enable some character concepts that would otherwise be difficult. It's not very effective at that role, but that's what it's for. If your character's money is still going to enhancing the party's combat effectiveness, they shouldn't really need a superpowered feat to replace their items.
"All my money is in the party's utility box" is very much one of those things that'd be interested in an item replacer to maintain function if you're anything but the most distantly rear-echelon support character or the most paranoid self-buffer with just how incredibly fragile you're going to be, and engaging in rules-lawering to accomplish this with VoP is going to be cleaner than crunching through the graduation of a more appropriate track. And the issue is mostly the absolute void of utility if you aren't a Druid or Psionic character, since the bonus [Exalted] feats are saturated in page-padding formulaic "Good-ified class feature" options. Numbers are good, things other than numbers are really bad.

[rel]

I'd say donating to the party directly so they can buy better adventuring gear is a bit shaky.

BUT

If the party face makes a big show of running a charitable organisation, and improving the lives of the needy then it's not unreasonable for the VoP character to donate to that charity.

And since that charity is under the direct control of the party face, they can quietly take the bulk of the donations for themselves as administrative overheads, wages, backroom deals with suppliers, and so forth.
The VoP character is doing the right thing, giving their money away to a legitimate (if arguably inefficient) charity. In fact between the faces prodigious skills at performance, diplomacy and so forth and the VoP characters 0 ranks in sense motive and 0 ranks in profession (accountant) there's no way the VoP character (or anyone else for that matter) will ever even realise the face is skimming off the top.

The face then spends (at least some of) the extra funds on the party and on the VoP character.


Giving money to a charity that you know is inefficient and that you personally are benefitting from through personal connections might be charitable in a legalistic sense, but I'm not sure the powers that be would consider it charitable in the capital-G-Good sense.

Some amount of subtlety is required. And the more blatant things are, the more dubious the scheme is as a means of circumventing the vow.
But I can easily see a level of obfuscation above which it becomes very difficult to argue that the VoP character is doing anything other than acting in good faith.

Remember that in this scenario, the VoP character has no knowledge that they're being duped.
They could have legitimately asked around about the charity, and heard nothing but good things. Both because big perform checks will do that, and given the sheer wealth of the average 3.5 party, the charity is probably spending a lot of money (relatively speaking) on improving things.
They could almost certainly take the PC running the show aside and ask them straight up if everything was legit and above board and absolutely believe the answer.

And it's not like a NPC charity is magically guaranteed to be perfect. There's as much chance of them being inefficient or a little bit sketchy, and I'd be surprised if a VoP player even performed the above level of due diligence before dumping their gold at one of those.

[icefractal]

Main issue with that is it requires the VoP character being, well, kind of a chump. Like, "probably shouldn't be allowed to speak on behalf of the party" kind of chump, because if they're so easily fooled by their party members, what stops enemies from doing it as well? Which is fine for some characters, but not for all of them.

Although IMO, the "have to demand a share to donate" thing unfortunately limits the concepts that VoP works for, and I'd have no issue just dropping it IMC. Although in that case I'd recommend using the SoP version instead, which is a lot more mechanically sound and doesn't require being exalted.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Main issue with that is it requires the VoP character being, well, kind of a chump. Like, "probably shouldn't be allowed to speak on behalf of the party" kind of chump, because if they're so easily fooled by their party members, what stops enemies from doing it as well? Which is fine for some characters, but not for all of them.To be fair, I wouldn't want such a character speaking for the group anyway.

[rel]

Remember it's not like the VoP character is especially incompetent, 3.x is just a system that rewards specialisation.
There are about 50 skills in 3.5, and aside from dedicated skill monkeys, characters would be lucky to get 4 skill points per level. Not having any ranks in sense motive or gather information or the other skills required to notice the deception is hardly unusual.

And even if a character does have a few ranks in a useful skill for some reason, they almost certainly don't have enough to match the party face who has specialised, and has (at a minimum) max ranks, positive associated stats, synergies, and masterwork tools.
The VoP charater isn't a chump, the opposition is superhumanly competent.