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Jack Mann
2008-05-26, 05:44 PM
The problem with Vow of Poverty is that it really doesn't give you enough to replace what you could get with items using Wealth-by-Level. Worse, it's inflexible. You get a fixed set of bonuses. Your only real choices are which abilities to give the bonuses and which exalted feats to take (and you quickly run out of decent exalted feats). Clearly, this is a bad thing. It's a good flavor for a character, mind you. Sometimes, you want to shine without all the magical baubles. But you shouldn't have to pay for flavor. If I leave you with nothing else, remember that maxim. You shouldn't have to suck to be cool. Vow of Poverty, in effect, punishes you for wanting to play a different sort of character. That's why it needs to be fixed. Understood? All right then.

So, let's look at what the feat is meant to do. Essentially, it's meant to make you on par with your buddies and all their "bling" (to employ the vernacular of today's youth), without you having to actually have those items. The flavor is that you're so nice, so brimming with holy goodness, that it gives you nifty benefits on par with those items.

So far, so good. But why does it fail? As I said above, it doesn't actually give you quite as much as you could get with your standard wealth by level. Given that you're having to spend a feat and stick to a very strict set of rules, this is bad. And it's rigid. You can't make it work with your character. You have to design your character around the feat. To be even halfway decent, you need to play a class that doesn't need that much in the way of specialized equipment, that gets the maximum mileage out of the bonuses given by the feat. But what if you want to play a humble wizard? Or a bard? It doesn't work very well.

So, how do we fix this? My idea is fairly simple. Just let players choose their bonuses, using magic items as wealth-by-level as their yardstick.

Essentially, a player "buys" his equipment as normal. The wizard gets his metamagic rod and scrolls. The fighter buys his belt of giant strength. But instead of wearing these items, their holiness gives them the benefits.

Obviously, we need to put in some restrictions. Body slot limits would still be obeyed. You couldn't gain the abilities of two different sets of boots.

Under this system, a character could keep treasure, but only long enough to donate it to the poor or to a good temple. This would be the point at which they'd be able to "buy" items. Or sell them, if they were done with a particular bonus and wanted to switch it out for something different. The usual guidelines would apply. Mechanically, there would be no change. It's only the flavor we're changing here.

Single-use items like scrolls and potions would be as normal, except that you would be styling them as one-use powers given by your god.

This feat my also need to replicate the function of some mundane items. A wizard's spellbook, for example. Rather than a heavy tome, perhaps he simply has mnemonic devices carved into bits of wood. Or painted stones. Or maybe he's imprinted them into the very aether around him. A cleric's holy symbol could be a hand sign she makes. Or a tattoo. A fighter's "sword" could be formed of holy energy. Or perhaps an ordinary tree branch transforms in his hand. And he is literally armored in his piety.

Keep in mind, they're paying the same for these benefits as they would without the feat. They're just paying in a different manner in character. The main mechanical benefit to the feat is that it becomes much harder to separate them from their gear.

One variant that might be explored is the use of relics. These are a bit different from usual magic items, and I could see letting a character with Vow of Poverty use them. After all, they are literally the items of the gods.

The final change I would make is the ease of losing this feat and the difficulty of regaining it. Much like the paladin's code, you shouldn't lose it when you've been dominated. And it should be possible to gain it back if you've broken your oath. People screw up. That's why we have the atonement spell. Let them pay the price, and then get back up and start doing good again.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

Axelgear
2008-05-26, 06:10 PM
I like it. I'd definitely request to use this system, it'd be perfect for some of my character designs.

Starsinger
2008-05-26, 06:42 PM
I like this, although I do have to ask about a Wizard's spell book. How exactly does that work?

Jack Mann
2008-05-26, 06:50 PM
Mechanically, the same as always. You'd pay X amount of gold to put new spells into your spells known (until you were rich enough to be able to afford a Blessed Book). You'd spend an hour each morning (after getting 8 hours of rest) preparing your spells. How this activity manifested in the game world would be completely up to you and the DM.

Starsinger
2008-05-26, 09:44 PM
Mechanically, the same as always. You'd pay X amount of gold to put new spells into your spells known (until you were rich enough to be able to afford a Blessed Book). You'd spend an hour each morning (after getting 8 hours of rest) preparing your spells. How this activity manifested in the game world would be completely up to you and the DM.

So in effect, a VoP wizard has Spell Mastery for every spell he knows?

dman11235
2008-05-26, 11:09 PM
The only characters that don't get screwed over by taking this feat are spell casters, and the only one that benefits from taking the feat is monk 1/druid x. Oh, and epic characters. Epic characters (especially spellcasters) benefit from the epic version (see WotC boards for details, though I'm not sure if it got destroyed or not in the migration).

That said, yours is overpowered. It lets them get items without having the items, thus restricted to the bulk and vulnerability to theft/sunder/disarm/etc. And the boost for wizards is way more than that. There is one aspect to the feat you did overlook: miscellaneous bonuses. You get ability enhancements as (ex), which can be big, you aren't vulnerable to dispel magic, the true seeing bit, and a couple more (weapons, AC, etc) that are better than possible items. The problem is the lack of flexibility, as you pointed out, and the lack of appropriate wealth. Technically, at level 20, it has something like 1,000,000 gp worth of boosts, all thanks to the single +8 bonus, worth 640,000 gp. Though I want my Wings of Flying. What needs to happen is not a "you choose anything", it's a set number of boosts, with a small amount of choice. A few boosts like the weapon thing will be set, and then some more will be choices you can make. Oh, and it just needs to give flight. That alone will make non-casters able to take it without gimping themselves. Level 15 max, and it will be unlimited flight. 40 ft good maneuverability, increases through levels is nice.

Jack Mann
2008-05-26, 11:48 PM
Keep in mind, they're paying for this both by taking a feat and by sticking to the code. This means, for example, that they can't benefit directly from any treasure earned in combat. They have to wait until they can "sell it back," in effect, before they can get any use from it. As well, they have to keep up an extremely good alignment to keep any exalted feat. They should get something out of it mechanically. Items aren't targeted that often, in my experience. I don't see this as especially gamebreaking.

Granted, it does make spell mastery a bit redundant. But again, in my experience, DMs don't target spellbooks all that often, since that effectively destroys the character's effectiveness until they can get it replaced (this, incidentally, is part of the poor class design of wizards, insofar as one of their major built-in control mechanisms removes them from play almost entirely).

They're still gaining some problems from their feat. It seems only right they should get something back.


EDIT: Also, it's not choose anything. It's choose anything they could get with the equipment you'd be letting them buy otherwise. They get the same bonuses. They're limited to the same slots. They gain no mechanical benefit except that they can't normally be separated from their gear.

dman11235
2008-05-27, 10:35 AM
Whoopdy do it's a feat and a code. Keep in mind that two feats for this is too little, and the code is a joke compared to this. Before hand the code was actually strict.

My point was that your version is too unrestrictive. Things like the armor boosts should stay, and the ability boosts should stay. All the current VoPov needs is a way to fly and a little more versatility. You are currently shoehorned into being an ascetic character (yes, I realize the irony, what I mean is a monk-like character). One more thing about yours is that they can get expendables, one of the sacrifices for getting some of the better boosts that VoPov had. Yours is just...there. There's nothing special. I guess overpowered isn't true, it's blah. There's no benefit other than making your items immune to dispel, disarm, sunder, etc. VoPov had (ex) ability enhancements, true seeing constant, an actual increase in your NA (so it stacks with spells and effects like Barkskin), and more like that.

Corncracker
2008-05-27, 04:29 PM
Whoopdy do it's a feat and a code. Keep in mind that two feats for this is too little, and the code is a joke compared to this. Before hand the code was actually strict.

My point was that your version is too unrestrictive. Things like the armor boosts should stay, and the ability boosts should stay. All the current VoPov needs is a way to fly and a little more versatility. You are currently shoehorned into being an ascetic character (yes, I realize the irony, what I mean is a monk-like character). One more thing about yours is that they can get expendables, one of the sacrifices for getting some of the better boosts that VoPov had. Yours is just...there. There's nothing special. I guess overpowered isn't true, it's blah. There's no benefit other than making your items immune to dispel, disarm, sunder, etc. VoPov had (ex) ability enhancements, true seeing constant, an actual increase in your NA (so it stacks with spells and effects like Barkskin), and more like that.

I very much agree with this.

Don't get me wrong, VoPov definatly needs to be fixed, but this doesn't seem to be a very good way to do it.

Jack_Simth
2008-05-27, 05:13 PM
I very much agree with this.

Don't get me wrong, VoPov definatly needs to be fixed, but this doesn't seem to be a very good way to do it.

Perhaps the fix for VoP is a roundabout one - don't so much fix VoP directly as make some more useful Exalted feats. Maybe a three-feat chain for Flight - the first grants slowfall, the second grants a limited amount of flight each day (and has some requirement or other that keeps it from being taken before 5th level, when the party Wizard gets Fly), the third makes the flight unlimited (with some requirement or other that prevents it from being taken before 9th level, when the party Wizard gets Overland Flight) - and a few feats that grant teleportation in a similar manner. Some exalted feats the duplicate basic buff spells often obtained from magic items, essentially.

Closet_Skeleton
2008-05-27, 05:21 PM
My favourite fix for Vow of Poverty is:

Don't make magic items so important in the first place.

Oh d20 modern and star wars saga edition, what would I do without you :smallsmile:

Jack_Simth
2008-05-27, 07:09 PM
In the vein of fixing the Vow of Poverty by way of introducing new Exalted feats for the non-casters, I've opened a New Thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=81556) for a few.

arkanis
2008-05-27, 08:00 PM
Sounds like a great idea. However, Sacred Vow is a feat which still DESPERATELY needs reduxing. Think you could make a new thread for that one?

Jack_Simth
2008-05-27, 08:30 PM
Sounds like a great idea. However, Sacred Vow is a feat which still DESPERATELY needs reduxing. Think you could make a new thread for that one?
Sacred vow, in and of itself, is a deliberately weak feat - because a couple of the Exalted feats that rely on it are fairly strong.

arkanis
2008-05-27, 09:17 PM
I've never seen any vow feat in the Book of Exalted deeds that was any stronger than a normal feat except for vow of poverty (which is debatable). Most of them are particularly weak or useless with a few exceptions.

dman11235
2008-05-27, 09:35 PM
Actually, they are all more powerful than normal feats. It's just that the perceived power isn't as high due to Sacred Vow and the exalted status required. Sacred Vow is about right on in power. Though because of this fact, the vows need a little more oomph than just the flavor.

Disclaimer time: you must all realize now that these feats, heck, that entire book, was not made to be a path to power, or meant to be used to make a powerful character. It was made as a character option, a roleplaying opportunity. It doesn't have that mature sticker warning for the content, it's the play style involved.

arkanis
2008-05-27, 11:37 PM
Apparently you haven't compared the Book of Exalted Deeds to the Book of Vile Darkness or Complete Warrior, both of which far outshine it (no pun intended) as far as powergaming goes.

Although, there may be an exception if you play in a campaign where ALL your enemies are evil undead or evil outsiders which would make BoED abilities more useful than they are given standard settings (where enemies can appear in any alignment or type).

Stycotl
2008-05-28, 12:15 AM
Actually, they are all more powerful than normal feats. It's just that the perceived power isn't as high due to Sacred Vow and the exalted status required. Sacred Vow is about right on in power. Though because of this fact, the vows need a little more oomph than just the flavor.

Disclaimer time: you must all realize now that these feats, heck, that entire book, was not made to be a path to power, or meant to be used to make a powerful character. It was made as a character option, a roleplaying opportunity. It doesn't have that mature sticker warning for the content, it's the play style involved.

i disagree with both aspects of this post. sacred vow is a pathetically weak feat, and the majority of the few exalted feats that are in the book are also way underpowered. i am not sure at what point you think that stigmata even begins to compare to two-weapon fighting, or that servant of the heavens trumps great cleave.

next, your disclaimer seems to be arguing that people should not complain about balance issues because the boed is not about power, but about flavor experience. is my analysis correct? if so, you are forgetting that they posted crunch in the book along with the fluff, and that any time a game designer puts crunch in his book along with the fluff, he thinks about balance. i can assure you that the writers *tried* to balance this against existing material, and probably even thought that they did a good job of it. i am sure that deadlines got in the way of in-depth game testing, but that does not detract from the fact that this was meant to be balanced. if this does not need to be balanced against the existing game because it is 'supplementary material', then the planar shepherd is a perfectly viable alternative to other prestige classes, and the monk doesn't need to worry about being squashed by the swordsage, because the swordsage is just a thought experiment in supplemental fluff.

aaron out.

dman11235
2008-05-28, 09:12 AM
You say powergaming and you DON'T want a +2 sacred bonus to diplomacy? Well, skill abuse aside, the point of this feat is not to be powerful, it is to raise the entry requirements of a bunch of other feats. Most of which are a little bit more powerful than normal feats. This one is about right, and those other 1/day bonus to a single roll are also about right, since they are entry feats. Keep in mind they also exist in your precious BoVD, which is, you know, 3.0, and a lot of the things in there are just off of power level and design level from 3.5? Something like Savage Species, it's 3.25. Though, actually, I think Servant of the Heavens does trump Great Cleave. It's so unnecessary, not that I'd take either one. Unless I needed SotH as a prereq for something. Does GC get that? nah. Stigmata does need a boost. And ya know what? This whole 3.75 rebalancing is happening. It's being done by the former CO boards over at Brilliant Gameologists.

No, the disclaimer was to get you people to keep that in mind. When using this book you should not be using it to gain the next big advantage. I'm not saying that roleplaying outweighs rollplaying, that would be committing the Stormwind Fallacy. What I'm saying is that there are roleplaying restrictions that bring down the power of some of these things, and change the power of others. Yes, this means that some of the things are weaker than they should be, but do not go revisiting the power levels on the sole basis of gaining the next big advantage. That's also an element of the Stormwind Fallacy, though not directly, it is powergaming, and it is what people accuse the CO boards of doing, when all CO does is optimize.

In closing, keep flavor in mind when creating and balancing things. That way, you don't get accused of munchinery and powergaming. And it leads to better balance overall. And better design, which is a very important thing.

Guyr Adamantine
2008-05-28, 09:43 AM
Amen, Dman! I don,t have a problem with the power of exalted, as their main condition is: stay exalted. That sounds hard, but I've figured a way to get through it. When in front of a dillemma, I ask myself:

WWAD?

(What Would Aragorn Do?)

Stycotl
2008-05-28, 10:43 AM
You say powergaming and you DON'T want a +2 sacred bonus to diplomacy? Well, skill abuse aside, the point of this feat is not to be powerful, it is to raise the entry requirements of a bunch of other feats. Most of which are a little bit more powerful than normal feats. This one is about right, and those other 1/day bonus to a single roll are also about right, since they are entry feats. Keep in mind they also exist in your precious BoVD, which is, you know, 3.0, and a lot of the things in there are just off of power level and design level from 3.5? Something like Savage Species, it's 3.25. Though, actually, I think Servant of the Heavens does trump Great Cleave. It's so unnecessary, not that I'd take either one. Unless I needed SotH as a prereq for something. Does GC get that? nah. Stigmata does need a boost. And ya know what? This whole 3.75 rebalancing is happening. It's being done by the former CO boards over at Brilliant Gameologists.

No, the disclaimer was to get you people to keep that in mind. When using this book you should not be using it to gain the next big advantage. I'm not saying that roleplaying outweighs rollplaying, that would be committing the Stormwind Fallacy. What I'm saying is that there are roleplaying restrictions that bring down the power of some of these things, and change the power of others. Yes, this means that some of the things are weaker than they should be, but do not go revisiting the power levels on the sole basis of gaining the next big advantage. That's also an element of the Stormwind Fallacy, though not directly, it is powergaming, and it is what people accuse the CO boards of doing, when all CO does is optimize.

In closing, keep flavor in mind when creating and balancing things. That way, you don't get accused of munchinery and powergaming. And it leads to better balance overall. And better design, which is a very important thing.

roleplaying restrictions are fine, but most of them are houseruled and homebrewed. so what is the point of limiting one more to the group?

i don't think that j.man was revisiting the feat solely to 'gain the next big advantage'. there are a ton of cool concepts in d&d that would be fun to play. but even the coolest concept, if paired with crappy mechanics, is not going to get any game play. or not much anyway.

it is hard to optimize something (110%) that is currently sitting at substandard as is (40%). in order to optimize it from the beginning, i think that it is important to bring it up to the same level as everything else, or bring everything else down. generally the former is easier.

the flavor issue at the end of your post is where it gets subjective. everyone has a different vision of the vow of poverty paragon. j.man's might not work for you, but it obviously does for other people; look at the responses. if you're going to come on the boards and critique people's work, realize that your opinion is just that--an opinion, not doctrine. as evidenced, there are many that disagree and think that j.man's redux is spot-on.

now, my personal opinion is that it is a cool idea, but needs a lot of mopping up. my personal houserule when i dm a vow of poverty character is just to throw some spell-like abilities in there every time he would get a bonus exalted feat. i don't remember how i worked spell level of the ability granted--i'll have to go find it in my mountain of loose papers and scattered books. but that is just what works for me. others have different systems that work for them.

arkanis
2008-05-28, 03:27 PM
You say powergaming and you DON'T want a +2 sacred bonus to diplomacy?

In closing, keep flavor in mind when creating and balancing things. That way, you don't get accused of munchinery and powergaming. And it leads to better balance overall. And better design, which is a very important thing.


Yes, because +2 diplomacy at the level required to actually gain any of these feats is absolutely PATHETIC.

And yes, flavor should be kept in mind but you also need power. You need BOTH to be BALANCED. Keywords here. No one book should outshine the other as much as BoED is outshined (power-wise, not flavor-wise). This was one of the reasons this thread was started because the Vow of Poverty feat was well underpowered in standard adventures (except for LG monks). The BoED has plenty of flavor but it lacks a lot of necessary components for balancing it with core books and other common material. That was the point.

dman11235
2008-05-28, 03:41 PM
You can take Sacred Vow at level 1, that makes the diplomancer that much better, and more likely to end combat instantaneously. And all of the other vows can be taken right after it, so what's the problem again (not that the others help the diplomacy much at all)? Actually, the current big diplomancer build involves this feat. I'm pretty sure it's capable of ending encounters at level 1 as a standard action, turning hostile to friendly.

Yes, the vows are a little weak. In the hands of anything besides a spell caster this one doesn't work in typical campaigns, and the only character that actually benefits from the feat is a druid (with a single level of monk). Monks are actually VERY item dependent, and can't work well at all with the feat. Trust me, personal experience.

As for flavor and power, that's what I've been saying. It takes both to balance something, because power follows design follows flavor. It's a direct correlation. The problem with this one is that there is no flavor. It's all the same, it's just how you appear to look. With the old one there were some benefits that can't be quantified, like the (ex) ability enhancements and others like that, as I have said.

arkanis
2008-05-28, 05:52 PM
Druid with a single level of monk? So, you do have some grasp of possible powergames. Good.

Except for the +2 diplomacy. I'm sorry, a +2 diplomacy in a school of feats that can give you +2 diplomacy and another skill or +3 to diplomacy or +5 skill points to spend as you see fit a little +2 just sucks. Really, it has only has flavor and no power.

But still, a high Diplomacy check will get you no where while adventuring. Unless your campaign is exclusively in social environment where you have time to communicate to rivals instead of getting backstabbed by a mugger, eaten by a monster, crushed by an automaton, or impaled by a trap like typical fantasy games.

Well, we seem to be agreeing in a disagreeable manner because that's exactly what I meant. The two need to be equally balanced. No matter how cool your flavor is, it's useless if you can't fit it into the system in a balanced matter and no matter and no matter how well your mechanic fits into a system you can't use it if it can't be explained with at least some level of flavor.

dman11235
2008-05-28, 06:24 PM
Do you know what the diplomancer is? It uses diplomacy for making things you willing slaves. The goal is to get as high of a diplomacy score as possible as early as possible. A +2 helps that, as does the +3 from skill focus. The build uses both of those feats. Let's see, a half elf bard with two flaws taking Negotiator, Sacred Vow, and Skill Focus Diplomacy, max ranks in diplomacy, bluff, knowledge (nobility and royalty), and sense motive, assuming 16 charisma (nothing else matters) at level 1 gets a +16 to diplomacy. That auto makes unfriendly indifferent. Next level he gets +7 to diplomacy: +1 rank and +6 synergy. Go look at the diplomacy chart. By level 20 you're making hostile helpful as a full round action due to your 23 ranks, +6 synergy, +8 at least charisma, +30 competence ring, +2 MW tool, etc. From what I listed that's already a +69, taking -10 for rushed is still auto succeed. And that's just what I came up with off the top of my head. CO (and TO) did much better, but I'm fairly certain they used they set up. It's not about just that little bonus all by its lonesome, it's that bonus plus others. Also, I don't see skill focus getting you awesome stuff acting as a prereq. Now if only those awesome things were in fact good, it'd be just fine as a feat. Having a throw away entry feat is one way of being able to up the power of a class/feat/etc without overpowering it as much. Just make sure not to overdo it.