[3.5] VoP feat overload

[Trekkin]

Has anyone ever managed to find a use for all eleven exalted feats for a VoP character that starts at level 1? Every time I play with a build that includes it I have more feat slots than applicable feats.

[Gaiyamato]

Yeah I'm always pushing it as well.
Remember there are few more exalted feats in some of the FR books that can come in handy.
I've filled a 18th level Exalted feat slot with "Homeland Defender" before (+1 to AC when fighting on home soil). lol.

[Sinfire Titan]

Not really. Especially for a noncaster.

Theoretically, a Monk qualifies for two that other characters can't use (the third happens to have an error). The ones that give a bonus to damage against Evil creatures. But this involves being a Monk.






Really, this is why Evil wins. Devoting yourself to an Elder Evil means you have access to 5 Vile feats that are generic enough that any class can make use of them.

[Trekkin]

Oddly, the text reads bonus feat rather than bonus exalted feat, except at first level. Perhaps this could be taken to mean VoP grants ten bonus feats?

[Gaiyamato]

Oddly, the text reads bonus feat rather than bonus exalted feat, except at first level. Perhaps this could be taken to mean VoP grants ten bonus feats?

No they are all Exalted feats. It does mention it somewhere. lol.

[sofawall]

Text trumping table and all that.

[noiadodh]

No they are all Exalted feats. It does mention it somewhere. lol.

only in the table.. so "At 1st level, an ascetic gets a bonus exalted feat, and another bonus feat at 2nd level and every 2 levels thereafter." is ambiguous or 'another bonus feat' really means 'another bonus exalted feat' by RAW?

[Trekkin]

I'm inclined to think they meant exalted, but what character can use eleven exalted feats without taking five or six Vows?

[Keld Denar]

Someone better versed in english grammer will come along and confirm this, but it has something to do with the rules for listing. Just like you can condense:

Brown shoes, brown hat, brown jacket, and brown scarf

to

Brown shoes, hat, jacket, and scarf

And still retain the same meaning, everything is brown. In math, we call this factoring.

So yea, exalted all the way through.
BTW, don't take it! ITS A TARP!

[Sinfire Titan]

Someone better versed in english grammer will come along and confirm this, but it has something to do with the rules for listing. Just like you can condense:

Brown shoes, brown hat, brown jacket, and brown scarf

to

Brown shoes, hat, jacket, and scarf

And still retain the same meaning, everything is brown. In math, we call this factoring.

So yea, exalted all the way through.
BTW, don't take it! ITS A TARP!

FYI, the English behind that second one only implies that the shoes are brown. The only assumption in the English language is the word "You", and even then only in specific circumstances.

Commas in the wrong place alter the meaning of a sentence dramatically. This comes up in legal issues; there was a lawsuit a while back about an inheritance that was being divided between three people. Poor grammar (read: an omitted comma) caused one person to receive 10K, and the other two involved to receive 5K each (rather than the intended 10K to all three). The remainder of the inheritance was donated to a charity.


Proper English: Shoes, hat, coat, and pants, all brown. RAW, VoP's Exalted restriction applies only to the first bonus feat, but the intent is that it applies to all of the bonus feats. The Devs didn't think that a feat like Chosen of the Stars would be considered crap, so they expected everyone to take the feats that could potentially apply to their characters (including the other Sacred Vows, as Apostle of Peace shows).

[Trekkin]

The problem is it's both ambiguous and extremely illogical to take the lingually normal answer. It can be read, and is usually read, as outlined above, but that leaves everyone with useless feats. The alternative reading is to read the text as exalted feat, bonus feat, etc, which brings Vow of Poverty into equivalent power again and simultaneously stops the feat overload problem.

Ah, it's been explained far more completely above. Well then, off to fix feat overload...

[Sinfire Titan]

Ah, it's been explained far more completely above. Well then, off to fix feat overload...

Want help? I've been wanting to take some stabs at the various alignment-restricting feats for a while (I just don't want to do the Sacred Vows personally, as all of them are a bit heavy-handed).

[Trekkin]

I was actually going to use VoP for a Totemist with Int and Cha 3 (Incarnate Arctic Wild Half-Minotaur Mineral Warrior Warforged for base Con 28) to represent his being so insanely simple-minded that he can't grasp that items have worth but just together enough to understand it makes other people happy to have them. I started trying to make a character too dumb to kill, and it's morphed into Incarnum Godzilla-Lennie (Of Mice and Men).

This is, however, purely a theoretical optimization idea to see how high I could bump Con and dump Int.

[Doc Roc]

"Tell me about the Tibbits again, George."

[Thurbane]

Exalted got less love than almost any other mechanic/subsystem in 3.5 - heck, even Pact Magic got a couple of token nods in other supplements. Vile got waaay more...HoH, EE, EoE just to mention a few...

It wouldn't be such an issue if WoTC had thrown a few extra feats into other supplements...now the only answer is homebrew.

[Doc Roc]

Actually, there's a pretty simple answer. Just use any vile feat as an exalted after a brief reflavor. Heavens knows that Pelor won't mind.

[balistafreak]

On the subject of the Vow of Poverty, could it apply to the caretaker of a blatantly magical place?

An immortal spellcaster ascetic dedicates his life to the maintenance of an ancient, now entirely unoccupied magical college/holy cathedral, depending on whether he's arcane or divine in nature. While he constantly rebuilds, maintains, repairs, and recharges all of the special features of the location, he never believes that he "owns" the place, simply that he is the rightful caretaker until it becomes occupied once more. When threatened, he calls upon the location to defend itself, but does not actively order/use the embedded powers. He calls upon legions of animated armor or turns on automated spell turrets, but does nothing as presumptuous as picking up a holy sword or magic staff and using it against the interlopers.

In his spare time, he reads and memorizes the endless books and scriptures held in the libraries.

Does this fall under the Vow?

[Ernir]

It wouldn't be such an issue if WoTC had thrown a few extra feats into other supplements...now the only answer is homebrew.

Speaking of that... has there been any effort towards that on the homebrew front?

My VoP Swordsage just ding-ed to the 10th level, and I'm completely out of non-crap Exalted feats.

[Trekkin]

We just established they're not necessarily exalted feats.

[balistafreak]

Actually, there's a pretty simple answer. Just use any vile feat as an exalted after a brief reflavor. Heavens knows that Pelor won't mind.

This is both the most idiotic and most brilliant idea I seen this week.

Idiotic, because, ZOMG, it's the book of VILE DARKNESS. And you're MAKING IT GOOD. HERESY.

/sarcasm

Brilliant, because it WORKS. Looking past the feats that are easily mirrored (and in fact already done so as Exalted feats, such as Evil Brand becoming Nimbus of Light), the body-changing feats can be reflavored as asceticism or such in the name of good.

Claw attacks? Instead of that stupid pointless Ki-strike, your divinity channels itself into glowing fists of doom.

Deformity of an eye? Flavor seeing invisibility as "(Deity) sees everything".

The face deformity is just a generic bonus to diplomacy and intimidate with evil creatures. Call it a scar in the name of good (flagellants, hehehe) and mirror the bonuses to good creatures.

The Gaunt and Obese feats can be said to be changes in your holy demeanor - you either become willowy with grace or stout with fortitude. The other bonuses simply reflect your added aura (intimidate) or are simply natural extensions of being graceful/tough (Escape Artist/poisons).

Lichloved, though... well, call it "relations" with a good outsider instead.

Instead of being a "friend to vermin", you're just a "friend to all living creatures", and the vermin recognize this fact.

*****************

... admittedly, though, that's not that many feats in the book alone. There were quite a few other feats elsewhere, though, and I feel as though you could continue to mirror them.

[balistafreak]

Speaking of that... has there been any effort towards that on the homebrew front?

My VoP Swordsage just ding-ed to the 10th level, and I'm completely out of non-crap Exalted feats.

I just looked up the errata for the BoED on the offical site. Errata says absolutely nothing on the text vs. table issue, so we can deduce that text still trumps table.

Vow of Poverty states "bonus feats", not "bonus exalted feats", in the text. Okay, so it's easily understandable as the latter, but strictly speaking it doesn't have to be. Even though the table says "exalted", the text doesn't. This makes the VoP much more useful than it would normally be, when you take feats that, ya know, actually accomplish something.

(I've always recalled text trumps table, but I can't remember where their official stance is on that, if someone could dig that up.)

Now go out and accomplish something with your bonus feats, sir.

[noiadodh]

(I've always recalled text trumps table, but I can't remember where their official stance is on that, if someone could dig that up.)

"Errata Rule: Primary Sources
When you find a disagreement between two D&D rules sources, unless an official errata file says otherwise, the primary source is correct. One example of a primary/secondary source is text taking precedence over a table entry."

[Trekkin]

Now if only there were a way to strip it of the alignment requirement. My characters tend to the psychotic, and that's not Good.

Can we make a UMD check to qualify for a feat prereq?

[Sinfire Titan]

Now if only there were a way to strip it of the alignment requirement. My characters tend to the psychotic, and that's not Good.

Can we make a UMD check to qualify for a feat prereq?

No. The next best thing is Abyssal Heritor feats in FC1. Devil-Touched feats in FC2 come close for Lawful guys, but not enough of them to matter and some of them require an Evil alignment.

[Melayl]

On the subject of the Vow of Poverty, could it apply to the caretaker of a blatantly magical place?

An immortal spellcaster ascetic dedicates his life to the maintenance of an ancient, now entirely unoccupied magical college/holy cathedral, depending on whether he's arcane or divine in nature. While he constantly rebuilds, maintains, repairs, and recharges all of the special features of the location, he never believes that he "owns" the place, simply that he is the rightful caretaker until it becomes occupied once more. When threatened, he calls upon the location to defend itself, but does not actively order/use the embedded powers. He calls upon legions of animated armor or turns on automated spell turrets, but does nothing as presumptuous as picking up a holy sword or magic staff and using it against the interlopers.

In his spare time, he reads and memorizes the endless books and scriptures held in the libraries.

Does this fall under the Vow?

I'd say yes.

[Doc Roc]

Now if only there were a way to strip it of the alignment requirement. My characters tend to the psychotic, and that's not Good.

Can we make a UMD check to qualify for a feat prereq?

Taint + Worship A Vile Deity + Undead=
TONS of free feats.

As for the whole thang about it giving you straight bonus feats, I've never met a GM who'd let that roll, so I think it's pretty much irrelevant what the actual legalistic stance on it is, particularly when it's linguistically ambiguous. And this is _me_ talking. You might as well argue that VoP allows you to use psionic items, presuming they fall into the condensed-astral-energy-set or can be fashioned into a quarterstaff, since transparency doesn't apply to feats.

In a related note, if you're interested, I have a bridge in San Fran that I'm looking to sell.

[Saintheart]

On the subject of the Vow of Poverty, could it apply to the caretaker of a blatantly magical place?

An immortal spellcaster ascetic dedicates his life to the maintenance of an ancient, now entirely unoccupied magical college/holy cathedral, depending on whether he's arcane or divine in nature. While he constantly rebuilds, maintains, repairs, and recharges all of the special features of the location, he never believes that he "owns" the place, simply that he is the rightful caretaker until it becomes occupied once more. When threatened, he calls upon the location to defend itself, but does not actively order/use the embedded powers. He calls upon legions of animated armor or turns on automated spell turrets, but does nothing as presumptuous as picking up a holy sword or magic staff and using it against the interlopers.

In his spare time, he reads and memorizes the endless books and scriptures held in the libraries.

Does this fall under the Vow?

Everything except the reading or memorising the books is fine. RAW on Vow of Poverty, though, says "must not own or use any material possessions." By this rather asinine sentence, I suspect reading a book probably counts as using it - after all, what other principal use does a book have other than as a doorstop?

Even using the facility's defences is arguably breaking VoP, but the oath does allow you to own and use a spell component pouch, so the defences of the place might be activated with a small glass rod or something which counts as a spell component.

[Lycanthromancer]

In his spare time, he reads and memorizes the endless books and scriptures held in the libraries.

Does this fall under the Vow?

Technically, activating the magics of the place counts as using a magic item (no matter how large), and even reading the books violates the vow.

However, VoP is stupid and stupid and more stupid, and most DMs would at least allow you to read the books, assuming they weren't, say, Books of Exalted Deeds or something.

[Doc Roc]

Related wonderful note:
Are material possessions "material" if they're generated by astral projection?

[Optimystik]

Everything except the reading or memorising the books is fine. RAW on Vow of Poverty, though, says "must not own or use any material possessions." By this rather asinine sentence, I suspect reading a book probably counts as using it - after all, what other principal use does a book have other than as a doorstop?

He can have the books read to him (so long as they aren't magical.)
Yes, this is silly.

Exalted got less love than almost any other mechanic/subsystem in 3.5 - heck, even Pact Magic got a couple of token nods in other supplements. Vile got waaay more...HoH, EE, EoE just to mention a few...

Because Evil is Sexy
Also, (a) Vile had a bit more time to catch developers' eyes (since BoVD is 3.0), and (b) Vile feats are really meant to give more options to truly heinous BBEGs, so there's more design space there than making PCs "uber-good."

There's a handful in Champions of Valor. While not much to write home about, they at least beat Nimbus of Light