Not at all, if you look at it from the divine power's point of view...as well as that of his flock.
A VoP is supposed to be a sacrifice by the PC to show his devotion to a divine ideal. In exchange, the divine power lifts him up as an exemplar of what living the life of the ascetic can mean.
I looked up every single spell & relevant class ability in the PHB to see what was lost if the DF was eliminated via the VoP.
What was left was a PC who didn't resemble a clergyman in any meaningful sense. In the case of the Cleric, he can't Turn Undead- how does that serve as a beacon to the faithful when Fr. Fred takes a vow and then can't fend off the predations of the zombies from the nearby battlefield like he did in all his previous years of service? Instead of being uplifted by the divine, it looks as if he has been punished, and the village imperiled because of it.
He can no longer Bless the faithful, nor can he cast Attonement, and so many other spells that are less about combat and more about maintaining and preserving the health of his flock.
Running VoP RAW, in other words, is contra the logic of vow and reward
They're the same philosophy. Mechanical optimization is fine, but it isn't the end-all, be-all goal. Viability is a matter of perspective. They are both irrelevant to the end-goal. Neither matters as long as the PC is who he is supposed to be- he matches the conceptual ideal the player had...within the framework of the rules, and everyone has fun.
Rules by their nature limit the number of possible and optimal builds, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with playing something that is suboptimal.
I let my players build their PCs pretty much however they want to. If they can't stand up to a particular foe, they need to disengage and find another way- perhaps eventually returning to take him down- or suffer the logical consequences.
The last campaign in which we played (RttToEE), I wasn't the DM and virtually everyone multiclassed. We had only 1 solo classed spellcaster, a 10th level Wizard. Nobody else had more than 4 arcane spellcasting levels, and there was no divine caster operating above 6th level.
No TPKs. Only one PC death (though there were at least 5 close calls). No punches pulled by the DM, either.
Your problem is my feature.
Anyway, enough of this here- if you want to continue, blargney has it right. Fork this thread and post a link to it.
Which book is [Phantom Knight] from?
