BoED -- Vow of Poverty

[Zimri]

If I may ask a question myself: how do you feel, in D&D, about a VoP character who lives in the lap of luxury? Perhaps the character is the good friend of a king or baron, and that friend lavishes him with expensive gifts, always pays for him to eat the best food and live under the most opulent conditions.

Would you still consider such a character to be faithfully adhering to his Vow of Poverty? Personally, I would not. He's living a wealthy life, even if he doesn't own any of the wealth he's taking advantage of, and that's not enough for a god to grant you a boatload of special powers. A Vow of Poverty is about living humbly, not about making sure you don't own any of the luxuries you enjoy.

Or so I rule it in my game.

If my friend is a lord/baron/ruler/wealthy whatever and I am providing him spiritual/moral counsel and he/she decides to keep me close at hand (in his house and dining hall) so I can provide worthy council/protection and in so doing I live in/on his estate, and need to dress the part of advisor wearing silk or whatnot, and need to eat meals with her/him so long as I OWN and MAKE DECISIONS regarding any of that wealth, and still maintain contributions to the poor, and I do not allow his generousity to sway any advice I give him, or any admonitions I might give him regarding his actions then I wouldn't have any issues.

Bearing in mind that at any time he can choose to throw me out, and I have nothing, or I may choose to leave if he acts in ways that break my world view but I will leave with NOTHING.

Same thing if I have a suitor that wants to take me to a ball, he will have to get me appropriate attire. I can't keep it afterwards (heck odds are it'll be ripped or something by the end).

 

[Zimri]

have I mentioned I hate lag

 

[Zimri]

Lag and impatience induced multipost sorry

 

[RigaMortus]

Bearing in mind that at any time he can choose to throw me out, and I have nothing, or I may choose to leave if he acts in ways that break my world view but I will leave with NOTHING.

So if your good friend, the king, throws you out of his house, you will have nothing. That's what you just said, right? Which implies that, so long as you stay in his house, you have... SOMETHING?

 

[RigaMortus]

If I may ask a question myself: how do you feel, in D&D, about a VoP character who lives in the lap of luxury? Perhaps the character is the good friend of a king or baron, and that friend lavishes him with expensive gifts, always pays for him to eat the best food and live under the most opulent conditions.

Does anyone else have a mental picture Kato Kaelin (OJ Simpson's infamous "house guest")? Of course, his poverty wasn't so much a Vow as a matter of circumstance, heh.

 

[Zimri]

If I am living with a poor hermit and he throws me out or I leave I also leave with nothing.

Sure I had something I had companionship, shelter, and I was lent the tools with which to do a favour for a person that wanted that favour done. None of it do I carry with me. So long as that character has broken no other vows they have taken I still see no issue.

 

[RigaMortus]

Just because the king offers you a room, offers you his finest food and drink, and offers you his fastest horse in exchange for your good services, does not mean you have to accept it. But most importantly, it means that you SHOULD'T accept it. That's the whole point of Vow of Poverty. To live a life of poverty.

 

[Elric]

If you will make Vow of Poverty into the most incredible rules nightmare ever, don't use it. If your character finds a holy relic to his deity and can't even pick it up because he has sworn a vow of poverty, something weird is probably going on. If your VoP character can't get raised from the dead because those spells cost money and can't do anything else either (Vow of Being an Inanimate Object, to borrow a phrase from DM_Matt), well, natural selection say it won't matter if VoP is allowed in the game or not.

 

[Pax]

In the case of the king - IMO an ascetic would refuse silks (more than required), refuse all but the simplest of meals on all but "Occasions of State" (and would then eat only what was needed not to be hungry), and would insist on quartering no better than the castle servants.

But if the King is truly the ascetic's friend ... he wouln't offer silks, jewels, and luxuries. He'd offer fine linens and woolens (just nice enough not to offend the nobility and/or foreign dignitaries), a small but warm room with plain furnishings (perhaps the only extravagence being a complete copy of the proper holy scripture for the ascetic's religion), a seat in the dining hall for dinner of course, but with special instructions to the cook to provide muchplainer fare, and so on.

And probably, would also offer to spend the rest of what the position would NORMALLY have cost the King to hire a non-ascetic for, on doing some sort of good works for the involuntarily poor. Open soup kitchens in the capital city, open what would essentially be some homeless shelters ("hostelries for those lacking alternate shelter", or whatever), aid and assistance for the borderline-poor to keep their homes in reasonable repair (fix leaking roofs, etc).

Heck, a city-wide working sewer system - rather than just one in the wealthiest parts of town - road improvements in the poorer sections of the city, better patrolling to keep down banditry in the countryside in areas the nobles don't care as much about, etc.

The ascetic lives little better than if he were wearing rough-spun woolens, sleeping in whatever corner of whatever home or inn was allowed him by kind and generous souls, and eating discarded bread crusts and whatever else he could beg for.

And a lot of poor people benefit in two ways from the King's actions - directly from the King's hand, in the form of those soup kitchens or whatever ... and indirectly, as other nobles see the King's example of generousity, and maybe, just maybe, follow suit with some generousity of their own.

The point of the Vow of Poverty is not to romanticise and idealise the status of the destitute. It is to show that there is more to life than merely accumulating more and more wealth; that one doesn't NEED, on any given day, any more than the one change of clothes on one's body, enough food and drink to last the day, and the goodwill of one's fellow man/elf/etc.

And the only reason it's quantified in the BoED, is to make such a role-playing choice, a viable option in comparison with those dripping with gobs and gobs of wealth in the form of the typical range of magic items carried by most non-ascetic adventurers.

 

[Zimri]

So a king/prince/aristocrat who wants me to attend a ball to 1) provide for his protection, and 2) to flirt my way into information, is out of luck. I will never fit in to the right conversations or look the part unless he provides my "disguise" but then my vow is broken.

Explain then who provided Mother Theresa with her clothes and Ghandi with his finer "diplomatic" robes.

Ohh wait I can't posess magical weapons, but my unarmed attack is considered magical and VoP add to that enhanement which means VoP breaks itself.

Ohh look the king is sending us off across the sea on his yacht to rescue his daughter. Everyone else gets to sleep on the ship we'll make an extra raft and tether it to the back of the main boat for the VoP.

Ohh the party used a gondsman constructed portal to Lantan yeah I'll be there in a year or two please keep the fight waiting for me.

Not to mention the fact that most likely by staying in the palace/manor house I can better effect change that will benefit the poor.