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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pax" data-source="post: 1674772" data-attributes="member: 6875">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.</blockquote>

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