Rystil Arden said:
The rules say that you need to pay the market price for any spell cast on your character--unless of course you just hand-wave and allow everyone to take free wishes. To allow a VoP character to have the wishes and no one else is an inherit violation of the concept of Vow of Poverty--the point of the feat is that it is supposed to be a balanced way to void yourself from wealth, so the VoP character can be treated the same as characters with wealth and items in all ways except for treasure distribution thanks to their bonuses. You are giving the VoP character additional bonuses that are not provided by the feat that you have told me they should get and other characters should not, which is inherently unfair and unbalanced. If the feat-designer thought that the VoP character should be receiving inherent bonuses automatically, then by golly, he'd have put that into the list of powers for the feat
This is a big load of nothing. The rules give guidelines about how much an npc could charge for the spell, but there could be other mitigating circumstances. There is no free wish going on anywhere, nor have I said that there is at any time as far as I can tell.
Would you disallow a vop character from having permanent spells? how about instantaneous spells cast on them? If both of those are ok then I'd have to say that you are making up artificial boundaries.
If you feel it is unfair or unbalanced that is up to you, but this is the rules forum. Of course, given the limitations of the vop character I dont feel that it is either.
And to nail: again, I did not say free wishes. Trading one service for another seems fair to me. Bartering has always been a good way to go in places where money is not allowed. Also, there isnt much one can actually do to thank the vop character directly (as in gifting). So, with options limited at some point over the course of 30 levels I do not see this as overwhelming.
Still, even without all of that, I personally wouldnt care if someone did write a million wishes into their background that they did get for free, so long as they have no useful impact now. They could say that every year they cast a wish to become one year younger and have been doing this for a hundred years. What does it do to the game? nothing really, they get to say they have been around longer. Woo. They dont get any extra benefits so why should it have an actual cost?
Some of the people argueing here strike me as the same kind of dm I heard about awhile back.. the player wanted to get into a prc which required having to have made a magic item at some point in the past. The player just wanted it to be part of his background but the dm said no, every item you have made counts against the exp I have just given you. Complete foolishness in my eyes. If the person doesnt have the item now there isnt any reason to charge them exp for it. They had all of the feats, they were starting at a decently high level, I bet at some point in time they might have just used them. If they dont have it now it shouldnt count against wealth or exp loss so long ago.
Whatever works for each campaign though I suppose. But, as my comment earlier (no matter how foolish nail might think it), it is a valid interpretation and is 'not' without cost. None of the arguements I have put forth for it to work have been refuted with more than, 'well, I wouldnt do it that way and I dont think anyone else should either', but that isnt helpful.
If you want your vop characters to be immune to spells with durations longer than X (and we have no idea how long or short X is, it seems to be defined at random by the people going against the idea) then change it in your game.