Is Vow of Poverty broken?

Well I've done that and am currently awaiting a response, as I've posted SEVERAL links on the matter that it simply doesn't compare to your average adventurer in a standard campaign. Not to mention he's allowing us to be specific in our crafting proficiencies (he's even allowing us to take feats that would allow low level characters the ability to craft major artifacts)

Thanks for the advice Dandu ^^
 

log in or register to remove this ad

Here's a list of what VoP provides, and what its equivalents would essentially be:

AC bonus: At 18th level, this maxes out at +10 AC. This is the equivalent of +1 Heavy Plate (Races of Stone additional armor), so 3,000 gp, plus another +1 bonus (I think +1) to work against Brilliant Energy, so 6,000gp.

Extra feats: Some would call the extra feats priceless, but we all know the effects of many, many feats can be had for coin. For instance, getting the benefits of the Mobility feat only requires a +1 enhancement on light armor. The other end of this spectrum is metamagic rods which go up to 170,000 GP in the DMG, and likely higher to account for Persist being a +6 modifier. If the character has VoP at first level, he'll gain 11 more Exalted feats over his non-epic career. This could mean the feats are worth as little as 33,000 (11x3,000) or go into the millions. We'll get back to this another time, maybe in my own guide.

Permanent Endure Elements: Putting this on a ring would cost 1,000 gp per the custom item creation rules in the DMG, page 285.

Exalted Strike: The cost of a +5 weapon is 50,000 gp. Toss in the Good alignment for another +1, making it +6 for 72,000 gp. This applies to all weapons wielded by the person, so going TWF might raise this to 144,000.

Sustenance: Sustaining Spoon costs 5,400 gp.

Deflection: +3 Ring of Protection costs 18,000 gp.

Resistance: +3 Cloak of Resistance costs 9,000 gp.

Ability Score Enhancement: The total costs for +8, +6, +4, +2 comes to 120,000 gp.

Natural Armor: +2 Amulet of Natural Armor costs 8,000 gp.

Mind Shielding: This one I'm mostly clueless on actually. I'm not familiar with any items or spells that block detect thoughts, discern lies, or "detect alignment."

Damage Reduction: 10/evil at 19th level. I'll come back to this.

Greater Sustenance: No longer need to breathe can probably be subbed by using Necklace of Adaptation, so 9,000 gp.

Energy Resistance: 15 to acid, cold, electricity, fire, and sonic energy. Based upon the various resistance enhancements for armors, I'd say 30k is reasonable for 15. Multiply by five for 15 res to all those energies, so 150,000 gp.

Freedom of Movement: Ring of Freedom of Movement costs 40,000 gp.

Regeneration: I'm not sure whether healing at 1 point per level per hour instead of per day is worth noting, especially for getting this wonderful ability at 17th level.

True Seeing: Using the DMG rules for custom items, gaining continuous True Seeing would cost 90,000 gp.

Lowballing the combined total comes out to 561,400 gp, and I say lowballing because I'm not sure of certain equivalencies. As per DMG 135, a 20th level character is expected to accrue wealth of around 760,000 gp. If going by its monetary "value," VoP so far is worse than having the actual wealth come normally.

Even if it's equivalent money-wise, the fact is the character has to stick to the rules or else lose the bonuses permanently means it's generally underpowered. Exalted feats in general require the character to be PITA Good, so they're definitely restrictive at the very least, but can become hampering.
 
Last edited:


Looks like he's not going to allow it, no matter how underpowered it is so. . . Oh well, back to the drawing board! Thanks everyone for the advice!
 

AC bonus: At 18th level, this maxes out at +10 AC. This is the equivalent of +1 Heavy Plate (Races of Stone additional armor), so 3,000 gp, plus another +1 bonus (I think +1) to work against Brilliant Energy, so 6,000gp.
With the lack of Armor Check Penalty and Arcane Spell Failure, it's more in line with Bracers of Armor than it is with Heavy Plate. If you consider blocking incorporeal touch attacks to be in line with stopping Brilliant Energy, this is effectively +10 Bracers of Armor.
Mind Shielding: This one I'm mostly clueless on actually. I'm not familiar with any items or spells that block detect thoughts, discern lies, or "detect alignment."
It's the same wording as the Ring of Mind Shielding at 8,000 gp.
Regeneration: I'm not sure whether healing at 1 point per level per hour instead of per day is worth noting, especially for getting this wonderful ability at 17th level.
The Ring of Regeneration is sorely overpriced at 90,000 gp. Do note, though, that at this point you've got the equivalent of 3 or 4 rings on....
 

Looks like he's not going to allow it, no matter how underpowered it is so. . . Oh well, back to the drawing board! Thanks everyone for the advice!
What we should do is figure out what point values he assigns to various abilities and bring a little shock and awe to the table.
 


Don't play a monk in such a game!

Any system that tries to put values on class features to have you buy them will invariably end up screwing over the monk. For one thing, no matter how expensive spellcasting is made, I can guarantee you it will be a bargain. Even if the DM tries to assign different costs based on value, he probably won't differentiate them enough, and if he's not very well versed in the game mechanics, will look at all the monk's class features and think they're more impressive than they actually are. Finally, these sorts of systems seldom GIVE you points for handicapping yourself. You'll get docked points for an unarmed damage progression and wisdom to AC, but won't get any points at all for having to fight unarmed and unarmored in the first place! Hint: Even with the monk stuff, your fighting style is still super underpowered, it's just that now you're paying for the honor of being underpowered!

IIRC, someone once tried to turn the D&D class features into point values for such a system and found that the monk's class features utterly destroyed the points scale. Because of the fallacies listed above.

Play a spellcaster. A druid can rip crap apart with wildshape and it almost is like punching, except you do better damage and having spellcasting to fall back on, too.
 



Pets & Sidekicks

Remove ads

Top