Paladin/Monk

[Kavok]

Anyone have good ideas for feats/prestige classes, so on for a paladin/monk combo using Vow of Poverty?

I can't use any sort of martial weapon. Are there any good prestige classes that give monk and paladin ability progression?

Thanks.

 

[Ceska]

The feat Ascetic Knight from CAdv comes to mind. With this feat your paladin and monk levels stack for determining the unarmed damage and your smite evil extra damage.
Since you have the VoP, you can think about using a variant class ability that displaces your spellcasting ability. You won´t use your spells, because you don´t have an Divine Focus. Unearthed Arcana and Complete Champion have variants for paladins without divine spells.

 

[Aus_Snow]

edit --- never mind. what they said. . .

 

[eamon]

A Divine Focus is merely an item with some spiritual significance to you, which usually is a simple disc. It's certainly not against the spirit of the vow of poverty to own one I think. To be extra conservative, perhaps you could use your walking stick (explicitly allowed) or your hat (symbolizing your poverty), or some particularly ragged rag (wrapped around your wrists?) as divine focus.

Vow of Poverty is about roleplaying, and focusing on divinity via some (almost) worthless trinket shouldn't be considered breaking the Vow.

 

[Ceska]

VoP states exactly the items you are allowed to have and a holy symbol is not on the list.

Holy symbol, wooden 1 gp
Holy symbol, silver 25 gp

This are the costs of holy symbols from the SRD.

When you follow the VoP, you cannot have a holy symbol. Your GM may allow it, but most GM´s I know don´t.

 

[Darklone]

Ascetic Knight doesn't work too well with VoP IIRC since the feat is more for the armored knight who uses additional unarmed attacks.

 

[Claudius Gaius]

Monk or paladin multiclassing is a pretty narrow segment of the material available to start with, combining both with Vow of Poverty gets you down to virtually nothing. If you want to customize to that extent, you may be best off either writing up your own ideas and trying to get the game master to approve, going to a customize-your-own-class system, such as using a d20 modern class, or going to a full point-buy system like Eclipse (which is all we use any more, and available as shareware to boot).

 

[Kavok]

Ascetic Knight sounds pretty good, any other feats or prestige classes that mix unarmed damage, smite evil, and lay on hands?

Not all divine spells require a divine focus, and im allowed having a spell component pouch. I think you can cast Cure spells without a divine focus.

 

[szilard]

Hmmm.... one strange (and possibly suboptimal, yet interesting) option:

Toss in a level of Sorcerer and the Ascetic Mage feat before you move into Paladin. Pick up Mage Armor and use your Charisma instead of Wisdom when calculating AC. Get your Charisma as high as possible - with VoP that should be pretty darn high.

-Stuart

 

[Klaus]

Argent Fist (Faiths of Eberron) is a Prestige Class for paladin/monks.