Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder Paladins and the Vow of Poverty: Divine Bond?

[Mistah J]

Quick question:


A paladin has the infamous Vow of Poverty feat. At 5th level, she gets the Divine Bond ability and chooses to take the celestial spirit over the divine mount.

She can now enhance her weapon, let's use the example from the VoP: a quarterstaff - but does she now own a magic weapon? Does the divine bond ruin her vow by RAW? What if she just imbued her unarmed strike?

I don't want to stir the hornet's nest that this feat contains, but I am curious as to whether people would consider this to be breaking the intent of the vow or some other kind of "loophole" that now exists with the mixing of Pathfinder and 3.5

Thoughts?

 

[Drowbane]

Disclaimer: I don't have PF in front of me

My answer would be no. Divine Bond is a class feature, that does not benefit someone else you pass the "enhanced" staff to, correct? If anything it could be viewed as an improvement on the blessings from the original Vow.

Then again, VoPoverty already gives an enchancement bonus to any (simple and unarmed?) weapons you use.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

My answer would be no. Divine Bond is a class feature, that does not benefit someone else you pass the "enhanced" staff to, correct? If anything it could be viewed as an improvement on the blessings from the original Vow.

I agree with this. You're not actually adding any value to the weapon, it only gains the benefits in your hands. It's certainly less questionable than a VoP caster using Magic Weapon on himself or whoever wanted it, and AFAIK almost all DMs would allow that.

Then again, VoPoverty already gives an enchancement bonus to any (simple and unarmed?) weapons you use.

The Divine Blessing explicitly says it can stack on top of a weapon's existing bonuses, so say you had +3 of Paladin bonuses and a +4 sword. You could increase it to +5 and make it Holy, for example. Seems fine to let it funtion like this with the Vow's enhancement bonuses, especially since VoP's enhancement porgression is so much slower than a typical character if he can pay to upgrade the weapon.