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<blockquote data-quote="Pax" data-source="post: 1666229" data-attributes="member: 6875">I concur, 100%.&nbsp; I agree.&nbsp; Origionally, I saw the Vow of Poverty and thought to myself, &quot;no way in the nine hells is that anything but grossly overpowered!&quot;&nbsp; Then I built Demetian, an epic-level Ascetic Druid/Warshaper/Shifter in the Exodus.&nbsp; And learned that, really, the Vow is potentially a bit underpowered in some key ways.&nbsp; At first, you see, I'd stripped out the bonus feats entirely - on the basis of &quot;ix-nay on the wishing for more wishes&quot;, IOW, &quot;no feat should give you more feats later&quot;.&nbsp; I've put the bonus feats back in, slightly watered down (only one bonus feat per five levels, starting at 5th level), and added inherent bonusses ('cause it's an arena, and tomes/manuals are a &quot;goes without question&quot; staple anyway).&nbsp; At present, it's balanced enough that in most campaigns, I'd have no problem with the feat as I've slightly reworked it.&nbsp; Or for simplicity's sake, I'd also happily let a player use the version in the BoED, as-printed, without too much worry about it being unbalanced.&nbsp; IOW ... as you suggest, playtesting disproved that first impression.&nbsp; The Vow of Poverty is (surprisingly enough) reasonably well-balanced for the average, by-the-book campaign.&nbsp; And being, now, a multi-year veteran of GMing Arena style campaigns DOEs give me one advantage, IMO, when it comes to evaluating most feats, spells, etc: I'm accustomed to seeing the worst possible abuses of things, the first time I look at them.&nbsp; In the case of PRactised Spellcaster, the WORST abuse I can see is the splash-of-spellcasting model [Fighter(x)/Spellcaster(1 or 2)], or the Cleric(5)/Wizard(5)/Mystic Theurge(10) with dual Practised Spellcaster feats, one per &quot;type&quot; of spellcaster ...&nbsp; ... and neither of those &quot;abuses&quot; strikes me as especially, well, abusive.&nbsp; Useful, yes.&nbsp; Desireable, yes.&nbsp; Must-have, you're-an-idiot-if-you-don't-do-this?&nbsp; Hardly.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Pax, post: 1666229, member: 6875"] I concur, 100%. I agree. Origionally, I saw the Vow of Poverty and thought to myself, "no way in the nine hells is that anything [i]but[/i] grossly overpowered!" Then I built Demetian, an epic-level Ascetic Druid/Warshaper/Shifter in the Exodus. And learned that, really, the Vow is potentially a bit [b]underpowered[/b] in some key ways. At first, you see, I'd stripped out the bonus feats entirely - on the basis of "ix-nay on the wishing for more wishes", IOW, "no feat should give you more feats later". I've put the bonus feats back in, slightly watered down (only one bonus feat per five levels, starting at 5th level), and added inherent bonusses ('cause it's an arena, and tomes/manuals are a "goes without question" staple [i]anyway[/i]). At present, it's balanced enough that in most campaigns, I'd have no problem with the feat as I've slightly reworked it. Or for simplicity's sake, I'd also happily let a player use the version in the BoED, as-printed, without too much worry about it being unbalanced. IOW ... as you suggest, playtesting disproved that first impression. The Vow of Poverty [i]is[/i] (surprisingly enough) reasonably well-balanced for the average, by-the-book campaign. And being, now, a multi-year veteran of GMing Arena style campaigns DOEs give me one advantage, IMO, when it comes to evaluating most feats, spells, etc: I'm accustomed to seeing the worst possible abuses of things, the first time I look at them. In the case of PRactised Spellcaster, the WORST abuse I can see is the splash-of-spellcasting model [Fighter(x)/Spellcaster(1 or 2)], or the Cleric(5)/Wizard(5)/Mystic Theurge(10) with dual Practised Spellcaster feats, one per "type" of spellcaster ... ... and neither of those "abuses" strikes me as especially, well, [i]abusive[/i]. Useful, yes. Desireable, yes. Must-have, you're-an-idiot-if-you-don't-do-this? Hardly. [/QUOTE]

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