Vop vs spell casting materials

Nac_Mac_Feegle said:
People seem to be awfully pedantic about VoP, I would go as far to say, thier argumentative nature is so disruptive that the BoED isnt for them, given the maturity required to adapt it to your setting.

Interesting statement.

from the VoP (previously posted by someone else

Originally Posted by BoED p.48
you must not own or use any material posessions, with the following exceptions: You may carry ordinary (neither magic nor masterwork) simple weapons, usually just a quarterstaff that serves as a walking stick. You may wear simple clothes (usually just a homespun robe, possibly also including a hat and sandals) with no magical properties. You may carry enough food to sustain you for one day in a simple (nonmagical) sack or bag. You may carry and use a spell component pouch. You may not use any magic item of any sort, though you can benefit from magic items used on your behalf ...

A fighter gets a sword from VoP, but its cant be masterworked or anything else, putting the Kensai PrC right out the picture. He gets an AC bonus as he levels from the VoP so he doesnt need armour, which is expressely forbidden by VoP anyway.

Actually the text says "simple" weapons. That is a classification of weapons and excludes all martial and exotic ones.

A 20th level monk, wiht a VoP in simple robes is wearing a fortune, why? because his deeds will be so legendary, people will pay extreme amounts of money to own something he/she wore, now how do you adjudicate that?.

?? Does it have a price listed? The items people are talking about have specific prices listed in the books and are not subject to role-playing, except for possibly bargaining and barter and house-rules (as is always the case)

Your allowed to carry a days worth of food and drink, and suddenly your in a famine striken country, that food/drink is suddenly worth 10 times its amount.

Subjective totally. Again it isn't an issue. They are also allowed to drink from a potion even though they can't possess one.

A monks weapons are only exotic to non monks, otherwise 90% of monk weapons are simple weapons (what could be more simple than 2 pieces of wood put together at right angles)

Incorrect statement. A monk's weapons are always exotic (well some of them like Sais, etc. are) - monks are proficient in them. This proficiency does not change the type of weapon they are.

There is absolutely no reason why any class cannot take the VoP, and still be effective, the trick here is to understand what the vow means, understand its spirirt, and work within those guidlines.

This is the house-rule point and is of course always applicable.

To discount the spellbook for a mage is a house rule, nothing more, and if you make that call, then thats how it is for your world, but there are plenty of reason, within the spirit of the vow, as to why a mage might have a spellbook, and still donate all his money to charity, and only carry with him what he needs to survive (food, drink, clothing and a spellbook)

Anything that is within the spirit of the rules is not RAW but instead an interpretation and is subject to house-rules.

If you want to be RAW about it, the rules themselves are wrong, because you would not be anything but a monk with VoP, because a true VoP person would carry no gear at all, no spell component pouch, no simple weapon, nothing, a true VoP is to forsake ALL material possesions, so an adventuring VoP is almost anthema to the idea of VoP, except for perhaps the monk, or the unarmed fighter.

Rules aren't wrong ;) . They can be changed however (again see house rules).

In essence, VoP would be an NPC peasant only thing, but its not, its been done to add a different flavour/characetr concept, and therefore, the idea of VoP iteself has been broken before it starts by allowing simple weapons and spell pouches, so to argue you may have nothing else because it doesnt follow VoP by RAW is an exercise in futility.

Sorry to sound so aggresive, but it strikes me that some poeple are being deliberately obtrusive about the RAW of VoP, or simply just dont get it. But if you dont get it, dont use it.

Feegle Out :cool:

Then the question shouldn't have been brought up on the rules forums. All discussion here are first coming from the RAW. When there are questions as to what it says that is where people start to insert their "opinons" and house-rules.
 

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Infiniti2000 said:
Spell Mastery only helps when the spellbook is lost. A wizard cannot choose any spells for spell mastery that he doesn't already know, so he'll still fill up the spellbook, but now with useless spells. At least a normal wizard could sell that spellbook, but only if the DM considered it valuable. ;)


It does not state anywhere that a wizard only knows the spells contained in his spellbook. More specifically it doesn't state that he muct record them into his spellbook in order to know them.

He knows the spells he learns.

If he doesn't ahve them written down he can't memorize them (ie.e., prepare them) for casting.

If he takes Spell mastery he can.

But yes the feat was obviously desgned to cover a wizard "losing" his spellbook but that does not mean it does not have other uses, as do quite a lot of things in the rules.
 

Infiniti2000 said:
Feegle, on the other hand, the stuff from the BoED was intended to be use with certain role-playing consequences, and in the case of VoP, quite severe consequences. When you just ignore those role-playing guidelines, you're not handling the material very well. It seems like you're looking at the BoED as a means of acquiring very powerful abilities while trying to ignore the restrictions as much as possible. I'd say you were distorting the intent of the feat, not trying to be creative about it.

A wizard is just not a viable VoP concept.

In this case you are perfectly correct, when you look at the bonus' a VoP character gets, it almost screams of a melee class, spellcasters using defense spells stacked with VoP bonus' is quite extreme, but maybe not as extreme as a Monk

My Vop Monk stacked his abilitiy scores he got from VoP in this order

Wisdom/Dexterity/Constitution/Strength

HIs AC got ridiculous for a robe wearing class, as his widsom bonus stacked wiht dex bonus to AC, his stunning fist got extremely powerful, he was very very good, and I would say, he was better off 90% of the time than an equal level character with non-vop, the only place he fell down was on incorporeal creatures, but his number of attacks almost made up for it.

If a mage started of wiht intelligence 16, by 20th lvl via VoP and putting all his level ability scores into intelligence, he would have 28 or 30 intelligence, now I tried a speculative sorceror.

I planned humna from level 1, so I could VoP straight away, and my prestige class i would aim for would be dragon disciple, and gave myself the generous charisma of 18 to start wiht, at 20 my charisma from 10 sorceror/10 dragon disciple wiht VoP would be 32, the amount of extra spells was staggering, and perhaps, to unbalancing

I would still like to try it sometime, but I think the monk was already to good.

I do agree its to add flavour, and therefore needs to be looked at in that light, but a lot of the arguments over "value" are niether here nor there, like beauty, value is also in the eye of the beholder (or eyes :) )

Feegle Out :cool:
 

This is how I see vop broken down.

No magic Items.

No expensive material components of any value (gold).

No armor.

No highly usefull weapons. If i was a dm i would let a player use all simple weapons (except for cross bow) i would let a vop charicter use a long sword (becuse i see it equal to a mace event though one is simple, and one is martial), but not a great sword or bastard sword or any exotic weapon. I would let the charicter perhaps use any weapon that they have proficency in becuse of race.

I would let clarics and druids have a DF
 

You could always have the wizard tattoo spells onto his body....That would fit with the VoP as I see it, and also (IMC) limit the number of spell levels that the wizard could so acquire.


RC
 

Infiniti2000 said:
And, I've noticed that no one is arguing that the wizard can buy or obtain another spellbook an people have even said that once his is lost, he's done for.

I've never said that. I'd have no problem letting a VoP Wizard buy a second 15gp spellbook anymore than I'd have a problem letting him buy a replacement spell component pouch for 10pg (or however much they cost).

Again, that's just me. ;)

I actually like Li Shenron's idea:

However... why not letting the player play a variant wizard who uses a spellbook made with recycled/biological material? He could have devised a scribe method based on certain natural substances which in fact may be worth nothing, but still possess the qualities to hold magical inscriptions. He may be forbidden to copy spells into his spellbook (because that would have a cost), and so would others to copy from his own, and his spellbook would be also worth zero for anyone else except himself.
 

Raven Crowking said:
You could always have the wizard tattoo spells onto his body....That would fit with the VoP as I see it, and also (IMC) limit the number of spell levels that the wizard could so acquire.


RC

I suggest a monk level or 2 for when you get 9th level spells, your going to need the flexability to tattoo the only areas of your body left :)

Fighter : Whys the mage drops his pants and shoved his head between his legs
Cleric : He just learnt "Finger of death" and its the only available space he had left to put it
Fighter : Ew
Rogue : Ew
Druid : Ew

and so on

Seroiusly though, some would still argue that you need ink etc to write the tattoo, and therby violate the RAW of VoP again.

I realise a lot of VoP is considered house rules, but when you take a concept and try to make rules for it, such as both books, Vile Darkness and Exalted Deeds, the spirirt of the rules is intrinsic, and cant just be dismissed as house rules so people cant discuss them here, both books are not RAW manuals, but flavour/ideas books, and as such, cn and should be discussed here in the rules section.

I firmly believe the guys who wrote these books may have to rethink some of thier material, a they havent obviously taken into account the ingenuity of players, and the massive grey areas thrown up when such simple questions like "Spell Books" come about.

I do agree wiht some posters that some classes benefit more than other from VoP, and some classes will find it extremely hard to play (like the mage in this example) but I dont think any class should be excluded from VoP, just means more work/conceptualisation on the part of both DM and Player, but I think it could work, by outright banning a class requirement (spell book) you are saying that in no way ever, could a wizard walk the path of freedom from worldy concerns.

Maybe let the wizard take a feat of "Photographic Memory" he still has to re-learn the spells each day (different from the sorcerors spontaneous casting of anything he knows) stipulating how many times he has channeled himeself to each spell (how can you actually memorise magic missile more than once?) so he is still limited to a certain number of spells each day.

It does away with a spell book, he of course wont be able to take VoP until 3rd level (!st levle feats : Sacred Vow & Photogaphic Memory) but with the stipulation that he must live to a Vow of Poverty from 1st level. It would be enough of a hinderance to prove his conviction, but his VoP benefits wont kick in till 3rd level

Feegle Out :cool:
 

irdeggman said:
It does not state anywhere that a wizard only knows the spells contained in his spellbook. More specifically it doesn't state that he muct record them into his spellbook in order to know them.

He knows the spells he learns.
The two free spells per level must be written into the spellbook, making this line of thinking interesting, but irrelevant for the current topic. "Each time a character attains a new wizard level, she gains two spells of her choice to add to her spellbook." So, the wizard can't learn new spells because he can't use scrolls or captured spellbooks and the two free spells must be written into the spellbook. Of course, if you let the wizard actually use scrolls and captured spellbooks, you might as well let him keep them.

irdeggman said:
If he doesn't ahve them written down he can't memorize them (ie.e., prepare them) for casting.
True. Also, if he doesn't have them written down in his spellbook, he can't even prepare them from someone else's spellbook. "A wizard can use a borrowed spellbook to prepare a spell she already knows and has recorded in her own spellbook..."

irdeggman said:
If he takes Spell mastery he can.
I agree, but getting to the point of learning a spell is impossible with VoP.

irdeggman said:
But yes the feat was obviously desgned to cover a wizard "losing" his spellbook but that does not mean it does not have other uses, as do quite a lot of things in the rules.
I disagree in this particular instance, but it's off-topic. IMO, Spell Mastery is completely useless as a feat for a wizard.
 

Dimwhit said:
I've never said that. I'd have no problem letting a VoP Wizard buy a second 15gp spellbook anymore than I'd have a problem letting him buy a replacement spell component pouch for 10pg (or however much they cost).
Consider that a 15gp spellbook is about a half year's salary for the common untrained laborer. How is it even possible to consider such a highly valued item (half a year's salary) and "poverty" in the same sentence?
 

Infiniti2000 said:
Consider that a 15gp spellbook is about a half year's salary for the common untrained laborer. How is it even possible to consider such a highly valued item (half a year's salary) and "poverty" in the same sentence?
A spell component pouch is two-months salary for an untrained laborer. Why would you consider that and poverty in the same sentence?
 

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