Vow of Poverty

[Mistwell]

Common sense is actually wrong a surprising amount of the time, particularly in a world of fantasy as abstract as D&D. As per your second paragraph, I believe you have it reversed. You are suggesting that additions be made to the text to simplify Vow of Poverty when in fact, no additions are needed. Additions are necessary to make the feat more robust, which is fine as long as they are fully realised as additions to the rules. Its when a "this can obviously work even though the rules say it cannot because common sense it does" attitude is adopted that there becomes room for arguments with players whose common sense tells them otherwise than the DM's.

So I argue that you can allow this outside of the rules, since it is not overpowered, but it needs to be seen as a departure from the written rules, rather than the ridiculous straw man you set up for me (although I'll admit it was kind of funny ).

You have stated that you believe that common sense trumps the rules, which is not how I would run things if I want a working system. I would instead use the less extreme view that the rules are the rules, and common sense allows us to make house rules and variants as we see fit (like allowing the use of a disguise for Vow of Poverty).

In your game then, it would be a house rule to charge for a "Prayer Beads: Karma Only" magic item I assume...since the rules as written clearly and unequivelently state it is free in the price formula for the item, and there is no errata on the item.

:\

 

[Rystil Arden]

In your game then, it would be a house rule to charge for a "Prayer Beads: Karma Only" magic item I assume...since the rules as written clearly and unequivelently state it is free in the price formula for the item, and there is no errata on the item.

:\

Yup, and a darn good house rule it is!

 

[Mistwell]

That would be a copyright violation since it isnt OGC. Buy the BoED

It's not friggen illegal. I'm fine with a "rules lawyering" discussion by folks here who are not lawyers...but not a LAW lawyering one. I wish non-lawyers here would stop claiming it is illegal to cite the text of a specific small paragraph in a book for the purposes of newsworthy (for that field) analysis and discussion. It specifically is NOT a violation of copyright law to do so, if that is indeed the only purpose of the quote. It might be a breach of the rules of EnWorld...but it is NOT a material breach of copyright law in my legal opinion.

 

[Mistwell]

Yup, and a darn good house rule it is!

No, really, it isn't. It's not a house rule. It's the actual rule itself. There is an unstated basic reasonableness in intepreting ALL written game rules (and all rules for that matter, and text in general). If you KNOW what the author meant by a typo, you read the rule as it was meant, and not with the typo. That isn't a houserule...it's the actual rule.

We all know what the author of the Prayer Beads meant by their formula, and that it was simply a typo error that caused it to come out that way.

A clean line would be "What would I have to inform my players about in advance concerning what our houserules will be, before they make their character". If your players are starting characters at higher levels, they very well might want a Prayer Beads: Karma Bead Only item. However, it is totally unecessary to inform them of the "houserule" concerning the price of that item, since ANYONE reading the rule knows what it means without having to claim it is a houserule to "fix" it. Nobody is going to honestly claim the item is free (or, in fact, that they get paid gold pieces by the DM for taking some other versions of the item in fact, since they have a NEGATIVE value if calculated as written). Everyone knows what the rule means. It isn't a houserule if everyone already knows it without having to ask simply by reading the rule.

 

[Rystil Arden]

It's not friggen illegal. I'm fine with a "rules lawyering" discussion by folks here who are not lawyers...but not a LAW lawyering one. I wish non-lawyers here would stop claiming it is illegal to cite the text of a specific small paragraph in a book for the purposes of newsworthy (for that field) analysis and discussion. It specifically is NOT a violation of copyright law to do so, if that is indeed the only purpose of the quote. It might be a breach of the rules of EnWorld...but it is NOT a material breach of copyright law in my legal opinion.

OK, then it seems I was mistaken. Happens every day. I still wouldn't post such a paragraph out of respect for the authors.

 

[Thanee]

How I see it:

A VoP character can carry anything he or she wants, pretty much, but generally not own or use it.

Using stuff (beyond what can be owned) is only allowed, if it is borrowed from someone else and only if the circumstances require the use. This would include the disguise example.

Bye
Thanee

 

[brehobit]

How I see it:

A VoP character can carry anything he or she wants, pretty much, but not own it.

Using stuff (beyond what can be owned) is only allowed, if it is borrowed from someone else and only if the circumstances require the use. This would include the disguise example.

Bye
Thanee

The way I generally rule it is that, other than the simple weapon, a VoP character can have pretty much anything that has no real value. So carrying leaves, a rough holy symbol (made of wood), tender, or a sharpened stone is all fine. My VoP sorc. carries a staff and a (very low end) small knife as well as whatever small bit of wood he is currently carving with the knife. (He often gives that small bit of woodwork to small children). House rule? I suppose. Certainly in the spirit. And he often carries a fair bit of cash (on his way to donate it).

 

[Jarrod]

I'm actually playing a VoP mage. Uses XP instead of cash to learn spells and components. Probably broken, but... it's _fun_.

I always saw the VoP as a way to explicitly not depend on material objects. That, at any point, you could lose _everything_ and not mind at all. It's ownership more in the mental sense than in how other people perceive you. Kinda reminds me of the line from Heat (which I'm going to mangle), which can be condensed to "always be willing to walk away and leave it all behind".

Though some stuff must be in there only for game balance. You can drink a potion handed to you by someone else, but not use a scroll to help someone else. Very odd.

 

[werk]

Common sense trumps "the rules", by which I mean an overly rigid adherence to a literal reading of the rules. In general, I view over-dependence on "the rules as written" as a sign that a person really does not know how to make the game work in a flexible setting.

I disagree. I believe that the rules are generally not realism or 'common sense' based, and when you try to make the fantasy game framework more 'real' it tends to confound everything and either throws off balance (to one extreme or the other) or causes an overall trainwreck that you have to imagine your way out of (it was all a bad dream, Bobby's in the shower).

Second to that, I'm no rules lawyer, and have no problem with on-the-fly rulings and house rules so long as they fit well in the system, not just because they make more sense to me or the players. I'm in this rules forum so I can be better prepared to run game correctly or as designed, not to argue the realism of game mechanics...which IMO is an exercise in futility.

.02

 

[Mistwell]

This debate seems to revolve around the definition of "use of a material posession".

I re-read the printed rule for the vow (which is in two different places in the book, with references to each), and it specifically says you can beg an expensive material componant from your companion for use in your spell without violating the vow. Part of the written justification for this is that "the person giving up the expensive componant will benefit from the party having the spell cast on its member(s)" (I am writing that from memory, so it is not an exact quote). So, apparently, the game considers "use" of a material possession to be something more than just a single time use of someone elses material possession for the benefit of the party, but more a long-term use, at least for certain types of items.

It also specifically says that you do in fact get your share of the treasure, but just donate it to charity...implying that you can carry such items without violating the "use" rule.

You can own and use ANY simple weapons (even more than one), as long as they are non magical and not masterwork (and I think by implication not made of a special material like darkwood). You can also use ANY simple clothing, which I take to mean any of the clothing options that a player can start with for free (as they are all just variations on relatively simple clothing in their manufacture, though of varying degrees of color and shape and size and composition).

Finally, the rule seems to stress the use of MAGICAL items as being much more prohibited than non magical items. The author goes to great lengths to mention the details of the magic item requirement, and seems to contrast them to the strictness implied by the non-magic item use rules.

So, I would conclude that you use any simple clothing and any simple weapon in your disguise, even if you own those items, without breaking the vow. You can also beg additional non-magical portions of a disguise for single use of the skill, if necessary and for the benefit of the party. In other words, if you could get past the gate guard by possing as a simple peasant under arrest, then you would likely choose that disguise over using the captured elaborate uniform of a guard to get past the gate. However, if the best way past requires the use of a captured non-magical guard uniform that one of your other party members has, you can beg the use of that uniform for the single purpose of getting past the gate. You cannot, however, use the uniform long term throughout the castle-based adventure and just give it back at the end of the adventure, as that would seem to violate the implied no-long-term-use portion of the vow.