D&D 3E/3.5 Coming back to D&D after 15 years.... Vow of poverty problems (3.5)

[NuSair]

A group of friends convinced me to get back into running a game after 15 years away from D&D (left to play Rolemaster, which I felt had more of what I was looking for in a game).

One of the guys in the group is playing a Druid with a wolf animal companion and has taken the Vow of Poverty feat.

Normally, I run a low magic/magic item campaign- but here was a druid with his pet up going toe to toe out damaging everyone in the party. His bonus to hit and damage was insane.

So, I gave the other characters in the party a hefty boost and the creatures as well..... question is... can the druid/vow of poverty junk keep up as the game goes on...

thought/ideas/experiences?

 

[Ahnehnois]

VoP is so specific it's hard to balance. If you're trying to run a low-magic game, you should reduce the benefits considerably.

Or you could decide that the animal companion is property and has value (not an unreasonable interpretation), and tell the druid he has to give that up.

Or just ban the feat.

I mean, in principle, it doesn't make much sense for someone who is already a druid to take a vow against material wealth. It's kind of redundant.

 

[delericho]

Yeah, that's about as bad a combination as you get: the druid is already amongst the most powerful classes, the Vow of Poverty really is broken, and the low magic/items setup hurts spellcasters less than non-spellcasters and doesn't hurt the VoP character at all.

It does look like you've already hit on the fix... or at least the closest thing to it that the rules actually provide.

 

[Greenfield]

Okay, as someone who's been out of the game for a long time, you may not realize just how many supplements have been released. Vow of Poverty is from the *OPTIONAL* book, Book of Exalted Deeds.

As someone pointed out to me recently, there are a couple of things from that book that *aren't* broken. Vow of Poverty isn't one of them.

Now, to be fair, it doesn't have to be broken. It's just that, for a few classes, it is. Any class that wasn't particularly gear-reliant before gets supercharged by that feat. Monks in particular get a lot out of it. Sorcerers can as well, and Druids get a hefty boost as well.

The key is, if they had gear restrictions before then they aren't really giving up much of anything.

On the broader scale, don't let players bring in things from books you aren't familiar with.

Now, if you want to be a, ahem, Richard about it, know and enforce the limits on the Vow: You have to be Good with a capital G, and "of highest moral character", which many take as meaning Lawful with a capital L. Like a Paladin, a single Evil act pops the bubble and all those goodies go away. Permanently.

If you want to be more up-front about it, just cast Dispel BS and tell him no.

However you handle it, get comfortable with saying no until you're up to speed, and make it the default answer when someone wants to bring in stuff from a book you aren't using. At the same time, read whatever is available and get familiar with the other books.

That way, when you have to say no to something, it will be an informed no.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Sorry, but you've made an error. (Talking to the OP here.)

Vow of Poverty is supposed to be balanced with a regular item loadout. (It probably isn't, but it's supposed to be. Among other things, noncasters need items more than casters, and druids have quite a few benefits of being casters, as well as the noncaster benefits of fighting as powerful monsters.)

Since you were running a low item campaign, this meant Vow of Poverty was overpowered for your campaign, and you would have had to edit the feat, or ban it.

If you're giving every other PC and monsters huge bonuses, it means VoP is controlling your game. I'd seriously consider banning the feat.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

The only time I would allow vow of poverty is for a monk.

A monk is so drastically underpowered that it basically needs VoP to be a useful class. By contrast, a druid is definitely one of the most powerful and most flexible of all of 3.5E's classes.

In the main, I prefer to pretend that Book of Egregiously-bad Design simply does not exist.

 

[NuSair]

Thanks for the feedback.

Yeah, I trusted the players (opps) who I thought were a more.... I donno... mature and not so much power gamers anymore.

I wish I had found this website/forum before we really got into the game. We've been playing for about 3 months at this point (once- twice a week as life dictates).

Going forward, I am pretty sure I will be banning the feat. A couple of players have already started talking about when this arc ends (I have it planned for about a year, maybe 18 months, depending on how things go) on starting up another campaign that I would be running.

 

[Ahnehnois]

One of the most important things amount DMing is realizing that it's okay to say no. Simply because VoP was published doesn't mean it works, or that it works for your game, or that a player is entitled to have it. You may just be best served by asking the player to do something different.

 

[Nezkrul]

Simple answer: ban the feat and work with your player to undo everything his character did with the feat (like the bonus feats) and give him comparable "wealth" to what the other player characters currently have. VoP isn't for a low item game, however, IMHO a low item game only hurts non-spellcasters, it doesn't hurt spellcasters at all

More difficult answer: The feat isn't broken. If you read the passages in the BoED about earning, having, and keeping exalted feats you'll see that it requires heavy roleplaying a very saintly and morally good do-gooder character; one slip up and POOF no more exalted feat(s). I say it isn't broken because with appropriate wealth a character can be better than with the feat, because TBH, characters generally end up with more wealth than the Wealth By Level chart would suggest, which is what the feat was built off of. VoP doesn't fix monks, it hurts them, they can do better with real wealth. VoP is just a feat that lets you have the things everyone else has, but you can roleplay a really good person in rags that gives away everything for the betterment of everyone around him.

 

[Dandu]

Woah guys! You do realize that VoP is an underpowered feat after level... 6 or so, since, under normal WBL, you get more benefits out of items? VoP grants some useful things, but it ultimately does not let you do very important things such as, you know, flight.

VoP monks in particular are a very bad idea. VoP druids, on the other hand, suffer less than other characters, but it's not making them more powerful, just less weak.

In this particular case, the combination of low wealth, druid, and VoP is making the druid stronger than other party members. In this case, you should not allow VoP as written (or at all - its a badly written feat with unclear code of conduct and no way to atone if you break the code).