Vow of Poverty is what you break out when you want to be passive aggressive about the fact that your DM has you running around at level 12 with no magic items and keeps you broke all the time.
I think it was fun to have in the game to keep the DM somewhat honest.
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The Book of Vile Darkness (sorry, Monte!) and the Book of Exalted Deeds have some dire, dire cheese in them. (In the BoVD's case, as a result of when it was published. Combining it's optional material with Divine Metamagic and Persistant Spell (from yet other non-core sourcebooks) or the Hive Mind with the 'new' Swarm rules or the Natural Armor granting disease with the various non-core ways a person can become a carrier of a disease and not suffer any of the detrimental effects, it falls apart.)
Vow of Poverty and Words of Creation pretty much need to die in a fire, although I'm less familiar with the BoED's cheese potential. (Even when I specifically created an inspiration-centric Bard, with Song of the Heart, a Badge of Inspiration and Inspirational Boost, I felt that adding Words of Creation would cause me some sort of intestinal blockage...)
As an exercise in figuring out what would be safe to use in a game, go to the WotC CharOp forums and do searches on the Feat, PrC, spell, monster, etc. and see how popular it is. If you see something mentioned too often, chances are, it's gonna be a problem. On the other hand, perusing those threads can also very painstakingly detail *how* that item is (ab)used, and you can then tweak it into something that retains the flavor and some of the mechanics, but doesn't lend itself to abusive interpretations or game-breaking builds.
That's kind of the best of both worlds, being able to say, 'Yes, you can use Vow of Poverty, but let's sit down and work out how it's going to work...'
The Book of Vile Darkness (sorry, Monte!) and the Book of Exalted Deeds have some dire, dire cheese in them.
According to Monte's Arcana Unearthed, dire cheese is cheese "with added spikes, spines, jagged blades, and hooks" and it "add[s] a +2 dire bonus to damage dealt". It costs 300 gp more than regular cheese and increases the cheese's weight by +25 percent.
:-P
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Everything I've ever seen about VoP has made it horribly broken when combined with the monk class. I think it's a mechanic that wasn't thought out thoroughly, and they didn't consider that a class that is already awesome without the need for magic equipment would abuse this rule that is supposed to be a trade off for not using magic equipment.
So I'll add my vote for this being a rule that should be buried in the deepest pit and never again see the light of day.
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I think I just pissed off my monk player. I read the feat finally and nixed it. if he was the type of a role-player that could pull it off it wouldnt of been a big deal but since he is a power monger it aint gonna fly.
So I think Im gonna limit the players to the core book and nothing else.
Any thoughts?
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According to Monte's Arcana Unearthed, dire cheese is cheese "with added spikes, spines, jagged blades, and hooks" and it "add[s] a +2 dire bonus to damage dealt". It costs 300 gp more than regular cheese and increases the cheese's weight by +25 percent.
:-P
Sadly it also requires an Exotic Weapon Proficiency to use!
Well, that is one side benefit to the new Pathfinder RPG. I told my guys that from now on we play core only. The plethora of classes, PrC's, Feats, Spells, etc. etc. was just too much near the end.
-- david
Papa.DRB
I think I just pissed off my monk player. I read the feat finally and nixed it. if he was the type of a role-player that could pull it off it wouldnt of been a big deal but since he is a power monger it aint gonna fly.
So I think Im gonna limit the players to the core book and nothing else.
Any thoughts?
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I think you made the right choice. If he's a bit peeved about the situation, throw him a bone and offer full BAB for his monk, instead of just for flurry and maneuvers. It won't really affect the overall mechanics of the class much, will make his stats easier to keep track of, and might just make him happy.
According to Monte's Arcana Unearthed, dire cheese is cheese "with added spikes, spines, jagged blades, and hooks" and it "add[s] a +2 dire bonus to damage dealt". It costs 300 gp more than regular cheese and increases the cheese's weight by +25 percent.
:-PSadly it also requires an Exotic Weapon Proficiency to use!
... but tieflings have it for free right?
Seriously, playing "core only" has it own flavour, which can be both challenging and fun (especially when there are few if no houserules).
Another sensible solution is to announce to your player that you will be playing with book X, Y, and Z and give them the chance to look at them during (and prior to) character creation. The,n play in the theme of those books.
'findel
I'd be highly skeptical of anything that was written in the 3.0 rules. You're going back two versions of the game and back when spells, feats and PrCs were much more powerful most of the time.
I plan to ban all things 3.0 but not everything in 3.5. That would kind of defeat the purpose of backwards compatability. If someone wants or needs something from a 3.5 splat book that fits their character concept, and it isn't terribly broken with the new rules, then I'll let them have it.
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I'd be highly skeptical of anything that was written in the 3.0 rules. You're going back two versions of the game and back when spells, feats and PrCs were much more powerful most of the time.
I plan to ban all things 3.0 but not everything in 3.5. That would kind of defeat the purpose of backwards compatability. If someone wants or needs something from a 3.5 splat book that fits their character concept, and it isn't terribly broken with the new rules, then I'll let them have it.
The only thing I want from backward compatibility is to be able to run old modules and APs. In my own games I'll likely ban just about everything from splat books and be core-only.
I think I just pissed off my monk player. I read the feat finally and nixed it. if he was the type of a role-player that could pull it off it wouldnt of been a big deal but since he is a power monger it aint gonna fly.
So I think Im gonna limit the players to the core book and nothing else.
Any thoughts?
I don't know, isn't part of the charm of PRPG that you can use those other books?
I'd say Core Book only, everything else on a GM approval basis.
I don't know, isn't part of the charm of PRPG that you can use those other books?
I'd say Core Book only, everything else on a GM approval basis.
That's how I'm going to run things. If a player wants to use a theme or character option from a past book, I'll talk with them and see if we can't make it fit; if I need I can trim something if its overpowered or build upon a concept that needs a little boost, but the PFRPG's backwards computability is one of its best selling points in my opinion. I'd literally feel like I was cheating myself out of the game's full value if I limited my players in that respect.
Yeah I have a current example of this actually:
I'm playing a "witch" in LoF. I wanted a number of 'witchy' abilities including:
Wild shape, a familiar, some spells off of both druid and sorcerer lists.
So I naturally decided to multi-class. However the mystic thuerge class really didn't do what I wanted. So I pointed out the arcane hirophant to my DM. However I realized that it was still more powerful than the pathfinder mystic thuerge so I offered to drop the BAB, the skill points, and the channeling abilities at later levels. He liked it so that's what I'll be using.
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You know what, I prefer to have the payers run straight core any way. I think a lot of the extra classes, feats, PrCs and spells were crutches for poor roleplaying. Short cuts if you will.
However as GM I have no problem using short cuts and crutches to get by on! lol I'm all for using splat books for NPCs but not PCs. Keeps them on their toes. And makes life easier for the GM (hey, we have to come up with a LOT more characters than they do!-- unless you're a killer GM...).
Now, that being said I will allow stuff in, but not a whole book without limits. The only way to get splat stuff is to research the spell yourself, or get training for the feat, or PrC. All of which will require actual play in the game.
Generally I make it just difficult enough players ditch the idea. >;)
You know what, I prefer to have the payers run straight core any way. I think a lot of the extra classes, feats, PrCs and spells were crutches for poor roleplaying. Short cuts if you will.
However as GM I have no problem using short cuts and crutches to get by on! lol I'm all for using splat books for NPCs but not PCs. Keeps them on their toes. And makes life easier for the GM (hey, we have to come up with a LOT more characters than they do!-- unless you're a killer GM...).
Now, that being said I will allow stuff in, but not a whole book without limits. The only way to get splat stuff is to research the spell yourself, or get training for the feat, or PrC. All of which will require actual play in the game.
Generally I make it just difficult enough players ditch the idea. >;)
Sounds like lazy DMing to me -- expect it of your players but not of yourself... smacks of something in the range of Gouda. ;D
I think I just pissed off my monk player. I read the feat finally and nixed it. if he was the type of a role-player that could pull it off it wouldnt of been a big deal but since he is a power monger it aint gonna fly.
So I think Im gonna limit the players to the core book and nothing else.
Any thoughts?
If you do not think the player can handle the RP aspect of the VoP, I think you made the right call. Unlike the majority of folks I've encountered, I have no problem with the VoP mechanics, especially for a monk, if the player is willing to invest what it takes in playing the character. I've played a VoP monk myself as well as DM'd one. I did not find the characters in either case any more powerful than an appropriately equipped monk of the same level. Players that want to find sneaky ways around the restrictions of the Vow--those are the problem more so than the feat itself, at least from the vast majority of horror stories I've read about it.
As for going Core only, I've used PFRPG Beta with lots of 3.5 material. Some things need tweaks to make sense in the new mechanics, but overall I haven't had any problems. Given that in most cases the final steps back closer to 3.5, I don't anticipate any more problems than I had with Beta. This said, I do not have players that seek out every little tweak they can find to make "killer" characters. I've fairly well established that I can kill them by simple DM fiat if necessary. We just don't play that way. So, all that to say it depends on your group and also on how much work you want to do regarding watching for little breaks in the mechanics.
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I think the deal with Vow of Poverty is that the character is better than everyone else at low levels, but gets left in the dust at high levels. If your campaigns generally end at around 12th to 15th level, the player will never see a downside to the feat.
If the DM is pretty sparse with magic items, then it's great. If he's pretty generous, then it loses it's advantage much sooner.
Obviously, if your player is a power gamer, he must feel that it'll be to his advantage to take it.
Nixing it was probably a good choice, from what you said. Although, I think the feat has the potential to be very interesting if you have the right player in your group.
Druids - VoP Druids can be very ridiculous.
If anyone reads JollyDoc's Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign journal here on the boards, there is a VoP druid in his group that is an absolute beast.
Druids - VoP Druids can be very ridiculous.
If anyone reads JollyDoc's Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign journal here on the boards, there is a VoP druid in his group that is an absolute beast.
It would be nice if someone worked on re-balancing VoP, i like the rp concept, but it definately can cause some havoc in a low rewards game.
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Druids - VoP Druids can be very ridiculous.
If anyone reads JollyDoc's Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign journal here on the boards, there is a VoP druid in his group that is an absolute beast.
Ah, you're right, I forgot about those. I've seen it too, and they can be just as broken, if not more so than monks, if the character spends all his time in wild shape.
It's the classic VoP -> Natural Spell -> Permanent Empathetic Bond combination that really made the druid broken.