Ok, so i decided to throw in the books of vile darkness and exalted deeds, i, the gm using the vile, and the PCs using exalted. well, one character died and created a monk who has taken the vows of poverty, nonviolence and peace. from what hes told me about stats, and with the exalted bonus' to AC, he is Rocking a 38 to armor class. and, hes only 4th level.
did i just shoot myself in the foot with this one or do the exalted bonuses NOT stack?
help!!!
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Nope, he's street legal. I recommend dire animals and high Fort warriors. Neutral animals are his bane, although I forget if he loses the exalted bonuses to AC against them. I have played such a monk. He's rough to plan for, but I found out the hard way there are gaps to exploit. A flying archer fighter can full attack him without fear of reprisal unless he has a caster to give him flight.
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Ok, so i decided to throw in the books of vile darkness and exalted deeds, i, the gm using the vile, and the PCs using exalted. well, one character died and created a monk who has taken the vows of poverty, nonviolence and peace. from what hes told me about stats, and with the exalted bonus' to AC, he is Rocking a 38 to armor class. and, hes only 4th level.
did i just shoot myself in the foot with this one or do the exalted bonuses NOT stack?
help!!!
So, you have a monk with a high AC that can't do anything that D&D does without breaking a vow. Cool. Let him sit there, not getting hit and not being able to do much else. The rest of the party pulls his weight and gets annoyed. Sounds like fun!
well, one character died and created a monk who has taken the vows of poverty, nonviolence and peace.
Did he read the last two vows?
Nonviolence and Peace together mean he can't cause harm or suffering to any living foes. Even his nearby allies who do so to humanoids or monstrous humanoids will suffer penalties.
And, if either vow is broken for any reason (except by magical compulsion), he loses all the benefits of the feat with no possibility to regain it.
So, while virtually nothing can hit him, he isn't even allowed to try (other than by nonlethal damage). And if he does, he just lost some feat slots.
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Let's see: if he's human and takes Sacred Vow and Vow of Poverty at level 1, he automatically gets a bonus exalted feat, so Vow of Nonviolence too. At level 2 he gets another bonus exalted feat - Vow of Peace, so by level 2 he's got all the feats you listed. (He also gets another bonus exalted feat at level 4).
Altogether at level 4 that gives him:
+2 perfection bonus to Diplomacy (Sacred Vow)
+4 save DC for his 'non-damaging' special attacks, like Stunning Fist (Vow of Nonviolence)
+9 exalted bonus to AC (Vow of Poverty + Vow of Peace)
Endure Elements (Vow of Poverty)
+1 magical enhancement bonus on all attack and damage rolls (Vow of Poverty)
+2 natural armour bonus (Vow of Peace)
+2 deflection bonus (Vow of Peace)
+4 exalted bonus to Diplomacy (Vow of Peace)
Calming aura (Vow of Peace)
Chance to harmlessly shatter manufactured weapons which strike his skin (Vow of Peace)
So, a total of +13 to AC from those feats.
However, note that the exalted AC bonuses don't work against touch (or incorporeal touch) attacks, and neither does the natural AC bonus, so against touch attacks he's only got +2 over his normal AC (the deflection bonus).
He can't ever own anything - if the party start to carry extra potions 'set aside' for this guy, and he knows it, then you're within your rights to say he's violating the Vow of Poverty.
He'll generally only be attacking with non-lethal / subdual damage, but this isn't a huge hinderance to a monk.
The group will need to be okay with handling prisoners, 'cos with this guy around they'll wind up with a lot more than usual for D&D. He can try to secure an 'oath of surrender or noninterferance' in exchange for a creature's life, which if it breaks he can let his friends 'do as they will'... but there's nothing to say the creature so asked has to swear such an oath, and you can only let 'em be killed if they break such an oath, not if they refuse to swear it in the first place. The bad guys will pick up on this 'goody-two-shoes' rule pretty quickly if they have any sense.
With the calming aura and the +6 to Diplomacy expect to do a lot more talking and a lot less fighting than usual for D&D.
Generally, this guy's Tripitaka from Monkey (or 'Journey to the West' if you're being smart about it) - which can make for a cool game, if the rest of the group are interested in that style of play. Of course, if you're aiming for the whole 'Vile Darkness Vs Exalted Deeds' vibe, then you're probably already halfway there: the core point of such a campaign is good Vs evil in a more extreme sense than the usual 'grey area' of D&D gaming. No more can you ethnically cleanse orc villages 'because they're evil'! :)
So, basically, the guy's still pretty killable by spells (touch attacks) and the like, but let's be honest, you're really bad bad guys are going to want to corrupt this guy instead of just killing him - he's a saint... they need to make an example of him... and with those Vows in play there are all sorts of moral dilemmas which can be used, e.g.:
A defeated bad guy refuses to swear an oath of surrender, and still has a spell in play causing damage or ruin to a community. He just sits there, gloating and taunting - will our saint let the people suffer just because he refuses to let the unrepentent bad guy be killed, thus ending the spell?
The group find a magic item which only the saintly guy can activate, and which is needed for some great purpose (save them all, heal a dying high priest, whatever) - but taking and using it breaks his Vow of Poverty... what does he do?
The party witness a noble or some other (good) legal authority about to execute a prisoner - can the saintly guy allow such a deed?
It's a great opportunity for role-playing, but only if the rest of the party are okay with it, since it's the sort of thing that can easily take over a campaign (turning even minor encounters into ethical debates).
I will agree with ProfPotts up to a point.
Yes touch attacks and spells are his weakeness. I am in total agreement with the Prof on the scene where the bad guys don't want to "just" kill him but want to take this beacon of light and hope and utterly corrupt him instead.
I ran into this situation as a player too. The DM got tired of me and the rest of the players walking over his carefully crafted encouters like they were nothing so he broke out the book of exalted deeds against us.
He had the same build your guy has only his "bad" guy was a paladin. He got around the equipment clause by saying his order/church owned all his stuff, granted it was basic players handbook equipment but we as players still felt it was cheesy.
His "bad" guy and my half-vampire cleric of Velsharoon went toe to toe and neither of us could win, we were too evenly matched.
I instead took out the half-elven female mage and while my minons kept him busy me and the rest of the party took out the rest of his party.
By the time he got to us through the traps and other stuff in out lair( Koblods are awesome trap builders) we had his fiance/girlfriend stapped to the alter of my undead god and his friends ready to be coup-de-graced(yes I know it's spelled wrong but don't feel like looking it up) In order to save their lives he had to agree to be MY slave for 1 year and a day, I swore by my god that I would never order him to do anything that would cause him to lose his standing but he could not interfeer with anything I was doing. So to save their lives he agreed and I had an exalted slave.
naturally my status went up within my church. He lasted about 4 months before he attempted to murder me in my sleep thereby loseing all his abilities because he knowingly commited an evil act and broke his word to boot.
My point to thsi little trip down RPG lane is to give you some hope that even if the players is hard to hit, there are other ways to beat him.
A few words of warning. Don't make builds that are just made for him all the time that gets annoying and the player will start to feel picked on.
Don't keep giving him moral dilemmas either thats gets just as annoying. One or two is fine spread out but not every other a session.
He may be awesome against devils/demons and such but the undead can still rock him, as can neutral creatures that are controlled or summoned, heck even the old dragon standby will work.
Best of luck to you.
The Vow of Peace feat prohibits harm (real damage or ability damage) to "any living creature (constructs and undead are not included in this probibition)."
That certainly rules out harming dragons. Some DMs might also include things like outsiders, plants, vermin, and oozes in the "any living creature" category. (I certainly would.)
Basically, I consider that combination of feats to be something which a skill monkey/party face would take, but not a combat character.
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And thus the reason a great many DMs, myself included, don't allow those Feats in my games.
You either get a PC who can't do anything cuz it'll break his lame-ass Vow (that, never Ever has anything to do with character just crunch!!!, by the way). . . or you get a PC who is so stupidly overpowered that no one, DM, dumb-ass broken PC, regular PCs, have any fun.
I love my BoVD and BoED but Feats and such, not allowed.
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You either get a PC who can't do anything cuz it'll break his lame-ass Vow (that, never Ever has anything to do with character just crunch!!!, by the way). . . or you get a PC who is so stupidly overpowered that no one, DM, dumb-ass broken PC, regular PCs, have any fun.
I'd have to agree that allowing a PC to take such feats as mere crunch is a bad idea - but also usually an easy one to fix: the first time the group wins surprise and kills an enemy, or the team rogue gets a sneak attack roll on an unwitting guard good enough to kill him, or even the first time the PC forgets to tend to fallen wounded enemies after a fight (and makes sure they won't bleed to death, or be left vulnerable to attack by others) that's at least two of his feats gone... forever. Playing exalted characters is all about the role-play, not the numbers - the numbers are just there to make sure that choosing to play such a character isn't such a sub-par option it's tantamount to character suicide. The BoVD and BoED are labelled as 'mature content' 'cos they do require a certain level of player maturity for the concepts within to work (that and the animal-sex in BoVD, but hey, let's be positive here! ;) ).
The Vow feats represent a character's total and absolute commitment to a certain ethical principle - they're life choices even more absolute than an alignment, a chosen deity, or becoming a paladin. They don't allow 'bending' of the rules by the character, as they're 'fuelled' (if you like) by the character's absolute commitement to the Vow, as rewarded by some higher power. It's like a geas where you actually want to follow the intent as well as the letter. A character who takes one of those feats is saying that the principle embodied in that feat is going to be central to that character (much as an evil character taking the Thrall to a Demon feat is sacrificing his immortal soul to his dark overlord).
Of course, if you're playing a game that's more crunch than fluff, I'd question the value of using the BoVD and BoED in the first place - without the fluff those books are an accident waiting to happen! IMHO, natch... ;)
Nonviolence and Peace together mean he can't cause harm or suffering any living foes.
If this is the case, I'd rule that even non-lethal damage is out.
Of course, if your player is using the book as intended and with the expected maturity level, he'll have no problem with that.
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Right - although non-lethal damage is specifically allowed by the Vows of Non-violence and Peace, it really should be a weapon of last resort for such a character. If the guy is using the Vows to just become an unstoppable kung fu monk and always leaps in, fists of fury first, then he's ignoring the intent of the Vows, and the DM should feel free to strip him of their benefits. Even non-lethal violence should only be used by such a character to prevent worse violence (such as stopping someone from executing a prisoner when they refuse to 'listen to reason').
One of the big issues with the Vows of Non-violence and Peace is that they mess with the other characters in the party. In game mechanics terms, the Vow of Poverty simply substitutes a bunch of generic bonuses for the character's normal 'wealth by level' equipment, so most other PCs are going to be fine with that. But the Vow of Nonviolence gives penalties to the character's allies if they act in a way he's vowed not to - that sort of thing tends to annoy the other players, since it is, in essence, imposing one character's chosen world view on all the others. The Vow of Peace extends this penalty from killing helpless humanoids and monstrous humanoids to killing any helpless living creature (even, for example, a mindless gray ooze... or that rabbit the party Ranger snared for the group's supper...). If the group's okay with that, then roll with it... if they're likely to object, then I'd suggest leaving those two Vows out of PC's hands.