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We all have seen the Vow of Poverty from UM, but it's not doing much for the monk who needs to equip himself with all sorts of item to be useful in a party.
So, I'd like comments on this take of VoP monk who won't wear anything for all it's life.
Warning: This is my first try at something like this.
Thanks
Archetype: Ascetic Monk
Weapon and Armor Proficiency: Ascetic Monk are not proficient with any weapon or armor. When wearing armor, using a shield, or carrying a medium of heave load, an ascetic monk loses his AC bonus, as well as his fast movement and flurry of blows abilities.
Ascetic Vows: At 1st level, the ascetic monk vows to never own more than what is required to eat and his rags. Even then, most ascetic monk never own anything, relying on finding food in the wilderness or working for farmers while being near a city. Only during cold seasons, the monk is allowed to own winter clothing to make himself warms and not die of cold. When an Ascetic Monk uses any item or someone else make use of an item on the Ascetic Monk, the Ascetic Monk loses the following abilities, Armored Soul, Layers of Soul, Ki pool, Flowing Soul, Soul over Body, Drape the Soul, Soul's Wisdom, Mighty Soul and Healing Soul until he can meditates on his actions for a whole 3 days. This ability replace Still Mind.
Armored Soul: At 3rd level and every 2 level thereafter, the Ascetic Monk gains +1 Armor Bonus to AC. Starting at level 5, the ascetic monk can exchange points of Armor Bonus for armor abilities but the monk must still have a +1 Armor Bonus on himself at all time. This bonus acts as Bracers of Armor.
Layers of Soul: At 3rd level and every 4 level thereafter, the Ascetic Monk gains +1 Resistance Bonus to all saves. This bonus acts as Cloak of Resistance.
Flowing Soul: At 4th level and every 4 level thereafter, the Ascetic Monk gains +1 Deflection Bonus to AC. This bonus acts as a Ring of Deflection.
Soul over Body: At 5th level and every 3 level thereafter, the Ascetic Monk gains +1...
I'd allow that for play testing in my game as it doesn't seem unreasonable. Basically she gets all the standard magic items as abilities.
The only tweak I would is requiring the monk to donate her share of treasure to her monastery/charity. Or as a GM just consider the group to be one person smaller when figuring out loot. Otherwise everyone else in the group gets a 20%-33% boost in treasure from the monk's unclaimed share.
When you make an archetype, you take away when you give. You just basically went, "Hey i know, he's a poor archetype, ill just give everything to him for free...."
This is okay as guidelines, but different DMs do loot differently. Low loot, this is good. High loot, this is bad. I'm not sure how balanced it is for standard WBL. It does lose a lot of versatility this way though, being so confined to what it gets.
The only tweak I would is requiring the monk to donate her share of treasure to her monastery/charity. Or as a GM just consider the group to be one person smaller when figuring out loot. Otherwise everyone else in the group gets a 20%-33% boost in treasure from the monk's unclaimed share.
That.
To the OP:
After a quick reading it looks good although i might suggest dropping that sentence "someone else make use of an item on the Ascetic Monk" becuase that sentence doesn't allow someone to use a wand of CLW (among other things) on the monk.
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Dotting to come back later. At a glance I agree that laying it out like an archetype is a good way to structure it even if it doesn't meet the traditional standards of an archetype. AND that it does give up a lot in exchange for whatever it gets, by giving up the flexibility offered by loots and moneys.
Exact rules of the vow could be tightened up as mentioned, both to lock it down against abusive subversions of the theme and to keep the monk from getting screwed over too easily. The winter clothing bit does catch a gap that is often looked over, which is good and is something that may be good to expand on. Do very much like that there's no "one item of value" caveat here. This feels like what a VoP monk should be.
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The only tweak I would is requiring the monk to donate her share of treasure to her monastery/charity. Or as a GM just consider the group to be one person smaller when figuring out loot. Otherwise everyone else in the group gets a 20%-33% boost in treasure from the monk's unclaimed share.
This is really a must-have here. The ascetic monk needs to have a code that prevents him from just giving all of his loot to the party. He should probably be required to demand a portion of whatever wealth he helped acquire and should definitely be required to give it to the needy directly or to whatever institutions/entities that can be trusted to distribute it fairly.
One thing that might be worth playing around with is to offer some alternate abilities(such as Lay on Hands) they could choose by permanently giving up one or more of their bonus-granting abilities. On the other hand, while any such choice would be set in stone just like the current Ascetic Monk is written in the OP, it could still offer more flexibility than what you're intending, especially since flexibility is the big thing you're sacrificing by giving up WBL.