As I'm sure a number of people will agree, the vow of poverty for Monks (and ninjas too I suppose) is the only vow worth taking because of its high Ki payout compared to other vows.
Initially the vow's decription seems pretty straight forward; you can have 6 items, 5 plain and 1 of some value. But after re-reading it over time, I noticed an error in the sentence structure about the 6th item that would allow the player to have any item they wanted no matter how expensive or powerful.
Original:
six possessions~.
Five of these items must be plain, though one can be of some value.
^subject^
though=but, and the Subject is the 5 items.
So the whole sentence is talking about the base 5 items, it doesn't mention the 6th.
example:
I have 6 sweets.
5 are sweet, though 1 (of them) is slightly sour.
^subject^
This sentence doesn't say what flavour the 6th sweet is, only that 1 of the 5 sweets is slightly sour, the 6th sweet coud be bitter, spicy, salty, or anything else.
but the way everyone is interpretting it is:
I have 6 sweets
5 are sweet and the 6th is bitter
which would be more like:
six possessions~.
Five of these items must be plain, though *the sixth* can be of some value.
^subject^_____________________^subject change^
alternatively it could be written in any combination of these:
Five of these items must be plain, though/while/and/but *the 6th/other* can be of some value.
So the 6th item's value is not specified, and so can be as valuable as the player wants, as long as it is their ONLY magical/valuable item.
Don't know if other people have noticed this too, but I couldn't find anything like it on the forums, so I wanted to share so people can use this nice little loophole to keep their Monk well equipped.
I mean that's nice but everyone knows what the rule actually means, as a GM I wouldn't let that slip by to be honest.
Also I'd actually argue Vow of Poverty's massive penalty (SO much of your abilities and stats are given to you by gear in this game) is not outweighed by the ki bonus. Now, some free ki bonuses for not lying and taking a bath every now and then, what is wrong with that?
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Perhaps, and only perhaps, vow of poverty can be not totally awful with the unchained alternative rule of Automatic Bonus Progression. And at middle-low levels.
About your concern, you are taking a rulebook for a *game* as a contractual document. In that case, you can win a formal demand. XD