I would say no. Mental speech is speech after all. You're speaking with your mind as much as you would with your tongue.
I enforce the spirit of the oath as much, if not more than the letter of it. Allowing free use of telepathy pretty much negates the spirit of the sacrifice.
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For starters, writing things down requires more effort, and can't easily be done in a combat situation.
I would say no. Mental speech is speech after all. You're speaking with your mind as much as you would with your tongue.
I enforce the spirit of the oath as much, if not more than the letter of it. Allowing free use of telepathy pretty much negates the spirit of the sacrifice.
Going to clarify - I would treat the Monk of the Sacred Mountain's vow the same way as the general Vow of Silence.
OP appears to have come to the conclusion that the general vow allows for telepathy, so the Monk of the Sacred Mountain should also get to use telepathy.
I'm not necessarily agreeing with that premise but the ruling should be the same in both cases.
Personally, I think a good way to get around vows of silence in general is simply the Bonded Mind feat, which, if you can get a party member to play nice and take the feat as well, would allow you to communicate without much difficulty to that party member, who could then relay that information.
Can the MotSM use sign language to communicate?
I would say no. Mental speech is speech after all. You're speaking with your mind as much as you would with your tongue.
I enforce the spirit of the oath as much, if not more than the letter of it. Allowing free use of telepathy pretty much negates the spirit of the sacrifice.
Devil's advocate + theory crafting. How do you feel about:
- Sign language
- Pantomimes
- Basic body language, gestures etc
- Letting others read your thoughts, giving up your save on detect thoughts
Vow Of Silence lets you warn others with claps and stomps, it also lets you write messages.
I was thinking of playing a monk with ALL the vows. Poverty Vow stops me from owning stationary so I guess I can scratch stuff into the ground.
I wouldn't fuss about it. With a cheap ioun stone you can get +1 insight to AC/CMD, so the net benefit is +1 to AC/CMD and +4 to three skills (the latter would be, what 3*4*4*100*2 for unslotted = 8000 gp value?).
At 17th level +1 to AC/CMD and the equivalent of 13K of items (WBL at 17 = 410 000 gp) for an ability which replaces Tongue of the Sun and Moon, or anything else a Qinggong monk might swap for that, sounds like a fair trade on its own. If the silence vow can be bypassed by telepathy in many ways I'd just let that happen.
In RL monks who took a vow of silence did develop simple sign languages IIRC.
why tho? all the vows in pathfinder suck so much only geting a single ki point per vow like atleast you got some goodies in 3.5 when you took a vow you get jack all in pathfinder
A roleplaying challenge.
Some people want to play blind or mute characters.
Hmm maybe I could be a blind monk with all the vows. Boy that would get complicated really quick...
Oh but it'd be an amazing 3 sessions!