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Way b ack in 3.X, there was the Book of Exalted Deeds, which had the Vow of Poverty feat, which granted a bunch of bonuses in exchange for not carrying magic items. In PF2e, do you think giving the Automatic Bonus Progression, in an otherwise standard campaign, would be workable for a “Vow of Poverty” character? If so, how would you implement it?
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Well it would allow you to support character concepts like "my monk doesn't want to be laden down with material attachments" without becoming unplayable.
I think as-is, it's a moderate downgrade, instead of a crushing downgrade (not using items and not getting ABP either). For a couple of reasons;
1) ABP bonuses arrive "on time", while loot tends to be slightly "early". An ABP character is gonna get Striking at level 4, period. A regular character might find a Striking weapon at level 3 according to the loot table, just on time for the bossfight at the end of the first AP book after which you level up to 4. The loot tables give you above-level items as a way of making adventuring THE best way to get shiny stuff, earlier access than crafting or buying. Risk reward and such.
2) ABP bonuses aren't very flexible. Items allow you to prioritize more.
3) A true vow of poverty would go further than cutting out the items that ABP covers.
4) ABP is more geared towards the needs of martial than casters, it doesn't cover staves etc.
So it might be desirable to give some kind of extra boost beyond ABP alone. On the other hand, is it really "poverty" if it doesn't hurt at all?
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For the rest of the party, yeah I'd just remove one share of loot drops as a GM.
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Overall I like the idea though. It allows another range of character concepts that would otherwise conflict with the "items are power" ethos of the game. And it could also cater to grumpy old geeks who want to play the game, but don't really want to play the equipment game.
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This should probably go under the Homebrew forum.
For the rest of the party, yeah I'd just remove one share of loot drops as a GM.
I'd push back quite fiercely against any player option that would reduce options for the rest of the players at the table.
Removing a share of loot drops does not maintain balance. It weakens it. Before, the Vow of Poverry player joined, the party had a bigger pile to choose from which meant more versatility of options. When you make that pile smaller, you might maintain strict numerical balance, but having less choices is a hit to versatility.
Versatility of choice is powerful boon. Just look at the popularity of pick-a-tradition spellcasters, like sorcerer, or the Free Archetype rules.
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I understand wanting to reduce loot, but it rubs me the wrong way that enemies become poorer due to a PC's choice to be poorer. (Poverty fad?)
In fact, keeping that extra loot solves the problem of less diversity & shallower resources by providing the inverse to the PC's allies. It's kinda expensive to buy upward, and with the wealth curve I don't think anything's being bent any more than the VoP bends it the opposite way.
Imagine grabbing your downed ally's gear, and then dispersing that among the party. Would that bump anybody above the power curve? Especially, as noted, with the VoP PC stuck waiting for the "now it's required" levels. They'd all be more comfortable spending consumables, but not gain access to anything they couldn't get by pooling their money. I've heard that recommended so the main martial can get a Striking weapon sooner.
From the treasure charts, the wealth bump would represent getting treasure slightly less than a level earlier. If that's too much seems more a matter of opinion & campaign. I've played, and heard about, APs where you struggle in the early levels because of less fluid treasure, where selling the items would hurt a lot. Or in one case where you needed those items to survive, but that left y'all underequipped in traditional ways.
And as RD said, this is Homebrew Forum territory. And reduces treasure fluidity, since the gear, campaign-centric, and thematic loot of the foes won't be reduced, it'll most likely be the loose change.
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What's more, most adventure paths overshoot the treasure tables by a wide margin, with the assumption that not all of the treasure will get discovered, or be considered valuable.
If you're implementing a house rule such as this in a homebrew campaign, I would recommend not reducing the treasure at all. At worst, you would be following the same implementation ideals of the official developers and their adventure paths.
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This should probably go under the Homebrew forum.
For the rest of the party, yeah I'd just remove one share of loot drops as a GM.I'd push back quite fiercely against any player option that would reduce options for the rest of the players at the table.
Removing a share of loot drops does not maintain balance. It weakens it. Before, the Vow of Poverry player joined, the party had a bigger pile to choose from which meant more versatility of options. When you make that pile smaller, you might maintain strict numerical balance, but having less choices is a hit to versatility.
Versatility of choice is powerful boon. Just look at the popularity of pick-a-tradition spellcasters, like sorcerer, or the Free Archetype rules.
Well, if ABP is a decent compensation, and one PC isn't using any of the loot, then in a typical party the other PCs just got a 33% increase in wealth. That's quite a lot.
It depends a lot on the GM if the loot you get is just "well, this is what it says on this page of the AP" or if the GM does a lot of tailoring exactly to the party.
If the GM was already kinda manipulating things so there'd be a decent amount of items that fit noticeably well for each particular PC, well then it's easy enough to just leave out the VoP loot. Everyone could clearly tell which item is "your" item already.
If you're more in the "well, this is what fell out of the pinata monster", then maybe a 25% loot cut is too strict.
What you [i]could[i] do is say that you do get the whole pile, but that the VoP character donates their share of it to some charitable cause. So everyone else does still get a lot to choose from, but the overall party wealth stays normal.
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One thing to be a little wary of. At least one AP (Quest for the Frozen Flame) is notorious for how bad it is in giving out the "basic" magic (+1 runes, striking runes, armor runes, etc). In that AP having ABP would be a huge boost to that particular character.
I think that's a good AP to just use ABP for everyone. I did the same in 1E with Iron Gods because half the loot was technological items like a 18,000gp life raft that didn't inflate half the time because it was 9000 years old. I mean, that's thematic and cool, but not as good as a +3 shield. Moving to ABP meant that I had less work as a GM worrying about whether the PCs were on the right track with gear.
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One thing to be a little wary of. At least one AP (Quest for the Frozen Flame) is notorious for how bad it is in giving out the "basic" magic (+1 runes, striking runes, armor runes, etc). In that AP having ABP would be a huge boost to that particular character.I think that's a good AP to just use ABP for everyone. I did the same in 1E with Iron Gods because half the loot was technological items like a 18,000gp life raft that didn't inflate half the time because it was 9000 years old. I mean, that's thematic and cool, but not as good as a +3 shield. Moving to ABP meant that I had less work as a GM worrying about whether the PCs were on the right track with gear.
Totally agreed. I'm playing in a campaign without ABP and running a campaign with it and I MUCH prefer the campaign I'm running in that respect.
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I think some campaigns need other things than others.
I played Dead Suns (Starfinder) and we were playing on weekdays, we only had about 3H play sessions. And nobody really cared deeply about loot. Also, we were supposed to be backed by the Starfinder Society because we were saving the universe (then again, who isn't). At some point we said to hell with this and switched to resetting everyone's wealth to benchmark WBL every level, which coincided with visits to home base. Basically, you book successes, bureaucrats take you more seriously, and you get better requisitions to deal with your conspiracy against life, the universe and everything. Side effect: loot tracking becomes unimportant. Not quite the same as ABP but kinda in the same philosophy.
But we also played Against the Aeon Throne, and in that one the GM definitely didn't want to do the thing that had worked SO well in the previous AP. Because in that AP a big story driver at the start of one book is that you're kinda cut off from supplies and have to negotiate to get access to new stuff. Automatic reset to WBL, or ABP for that matter, would have really taken the wind out of those sails.
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Way b ack in 3.X, there was the Book of Exalted Deeds, which had the Vow of Poverty feat, which granted a bunch of bonuses in exchange for not carrying magic items. In PF2e, do you think giving the Automatic Bonus Progression, in an otherwise standard campaign, would be workable for a “Vow of Poverty” character? If so, how would you implement it?
I suspect you might've already been aware of this, but there was an optional rule which went by the same name in PF1E; I preferred this version over Vow of Poverty because it was more flexible (there's a low magic item version and a no magic item version) and it isn't laden with pre-existing RP (you don't need to be an exalted character to take advantage of it).
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I suspect you might've already been aware of this, but there was an optional rule which went by the same name in PF1E; I preferred this version over Vow of Poverty because it was more flexible (there's a low magic item version and a no magic item version) and it isn't laden with pre-existing RP (you don't need to be an exalted character to take advantage of it).
I wasn’t aware of it, or if I ever was. Had forgotten. Thank you for that link.