Frank, why do they have that section on expensive material components, then, if it's a non-issue?
It's not a non-issue. You can't keep any money. So even though you are allowed to have and even buy material components, you can't "save up" for them. So if your share of the party treasure is 1,000 gp - you are no closer to getting your Jade Circlet. In fact, if your share of the party treasure is 1,000 gp twenty times - you are
still no closer to getting your jade circlet.
Book of Exalted Deeds wrote:A character who has forsaken material possessions may find himself at a marked disadvantage when it comes to certain necessary expenses, such as expensive material components. One option is for ascetic characters to beg components from other party members...
So yeah, you can totally have expensive components - you just can't have gold pieces for very long. The XP or GP thing is an optional rule.
All in all, I don't approve of the Book of Exalted Deeds. It provides a moral framework in which "Good" is in most ways indistinguishable from "Stupid." Being "Good" has absolutely nothing to do with the results of your actions, and everything to do with some extremely dumbly defined set of action methodologies - which is completely backwards and useless.
"Exalted" characters are frequently going to cause more harm than good, provided that harm is measured in the traditional way of "how much average people suffer" and good is measured in the traditional way of "how much people benefit." With such bad writing and obvious religious bias coloring every aspect of the book - I wouldn't get terribly surprised by the fact that sections of the book don't make sense to you. For example: it's perfectly OK for people who have taken a Vow of Nonviolence to cast
suggestion and tell their victims to jump off a cliff - but shooting the same enemy with some Insanity Mist to knock them out is right out for a variety of reasons
even though the creature will survive the Insanity Mist and won't survive the Suggestion.
Ones you find can be donated once you get the spells out of them. I think BoED says Wizards can beg for donations to pay for scribing scrolls.
Nope. Magic Item possession is right out - as is magic item creation of any kind. Ascetic Wizards cannot scribe scrolls. Whether they can have spellbooks depends upon whether you use the Forgotten Realms sourcebooks or not. If you do, spellbooks have a defined cost which is independent of where the spells came from and even a 1st level Wizard's book is way over the limit.
If you don't, then there is no listed cost, and then you have to argue to your DM that the book has
no value - since spellbooks are very definately
not on the extremely short of list of things that can have
any value that you can have (which includes things like "1 day's trail rations"). However, one of the things that is on the list is your spell components - and there is no upper limit to that. Actually, there is also no limit to what they use their spell components for - so there is no actual wealth limit for Poverty characters - provided they run their entire personal economy in diamonds.
-Username17