Legacy Weapons from White Plume Mountain - How do they work?

[Noumenon]

I downloaded White Plume Mountain from Wizards here and my players retrieved one of the legacy weapons. But I don't have the legacy weapons sourcebook and don't know what they do.

Each weapon has several pages devoted to it at the back of the adventure (search on "blackrazor" to see one). Each one has a list of abilities linked to your level, so they get better as you keep them. But they also have unlockable abilities. If you do the "Against the Goblins" ritual with the dwarven weapon, you unlock the "least legacy." "Against the Giants" gives you the "lesser legacy," etc. But it doesn't say what those legacies are. Do you have to own the book to see? The weapons without their legacies are just basic +1 warhammer and given the buildup the adventure gives them they need to be way more exciting than that.

 

[Starbuck_II]

I downloaded White Plume Mountain from Wizards here and my players retrieved one of the legacy weapons. But I don't have the legacy weapons sourcebook and don't know what they do.

Each weapon has several pages devoted to it at the back of the adventure (search on "blackrazor" to see one). Each one has a list of abilities linked to your level, so they get better as you keep them. But they also have unlockable abilities. If you do the "Against the Goblins" ritual with the dwarven weapon, you unlock the "least legacy." "Against the Giants" gives you the "lesser legacy," etc. But it doesn't say what those legacies are. Do you have to own the book to see? The weapons without their legacies are just basic +1 warhammer and given the buildup the adventure gives them they need to be way more exciting than that.

The only way to advance a Legacy weapon
a. Get a Legacy Feat
b. Do the Ritual.

If you do Against the Giants Ritual (by completing it): you gain the Legacy feat Least.

 

[Noumenon]

Do you mean the point of the rituals is to give you an extra bonus feat off a list of Legacy feats, which you can only find in the Weapons of Legacy sourcebook?

 

[Starbuck_II]

Do you mean the point of the rituals is to give you an extra bonus feat off a list of Legacy feats, which you can only find in the Weapons of Legacy sourcebook?

Yeah, pretty much.

But the feats are pretty simple, they just let you gain more abilities with the weapon than you could normally.

Sadly, I can't remember what the feats do so finding out would be a good idea.
If I remember right, the feats let the weapon grow up to a certain level.
Example Least up to 7th, Lesser up to 14, Greater no limit.
That is just a guess because it has been a while since I've seen someone's book.

For example, Blackrazor: +1 Greatsword. Not that great by itself. If you dominate the blade, you gain the feat Least Legacy.
It would be much simpler to take the feat, but than again you only get so many feats.

 

[Kristian Serrano]

1. Do the ritual and pay the gp.
2. Get the least/lesser/greater legacy feat as a free bonus feat, which unlocks the corresponding range of legacy abilities.
   • Least: 5-10
   • Lesser: 11-16
   • Greater: 17-20

 

[blargney the second]

I scrapped the penalties for legacy weapons, and I can't emphasize enough how much more useful that made the book for us.

 

[Jhaelen]

I scrapped the penalties for legacy weapons, and I can't emphasize enough how much more useful that made the book for us.

Ditto!

I calculated what crafting the weapon would cost and added an xp cost to the rituals. If the xp cost would result in the character losing a level, she gains a temporary negative level instead.

Weapons of Legacy is really one of my favorite books. The history writeups are really great. Some of the weapons are a bit on the weak side but after calculating the costs it's easy to add some abilities to bring them all in a similar range.

 

[hornedturtle]

I have to agree that the penaltys seem random, pointless, and just plain annoying. The penalties most of the time seemed worse then the ablities granted by the item.