Experiences with Weapons of Legacy

Well, WoL has been (and still is) one of my favorite 3e books. It's one of the books I've got the most use of. It's been a great inspiration for me and I've used it with great success in my campaign. Three items have even played pivotal roles in the campaign. Currently, the pcs possess six Items of Legacy:
- Bow of the Black Archer
- Bones of Li-Peng
- Mindsplinter
- Treebrother
- Ur
- The Whip of Concordant Opposition (self-created)

Guurgal, Exordius, the Planeshifter's Knife and Banrhialorg (from The Sinister Spire) will play a role and/or can be found in the course of the current adventure.

Apparently, many dismissed the book just because the WoL mechanics as written SUCK. Instead of throwing the baby out with the bath water, I simply ignored the penalty tables.
What I'm doing instead is this:

Calculate the cost of the item's abilities and have the pc pay for them via the rituals as if they'd created the item usign the item creation rules (without applying the markup for combining abilities). I.e. about half the gp cost and 1/10 xp cost.

Note, that I also allow the pcs to pay more xp than they currently have at their level - they'll just end up having a negative level that will automatically get away once they've earned enough xp.

Here's what you should end up with:
Least Legacy: 18-24k gp
Lesser Legacy: 48-72k gp
Greater Legacy: 128-144k gp
I.e. a total of 194-240k gp

Note that for many items you'll have to add a couple of powers to have them end up being in these ranges since they're too weak as written. Actually, I didn't use any of the items exactly as written. I also took care to tailor them somewhat to be desirable and useful for the pcs (or sometimes important npcs).

About the only problem I've experienced:
The players that didn't get an Item of Legacy yet have started to complain!

In 4e I'm definitely going to make use of them again. The mechanism as described in the AV supplement should work fine. While the artifact rules in 4e are fine, too, I wouldn't want to be more than one or maybe two of them in the game at any one time.
They also serve a slightly different role, since the pcs will never get to keep an artifact.

To sum it up:
I can definitely recommend to use Items of Legacy _IF_ you don't use them as written. Then they're the best thing since the Earthdawn RPG authors invented the idea.

coyote6 said:

IIRC, the Dragon article wasn't much like WoL at all. I think the Dragon article was more like the OA Samurai's ability to increase his ancestral weapon's powers. Steve Kenson wrote the Dragon article, I believe.

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Quite possible- I didn't have much experience with WoL, and I barely remember the dragon article. (It was a case of, oh that seems cool I should use that... just before it went on the shelf of forgotten dragons...)

I ran with Weapons of Legacy stuff, ignoring the penalties (which made you worse at what you did*, wha?) and instead had them cost a 10% xp penalty. That seemed to work quite well.


*The only Legacy Items that didn't act as a screwjob were the psionic ones, where the tiny cost of 2PP (iirc) as each penalty was inconsequential.

Garnfellow said:

How can Deities and Demigods not be considered as a contender in the four way race for ultimate suckdom? Most of that book is a monumental waste of time. WotC created parallel divine and epic rules that really weren't very compatible, even though they clearly should have interacted.

ELH is certainly a worthy challenger for title of worst book. But then, I've actually seen people use epic rules. (And the atropal is almost cool enough to make the book worth it.)

I don't think I've seen anyone use the divine rules. And even though the divine rules are in the SRD, did any 3PP ever use them?

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At least Deities & Demigods had basic write-ups of the Olympain, Egyptian, and Nordic deities. You could use those in your campaign. Also, while I can't think of any 3pp publishers who used the divine ranks, there are numerous critters in the ELH and third party publications who have some or all of the characteristics of a level 0 deity as laid out in Deities. It also has a perfectly serviceable writeup of cyclops, which puts it at least one usable writeup ahead of anything in WoL.

Savage Species, say what you will, it had a Multi-Headed template I have used multiple times, SLA and supernatural ability based feats, and undead templates. While the total volume of good stuff is small, I would never get rid of my SS, because it has some genuinely useful things in it.

BoED and BoVD take cool concepts and do basically everything wrong, but since I have known them to be used by many people in actual games, they also have a value greater than zero.

I would estimate that the total number of people who used any WoL material at all, as written, to be approximately, oh, five. I doubt even the authors used it straight up. it's one of those books that looks bad until you try to play it, then you realize it's horrible. It was trying to implement a few of these items in my 3e game that resulted in the WoL going to the Half Price Old Roleplaying Books home.

Jhaelen said:

To sum it up:
I can definitely recommend to use Items of Legacy _IF_ you don't use them as written. Then they're the best thing since the Earthdawn RPG authors invented the idea.

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Right. So it is a great book if you ignore all of the rules in it. Really why would people want this book again? I know what you are saying regarding the items themselves and their histories. I love those. But drop $40 on a book for 40 odd pages of "fluff"? You can't seriously expect anyone to consider that a good deal.

Garnfellow said:

I don't think I've seen anyone use the divine rules. And even though the divine rules are in the SRD, did any 3PP ever use them?

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Yes, but very few.

Creedbook - The Book of the Sun, by Mad Kaiser Games, has divine stats for the sun god, Zar, though they needed some editing.

Lore of the Gods, by DragonWing Games, has several pantheons' worth of gods with full stats, though they tweak the divine rules very slightly (too slightly to be noticed, really).

The Divine Order: Jute - Faith of Creation gives divine statistics for the goddes Jute, as well as her avatar.

Holy Bovine said:

Right. So it is a great book if you ignore all of the rules in it. Really why would people want this book again? I know what you are saying regarding the items themselves and their histories. I love those. But drop $40 on a book for 40 odd pages of "fluff"? You can't seriously expect anyone to consider that a good deal.

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Which is akin to saying "Bob's a great guy, if you ignore the six people he murdered."

Dausuul said:

Weapons of Legacy could have worked, if the designers had bit the bullet and applied a suitable gold-piece cost; make it so the price you pay for a ritual to improve your Weapon of Legacy is comparable to the price you'd pay to upgrade a regular weapon of similar level. Make sure the upgrades are sensible ones that a real weapon-user might find attractive. Then adjust the price downward somewhat, or throw in a few extras, to account for the loss of flexibility.

Something like this:

Sword of Frosty Death (8,000 gp)
When found, the sword of frosty death is a +1 frost greatsword. The wielder can gain the ability to use it as a more powerful weapon by making offerings of silver and white gems to the mighty snow demons. The rituals to improve it are as follows:

• First Rite: Sacrifice 24,000 gp worth of silver and gems. While you wield it, the sword is now a +3 frost greatsword; you gain cold resistance 10; and you can ignore terrain penalties due to snow and ice.
• Second Rite: Sacrifice 40,000 gp worth of silver and gems. While you wield it, the sword is now a +5 frost greatsword; your cold resistance increases to 20; and you can cast wall of ice once per day as a sorceror of your level.
• Third Rite: Sacrifice 56,000 gp worth of silver and gems. While you wield it, the sword is now a +5 keen icy burst greatsword; your cold resistance increases to 30; and you can cast freezing sphere once per day as a sorceror of your level.
• Fourth Rite: Sacrifice 72,000 gp worth of silver and gems. While you wield it, the sword is now a +5 keen icy burst greatsword of wounding; you are immune to cold; you can cast polar ray once per day as a sorceror of your level; and once per year you can cast summon deranged mutant killer monster snow goon (see Spells of Legacy).

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So the difference between this and having an item crafted to custom order is the weapon of legacy has a set path of upgrades that the PC can't determine for himself? Is that really an improvement?

I didn't like the penalties in the WoL rules either. But going through rituals doesn't really do it for me either. At that point, I really might as well be crafting it from scratch.

I kind of liked the feat idea. I know some min-maxish people think a feat is far too valuable to waste on improving a single magic item. But if the benefits are good enough (as they really should be for an artifact-ish item), then blowing a feat should be a reasonable cost. In any event, it gives the player a really important choice to make - improve the legacy item or pick up a general benefit.

I also like the quest idea. A particular quest unlocks a particular power. Better yet, as long as each power has a crafting value associated with it, the DM can be sure to deduct that amount from the loot the quest's encounters would otherwise generate. The wealth guidelines can then be appeased.

Remathilis said:

Which is akin to saying "Bob's a great guy, if you ignore the six people he murdered."

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Come on, the first two were accidents and the third was never proven in court.

Holy Bovine said:

Right. So it is a great book if you ignore all of the rules in it. Really why would people want this book again? I know what you are saying regarding the items themselves and their histories. I love those. But drop $40 on a book for 40 odd pages of "fluff"? You can't seriously expect anyone to consider that a good deal.

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Exoooordius!... Come on, right?