Creating a Legendary Weapon

[cimbrog]

In the current game I'm running the characters are going to eventually become legendary saints (assuming they don't fail). They're about 8th level right now and I've equipped each one of them with a legendary weapon ala Unearthed Arcana. What I've decided is that instead of these weapons having a history and power list, they are blank slates for the characters to imprint upon. In a non-rule sense, these weapons will be imprinted by the characters in such ways as taking on their personality (they are intelligent) complete with flaws (one character has the Unlucky flaw, so anyone who weilds the weapon gains that flaw).

Rules-wise, the weapons begin as +1 flaming weapons. As they advance in levels of <whatever> Scion, the player gets to choose what power the weapon gains. Right now I'm going with the following rule for how to choose powers:

-First off, pretty much any power (within reason) of another prestige class that is equal to or less than the current level of Scion they are taking is fair game. (The reason for this is that two of them passed the tests to join a prestige class but got these before taking any levels. It allows them to still be paragons of those organizations without giving up too much.)
-For levels 1-3, about 2000 gp worth of enchantment can be chosen. (Any +1 equivilent weapon power or about 2000 gp worth of misc. magic powers.)
-For levels 4-6, about 8000 gp, or +2 equivilency.
-For levels 7-9, about 16000 gp
-For level 10, 32000 gp.

I'm not sure about the scaling of powers - it seems like using the GP equivilency would become unbalanced after 4th level. Any suggestions?

 

[Prothall]

Have you ever seen Spells & Spellcraft? It's got a dandy system for legendary-type weapons that doesn't involve taking levels. The character sacrifices XP and a little bit of money (flat 100gp, I think) to improve the weapon in one of two ways:

A) According to a sort of list of pre-determined powers
B) As the character so chooses

It also has rules that keep this in check, i.e. all such items must become intelligent by a certain point, and they tend to develop "quirks" that are nice for roleplaying and only moderately inconvenient for the characters.

 

[Derulbaskul]

Age of Legend for the excellent Dawnforge setting has a list of magic items and matching achievements ("legendary challenges") that would allow the item to be imbued with certain powers. Frex, part of the creation process for a bag of holding is to travel 100 miles with a heavy load (I selected a more obscure example).