Charles Ryan speaks - Weapons of Legacy

[MerricB]

A Querent:
I was wondering if there will be rules within the D&D Magic Supplement Weapons of Legacy describing how to create magic items that grow and improve as their owners advance in level?

If there are rules within the supplement for creating magic items that grow and improve as their owners advance in level, will they only be ritual based or will the owner be able to spend experience points to improve the item?

Charles Ryan:
There are, in fact, rules for magic items that grow with your character in Weapons of Legacy. It's one of the main topics of the book, actually.

I haven't read the manuscript yet, so I'm not certain exactly how the system works. Perhaps we'll hear more about it in the previews that get posted to the web site as we get closer to the book's release!

(this thread on the Wizards boards)

 

[NSpicer]

Magic items that grow and improve as their owners increase in level have already made a pre-emptive appearance in The Game Mechanics' Artifacts of the Ages series. It requires that a hero take levels in the new Scion prestige class for each type of item, however. That approach didn't appeal to everyone (but what new rules variant or option ever does?).

The cool aspect of Artifacts of the Ages are the many "named" magic items written up by The Game Mechanics (i.e, JD Wiker, Stan!, Rich Redman, et. al.). Each of those items comes with a very specific historical background and well-integrated powers that can only be tapped by a Scion of the appropriate level. Eventually this concept for the Scion prestige class and magic item improvement also found its way into Unearthed Arcana, as Wizards borrowed the idea from TGM.

In addition, Unearthed Arcana also includes "Item Familiars"...a method by which a wizard or sorceror can pump up a magic item as his or her familiar instead of an actual animal, etc. This is a neat twist for introducing weapons that improve in power without having to reach outside of your arcane spellcasting class to pick up levels in the Scion prestige class. Still, it might be interesting to give other classes the ability to improve items in exchange for XP...or as a special "open" metamagic feat.

Just FYI,
--Neil

 

[Li Shenron]

I already have simple and effective rules for weapons which grow with the character: the DMG wealth by level table

OTOH, I've said before that this book is going to interest me if it provides new flavor to magic items, or to how magic items work in the campaign, and this sort of topic could be one of them. Depends how it's done however, e.g. the UA rules for this were one of the few parts of that book I found disappointing.

 

[Southern Oracle]

The samurai from Oriental Adventures is an existing example of someone with a weapon whose powers increase as the character advances in level. I borrowed those rules for the paladin in my Planescape campaign, as his weapon is an artifact of his church.

 

[dagger]

I wonder how similar they will be to the Leveled weapons in Dragon Magazine in 2004 or was it 2003 (can't remember the issue number)?

 

[Chaldfont]

The leveled weapons from that Dragon Mag article were pretty cool. It made the cost of the item much less but required the user to invest xp to "level up" the item and gain access to its higher powers.

I made a leveled rapier for a rogue/bard PC in my campaign that granted all sorts of interesting duelling abilities. Its fun to add requirements other than xp to get the item to "level up". For one of the levels, I made the requirement that the PC loose a duel!

 

[rowport]

Our GM has leveled weapons in our campaign (using the Dragon mag model, AFAIK). It is pretty nifty- you invest XP, and at some point find new abilities for your weapon. The catch is: you do not know what the ability will be, or how much XP it takes to 'trigger' the ability. So, there is a real opportunity cost in delaying your character's progression for eventually triggering your weapon's improvement. In our game, for instance, my character's weapon is farther advanced, but his character level is a bit behind the group in exchange. All in all, it feels balanced, and is a really cool idea, especially when you play out the ability trigger as a dramatic, ritual event.

 

[Ghostwind]

There are rules for weapons of legacy in Arms & Armor v3.5 that don't require you to take levels in a Prestige Class. Take a look...

 

[naturaltwenty]

Earthdawn threaded items

Earthdawn (originally by FASA and now Living Room Games) has always had threaded items, where threads (i.e. xp) was spent/tied to magic items. As the background was found out about the item more abilities were revealed.

Some adventures actually ended up with our group creating thread items.

Great stuff and it's good to see that D&D is catching up. I always hated the fact that as I leveled I would have to go shopping for new, more effective weapons vs. revealing abilities of my existing weapons I didn't know about.

EDIT: After some googling I found: http://www.barsaive3ed.com/Karma.htm which has a good conversion of Earthdawn to d20.

Later,

Greg Volz
Natural Twenty Gaming
www.naturaltwenty.com

 

[Barak]

I have a problem with magical items that require the owner to expand XP to "advance" it. Let me explain my problem, and let's see if any of you have an answer to satisfy me.

According to the DMG, each character's equipment should be more or less equal (assuming that the characters are of the same level), and should be worth a certain amount of GPs. Given that, how does the concept of advancing a magical item (for some reason, it always seem to be a weapon) by investing XP into it? First off, it delays level advancement to a degree (usually not by -too- much), therefore the value of the character's gear should be slightly delayed as well. Secondly, characters who do -not- invest any XPs into their gear would be expected (according to the DMG), to find more items -anyway-, or items of greater value, in order to "keep up" in term of gears with their companions. In fact, since they do not invest XP, they -should- end up with -more- gear, in GP terms.

Or are items that can be "leveled up" valued at less then what a "normal" item would be, assuming that the item is completely leveled? That would tie in with Item creation, to a degree, in which gear created by the character itself could be counted as the value in GP expended to create the item, instead of market value. Obviously, they would then end up with more gear, but the expenditure of the feats necessary, and of the XP, should balance it out. Then again, how does one figure it all out when the "creater" makes items for his companions, instead of for himself?

I, for one, do not follow the "GP value per level" very closely, and that's actually one of the reason. It does, however, create other problems for me, which is why I'm wondering of how people who -do- follow the DMG guidelines work with those issues.