Legacy: Campaign Enhancement

[Old Fezziwig]

Looking to spice up your campaign to give it an original and unique feel or if you already run a world that uses actions points - well, this product is designed for you!

This Game Enhancement presents an innovative new rule for the d20 system: Action Points and Legacy Traits.

A campaign enhancement is designed to do exactly what it says: to enhance a campaign. But to be more precise, it adds elements into the campaign so that an existing world becomes ever so more unique. In this case, a Legacy Enhanced world. This campaign enhancement provides the beginning tools needed to make your campaign a Legacy Enhanced setting. You may be able to use everything in this campaign enhancement, or you may elect to use only a select few of the elements this product provides. After all, it is your campaign world, so the option is up to you.

Legacy: Campaign Enhancement is also adaptable to any FANTASY d20 system campaign setting.

This campaign enhancement includes:
- Rules for implementing Action Points into your game world.
- Rules for using Legacy Traits.
- 16 Legacy Traits to enhance any character with a connection to their ancestral past.
- 64 abilities to create legendary game play.
- 6 feats for use with the action point system (action boost, boost defense, heroic surge, legacy, spell boost, and spell recall).
- A new subclass: the Legacy Heir.
- A new template: Primal Creature.
- Suggestions for setting a tone of fallen kingdoms in your campaign enhanced world.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Legacy: Campaign Enhancement is a 16-page, full-color PDF from Alea Publishing Group [APG]. Written by Joshua Raynack, this product describes a system designed to tie characters into the mythic past of their world's past. It uses the same layout and design as Professions, and, although the layout is very clean and professional, it still reminds me a little too much of the layout Wizards of the Coast uses for its web enhancements for me to be overly excited by the design. The editing and writing are solid, with Raynack's prose only occasionally being overwritten ("A Legacy Enhanced campaign is a traditional medieval setting, however as the name implies, it is a setting that passes knowledge from one generation to the next." — aside from the name not really implying that and the dodgy punctuation, isn't all knowledge passed from one generation to the next?). All in all, this product looks good, and I really like the art by Raynack, von Stuck, and Wyeth. So if it looks good, how is it mechanically?

In creating what they call a Legacy Enhanced game, APG and Raynack have wedded an extremely cinematic mechanic in the action point (using the rules from Unearthed Arcana, which is cited in the Section 15 this time) with a dark and grim mood. Rather than spending action points to achieve amazing stunts in a pulpy atmosphere, characters spend them to activate abilities tied into their ancestors' natures. Could these abilities be used outside of a campaign with this tone? Yes, but I think the text around the mechanics would need to be altered; the system would work fine in any fantasy game, but it has strong cosmetic ties to the tone and setting described by the product — a world where mankind has become dominant and the other races have seen their empires fall. Somewhat reminiscent of Tolkien, actually. The product details this system, some new feats, a new subclass, and a new template.

Mechanically, I was impressed; I feel like they demand a playtest, but upon casual inspection I think they're balanced and workable. Thematically, they're cohesive, mostly granting bonuses to skill checks and other rolls, with only the Healing legacy trait sticking out as being unusual. Where 90% of the others are mundane, it's conspicuously magical, allowing the character to cast cure spells, minor for 2 AP and light for 3 AP; my objection here is not the cost but the fact that none of the other traits permit the casting of a particular spell. A mechanic closer to the paladin's lay on hands might have been more appropriate thematically. Other than that major complaint, I only had a few nitpicks regarding the legacy traits. For instance, under the Charm trait, the favor ability maxes out the bonus to the check at +10, even though the DC can climb as high as 30, meaning that the ability stops improving after level 10. I'm pretty sure that this is a result of how closely the traits tend to match the d20 Modern talent trees in places, so the +10 is a hold-over from the ten-level base classes in that game. Also, in the cool under pressure ability under the Insightful trait, how long does the ability to take 10 last? What are the durations for these things? If it was in there, it was well hidden, as I couldn't find it. My intial impulse is to call it instantaneous/immediate (only works on the next use of the ability or the use that happens right at that moment), but something specific from the author would have been helpful.

Although I've been critical of the mechanics here, I don't want to imply that I didn't like any specific legacy traits. On the contrary, Insightful, Knowledge, and Unbreakable all struck me as being particularly neat. I don't have a solid, rational argument for why so much as I just really tend to like these types of abilities. I also liked the feats for the most part, although Spell Boost seemed a little too good (maybe 2 AP to raise the caster level by 2 instead of 1 AP for a +2 caster level?). I found the primal template, for creating savage tribes of humanoids from fallen empires, completely uninteresting, as I feel that this idea can be emulated well through role-playing and class/skill/feat choices; there's just no need for Raynack to reinvent the wheel here.

I've intentionally avoided mentioning the Legacy Heir subclass, as I don't know how I feel about it. A subclass, as set up by APG and Raynack, is taken simultaneously with a normal class, with each level in the subclass being equivalent to 1/4th of a level in a normal class. This mechanic strikes me as being a bit odd and definitely brings in a level of complexity to the game, especially since the subclass does grant tiny (+1) bonuses to BAB and saves over the course of its progression. As designed, it looks okay, although I would definitely have to playtest it to be completely comfortable with it, and I would eliminate the bonuses to BAB and saves and reduce the class skills to pick four from pick six to make it work more like I'd like it to work.

Would I use it? Yes, but only if I were running a game with the atmosphere described. It is applicable to other settings and tones, but it isn't quite right for anything I'm interested in doing at the moment. For someone looking to run a campaign of fallen empires and the rise of man, however (possibly in conjunction with the three generic classes in Arcana Unearthed), it's a great little product.

Score: 4