Legacy Weapon rituals

[Oryan77]

I guess you don't need to be familiar with the Weapons of Legacy book to answer this question.

In order to unlock special powers for a Legacy Weapon, you must perform certain rituals. Some rituals say that you must defeat an enemy of equal or higher CR than your PC. It seems like the description expects you to metagame in order to do this. If a PC goes off to kill a Drow, without metagaming, how is the PC supposed to know if this Drow you are hunting is equal or higher CR?

This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Is it a "cross your fingers and hope this is the one" kind of situation? How can you make sure the Drow is higher CR than you without just going on a murdering rampage every night killing Drow until you find that "one"? Not that killing lone Drow every night would be frowned upon

 

[Vorput]

Yeah... that does seem a bad way of wording things...

I'm reminded of the trap the soul spell where the meterial component is listed as:

Material Component
Before the actual casting of trap the soul, you must procure a gem of at least 1,000 gp value for every Hit Die possessed by the creature to be trapped. If the gem is not valuable enough, it shatters when the entrapment is attempted. (While creatures have no concept of level or Hit Dice as such, the value of the gem needed to trap an individual can be researched. Remember that this value can change over time as creatures gain more Hit Dice.)

I suppose the person in question just has to go find an 'equal' and yeah... cross their fingers when they take them down, hoping they're 'equal' enough.

When I used weapons of legacy, I changed most of the rituals... Spending money on meditation didn't make a lot of sense- neither did some of the combat ones.

 

[Notmousse]

Yeah... that does seem a bad way of wording things...

I'm reminded of the trap the soul spell where the meterial component is listed as:



I suppose the person in question just has to go find an 'equal' and yeah... cross their fingers when they take them down, hoping they're 'equal' enough.

When I used weapons of legacy, I changed most of the rituals... Spending money on meditation didn't make a lot of sense- neither did some of the combat ones.

Tossing cash about for meditation (especially 'proper' meditation) makes perfect sense, especially in today's world where everything has been marketed and monetized.

Assuming you've got a monestary handy (which isn't always the case and I could address later), you need to get admitted before any meditation can take place. Given that monestaries have expenses and often need improvements/supplies because of their isolation. Then there's the specially prepared incense, time in special meditation chambers, ritual attendants, specific religious texts for the occasion, holy garments, purifications rituals before entering the meditation chambers, tests of worth, ritually prepared foods, donations to the temple, taxes to the local nobility, bribes to the high priests, and of course gratuities.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

how is the PC supposed to know if this Drow you are hunting is equal or higher CR?p

That's where the DM comes in. Or divination spells. In short, the PC wouldn't know. But a good DM will tailor an encounter/mission to help the PC achieve his goals.

 

[Vorput]

Tossing cash about for meditation (especially 'proper' meditation) makes perfect sense, especially in today's world where everything has been marketed and monetized.

Assuming you've got a monestary handy (which isn't always the case and I could address later), you need to get admitted before any meditation can take place. Given that monestaries have expenses and often need improvements/supplies because of their isolation. Then there's the specially prepared incense, time in special meditation chambers, ritual attendants, specific religious texts for the occasion, holy garments, purifications rituals before entering the meditation chambers, tests of worth, ritually prepared foods, donations to the temple, taxes to the local nobility, bribes to the high priests, and of course gratuities.

Yeah, but my PCs were perfectly able to roleplay getting to the place where the ritual was to take place (which almost never involved a monestary if I remember my WoL flavor text correctly)- and spending the money to get there that it would actually cost. In the few weapons rituals I actually used (I thought the book was aterrible waste of money on the whole)- the PCs just roleplayed gettiong to the locations, spending a fraction of the required gold. I never could believe that in order to activate the weapon's special power, often a weapon and/or item which had NOTHING to do with elaborate ceremonies, you had to go through an elaborate ceremony to activate it... It stretched vermisilitude to me to have these items come with nice little pamphlets (albeit, yes- with research)- that listed exactly what robes, inscence, foods, etc. etc. etc. were needed to do a nebulous 'ceremony.'

And how about the ritual costs that involve fighting someone? My monk killed people with nothing to his name, why the heck would he need to spend 36k gold to kill them this time?

I thought the book on a whole was poorly planned... and am still kicking myself for paying 30 dollars for an idea I already had... I was drawn in by the cool flavor text which turned out to be annoyingly cliche.

K, done with my rant- now let us return the thread to its actual purpose.

I agree with Ogrork- if you're going to use WoL- you should help the PCs along in their quests with them... granting you're willing to have the entire party side-tracked on a quest for a single character, many times of which the party can't participate in.

Vorp