Tell me about weapons of legacy
- Thread starter Gundark
- Start date
And with the characters we messed around with, the losses seemed pretty significant. And it definitely had the effect keeping people from wanting the items.
Heap - what type of character are you running? (as in classes and levels, standard phb wealth?) Which legacy modifer foundation are you using?
I mean obviously, these weapons work well in your campaign...but that won't hold true for every campaign.
Heap - what type of character are you running? (as in classes and levels, standard phb wealth?) Which legacy modifer foundation are you using?
I mean obviously, these weapons work well in your campaign...but that won't hold true for every campaign.
HeapThaumaturgist
First Post
Certainly. That's what I maintain. It's opinion, not fact, that the penalties "suck" or that it requires an investiture of feats to "make it any good".
People hold out that the penalties have kept them/their players/their mother from ever having actually played in a normal every-day game with a Legacy Item.
I'm presenting the opinion of somebody who has been playing a character who has had a legacy item from lvl5 to lvl13 (soon to be lvl14, I think).
I was also disputing the inference that I enjoyed the legacy item only because my character was totally dependent on magical treasure for fun, coolness, or effectiveness. He's fun, cool, and effective naked in the rain weilding a dead trout, and everywhere in between, legacy item or none.
--fje
People hold out that the penalties have kept them/their players/their mother from ever having actually played in a normal every-day game with a Legacy Item.
I'm presenting the opinion of somebody who has been playing a character who has had a legacy item from lvl5 to lvl13 (soon to be lvl14, I think).
I was also disputing the inference that I enjoyed the legacy item only because my character was totally dependent on magical treasure for fun, coolness, or effectiveness. He's fun, cool, and effective naked in the rain weilding a dead trout, and everywhere in between, legacy item or none.
--fje
HeapThaumaturgist
First Post
I'm playing a Barbarian 1, Cleric 12 with the Destruction and Strength domains.
I have the feats: Extra Rage, Extra Smite, Divine Vigor (among others)
We are adhering as closely as possible to the PHB wealth guidelines, but we're in an Age Of Worms campaign so sometimes we're low and sometimes we're high but never by a huge margin. In general I'm not terribly far behind the PHB reqs on wealth, but at the last measure I was behind the other characters mostly because they'd kept items from treasure finds instead of selling them, so we couldn't divide perfectly (like, last big haul included a custom ring and custom headband from the module worth quite a bit, that one character kept because that character made best use of ... I got a +3 equivalent sword that I'm never going to use, but we're not going to sell it as it was bequeathed to our use by an eons-dead general ... we dig on the role-playing, even if it gets in the way of the roll-playing.)
I'm using the legacy foundation that's appropriate for a character who is "a caster that engages in combat", as I'm 12/13ths Cleric. I don't have the book at hand, but I seem to remember we decided on that legacy progression because it was tailored for clerics ... including both attack and hit point reductions as well as spell reductions.
Here's the first least-legacy data for the item, since I was just looking at it. I haven't updated the story or the item for the lesser legacy as we haven't had time recently.
--fje
I have the feats: Extra Rage, Extra Smite, Divine Vigor (among others)
We are adhering as closely as possible to the PHB wealth guidelines, but we're in an Age Of Worms campaign so sometimes we're low and sometimes we're high but never by a huge margin. In general I'm not terribly far behind the PHB reqs on wealth, but at the last measure I was behind the other characters mostly because they'd kept items from treasure finds instead of selling them, so we couldn't divide perfectly (like, last big haul included a custom ring and custom headband from the module worth quite a bit, that one character kept because that character made best use of ... I got a +3 equivalent sword that I'm never going to use, but we're not going to sell it as it was bequeathed to our use by an eons-dead general ... we dig on the role-playing, even if it gets in the way of the roll-playing.)
I'm using the legacy foundation that's appropriate for a character who is "a caster that engages in combat", as I'm 12/13ths Cleric. I don't have the book at hand, but I seem to remember we decided on that legacy progression because it was tailored for clerics ... including both attack and hit point reductions as well as spell reductions.
Here's the first least-legacy data for the item, since I was just looking at it. I haven't updated the story or the item for the lesser legacy as we haven't had time recently.
--fje
pawsplay
Hero
Bought it, wrote up a half dozen weapons of legacy, tried to figure out how to integrate them into my campaign, ran into some very serious rules issues, got a fishy look from my players when I described the drawbacks system, and finally sold it at Half Price Books.
The legacy items themselves are fairly well balanced.
Basically, it kind of sucks. Not because it's stupid, but because it simply didn't turn out very well, on any level. If I were the line editor, I would have kicked it back and said, "Sorry, try again."
The legacy items themselves are fairly well balanced.
Basically, it kind of sucks. Not because it's stupid, but because it simply didn't turn out very well, on any level. If I were the line editor, I would have kicked it back and said, "Sorry, try again."
Crothian
First Post
Another thing I didn't like was the mundane feeling of the mechanics. The history of the items was very creative but then when I would read the mechanics it was just the same old powers and bonuses from other places. There just seemed to be a lack of creative powers. I used in my game, it just didn't spark interest or seem to be all that much fun. So, I eventually gave it away to someone.
Olaf the Stout
Legend
Crothian said:
What feats are you talking about exactly Crothian? The feats you get for performing the legacy rituals are bonus feats. Are you saying that you then need to invest in weapon feats in order to make better use of the Weapon of Legacy?
Olaf the Stout
Olaf the Stout
Legend
Overall I find Weapons of Legacy to be a good idea executed poorly. Some people don't have a problem with the weapons and the fact that they give PC's negatives to attacks, skills, hit points, saves and/or spell slots. Other people think that it sucks on toast.
Personally I'm still on the fence with this one. So far I haven't thought of a different way implement them that doesn't give PC's negatives. In the campaign that I am currently running the PC's have just hit 5th level. I'm thinking of introducing them into the game, 1 per PC and just not worrying about the negatives. Sure it will make the PC's more powerful than a "normal" PC of their level but if every PC gets one it shouldn't be unbalancing within the party. If the party are walking over the bad guys I can just up the challenge of things that I throw at them to compensate.
As for the book itself. I found the organisation to be absolutely horrible. I had to search through the entire book the first time around to find out what level PC's could get the different rituals. Reading posts on these boards made me realise that I was far from alone in this. The book would have also greatly benefited from an index, something that Wizards don't seem to want to do anymore. The editing could have been improved too. Are spell slot losses cumulative? You figure it out. The book says that they are in one spot and they aren't in another!
Overall a book that has a lot of promise but probably needed a bit more work done on it before they put it out to make it the really good book that it could have been.
Olaf the Stout
Personally I'm still on the fence with this one. So far I haven't thought of a different way implement them that doesn't give PC's negatives. In the campaign that I am currently running the PC's have just hit 5th level. I'm thinking of introducing them into the game, 1 per PC and just not worrying about the negatives. Sure it will make the PC's more powerful than a "normal" PC of their level but if every PC gets one it shouldn't be unbalancing within the party. If the party are walking over the bad guys I can just up the challenge of things that I throw at them to compensate.
As for the book itself. I found the organisation to be absolutely horrible. I had to search through the entire book the first time around to find out what level PC's could get the different rituals. Reading posts on these boards made me realise that I was far from alone in this. The book would have also greatly benefited from an index, something that Wizards don't seem to want to do anymore. The editing could have been improved too. Are spell slot losses cumulative? You figure it out. The book says that they are in one spot and they aren't in another!
Overall a book that has a lot of promise but probably needed a bit more work done on it before they put it out to make it the really good book that it could have been.
Olaf the Stout
Jeff Wilder
First Post
I think the idea of Weapons of Legacy is very cool. It's not that DMs have been incapable for decades of creating powerful weapons, but it's nice that the designers recognized that it's fun to have a weapon grow with a character. It's also good that they recognized that truly powerful items do need to be balanced out somehow.
I'm one of those people who has felt for years and years that D&D is too much about what a character owns, and not what the character himself can do. Even so, I disagree that Weapons of Legacy exemplifies that negative aspect of the system. First, Weapons of Legacy is all about finding a reason not to have "disposable" items, but rather to forge a link with a once-or-future heirloom item. Second, the powerful weapons tend to replace multiple other items the character in question might otherwise own and use.
All that said, I was also taken aback by the penalties associated with the weapons. I found myself thinking, "Wait ... I have to take a -3 to attacks in order to unlock the +4 of the weapon?" I don't particularly like that aspect of the system, perhaps especially because they didn't really offer any game-world explanations for why legacy weapons would behave that way.
On the other hand, I find myself puzzled by the implicit idea behind some of the posts above that legacy weapons should have been offered "as is" without something balancing their drastically lowered cost. I've given it quite a bit of thought, and I'm not sure how to implement such balance, other than the way the designers did it.
I'm one of those people who has felt for years and years that D&D is too much about what a character owns, and not what the character himself can do. Even so, I disagree that Weapons of Legacy exemplifies that negative aspect of the system. First, Weapons of Legacy is all about finding a reason not to have "disposable" items, but rather to forge a link with a once-or-future heirloom item. Second, the powerful weapons tend to replace multiple other items the character in question might otherwise own and use.
All that said, I was also taken aback by the penalties associated with the weapons. I found myself thinking, "Wait ... I have to take a -3 to attacks in order to unlock the +4 of the weapon?" I don't particularly like that aspect of the system, perhaps especially because they didn't really offer any game-world explanations for why legacy weapons would behave that way.
On the other hand, I find myself puzzled by the implicit idea behind some of the posts above that legacy weapons should have been offered "as is" without something balancing their drastically lowered cost. I've given it quite a bit of thought, and I'm not sure how to implement such balance, other than the way the designers did it.
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