Weapon plus

[Lonely Tylenol]

Personally, I think the WoL IDEA is pretty good.

I think people's dislike is really just knee-jerk. It's like Free Stuff. Once somebody has gotten something for free, even if they'd have paid for it before hand, they're totally unwilling to pay for it.

Once somebody has gotten a +5 Will Save, taking a -1 to Will Saves ... hell, chop off their character's arm, brand him with irons, take all of his magical gear, but you can't seriously give him a -1 to Will Saves!!!

Functionally, the penalties end up being alot like dipping into a PrC, but without alot of the hidden costs. If you dipped into a PrC with 0.75 BAB, you'd have LESS BAB than you would if you'd taken full fighter. Now, if you take a -1 to attacks, functionally they're quite similar ... but yet you still keep on track for iterative attacks, qualities that depend on BAB (Imp. Critical or some other PrC).

Some of them eat Spell Slots. You lose a 3rd level spell slot. "HOLY SHNIKIES, NOOOOOO!!" ... again, similar to dipping into a PrC with partial progression, but MUCH less punative. You still have full Caster Level for overcoming SR, for damage attacks ... AND, 9 times out of 10, the weapon gives you a SLA of the same level a level or two later. So really, you're just being forced to memorize a certain spell per day AND you get to cast it as an SLA (which has some benefits attached).

Most of the weapons are like PrCs ... they give some stuff that a very particular character would love, but are sub-standard for another type ... one guy might love giving up 1 2nd level slot for CLW as a SLA 3/Day. Another guy might break down and cry.

--fje

From what I remember, the penalties for spellcasters weren't as annoying as those for melee characters. Losing a spell slot at each level isn't too bad, if you get two spells at each level 3/day without threatening any AoOs in return. The legacy Staff of Power is cake. In fact, most of the ones I liked were the ones that aren't weapons, but staves, rings, holy symbols, etc.

Losing attack bonuses, losing hit points, having to cough up skill points if you're a fighter...these things are more trouble if your purpose is to hit things and soak damage, which it is, if you're a melee guy. And as someone pointed out, a 20th level character can have a +5 weapon with +5 worth of special abilities, or he can have a +2 to hit/+5 damage legacy weapon that lets him cast Daylight 3/day and walk on walls and turn water into wine for the cost of 20 hit points, -3 to all saves and having to perform three ridiculous rituals that usually involve putting the campaign on hold so you can travel somewhere and do something specific.

I think the mechanic just works better for spellcasters. It's essentially levels of Archmage anyway. Trade in a spell slot for spell-like abilities. Groovy.

edit: Also, wasn't there some sort of mechanic that said that your ability to even use the weapon hinged on being able to locate someone who could make a DC 35 Knowledge (history) check?

 

[FireLance]

And does the extra 130,000 gp the fighter with the legacy item get to spend influence things as well?

I guess that's the core of it. I would rather spend the full price of the item, than take a bunch of miscellaneous penalties to use it on the cheap. I like the idea of a magic item that has a cool history and thematically linked abilities that will grow in power with the user, but I don't like how the user has to "pay" for these abilities through attack penalties, saving throw penalties, loss of hit points, skill points, spell slots, etc.

I can see why the weapons were designed this way. In a "standard" D&D campaign, if only one player has a weapon of legacy, you can't take him aside after he levels and tell him that the extra powers gained by the weapon are worth an extra 4,000 gp, so even though the party got 20,000 gp in the last adventure, the other three guys get 6,000 gp and he only gets 2,000 gp. So, to balance the growing power of the weapon in a party where treasure is split equally, the guy who owns it has to take a hit somewhere else.

What I think should have been added is a way to remove the penalties by spending gold, maybe on a "legacy offset ritual" or something like that, so that the balance is retained. Don't want to make attack rolls at -1 to hit? Spend 5,000 gp and it goes away. If the attack penalty goes up to -2, spend another 15,000 gp (total 20,000 gp or 5,000 gp times penalty squared) and you're attacking as normal again.

My current, completely unofficial system, is 5,000 gp times penalty squared for attack roll, skill check and caster level penalties, 2,500 gp times penalty squared for saving throw penalties, 1,250 gp times penalty squared for a penalty to a single saving throw, 1,000 gp times spell level squared for spell slot loss, and 100 gp times cumulative loss squared for hit point and skill point loss.

 

[Andor]

Weapons of Legacy seem to be pretty blatent rip-off of the way magic weapons worked in Earth Dawn. The trick is, in Earth Dawn you paid for the incemental improvments to your weapons both by fulfilling the lore/rp requirement and by paying a chunk of XP. In Earth Dawn this was neither negligable nor a screwjob like it tends to be in DnD because in Earth Dawn you bought your abilities with XP a chunk at a time and leveled up when you had bought enough. As though in DnD a player said "Hmm.. We got just enough XP from those Orcs for my sorcerer to buy another 3rd level spell slot." So because you were paying a cost for your weapon ability that was the same as you would pay for a roughly equivalent class ability it was neatly balanced.

Unfortunately DnD has rougher granularity and doesn't let you part out costs so neatly. But I do think the solution used in the book is an ugly one. I think I'd rather see the weapons paid for with actual feats, and leave it at that.

 

[MerricB]

What I think should have been added is a way to remove the penalties by spending gold, maybe on a "legacy offset ritual" or something like that, so that the balance is retained. Don't want to make attack rolls at -1 to hit? Spend 5,000 gp and it goes away. If the attack penalty goes up to -2, spend another 15,000 gp (total 20,000 gp or 5,000 gp times penalty squared) and you're attacking as normal again.

Hmm. I've mentioned earlier that the equivalents are 2000 gp per level 5-10; 10,000 gp per level 11-16 and 35000 gp per level 17-20 (or thereabouts).

You might want to use those figures.

Cheers!