Weapons of Legacy: Balancing levelled items

[FireLance]

This seems silly. IMC there are weapons that increase with power as the wielder levels - eg +1 at 3rd level, +2 at 6th, +3 at 9th etc - but no need for penalties. I just look at what a 6th level PC "should" have according to wealth-by-level tables.

Unfortunately, not every DM wants to do the work of figuring out how the most recent enhancements to the characters' magic items increases their current wealth and consulting the wealth-by-level tables to determine how much more treasure to give them. Me, I let the players do the work, but that's a topic for another thread. Nonetheless, I do agree that is the best way to account for items that grow in power with the weilder.

 

[Nightfall]

Merric,

I didn't say eliminate ALL penalties just maybe assign something ELSE besides BAB, Saves, skill points and other stuff. Maybe just ability loss/drain/temporary damage.

 

[MerricB]

Nightfall: I didn't think you said anything of the sort (at least in this thread). My comments were replies to other posters.

Gone looking. Oh, there it is. you said:

BUT if you have to start using say, Diplomacy checks or some other Cha based skill, that penalty WILL start to hurt after all. That's why I think the skill checks make having decent ie non-low or less negatives work more for ability modifiers/penalties. Admittedly it's not a serious penalty like attack rolls, but then again saves might work just as well. (Specific saves not to all saves.)

There is a big problem whenever you force the DM to alter their campaign to balance the items, which is what you suggest. Normally a fighter doesn't do diplomacy - that's the job of the Bard, Cleric or Paladin. Artificially requiring the fighter *to* handle the diplomacy isn't good.

WoL has various penalties for various items. They include:

* Attack Penalty
* Save penalty (all saves)
* Save penalty (one save)
* Skill checks (all skills)
* Skill point loss
* Hit point loss
* Caster level loss
* Spell slot loss

###

One thing that just came to me: the penalties are XP loss in disguise.

They're somewhat similiar to having a Level Adjustment in reverse; but they aren't quite so vicious. For spellcasters, -2 caster levels and loss of a spell slot per spell level (normally up to two levels below their maximum) isn't really that bad - they're not losing their top spells at all.

Fighters, with HP loss and Attack penalties are effectively a few levels lower... but they keep their bonus iterative attacks for high BAB - and the plus of the weapon tends to make up for the loss attack bonus. Normally.

It's basically like a Level Adjustment - or those Monster Classes - in reverse.

There are several items that only impose a -1 on attacks, but hit skills or spells instead.

Cheers!

 

[Jackelope King]

A thought:

Weapons of legacy automatically grant your character the feats needed to gain access to higher-level abilities of the items. What if you actually needed to take those three feats rather than have them granted to you automatically? How much would three feats "cost" a player?

 

[Nightfall]

My problem with such things (even though admittedly its supposed to work for LA races, which I'm not sure it does considering I have clear evidence to the contrary), is that such penalities make for nearly unplayable characters. True the roleplaying aspects are touched up, but to me, I feel if we are to balance anything the penalities needed be BAB or others. Sacrificing one's ability scores should be hurtful enough CONSIDERING we have a number of untrained skills that DO get used. Take CHA. Often derided for "What do I need it for?" Well if you're a 16th level fighter...and you're facing down 20 well armed 10th level orcs, would a) die a ignoreble demise or b) neogiate? If you chose B then having a very low CHA along with 0 ranks in Diplomacy makes you VERY unlikely to get out that situation alive.

That's kind of why I'm a supporter of "IF WoL means to make a decent item TAKE OUT ability score!!!" This way, it's an appropriate way to balance with regards to adding XP AND gold costs.

A thought:

Weapons of legacy automatically grant your character the feats needed to gain access to higher-level abilities of the items. What if you actually needed to take those three feats rather than have them granted to you automatically? How much would three feats "cost" a player?

The feats are free. You don't lose feat slots for gaining them.

 

[Jackelope King]

The feats are free. You don't lose feat slots for gaining them.

I'm well aware. I'm suggesting that making them NOT free could go a long way towards balancing legacy items without chopping a character's base attack bonus, hit points, skills, saves, etc.

 

[Nightfall]

Uhm no. While I'm favor of balancing it, burning feats is even WORSE than burning BAB. At least then you have a chance of improving it. Burning Feats, it's like killing off the gods or something equally bad.

 

[MerricB]

I'm well aware. I'm suggesting that making them NOT free could go a long way towards balancing legacy items without chopping a character's base attack bonus, hit points, skills, saves, etc.

Feats are an unequal resource. Losing them as a cleric is harsh; losing them as a fighter is easy.

And it isn't base attack bonus you lose.

 

[MerricB]

Well if you're a 16th level fighter...and you're facing down 20 well armed 10th level orcs, would a) die a ignoreble demise or b) neogiate? If you chose B then having a very low CHA along with 0 ranks in Diplomacy makes you VERY unlikely to get out that situation alive.

Crap. I always turn to option C: let the bard or cleric handle it. (In most cases, I *am* option C. I play high Cha characters for a reason).

And, you know what: having a -4 Cha penalty is going to mean nothing when you hadn't spent any ranks there *anyway*.

"Yay! My wizard now has a 4 strength and a free Staff of Power!"
"What's the penalty involved with the low strength?"
"Nothing at all. I don't need strength!"

The genius of Weapons of Legacy is that it reduces scores that are important to you, without reducing them enough to make you ineffective, rather than reducing scores that aren't important to you... or are only important if the DM spends every waking moment trying to make them so.

 

[SteveC]

Steve, those are the two points that I feel are relevant to your game.

You're going to find that the PCs have *more* treasure than would otherwise be apparent due to the Weapons of Legacy, and any XP cost would be likely irrelevant in a short time. The net result of that isn't actually bad for your campaign! You'd likely find the PCs to be stronger than their levels would indicate, but that's easily accounted for.

Cheers!

Merric,
Very good points. From the numbers you've been crunching (thanks for doing that, by the way) it looks like the weapons end up costing about half as much as their book value. I wouldn't have any problem simply reducing the overall treasure in the game in half and calling it a day.

But still...I think the fact that the only items a character could have that were worth over 5000gp were either legacy items that they had found and researched or items they had made with their own legendary deeds would balance things out.

It's more of a thought exercise for me at this point, simply because I would really need to start fresh or "reload" a campaign in order to make this happen.

Still, I'm enjoying everyone's suggestions quite a bit. For what it's worth to anyone reading this thread who is thinking about buying Weapons of Legacy, I'd say that there are so many good ideas here that it is worth modifying it for your own use. It's kind of funny, really: I think Weapons of Legacy is almost like a third-party product--lot's of good ideas but poorly executed and balanced. I guess I'm not used to this from WotC on such a large scale (i.e., a whole book with the problem).

--Steve