Weapons of Legacy: does anyone have it yet?

[FireLance]

All I can say is I'll probably write my own bonding stuff and add in additional penalities if necessary. I can live with taking away a warrior HP or even draining off a point of physical/spiritual stat (phys= Str, Dex, Con; spiritual= Int, Wis, Cha). But skill points?! BAB?! No way. Other than that, I'll keep trying out various things.

I've decided to implement "legacy offset rituals" which effectively substitute the personal cost for using the legacy item for a gp cost for the ritual.

The numbers I've come up with are (penalty)^2 x 5000 gp for attack roll penalties, skill check penalties and caster level penalties, (penalty)^2 x 2500 gp for saving throw penalties (half that for a penalty to a single saving throw), (spell level)^2 x 1000 gp for spell slot loss, and (cumulative point loss)^2 x 100 gp for skill point and hit point loss. This seems to work out fine for tables 4-1 to 4-5 and table 4-7, where the cumulative ritual cost (legacy ritual costs plus offset ritual costs) are pretty close together at every level and come up to between 123600 gp and 150700 gp at level 20. Effectively, this means that someone can use a legacy item with no personal cost by spending an amount approximately equal to the cost of a +8 to +9 weapon.

Tables 4-6 and 4-8 produce slightly higher numbers with my formula, at 166500 gp and 191600 gp by level 20. I'm thinking the penalty to skill checks and caster levels for both these tables are too high. Table 4-6 should probably top out at -1 for both, and table 4-8 should probably top out at -2 for both.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Finally got a change to look through the book.

A little surprised that they mentioned Stormbringer as that's pretty much a powerful weapon regardless of the wielder although it's penalties are more in the form of it say killing your friends as opposed to hit point loss.

Overall I like the back ground details, legacy monsters, maps, and encounters, but I haven't wrapped my head around the penalties for the weapons themselves, especially since in some cases they're really not that much better than an individualized weapon of that power level.

Gets worse if you compare it to the Scions, Bonded Items, or Item Familiars.

Haven't finished reading it yet, but it's looking like a 3 star rating.