Weapons of Legacy opinions?

[TheAuldGrump]

The two specific items in the book I like are the legacy holy avenger and the legacy staff of power.

The rest just give inspiration, and I ignore their abilities.

Cheers!

Actually, I had forgotten about those, and agree.

The Auld Grump

 

[ColonelHardisson]

We changed it to where the attack penalty applied to any weapon OTHER than the legacy weapon.

Now that's a really, really cool idea.

 

[MerricB]

Right, and what could be wrong with a character having their own innate abilities "overwhelmed" by their magic items? That's old-school D&D right there, folks.

Weapons of Legacy is sort of the Anti-Iron Heroes sourcebook--to re-paraphrase, "It's the sword, not the arm that wields it". It literally disempowers the actual character so that they can wield some awesome piece of gear.

No, that's the Game Mechanics (Unearthed Arcana) version. You have to even take a prestige class to wield the item. Forget any development of your character. You were wanting to be a Shadowdancer? Pity.

XP penalty? Oh, that's good. Lose a level - so a -1 to all attacks and fewer hit points and lower saves and worse spells... hey, that sounds like WoL! Except that it's worse - the WoL penalties aren't that severe.

Magic weapons making you fight worse? Stupid.

Actually, it's rare that the weapon actually makes you fight worse with the weapon. (Designs like that don't thrill me that much).

Morover, the designers seem to regard wierd things as benefits. Take UR. It gains sentience as a "bonus". Thats not a useful ability, its just an irritation for both players and DM's to have some stupid deer spirit in a weapon yelling at you to hide all the time. I changed it to actually give bonuses when the 3 spirits awaken, and it seems a better balanced item.

I agree there. Sentience is not a benefit. It's merely annoying.

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

Now that's a really, really cool idea.

It's a very nice idea; mind you, the -2 to attacks by 20th level doesn't faze me that much.

(BTW, Stormbringer is another example of Weapon over User).

Cheers!

 

[FireLance]

Like several other posters, I like the concept of an item that grows in power with the wielder, but don't like the idea of the penalties.

I can see why they are there - even with the legacy ritual costs, the items are underpriced for the powers they provide. Presumably, PCs with legacy items can buy other magic items with the money they save and thus be at about the save level of competence as PCs who do not have legacy items.

So for me, the next logical step was to use money to buy off the penalties.

I actually came up with a very complicated system that priced the cost of offsetting an attack penalty, a save penalty, a caster level penalty, the loss of a spell slot, etc. and was quite pleased to note that the overall cost for each legacy item were fairly close together.

Then, to simplify the system, I averaged the offset costs at each level and compared them to the standard wealth per level table. There was quite a lot of variation, ranging from 19.4% to 45.5%, but when I averaged those numbers, I got something very close to 33%.

Hence, my simplified rule of thumb for legacy items without penalties is that they should cost about one-third of the standard wealth that a PC should have at each level. In order to unlock the next level's ability, the PC should pay the difference in costs (ignore the cost of the mundane item).

Example: At 4th level, a PC's legacy item is simply a +1 longsword (cost: 2,000 gp, ignoring the base cost of 315 gp for a masterwork longsword). The standard wealth for a 5th-level PC is 9,000 gp, and one third of this is 3,000 gp. In order to unlock his legacy item's 5th-level ability, the PC has to pay 1,000 gp after he reaches 5th level. The standard wealth for a 6th-level PC is 13,000 gp, and one third of this is about 4,300 gp. In order to unlock his legacy item's 6th-level ability, the PC has to pay 1,300 gp after he reaches 6th level, and so on.

 

[Aaron L]

No, that's the Game Mechanics (Unearthed Arcana) version. You have to even take a prestige class to wield the item. Forget any development of your character. You were wanting to be a Shadowdancer? Pity.

XP penalty? Oh, that's good. Lose a level - so a -1 to all attacks and fewer hit points and lower saves and worse spells... hey, that sounds like WoL! Except that it's worse - the WoL penalties aren't that severe.



Actually, it's rare that the weapon actually makes you fight worse with the weapon. (Designs like that don't thrill me that much).



I agree there. Sentience is not a benefit. It's merely annoying.

Cheers!

I love the idea of WoLs, but the implementation looked so complicated, and I saw examples that gave penalties to hit and stuff, and just gave up on them. I should look into it more.

 

[MerricB]

Hence, my simplified rule of thumb for legacy items without penalties is that they should cost about one-third of the standard wealth that a PC should have at each level. In order to unlock the next level's ability, the PC should pay the difference in costs (ignore the cost of the mundane item).

Example: At 4th level, a PC's legacy item is simply a +1 longsword (cost: 2,000 gp, ignoring the base cost of 315 gp for a masterwork longsword). The standard wealth for a 5th-level PC is 9,000 gp, and one third of this is 3,000 gp. In order to unlock his legacy item's 5th-level ability, the PC has to pay 1,000 gp after he reaches 5th level. The standard wealth for a 6th-level PC is 13,000 gp, and one third of this is about 4,300 gp. In order to unlock his legacy item's 6th-level ability, the PC has to pay 1,300 gp after he reaches 6th level, and so on.

The actual value of the legacy weapon abilities are pretty close to:
2,000 gp for levels 5-10
8,000-10,000 gp for levels 11-16
35,000-40,000 gp for levels 17-20.

See:
Menu slot A makes a weapon from Masterwork to +1 - 2000 gp
Menu slot B (worth 2 A slots) gives an item a +2 enhancement bonus to Str - 4000 gp
Menu slot D is the equivalent of a rod of metamagic, extend spell - 11,000 gp or moves a weapon from +2 to +3 (10,000 gp)
Menu slot E (worth 2 D slots) gives an item a +4 enhancement bonus to Str - 16,000 gp
Menu slot G gives weapon enhancement +9 to +10 (39,000 gp), or a +6 bonus to a stat (36,000 gp) or a ring of wizardry II (40,000 gp)

"Buying off" the penalties is somewhat tricky due to their varying value depending on level.

Cheers!

 

[Li Shenron]

I fI understand right, WoL is written around two ideas:

- having certain magic items grow together with the character

- having some items which are more powerful than normal (compared with items of same cost), and compensate with penalties

I love the first idea, and I was happy when WoL was announced to do that. The dread mistake was to merge both ideas in the same items. I do not necessarily loath the idea of having magic items with penalties, but I do not want the two ideas mixed together.

Furthermore, most of WoL penalties are utterly flavorless and make no sense: HP penalty means that the weapon simply makes you physically weaker. Makes sense if you are talking about some necromancy item which sucks your life, but not much else. Attack/damage penalty can be only explained so that you cannot really master the use of this specific weapon even if you're proficient: it could be fine, but to have such a penalty at the same time as an enhancement bonus is bordering to insane design, since the cancel each others out.

If the two things were separate, I would have bought the book and used a lot about the first idea. But not being able to get that without the second simply kept me away from buying it. It would have just taken the effort of providing a second market price for the same item without the penalties. This is probably a piece of cake for designers, but it's not so easy for me to do myself, I would be better off buying correctly designed market price and write my own flavor, rather than buying the flavor and have to adjust and re-balance the whole mechanic.

 

[Psychic Warrior]

I'll have to agree with MerricB on this one - Weapons of Legacy is one of the most interesting and useful supplements I have bought. I love the concept of weapons 'powering up' as the PC gains levels and the penalties are very minor considering the abilities one gets (in my game the Cleric sacrificed 12 hit points and has a -2 on skill checks for a +2 Frost Battleaxe which can cast an 11HD Cone of Cold and has a metamagic feat built in, the Rogue has a +3 rapier that adds 4 to his Str, 2 to his Con and one other ability I can't remember right now all for 6 HP, -1 to attacks and -2 on one save (Reflex - which he barely notices given his Reflex save of +16).

The penalities look debilitating but when you considerthe abilities the weapon gets they more than often overshadow them.

 

[ceratitis]

while the penelties may be over shadowed i simply dont like having random penelties like that. i like items with some kind of penelty and i love the concept of items growing in power with the char but imho the penelties should be related to the granted powers. a frost battle axe with a cone of cold should inflict a sensetivity to fire damage, and similar stuff. plus i think the main thing about weapons of legacy should be the fluff. i have a bard friend with a crossbow that gave us hell until we pried it from the dead fingers of our slain enemy. now several levels later with more money he has the option to trade it for a better weapon but that would be giving up the story that comes with it, so i suggested to our dm to implement legacy abilities on it. they can grant him great power at a cost of say sensetivity to cold (its a flaming crossbow) or penelty to hit with melee weapons ect...
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