Weapons of Legacy opinions?

[Hjorimir]

Attunement

I have my own attunement system for items that grow with characters, which has been very well received by all of my players. Basically, each character has a hard limit on how much magic they can bind to their souls. This is driven by the wealth-by-level chart provided in the DMG with 1,000gp of character wealth equating to 1 attunement point.

The cost for attunement is 50gp per point of attunement (basic incantation with the associated material costs – oils, rare pigments, incense, attendants, virgins, etc.). The attunement process can just as easily require a certain task, for which I would toss aside the gold piece cost normally associated.

So, let’s take a look at a 7th-level fighter. I can literally hand him a +5 vorpal sword and not blink an eye at game balance. A 7th-level character has 19 points of attunement available to him at any one time. Now, I should preface that I require attunement in order from cheapest abilities to most expensive. That means in order to attune the vorpal quality (a +5 modifier) the character will first have to at least attune +4 of the enhancement bonuses before he can even consider the +5 vorpal ability. That would place him at 15th level before he could swing it as a vorpal weapon and he'd only have 38 points left over for all of his items (armor, ability enhancers, cloaks, rings, etc.).

At 7th-level he can attune the sword up to +3 for 18 of his points and have 1 point left to spare. That means maybe a +1 suit of armor.

Gone are the days where I have to consistently monitor the magic items that drop and I can freely introduce heirlooms or other crazy powerful items. Also, the system polices itself as far as distribution of magic items. Ever run a game (or been a player in one) where one character just seems to keep getting all of the magic items? Or at least the lion’s share? Well he can’t even use them so what good are they doing him? I find that the players are very, very mindful of spreading the wealth…and that’s a good thing.

I don’t charge attunement for scrolls and potions, btw.

Anyway, I thought I’d toss this up here for any who are interested. I can answer questions if anybody cares to ask.

 

[GQuail]

I'm always stunned when I hear people say "I couldn't make up a plausible explanation for my players for why the mechanics work this way." What? It requires gold to purchase the special yrthak oil that you need to annoint the weapon and to hire the troupe of fifty monks to chant for sixteen days. It reduces your hit points because the weapon is fueled on the vital energies of the weilder. It reduces your attack bonus because when you swing the weapon, you can feel the very weight of ages weighing down your arms, and only a mighty hero can overcome that load to wield the thing properly. See? It's easy.

I just wanted to give a big "Me too" on this. I love Weapons of Legacy: and though I agree that PCs might not be keen on using weapons which give negatives to their core abilities, I think the powers given far outweight this. I also think that saying "I don't get why it happens" is a bit silly because there are so many soul-sapping, mind-controlling, headache-inducing items in fantasy that making up an excuse for a paticular set of mods seems almost obvious to me.

For example, my current group has two legacy weapons: the barbarian has Tiamat's Bane, a greataxe which is currently a +1 Dragonbane weapon and will eventually gain the enhanced bane from DMG II and Keen, and the wizard has The Kingmaker's Stave, a quarterstaff which grants him all kinds of time related powers, starting with True Strike and heading towards Commune and eventually Time Stop.

In both cases I've used the drawbacks more or less as is: though the gold cost for the Axe's least ritual was paid by an NPC because the weapon was won in ritual combat, and the caster level negative on the second has more or less been ignored. (Though the used up spell slot and other negatives remain). The former was an RP conceit and because the player was a little poor and deserved a power kick up: the latter was because the wizard in question is a Dwarf Wizard and only recently started to cast spells more than try to charge into combat and end up unconscious, and I figured an incentive to actually cast spells wouldn't go amiss. ;-)

Like any item creation, the rules shoudl be seen as guidelines, not definites: a DM should feel free to toy with it, but as is I think it works good as is. Tiamats Bane is a great weapon, but the blood of so many dragon's has tainted it and makes it a mighty burden to carry as well as a great boon. The Kingmaker's Stave is an item of enormous potential, but the foresight it grants causes the caster to become slightly more detatched from the present, and fueling its power requires some of the casters own mana. My PCs were a little taken aback when they first heard about negatives from items, sure: but the moment someone mention Elric, they all kinda went, "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, I see."

 

[MerricB]

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

- having certain magic items grow together with the character

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.

The trouble is this: there must be a penalty of some kind to maintain game balance. Having a +1 sword that scales up to a +5 vorpal sword is great, but if it's the property of the fighter of the party and no-one else has an equivalent item... oh dear. The fighter suddenly has 200,000 gp extra worth of stuff. Even if everyone has equivalent items, the DM has to reduce treasure awarded to keep things in scale; this may not be a problem in a homebrew, but can quickly get troublesome when using published adventures.

The idea of growing magic weapons has been in the game since the start, as a player demonstrated to me during my Necropolis game. A simple +1 longbow was gradually recrafted to be a +1 flaming, shocking, corrosive, frost longbow by the end of the campaign by this character (an Eldritch Knight). However, the XP cost, feat, spell and gold cost was significant.

Furthermore, most of WoL penalties are utterly flavorless and make no sense.

I'm not going to disagree with the first part there. The sense lies in making it a good design that can be used by anyone.

Creating a new Weapon of Legacy is superbly easy thanks to the guidelines and rules given in the book. The genericness of the penalties makes them applicable to many characters, and the way the item bonuses are laid out are very easy to apply.

Why I like the penalties as written so much is because they don't care whether the PC is a barbarian, fighter, or knight. They work for each; as opposed to the "Scion" prestige classes in Unearthed Arcana, which assume a generic fighter, cleric, wizard or rogue. If you take a prestige class, they don't interfere with your abilities. Sure, you might be slightly weaker in a couple of areas, but at least you still get all of your feats, special abilities and iterative attacks.

Cheers!

 

[M.L. Martin]

Something I've been thinking about, and I'd welcome the input of Merric and others who actually have the book.

Would the penalties feel more organic and rational if they were treated as 'slowed advancement' rather than net penalties? That is, when you were to hit a -X penalty with an item of legacy, instead of taking it off your existing stats, you lose the advancement either from the level you've just gained or from/over the next levels at which you advance in that stat?

This could be tricky to balance, but it might work better from a world logic point of view--you're investing so much in growing the item of legacy that growth in your natural talents slows down. To maintain balance in some cases--such as attack penalties for classes with 1/2 BAB advancement--you might even argue that you start to lose proficiency in some less important areas, thus applying penalties to existing statistics at some points in addition to just sacrificing gains.

Matthew L. Martin

 

[MerricB]

Something I've been thinking about, and I'd welcome the input of Merric and others who actually have the book.

Would the penalties feel more organic and rational if they were treated as 'slowed advancement' rather than net penalties? That is, when you were to hit a -X penalty with an item of legacy, instead of taking it off your existing stats, you lose the advancement either from the level you've just gained or from/over the next levels at which you advance in that stat?

I don't think that's dissimilar to how they work, really. A new penalty kicks in when you gain a level; e.g. a fighter hitting 8th level suddenly gets a -1 to attacks, (partially) negating the BAB increase.

There are penalties that "eat" skill points that you would otherwise get, or hit points likewise.

Of course, taking -1 to saving throws at 7th level is a retroactive change; if the negatives to saving throws were at 6th, 12th and 18th level, then the slowed advancement would work better (conversely, the penalty may be too high).

And -1 to all skills is rather more significant than the loss of 3 skill points to a rogue...

Cheers!

 

[coyote6]

I, too, like the basic idea, but hate the penalties.

My solution to that would be to ignore the penalties, adjust loot amounts to compensate, and make sure all the PCs are covered -- if I reduce the loot levels because most of the PCs have items of legacy, but one PC doesn't, then maybe that character's mentor/parent/king/high priest gives him or her an item as a reward. Conveniently, said item will keep said PC balanced with the WoL-wielders.

As a player, if I had a character get most of those items, I would seriously consider selling the item. Drawbacks in items are fine, if they're cool or flavorful; but "-x to attacks/saves/skills" is not cool or flavorful. And reducing hit points approaches suicide.

 

[Vague Jayhawk]

The Divine Spark is driving me nuts. My DM has the book I do not.

I am currently playing a cleric of Moradin. The hit point loss I could handle. I think I lose 4 total. I can handle the -1 to attack.

The DM keeps us broke so I am not sure how I am going to come up with the money for it.

My cleric aint too smart and Clerics do not get many skill points. It really hurt me to put 6 skill points in learning 3 languages. All of my skill points for three levels went there.

Then I find out that I lose spell slots up to the 6th level! That is going too far! I can understand some penalties but the penalties on this are ridiculous!

 

[Li Shenron]

The trouble is this: there must be a penalty of some kind to maintain game balance. Having a +1 sword that scales up to a +5 vorpal sword is great, but if it's the property of the fighter of the party and no-one else has an equivalent item... oh dear. The fighter suddenly has 200,000 gp extra worth of stuff. Even if everyone has equivalent items, the DM has to reduce treasure awarded to keep things in scale; this may not be a problem in a homebrew, but can quickly get troublesome when using published adventures.

Yes I agree, but the whole idea ends up being like this: we're giving you an item more powerful than you should have, but we ask you a higher price (the penalties).

Then the key point is how do you design that price? Penalties should not be to something that the character may manage to ignore, they should concretely come into place. This means that they can be either (a) penalties to general things [ST, HP, Init and a few more, which you cannot choose not to use/roll] or otherwise (b) penalties to very related things [a melee weapon may give both bonuses and penalties to fighting in melee].

So far WoL seems to go in the right direction, but then ultimately I don't understand why would I want an item that gives me a bonus to hit and a penalty to hit at the same time? You can argue that it isn't exactly the same (there's DR for example), but still with the attack penalty it feels like "we're giving you a bonus in exchange... for you to give it back"!

Maybe the real question is: why should a character be allowed to have an item more powerful than she should ever have?
In fact the book starts by giving you the item, but immediately tries to put balance back. You can see this system as one more option, as soon as the balance is quite fine (which I think it probably is) there's no reason to say that the system shouldn't be there, but also for me there is no reason to use it either...

Actually, there would a reason: I wanted items to grow with the character so that the PC would rely less on buy-sell practices. The reason why WoL doesn't satisfy me is that in order to get this benefit, I must take the other idea (the penalties) into use as well even if I don't want. That is really my only problem with it, ultimately.

 

[MerricB]

The Divine Spark is driving me nuts. My DM has the book I do not.

I am currently playing a cleric of Moradin. The hit point loss I could handle. I think I lose 4 total. I can handle the -1 to attack.

The DM keeps us broke so I am not sure how I am going to come up with the money for it.

My cleric aint too smart and Clerics do not get many skill points. It really hurt me to put 6 skill points in learning 3 languages. All of my skill points for three levels went there.

Then I find out that I lose spell slots up to the 6th level! That is going too far! I can understand some penalties but the penalties on this are ridiculous!

Divine Spark will "eat" spell slots, but this isn't cumulative. When you're 6th level, you should lose one 1st level slot; When you're 8th level, it's one 2nd level slot, when you're 20th level, it's one 8th level slot. It's a minor cost compared to your regular spells.

Cheers!

 

[Vague Jayhawk]

I am still going to go through all of the rituals just for sheer role-playing immersion. It seems to be an item that my character would take great pride in and so I play it that way. None of my previous clerics have had anything like this.

Despite all this I still wonder if the penalties of the item outweight the benifits.