# Experiences with Weapons of Legacy



## Remathilis (Dec 27, 2009)

So one of my PCs in my Pathfinder game is going to discover his +1 bastard sword isn't just a beat-up old magic-item; its a near-divine relic which needs to be restored. I want him to keep the weapon and slowly work on releasing its powers, till its restored (at high level) to the kickass weapon it is. (In reality, its based on Ravenloft's Sunsword, see below).  

I'm not yet sure how to do it.

I'm considering Weapons of Legacy; it fits the model I'm aiming for and Expedition to Castle Ravenloft did a lot of heavy-lifting for me when they wrote up the Sunsword like that (which I will modify and use for my own purposes), but I've heard all manner of negative things about it (to be honest, the rules could be a LOT clearer, especially in relation to lesser/greater aspects).

Specifically, I'm unsure the weapon will be properly balanced against normal magical items found, especially at high-levels.  I'm worried the Personal Costs and Ritual Costs will drive the player away from it (currently, a -3 to skills and loss of 16 hp by 20th level). I'm afraid forging a +10 (+5 keen, holy, flaming-burst) weapon might be a whole-lot easier and more beneficial in the long-run. 

So I'm interested in hearing personal experiences with WoL OR alternative methods of letting this sword grow with the PC (gaining sunblade-like powers along the way). All suggestions are welcome. 

Thanks


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## Vorput (Dec 28, 2009)

I really didn't want to retype up an answer to this, and thanks to Google- I was able to find my response to a similar question from 3 years ago!

From here:  Weapons of Legacy (the thread as a whole might help you)



> I found the book mostly worthless... It was an idea that I certainly didn't need a book to tell me, and a whole set of complicated needless mechanics to explain the aforementioned idea.
> 
> I was at a loss to explain to my character why he needs to spend 5,400 gold to go pray at a location that he was able to get to spending no more than 300 gold.
> 
> ...


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## Jarrod (Dec 28, 2009)

We tried to use it over and over and it... just wasn't worth it. The penalties really kill the idea. Not because they're death on wheels, but they're just really, really annoying.


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## Dice4Hire (Dec 28, 2009)

I read over WoL an was not impressed as it was a lot of give and take, and the take was really annoying

To keep it simpler, I would do something like the Samurai in Oriental adventures, or the Kensai in Complete Warrior who used xp or treasure sacrifices to awaken powers in their weapons. Put a level limit on each power and let the player choose whatthey activate in each order, but give them a list of what it can do.

Or set the order yourself and the player gets what comes.  

If you want to tie a location or a specific sacrifice need ,that can be gravy, just do not give penalties. Players hate those. IME


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## Crothian (Dec 28, 2009)

I use the weapons and their abilities but disregarded the silly penalties and needless spending of gold.


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## Remathilis (Dec 28, 2009)

Crothian said:


> I use the weapons and their abilities but disregarded the silly penalties and needless spending of gold.




Interesting. Was there any balancing factor (beyond time) you used? They seem potent compared to "normal" items, but not as much as the penalties would have you think. 

I'm thinking of chunking the powers into 5 "chunks" and giving the PC specific quests to unlock the powers. Alternately, I could just give him a bonus instead of a "magical item" when assigning treasure.


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## Alzrius (Dec 28, 2009)

Honestly, the best thing to come from _Weapons of Legacy_ was that short-lived meme we had around here based around the "monster of legacy" template in the back of the book.

- Alzrius, the EN World Kitten of Legacy


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## the Jester (Dec 28, 2009)

I'm a whore for gaming material, and when WoL came out I was flush with cash. 

I looked it over and thought, "This is such crap, I'm not even gonna bother to get the book." And let me tell you, that was saying something at the time! 

If you want artifacts, use artifacts. If you want magic items with abilities that level over time with the wielder, make it so. If you want items that cost the user significant penalties, use cursed items.

Weapons of legacy, imho, were like a stew that tried to mix all three together, and instead of being a delicious goulash turned out as a burnt, nearly-tasteless tub of fat curd that rats got into and pooped in before anyone could take a taste. No point in eating that!


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## Jeff Wilder (Dec 28, 2009)

From what I've been able to tell, the main beef against _Weapons of Legacy_ is that the rules actually expect you to pay meaningful penalties for weapon powers that are far, far beyond what you'd normally get for the same amount of gold.

People would have been fine, for instance, if the penalties for a weapon's combat powers were things like "-2 on Diplomacy checks," because for the vast majority of melee-oriented PCs, "-2 on Diplomacy checks" is meaningless.  On the other hand, "-4 HP" or "-1 to all attacks" is a trade-off that isn't a no-brainer.

In other words, weapons of legacy, by the book, were balanced, and that's not what people -- me, included, at first -- expected.  As such, using them is mostly a matter of whether the DM and the players want the flavor of a weapon that grows in power with the character.

Can DMs and players work out another way of doing a similar idea, without the inherent balance of meaningful game-mechanical penalties?  Of course, and in many games that will be a superior way to do things.  But if you want weapons of legacy that are game-mechanically balanced, and already created for you (including rules for making your own), _Weapons of Legacy_ is a fine book.

FWIW, my DM gave a PC a weapon of legacy (a longbow) and vastly nerfed the penalties, and the weapon is far, far more powerful than anything the rest of us have.  (Including my cleric's self-crafted hammer, a relic of Moradin.)  If the player weren't hopelessly inept at both optimization and tactics, the longbow would be extremely unbalancing.  (The player's ineptitude _might_ be why the DM was so lenient, but the DM's another one who doesn't like the legacy penalties, so I dunno.)


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## Dice4Hire (Dec 28, 2009)

Jeff Wilder said:


> F
> People would have been fine, for instance, if the penalties for a weapon's combat powers were things like "-2 on Diplomacy checks," because for the vast majority of melee-oriented PCs, "-2 on Diplomacy checks" is meaningless.  On the other hand, "-4 HP" or "-1 to all attacks" is a trade-off that isn't a no-brainer.




The problem is that all of those are incredibly boring, and very hard to balance. Were the Weapons of Legacy blanced in a party? 

I don't know as I found the book not worth the effort to find out.


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## MerricB (Dec 28, 2009)

We had a really great time with Weapons of Legacy, mainly because I designed our own ones, and then the players really became invested in them (and they were rather good items at that).

Enough so that I've occasionally heard them lamenting that they don't exist in 4e. 

Cheers!


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## cignus_pfaccari (Dec 28, 2009)

Jeff Wilder said:


> People would have been fine, for instance, if the penalties for a weapon's combat powers were things like "-2 on Diplomacy checks," because for the vast majority of melee-oriented PCs, "-2 on Diplomacy checks" is meaningless.  On the other hand, "-4 HP" or "-1 to all attacks" is a trade-off that isn't a no-brainer.




The bonuses weren't really so hot, though.

Looking in Bo9S, the weapons there have abilities that are kind of meh at best.  They're either highly situational (and thus prone to be forgotten) or something that is covered in the rest of your panoply, or they come in at so high a level that they aren't useful.

So, giving up hp or taking attack/skill/save penalties for what eventually turns out to be a +7-equivalent weapon with some SLAs doesn't seem to be that much of a good idea.  I'd rather spend more money on a weapon of my own design, thank you.

Brad


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## Holy Bovine (Dec 28, 2009)

As written WoL is pretty much worthless.  And I read and re-read that book over and over again  wanting to like it.  I even brought in some for 2 different groups and neither liked them very much.  That said the backgrounds and histories written for most of the weapons in the book are really top notch.  I have found many uses for them over the years.  I would _never_ thrust one upon a player though - they really just suck.  For the record I used 11 different WoL (of my own devising using some of the histories from the book) and none of them really worked for me or the group.

A good idea with just terrible implmentation.


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## Runestar (Dec 28, 2009)

Another issue is that you can't customize the abilities granted by the item (well, you can, but that typically involves redesigning the entire item from scratch, which seems to defeat the purpose of getting the book in the first place). 

A player given the opportunity to craft or commission the crafting of a magic item he really wants will surely use the chance to cherry-pick properties which complement his abilities the most. Not the case with weapons of legacy. 

Throw in the various penalties you have to suck up and you typically end up with a far inferior weapon compared to the next best alternative - creating one yourself.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Dec 28, 2009)

I liked the ideas espoused in WoL, but not necessarily the execution.

The rules lacked flexibility- I'd have liked more info on how to design & balance new WoLs, with broader themes.

I also think that the single biggest problem with them is that it costs a feat to "buy in" to WoLs when most classes are Feat-starved (and some of us like Sunder_ *raises hand*_).  It might have been better if the Legacy feats worked a bit more like the Vows from BoED/BoVD, and actually replaced the feat lost, albeit at a later level.

Better would have been to have a WoL linked to a particular backstory...and have the "buy in" be in the form of either PC/campaign backstory, PC action, or innate to the weapon itself.


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## Truth Seeker (Dec 28, 2009)

Besides all the 'don't' like statements, there was a moment where I took a high-light and literally found a word, one word, (forgot what it was now), and repeatedly mark the word out, line by line, page by page (alot of lines and several pages).

I was seriously turned off by that. Never touched it again.

p.s. locate Dragon Magazine # 289, pg 56. There, you can simpifly the process.


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## coyote6 (Dec 28, 2009)

Yeah, the penalties struck me as made of fail. "Here's a weapon -- it will make you worse at combat and adventuring, by penalizing things you need to survive, and costing you resources you have in short supply." Uh, no thanks. 

For me, penalties like -2 Diplomacy or similar "-X to something you won't do" wouldn't have made it better; they would have been clearly cheesy. 

It seems like it would be easier to just make the weapon/item's cost rise appropriately as its abilities increase, and give out less treasure if you care about staying in the wealth guidelines. If you are concerned about party balance, give everyone an item of legacy.


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## pawsplay (Dec 28, 2009)

It may be the worst 3e book ever written. Insofar as the costs were "balanced," they were a needlessly complicated way to get you back where you started, or from a GM standpoint, a needlessly complicated way to bribe your players to stick with a particular item. Despite the explicit inclusion of a pair of paired weapons, using more than one of these items would "balance" your character so much that a half-dragon drow sorcerer would look strong by comparison. The mechanics didn't work, the balancing mechancis didn't work, the rules assumed non-standard uses of Knowledge checks which were never explained, and the items which supposedly arose as a result of legendary acts required special insenses and such costing thousands of gold that you needed to contemplate the weapon's specialness. Apart from that, Exordius has an awesome backstory and would work great as an artifact, whereas most of the other items were either boring or, frankly, dorky. Bullybasher's Gauntlets pretty much win the prize for worst name married to least interesting item with most pathetic legendary origin.

Apologies to any board posters who contributed to that book, nothing personal, I assure you.

You would do better with the item advancement rules in Unearthed Arcana, any of a number of third party supplments that supported that concept, or any number of other approaches to the same concept. Really, anything other than using Weapons of Legacy. Before you use Weapons of Legacy, you should strongly consider whether there are any downsides to simply handing out improvements to their exisisting items in place of treasure.

I wrote this review in a fairly generous mood and before I sold my copy:

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12190.phtml


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## Derulbaskul (Dec 28, 2009)

pawsplay said:


> It may be the worst 3e book ever written. (snip)




No. Surely that honour must belong to the _Epic Level Handbook_? 

While I do agree with you and your review, I must admit I have found some of the weapon backstories quite good and will eventually include several in my 4E games... but completely ignoring the mechanics.  That said, it was a bloody expensive way to buy the backstories of a few magical items!


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## Runestar (Dec 28, 2009)

> No. Surely that honour must belong to the _Epic Level Handbook_?




Make that a 3-way fight for 2nd last place with Savage Species? 

Ironically, I liked the idea behind SS, but felt that the execution was extremely bad. Worse - it came out right before 3.5, thus invalidating quite a bit of material.

As for weapons of legacy, why do I get this feeling said book could easily have been a web enhancement, but the designers decided to try and bloat it so they could package it as another splatbook?


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## Crothian (Dec 28, 2009)

Remathilis said:


> Interesting. Was there any balancing factor (beyond time) you used? They seem potent compared to "normal" items, but not as much as the penalties would have you think.





Not really.  D&D never punished PCs for having magical items before (except with artifacts and cursed items) and I didn't like that it did that here.  Sure, they were powerful but not all magic items are created equal anyway so we always had items that were more powerful then others.


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## Coldwyn (Dec 28, 2009)

Legacy weapons are actually quite good and well balanced when keeping some things in mind: They seem to be designed with standard wealth-by-level in mind. When strictly playing by the rules, a fighter with a legacy sword that scales well up to lvl 20, having adequate money for his level, can compensate quite well for the disadvantages, because he has a fair amount of money more to spent (more or less the difference to not having to buy a adequate sword for his level). The disadvantage system forces the player to spent his extra money on the specific items used to counter the disadvantages.
If a dm doesn´t stick to the money-per-level rules, than the disadvantages need to be modified to reflect the difference.


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## pawsplay (Dec 28, 2009)

Derulbaskul said:


> No. Surely that honour must belong to the _Epic Level Handbook_?




Not even close, IMO. Seriously. At least with the ELH, you can simply excise the 90% of the material that you don't like and use the remaining snippets. With the WoL, you have to do that and then revise everything that's left to make sense.


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## pawsplay (Dec 28, 2009)

Runestar said:


> Make that a 3-way fight for 2nd last place with Savage Species?
> 
> Ironically, I liked the idea behind SS, but felt that the execution was extremely bad. Worse - it came out right before 3.5, thus invalidating quite a bit of material.




Actually, I kind of like Savage Species. It wasn't perfect, but considering the circumstances, how could it be? File it under "noble experiment."



> As for weapons of legacy, why do I get this feeling said book could easily have been a web enhancement, but the designers decided to try and bloat it so they could package it as another splatbook?




"Let's use that!"
"Uh, seriously, these were some ideas we were kicking around. I'm not quite sure if they're ready to..."
"Just do it. I know you guys can make it work."
"We're not even entirely sure..."
"Zip it."
"But..."
"Zip!"


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## Derulbaskul (Dec 28, 2009)

Runestar said:


> Make that a 3-way fight for 2nd last place with Savage Species?  (snip)




Hehe. You may have a point there but I hope you agree _Epic Level Handbook_ is the worst. 



> As for weapons of legacy, why do I get this feeling said book could easily have been a web enhancement, but the designers decided to try and bloat it so they could package it as another splatbook?




Or a _Dragon_ article.


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## Scribble (Dec 28, 2009)

Derulbaskul said:


> Or a _Dragon_ article.




Actually I think it originally WAS a Dragon article.  It was called like level up your weapons or something?


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## Aus_Snow (Dec 28, 2009)

Ding ding, we have a winner.


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## Dausuul (Dec 28, 2009)

The fundamental fail of Weapons of Legacy was this:

*The Problem:* Because of the way wealth by level works, PCs tend not to stick with the same weapon; they swap out any time they get a chance at a better one.

*The Solution:* Create weapons that are cheap enough to give to low-level characters, level up along with their wielders, yet are balanced at their original price (plus a few relatively small ritual costs) due to feat costs and stat penalties.

*The Problem With The Solution:* If the weapon is balanced at its original price, that means it _has_ to be weaker than a higher-priced weapon available later on. If you're a 3E weapon-user, your weapon is your absolute top priority; you can expect to invest (IME) about 50% of your WBL in it. Using a Weapon of Legacy means you are denied the chance to make such an investment, which is a major penalty in itself.

Weapons of Legacy _could_ have worked, if the designers had bit the bullet and applied a suitable gold-piece cost; make it so the price you pay for a ritual to improve your Weapon of Legacy is comparable to the price you'd pay to upgrade a regular weapon of similar level. Make sure the upgrades are sensible ones that a real weapon-user might find attractive. Then adjust the price downward somewhat, or throw in a few extras, to account for the loss of flexibility.

Something like this:

*Sword of Frosty Death (8,000 gp)*
When found, the _sword of frosty death_ is a _+1 frost greatsword_. The wielder can gain the ability to use it as a more powerful weapon by making offerings of silver and white gems to the mighty snow demons. The rituals to improve it are as follows:


*First Rite*: Sacrifice 24,000 gp worth of silver and gems. While you wield it, the _sword_ is now a _+3 frost greatsword_; you gain cold resistance 10; and you can ignore terrain penalties due to snow and ice.
*Second Rite*: Sacrifice 40,000 gp worth of silver and gems. While you wield it, the _sword_ is now a _+5 frost greatsword_; your cold resistance increases to 20; and you can cast _wall of ice_ once per day as a sorceror of your level.
*Third Rite*: Sacrifice 56,000 gp worth of silver and gems. While you wield it, the _sword_ is now a _+5 keen icy burst greatsword_; your cold resistance increases to 30; and you can cast _freezing sphere_ once per day as a sorceror of your level.
*Fourth Rite*: Sacrifice 72,000 gp worth of silver and gems. While you wield it, the _sword_ is now a _+5 keen icy burst greatsword of wounding_; you are immune to cold; you can cast _polar ray_ once per day as a sorceror of your level; and once per year you can cast _summon deranged mutant killer monster snow goon_ (see Spells of Legacy).


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## coyote6 (Dec 28, 2009)

Scribble said:


> Actually I think it originally WAS a Dragon article.  It was called like level up your weapons or something?




IIRC, the Dragon article wasn't much like WoL at all. I think the Dragon article was more like the OA Samurai's ability to increase his ancestral weapon's powers. Steve Kenson wrote the Dragon article, I believe.


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## Garnfellow (Dec 28, 2009)

How can _Deities and Demigods_ not be considered as a contender in the four way race for ultimate suckdom? Most of that book is a monumental waste of time. WotC created parallel divine and epic rules that really weren't very compatible, even though they clearly should have interacted.

ELH is certainly a worthy challenger for title of worst book. But then, I've actually seen people use epic rules. (And the atropal is almost cool enough to make the book worth it.)

I don't think I've  seen anyone use the divine rules. And even though the divine rules are in the SRD, did any 3PP ever use them?


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## Jhaelen (Dec 28, 2009)

Well, WoL has been (and still is) one of my favorite 3e books. It's one of the books I've got the most use of. It's been a great inspiration for me and I've used it with great success in my campaign. Three items have even played pivotal roles in the campaign. Currently, the pcs possess six Items of Legacy:
- Bow of the Black Archer
- Bones of Li-Peng
- Mindsplinter
- Treebrother
- Ur
- The Whip of Concordant Opposition (self-created)

Guurgal, Exordius, the Planeshifter's Knife and Banrhialorg (from The Sinister Spire) will play a role and/or can be found in the course of the current adventure.

Apparently, many dismissed the book just because the WoL mechanics as written SUCK. Instead of throwing the baby out with the bath water, I simply ignored the penalty tables.
What I'm doing instead is this:

Calculate the cost of the item's abilities and have the pc pay for them via the rituals as if they'd created the item usign the item creation rules (without applying the markup for combining abilities). I.e. about half the gp cost and 1/10 xp cost. 

Note, that I also allow the pcs to pay more xp than they currently have at their level - they'll just end up having a negative level that will automatically get away once they've earned enough xp.

Here's what you should end up with:
Least Legacy: 18-24k gp
Lesser Legacy: 48-72k gp
Greater Legacy: 128-144k gp
I.e. a total of 194-240k gp

Note that for many items you'll have to add a couple of powers to have them end up being in these ranges since they're too weak as written. Actually, I didn't use any of the items exactly as written. I also took care to tailor them somewhat to be desirable and useful for the pcs (or sometimes important npcs).

About the only problem I've experienced:
The players that didn't get an Item of Legacy yet have started to complain!

In 4e I'm definitely going to make use of them again. The mechanism as described in the AV supplement should work fine. While the artifact rules in 4e are fine, too, I wouldn't want to be more than one or maybe two of them in the game at any one time.
They also serve a slightly different role, since the pcs will never get to keep an artifact.

To sum it up:
I can definitely recommend to use Items of Legacy _IF_ you don't use them as written. Then they're the best thing since the Earthdawn RPG authors invented the idea.


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## Scribble (Dec 28, 2009)

coyote6 said:


> IIRC, the Dragon article wasn't much like WoL at all. I think the Dragon article was more like the OA Samurai's ability to increase his ancestral weapon's powers. Steve Kenson wrote the Dragon article, I believe.




Quite possible- I didn't have much experience with WoL, and I barely remember the dragon article. (It was a case of, oh that seems cool I should use that... just before it went on the shelf of forgotten dragons...)


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## Bold or Stupid (Dec 28, 2009)

I ran with Weapons of Legacy stuff, ignoring the penalties (which made you worse at what you did*, wha?) and instead had them cost a 10% xp penalty. That seemed to work quite well. 


*The only Legacy Items that didn't act as a screwjob were the psionic ones, where the tiny cost of 2PP (iirc) as each penalty was inconsequential.


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## pawsplay (Dec 28, 2009)

Garnfellow said:


> How can _Deities and Demigods_ not be considered as a contender in the four way race for ultimate suckdom? Most of that book is a monumental waste of time. WotC created parallel divine and epic rules that really weren't very compatible, even though they clearly should have interacted.
> 
> ELH is certainly a worthy challenger for title of worst book. But then, I've actually seen people use epic rules. (And the atropal is almost cool enough to make the book worth it.)
> 
> I don't think I've  seen anyone use the divine rules. And even though the divine rules are in the SRD, did any 3PP ever use them?




At least Deities & Demigods had basic write-ups of the Olympain, Egyptian, and Nordic deities. You could use those in your campaign. Also, while I can't think of any 3pp publishers who used the divine ranks, there are numerous critters in the ELH and third party publications who have some or all of the characteristics of a level 0 deity as laid out in Deities. It also has a perfectly serviceable writeup of cyclops, which puts it at least one usable writeup ahead of anything in WoL. 

Savage Species, say what you will, it had a Multi-Headed template I have used multiple times, SLA and supernatural ability based feats, and undead templates. While the total volume of good stuff is small, I would never get rid of my SS, because it has some genuinely useful things in it. 

BoED and BoVD take cool concepts and do basically everything wrong, but since I have known them to be used by many people in actual games, they also have a value greater than zero.

I would estimate that the total number of people who used any WoL material at all, as written, to be approximately, oh, five. I doubt even the authors used it straight up. it's one of those books that looks bad until you try to play it, then you realize it's horrible. It was trying to implement a few of these items in my 3e game that resulted in the WoL going to the Half Price Old Roleplaying Books home.


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## Holy Bovine (Dec 28, 2009)

Jhaelen said:


> To sum it up:
> I can definitely recommend to use Items of Legacy _IF_ you don't use them as written. Then they're the best thing since the Earthdawn RPG authors invented the idea.




Right.  So it is a great book if you ignore all of the rules in it.  Really why would people want this book again?  I know what you are saying regarding the items themselves and their histories.  I love those.  But drop $40 on a book for 40 odd pages of "fluff"?  You can't seriously expect anyone to consider that a good deal.


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## Alzrius (Dec 28, 2009)

Garnfellow said:


> I don't think I've  seen anyone use the divine rules. And even though the divine rules are in the SRD, did any 3PP ever use them?




Yes, but very few.

Creedbook - The Book of the Sun, by Mad Kaiser Games, has divine stats for the sun god, Zar, though they needed some editing.

Lore of the Gods, by DragonWing Games, has several pantheons' worth of gods with full stats, though they tweak the divine rules very slightly (too slightly to be noticed, really).

The Divine Order: Jute - Faith of Creation gives divine statistics for the goddes Jute, as well as her avatar.


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## Remathilis (Dec 28, 2009)

Holy Bovine said:


> Right.  So it is a great book if you ignore all of the rules in it.  Really why would people want this book again?  I know what you are saying regarding the items themselves and their histories.  I love those.  But drop $40 on a book for 40 odd pages of "fluff"?  You can't seriously expect anyone to consider that a good deal.




Which is akin to saying "Bob's a great guy, if you ignore the six people he murdered."


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## billd91 (Dec 28, 2009)

Dausuul said:


> Weapons of Legacy _could_ have worked, if the designers had bit the bullet and applied a suitable gold-piece cost; make it so the price you pay for a ritual to improve your Weapon of Legacy is comparable to the price you'd pay to upgrade a regular weapon of similar level. Make sure the upgrades are sensible ones that a real weapon-user might find attractive. Then adjust the price downward somewhat, or throw in a few extras, to account for the loss of flexibility.
> 
> Something like this:
> 
> ...




So the difference between this and having an item crafted to custom order is the weapon of legacy has a set path of upgrades that the PC can't determine for himself? Is that really an improvement?

I didn't like the penalties in the WoL rules either. But going through rituals doesn't really do it for me either. At that point, I really might as well be crafting it from scratch.

I kind of liked the feat idea. I know some min-maxish people think a feat is far too valuable to waste on improving a single magic item. But if the benefits are good enough (as they really should be for an artifact-ish item), then blowing a feat should be a reasonable cost. In any event, it gives the player a really important choice to make - improve the legacy item or pick up a general benefit.

I also like the quest idea. A particular quest unlocks a particular power. Better yet, as long as each power has a crafting value associated with it, the DM can be sure to deduct that amount from the loot the quest's encounters would otherwise generate. The wealth guidelines can then be appeased.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Dec 28, 2009)

Remathilis said:


> Which is akin to saying "Bob's a great guy, if you ignore the six people he murdered."



Come on, the first two were accidents and the third was never proven in court.


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## pawsplay (Dec 28, 2009)

Holy Bovine said:


> Right.  So it is a great book if you ignore all of the rules in it.  Really why would people want this book again?  I know what you are saying regarding the items themselves and their histories.  I love those.  But drop $40 on a book for 40 odd pages of "fluff"?  You can't seriously expect anyone to consider that a good deal.




Exoooordius!... Come on, right?


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## Vorput (Dec 28, 2009)

pawsplay said:


> Exoooordius!... Come on, right?




Eh- you can get it here without buying the book


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## Dausuul (Dec 28, 2009)

billd91 said:


> So the difference between this and having an item crafted to custom order is the weapon of legacy has a set path of upgrades that the PC can't determine for himself? Is that really an improvement?




That's why I threw in the extra abilities - the cold resistance and cold-themed spells - which you would not normally get from crafting to order. In exchange for having to follow a specific path of upgrades, you get better upgrades.



billd91 said:


> I kind of liked the feat idea. I know some min-maxish people think a feat is far too valuable to waste on improving a single magic item. But if the benefits are good enough (as they really should be for an artifact-ish item), then blowing a feat should be a reasonable cost. In any event, it gives the player a really important choice to make - improve the legacy item or pick up a general benefit.




Agreed. I think the easiest way to balance that would be to have each item come with a set of feats you can take which give you special abilities or bonuses when using that item.

The main thing, though, is to recognize that any warrior-type PC is going to sink 50% or so of WBL into his/her weapon, so a Weapon of Legacy has to be at least as powerful as a weapon worth 50% of WBL in order to be worth using. And that means you're going to have to find a way to siphon off that much WBL or equivalent character resources - or else ditch the WBL system altogether and re-balance the game to work without it, which I wholeheartedly approve of but which is a rather substantial project.



billd91 said:


> I also like the quest idea. A particular quest unlocks a particular power. Better yet, as long as each power has a crafting value associated with it, the DM can be sure to deduct that amount from the loot the quest's encounters would otherwise generate. The wealth guidelines can then be appeased.




I hate the quest idea. It _looks_ cool and thematic and story-focused, but when you think about it, what it means is that the rest of the party has to go on a quest devoted to powering up Bob the Fighter's magic sword; not real interesting for them. And the DM has to find a way to cram some pregen quest (which, based on WotC's track record, will probably be a tedious hackfest) into the existing campaign arc.

As for deducting the gold piece value from the loot: IME, most groups split the profits from an adventure evenly among the party members, which means that instead of charging Bob the Fighter for his sword's fancy new powers and leaving everyone else's profits the same, you're charging Bob a mere 25% (in a 4-person party) of the cost of those fancy powers, and spreading the remaining 75% among the other PCs.


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## Will (Dec 28, 2009)

I've contemplated this 'substitute for buying an upgrade' idea (and written kinda bad ideas on the subject in past supplements).

One thing you could do:
Go on a quest to find the lost gem of Sankmar, which fits into the pommel of the High Tree's staff that you own.
When you finally find the lost gem, it's understood that the rest of the party gets the piles of loot that accompany it.

Other fun ways to 'buy' improvements:
Research (buying rare books, finding fine materials to experiment with, etc.)
Honoring the ancestors (buying a new temple, fixing up said temple, hiring folks to run the temple, have a huge feast for your ancestors, purification rituals with fine incense)
Repairing the item ('I've determined these grooves were actually platinum filigree' "Ouch. Sam, how much is that going to cost you?" 'Not nearly so much as the adamantine handgrip' "Gak")


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## Jeff Wilder (Dec 29, 2009)

billd91 said:


> I kind of liked the feat idea. I know some min-maxish people think a feat is far too valuable to waste on improving a single magic item.



The feats required to use a legacy items are bonus feats, granted to the wielder as soon as a given ritual is completed.  There isn't a feat cost associated with legacy items (despite the misinformation in this thread).

Just for curiosity's sake, I selected one legacy weapon more or less at random, for a comparison with crafting.  I picked _Durindana_, _Weapons of Legacy_ p. 75.

Final abilities: _+4 holy undead bane longsword_ (98,000 gp), Saint's Grace [+2 resistance bonus to saves] (4,000 gp), Endure Evil [continuous _protection from evil_] (2,000 gp), Pelor's Gaze [_daylight_, 1/day)] (5,400 gp), Pelor's Baleful Eye [+4 levels for Turn Undead] (10,000 gp, conservatively?), Pelor's Protecting Grasp [_death ward_, 1/day] (10,080 gp), Hallowed Ground [_hallow_ plus _daylight_, 1/day] (18,360 gp), Pelor's Dazzling Beneficence [total concealment for 15 rounds, c.f. _displacement_, 1/day] (16,200 gp).

Total Market Value (note that this ignores the x2 modifier for slotless items and the x1.5 modifier for multiple abilities): 164,040 gp.

Cost to Craft: 82,020 gp, 6560 xp, and Craft Magic Arms and Armor.

Cost as Item of Legacy: 55,200 gp, -2 to attacks, -3 to saves, 14 HP.

The cost of the item is high, but it's not as ridiculous as people are making it sound.  The biggest drawback, as someone has alluded to, is that this weapon simply isn't powerful enough for a 20th level character, and (as far as I can remember) there aren't any rules for how you independently improve a legacy item.


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## Remathilis (Dec 29, 2009)

Jeff Wilder said:


> The feats required to use a legacy items are bonus feats, granted to the wielder as soon as a given ritual is completed.  There isn't a feat cost associated with legacy items (despite the misinformation in this thread).
> 
> Just for curiosity's sake, I selected one legacy weapon more or less at random, for a comparison with crafting.  I picked _Durindana_, _Weapons of Legacy_ p. 75.
> 
> ...




An interesting breakdown on cost.

I considered doing the same with the Sunsword (Expedition to Castle Ravenloft). A +5 keen bastard sword which also has the powers of a sun-blade, beats silver-DR (without the -1 for being silvered), casts death ward 1/day, banishment (undead only) 1/day, and undeath to death 1/day.

Trade-off? 16 hp and -3 to skill checks.

I didn't do a math-crunch like Jeff did, but I'm sure you come out ahead (its equivalent to a +9 weapon BEFORE SLAs). Still, is it worth the cost?

One could enchant a sword to be a +5 keen sun blade without the bonus abilities and be just as happy WITHOUT the 16 hp and -3 skills, I guess.


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## pawsplay (Dec 29, 2009)

Jeff Wilder said:


> Cost to Craft: 82,020 gp, 6560 xp, and Craft Magic Arms and Armor.
> 
> Cost as Item of Legacy: 55,200 gp, -2 to attacks, -3 to saves, 14 HP.
> 
> The cost of the item is high, but it's not as ridiculous as people are making it sound.




Really? What's the gp cost of +2 to attacks, -3 to saves, and +14 hp?  A good deal more than 27k, I think. A plage green ioun stone costs 30,000 by itself. But really, since these bonuses come "off the top" (ultimately limiting your highest bonus), the proper comparison is the top few tiers of enhancement bonuses for weapons and cloaks. Going from +3 to +5 costs 32,000 gp by itself, and typically, legacy weapons reach +4 or higher.


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## Runestar (Dec 29, 2009)

> The feats required to use a legacy items are bonus feats, granted to the wielder as soon as a given ritual is completed. There isn't a feat cost associated with legacy items (despite the misinformation in this thread).




I thought that if you opted not to complete the quests for whatever reason, you could instead choose to take the legacy feats using your own feat slots to acquire the weapon's properties?

So that could mean up to 3 feats burnt. 

Granted, I don't own the book, and my knowledge is based on what I can remember from the last time I browsed (okay, more like read it from cover to cover) through the book at Borders...


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## Remathilis (Dec 29, 2009)

Runestar said:


> I thought that if you opted not to complete the quests for whatever reason, you could instead choose to take the legacy feats using your own feat slots to acquire the weapon's properties?
> 
> So that could mean up to 3 feats burnt.
> 
> Granted, I don't own the book, and my knowledge is based on what I can remember from the last time I browsed (okay, more like read it from cover to cover) through the book at Borders...




Your basically right; you could either blow hard-earned feats to unlock the legacy powers, OR do the quests. Generally, the quests are easier and cheaper than a feat.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Dec 29, 2009)

Jeff Wilder said:


> The feats required to use a legacy items are bonus feats, granted to the wielder as soon as a given ritual is completed.  There isn't a feat cost associated with legacy items (despite the misinformation in this thread).
> 
> Just for curiosity's sake, I selected one legacy weapon more or less at random, for a comparison with crafting.  I picked _Durindana_, _Weapons of Legacy_ p. 75.
> 
> ...



Huh? A special ability that grants a +2 resistance bonus to saves and a penalty that causes a -3 penalty to saves?


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## FireLance (Dec 29, 2009)

I found an old post of mine which might be relevant to the discussion:
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 same 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.​


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## roguerouge (Dec 29, 2009)

Just use the ancestral weapon feat. It allows you to spend gold and time to improve your signature weapon over time. That signature weapon idea has been a massive gift to my campaign, as my player loves her +2 keen thundering crystal echoblade rapier. She gladly pays the costs and the tasks necessary to reforge it are usually great side-treks.


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## Jhaelen (Dec 29, 2009)

Holy Bovine said:


> Right.  So it is a great book if you ignore all of the rules in it.  Really why would people want this book again?  I know what you are saying regarding the items themselves and their histories.  I love those.  But drop $40 on a book for 40 odd pages of "fluff"?  You can't seriously expect anyone to consider that a good deal.



Well, the WoL rules take up a whopping 24 pages of a total of 224 pages.
The suggested retail price back then was 34.95$. I don't think I payed that much, though.
And, yes I like the book purely for the idea it presents and the fluff it provides. The rule section was useful in so far as it allowed me to analyze how it was supposed to work and come up with a better solution. So, for me it was definitely a good deal.

Another book I really liked was Lords of Madness. Incidentally, it's the same price point and page count as WoL and it doesn't even have 30 new monsters in it. Wow, what a waste of money, you say? Except it wasn't (to me). It's what helped to shape my campaign and that's 5+ years of gaming. So, yeah, totally worth it (for me)!

Anyway, unless I'm mistaken, all of this is completely unimportant for the OP, since he was asking about the WoL concept and not the book (which he may or may not already have). And the concept (as in idea and not as in mechanics) is excellent and I can only recommend to introduce them into a campaign.


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## ProfessorCirno (Dec 29, 2009)

Well, there are two other problems that "weapons that level with you" had compared to normal magic items.

1) Golf bag.  With all the various different types of DR, you'd want a weapon of every material.  Having just one cold iron longsword that you always used was nice thematically, but then a group of lycanthropes pop up and _well, there goes that_.  Your cold iron longsword is pretty sweet, right up until the enemy wizard casts Stoneskin.

2) In general, people would much, much rather have a sword that's +1 and a whole bunch of other enchantments, then a +5 sword with one or two other enchantments.  This ties into the golf bag, in that a +1 shocking/flaming sword is cheaper then a +5 shocking/flaming, and you need a shocking/flaming sword of all materials.

I think the _style_ of item, where it gets strong with you, works a lot better in Pathfinder, where having a +_x_ also passes through DR, helping eliminate both 1 and 2.  When your +5 weapon can pass through any DR, you no longer NEED to have a golf bag, and you can focus on having just one weapon.

As for WoL itself, good idea with absolutely atrocious mechanics to go behind it.  Sure, you can take penalties to upgrade your item, and you might break even!  Or you can just get _ahead_ and not bother with it altogether.


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## TheAuldGrump (Dec 30, 2009)

ProfessorCirno said:


> Well, there are two other problems that "weapons that level with you" had compared to normal magic items.
> 
> 1) Golf bag.  With all the various different types of DR, you'd want a weapon of every material.  Having just one cold iron longsword that you always used was nice thematically, but then a group of lycanthropes pop up and _well, there goes that_.  Your cold iron longsword is pretty sweet, right up until the enemy wizard casts Stoneskin.



You know, I keep hearing about the golf bag - but the most weapons any of my players has used has been 3 - 1 blunt (often iron), one edged (often silver) and one shooty (which might have a putt putt bag of arrow/bullet/shot/bolt materials - a mini golf bag). They never went after adamant, but would take mithril if it showed up (for my purposes I allowed mithril to injure critters that were affected by silver). They never tried to buy mithril.

I liked the idea of WoL, but felt that the implementation was pretty poor - they would have been better off with a straight up gold/XP cost than the oddball skill points/hit points/whatever that they went with. Heck, even the need to take a feat to attune the item would work better.

Then again, I never encountered the 15 minute adventuring day, either.... The spell casters tended to keep a few spells in reserve, rather than going for broke in every encounter. (Though the reserve feats in Complete Arcane met with loud applause.  )

The Auld Grump


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## Will (Dec 30, 2009)

I've never encountered the golf bag, either. Generally folks would prefer to pour their finances into one weapon, and just let whomever had the 'right' weapon step forward when it really applied (a dragon? Ok, guy with dragonbane sword, show us your stuff).

With the exception of ranged weapons, where having arrows of this or that is easy.


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## doomwh (Dec 30, 2009)

*Another option*

You could take a look at Green Ronin's Artifacts of the Ages. I remember reading it when it came and was turned off by the Prestige class Scion option but you might like better than the weapons of legacy approach. Back in my 2nd edition campaign I simply altered the bonus every 4 levels and added powers as I saw fit and it worked fine. if I gave the sword a power that threw things outta whack I told my player he had tapped that power out. I then would add an ability less powerful and see how that went. I did enjoy the book, it is a good read plus my buddy did all the artwork, check it out if you can find it.


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## Beginning of the End (Dec 30, 2009)

Jeff Wilder said:


> From what I've been able to tell, the main beef against _Weapons of Legacy_ is that the rules actually expect you to pay meaningful penalties for weapon powers that are far, far beyond what you'd normally get for the same amount of gold.




My complaints boil down to:

(1) The system is needlessly bloated and overly-complicated for what they're trying to achieve.

(2) The penalties are designed to go after the exact same stats the items are boosting. When you run the numbers you find that the math makes a sort of pseudo-sense, insofar as (for example) you end up paying as much for a +4 weapon with a -2 penalty (rendering it a +2 weapon) as you would for a +2 weapon.

... but then you realize that you're paying just as much for a pseudo +2 weapon that causes you to suffer a -2 penalty whenever you aren't using that specific weapon as you would for a +2 weapon that doesn't give you a penalty and you realize that the designers didn't check their math.

I prefer the simple solution suggested by Justin Alexander: Legacy Items have latent abilities which can be unlocked with rituals. These rituals cost the same amount of XP and gold as if you were creating any other magic item with the same abilities; the only advantage is that you don't need an Item Creation feat to perform them.

Done.

If you want to make them slightly more appealing, offer a 10% discount on the costs. Or, if you're feeling really generous, eliminate the XP penalty. (But the advantage of not requiring the Item Creation feat while halving the cost in gold is nice all by itself, frankly.)


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## Dannyalcatraz (Dec 30, 2009)

I'm another player who has never seen the "golf bag."  While my PCs often carry more than one weapon, its typically 2 ranged weapon (typically a bow or X-bow, plus a sling or thrown weapon), and 2 melee weapons (a main & a backup).  Eventually, the nature of those weapons settles down- I don't keep trading up.

And most of my buddies are the same.

When the warriors don't have the weapons to deal with a foe, the spellcasters step up their efforts to knock off the problematic critter while the rest of the party plays "meat shields & mook-sweepers."


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## pawsplay (Dec 30, 2009)

I really like the scion rules from the UA. What books use those rules?


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## MerricB (Jan 4, 2010)

pawsplay said:


> I really like the scion rules from the UA. What books use those rules?




I hate those rules greatly. Weapons of Legacy at least doesn't kill your class abilities the way that the scion rules do.


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## pawsplay (Jan 4, 2010)

MerricB said:


> I hate those rules greatly. Weapons of Legacy at least doesn't kill your class abilities the way that the scion rules do.




Howso? The Battle Scion granted full BAB and the Faith Scion and Spell Scion full casting progression.


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## Jack7 (Jan 4, 2010)

_I thought Weapons of Legacy was awesomesauce!!!_

No, not really. I'm with those who thought it pretty much sucked.

But I liked the more general idea behind the concept. Yet as others said, execution, _not so much_.

Though to answer your question what I did was this:

1. Created Weapons with natural (inherent) limitations to prevent the weapons from becoming an artifact. Occasionally adding curses or at least hindrances that had to be overcome before the weapon could be fully exploited.

2. Forgot bonuses (like combat bonuses) altogether in favor of adding capabilities to the character. When the weapon was in the possession of the character then the character's capabilities increased rather than those of the weapon, and as the character progressed in levels often the weapon would compensate where the character had failed to advance. Say the character wanted to be more skillful in some way, but had lacked the points to dedicate to that skill then the weapon would compensate.

3. To assure the weapons were matched to the character, then abilities and advantages offered always matched those of the user-character.

4. Found out what kind of weapons the players most liked to use so that the WOL matched the character rather than trying to make the character match the weapon. For instance if one character liked using a spear best then that WOL which was a spear would work best for that particular character and would obviously favor being used and exploited by that character/player.

5. Allowed more subtle possibilities, such as enhanced good fortune or luck when possessed by a particular character, a sense of enhanced intuition, dreams and visions associated with the weapon, etc.

6. Occasionally the weapon would have an agenda of its own. 

7. No rituals (these always struck me as highly artificial and contrived and not at all useful to the character himself) but rather occasional quests related to both the nature of the weapon and the nature of the character.

8. Often made them *heirlooms and what not*. Ancestral treasures. And employed mythological and ancestral backgrounds and legacies and capabilities rather than purely gaming ones.

9. Sometimes disguised the weapon's true nature.

10. Weapon wouldn't always transfer the same abilities or powers, and over time powers and abilities would change to fit the situation with the character. This could be used both beneficially to enhance the character, and on occasion malignantly, to limit what they had expected they would be able to do, but couldn't anymore.

And so forth and so on.


I think the problem with WOL, and I got the book, is that it was overcomplicated and micro-managed. As others have already said, no flexibility, no real bonding or individual association with the character (it was all about what the weapon could do through the character rather than what the character could do through the weapon) and so the progression of power was not organic, and character-centered, but artificial and device-centered. In short the legacy seemed a contrived and artificial thing in which the character played a secondary role, rather than the character shaping the legacy of the weapon with the help of the weapon. To me personally it was like so much else produced in that time-frame of D&D, all about superpowers and ever increasing power-scales, rather than heroism and characterization. Or put another way, power is a thing in and of itself, rather than something that arises naturally from the interplay between man and his world, and man and the things he creates.

To me the book was all about gaming and how gaming over-rulerization limits the imagination and limits characters, rather than enhances them. And that attitude did the same basic thing to the weapons.

Anywho, good luck with what you're doing. I'm off to bed cause tomorrow it's back to a normal work-week. First of the year.


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## MerricB (Jan 9, 2010)

pawsplay said:


> Howso? The Battle Scion granted full BAB and the Faith Scion and Spell Scion full casting progression.




Yes, but you lost all the class abilities you might be getting if you weren't playing a wizard or sorcerer. Pity the Barbarian who wanted one of those weapons - they lost out on their new abilities.

Don't even think about playing an Eldritch Knight or a Hexblade.

The problem with the Scion classes is they removed all flexibility from what sort of character you could play with it: a class with very few special abilities was it. They turned the weapon into a prestige class, but rarely a prestige class you actually wanted.

Meanwhile, the Legacy Items allowed you to continue in your class, albeit with a reduced effectiveness. The most significant drop in effectiveness was with the fighter-types: a -3 to hit was just too harsh. (Mind you, fighters tended to hit way more than anyone else anyway, so perhaps it wasn't). All the Legacy Items I designed - and we had about 5 in my games - didn't use that progression.

The penalties for spellcasters were much less severe. The primary one was that you lost your 2nd highest spell slot. (There was a contradiction in the book about whether you'd lose one spell of each slot or only the highest one; the primary text said only the highest one, so that's what we used).

I discovered that once you designed your own Legacy Items, they became extremely effective and interesting. They added greatly to the campaign. One of the best was an item that held the souls of several powerful priests and wizards - it was intelligent, which meant that it could cast healing spells or offensive spells in addition to the actions of the character who wielded it. That was fun. 

Cheers!


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## pawsplay (Jan 10, 2010)

MerricB said:


> Yes, but you lost all the class abilities you might be getting if you weren't playing a wizard or sorcerer. Pity the Barbarian who wanted one of those weapons - they lost out on their new abilities.
> 
> Don't even think about playing an Eldritch Knight or a Hexblade.




A Hexblade would trading higher level curses and minor spellcasting improvements for a better weapon. The weapon is the new abilities. Obviously, the item can't be zero cost. The barbarian is not really in bad shape; he can still rage, and while his rage isn't as impressive as other barbarians' of his level, his sword shoots fireballs, heals him, whatever. 

The Eldritch Knight would, indeed, have to choose which way to go. Unless, of course, you invented an Eldritch Scion which loses 1 casting level and has d8s for hit dice.


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## MerricB (Jan 10, 2010)

pawsplay said:


> Obviously, the item can't be zero cost.




Unfortunately, the cost is character concept.

Unless you designed a character that was devoted around the idea of using this legendary weapon, or was the simplest of classes (fighter, wizard, sorcerer), you lost out massively. No prestige classes for you. No non-standard classes. 

Given that I saw people designing their characters around the classes and prestige they took - and indeed, this was often the best way of approaching 3E - Scion weapons throw out all of that to give what is effectively just another prestige class.


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## pawsplay (Jan 10, 2010)

MerricB said:


> Unfortunately, the cost is character concept.
> 
> Unless you designed a character that was devoted around the idea of using this legendary weapon, or was the simplest of classes (fighter, wizard, sorcerer), you lost out massively. No prestige classes for you. No non-standard classes.
> 
> Given that I saw people designing their characters around the classes and prestige they took - and indeed, this was often the best way of approaching 3E - Scion weapons throw out all of that to give what is effectively just another prestige class.




Frankly, if a character doesn't fulfill their concept by 4th level, there is no concept. At that point, the Scion system isn't to blame, it's using a prestige class for your concept when you should be using a base class. Given that most new base classes were not out when UA was written, you might need to make some tweaks to the system. Just about anything should be workable with 10 levels of X plus 10 levels of Scion. Maybe something is worth cooking up for Eldritch Knight and Duskblade, but honestly, if they go the Spell Scion route, they are getting full casting and a ton of magical abilities anyway.

So maybe a new Scion class for Bards, Duskblades, and fighter-mage prestiges class types.


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## Remathilis (Jan 10, 2010)

pawsplay said:


> Frankly, if a character doesn't fulfill their concept by 4th level, there is no concept. At that point, the Scion system isn't to blame, it's using a prestige class for your concept when you should be using a base class. Given that most new base classes were not out when UA was written, you might need to make some tweaks to the system. Just about anything should be workable with 10 levels of X plus 10 levels of Scion. Maybe something is worth cooking up for Eldritch Knight and Duskblade, but honestly, if they go the Spell Scion route, they are getting full casting and a ton of magical abilities anyway.
> 
> So maybe a new Scion class for Bards, Duskblades, and fighter-mage prestiges class types.




Actually, The problem isn't loss of PrC bonuses, its the fact that all classes* lose out to gain the legendary weapon. Fighters, Clerics, Sorcerers, and Wizards lose the least. Bards give up new bard songs (swift scion grants up to 3 levels of bardcasting, but not new musics) barbarians give up rage powers, paladins spells and increased smite/lay on hands, druids wildshape, etc. (Rogues, Monks, and Rangers can keep up thanks to the bonus class feature in swift, but rogues lose skill points and rangers Bab/Hp). 

* That's even more exacerbated in Pathfinder; where you give up a whole SLEW of powers to multi-class. Those scion PrCs look downright aenimic unless your getting a Staff of the Magi out of the deal! Of course, I guess you could create a bard scion, druid scion, barbarian scion, etc...


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## pawsplay (Jan 10, 2010)

Remathilis said:


> Actually, The problem isn't loss of PrC bonuses, its the fact that all classes* lose out to gain the legendary weapon. Fighters, Clerics, Sorcerers, and Wizards lose the least. Bards give up new bard songs (swift scion grants up to 3 levels of bardcasting, but not new musics) barbarians give up rage powers, paladins spells and increased smite/lay on hands, druids wildshape, etc. (Rogues, Monks, and Rangers can keep up thanks to the bonus class feature in swift, but rogues lose skill points and rangers Bab/Hp).




And gain powerful weapon abilities. That's the point. Sorcerers get kind of a free ride, as they lose out on familiar progression, and that's it. The only way around that is to either use less powerful items, use a feat-based system, or give each character one item as a freebie.



> * That's even more exacerbated in Pathfinder; where you give up a whole SLEW of powers to multi-class. Those scion PrCs look downright aenimic unless your getting a Staff of the Magi out of the deal! Of course, I guess you could create a bard scion, druid scion, barbarian scion, etc...




They would need to be revised for Pathfinder, no question. I think the four categories, maybe five, still work, though. I think Barbarian Scion is a really odd concept, unless you have an item that is intended only for barbarians and only grants rage abilities in addition to the item powers.


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## MerricB (Jan 10, 2010)

pawsplay said:


> Frankly, if a character doesn't fulfill their concept by 4th level, there is no concept.




I'm sorry you don't like 3e.


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## pawsplay (Jan 10, 2010)

MerricB said:


> I'm sorry you don't like 3e.




What do you mean?


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## MerricB (Jan 11, 2010)

pawsplay said:


> What do you mean?




You have just stated that any power you gain past 4th level is irrelevant.

That if you have a concept for someone who can cast fireballs, because that's a power you gain at 5th level, it's not valid. Given that the general "sweet spot" for 3E is considered to be around 5th-13th level, that eliminates the best bit of the game.

Oops.

The simple fact is that 3e allows a great deal of mechanical flexibility as to how you built characters. With that flexibility came the possibility of getting it totally wrong - either characters that were tremendously underpowered, or characters that were tremendously overpowered (the latter normally a design fault somewhere). The system isn't always elegant, but it's there - and people use it.

The trouble with the UA Legendary Weapons and Scion classes is that it's not flexible. It works for a very small number of characters - basically those who have decided that their character will be defined by their weapon. An unfortunate thing about 3e is that most character advancement needs to be preplanned. So, Legendary Weapons work when the DM and player sit down at 1st level and say "this character will have a Legendary weapon". 

Meanwhile, I could introduce a Legacy Item at any point in the campaign and the characters could decide to use it or not - their choice. The costs for the weapons were designed so that they applied to a very wide range of characters; the only time you needed to really house rule anything was when a new power source was introduced. In my case, I house ruled the penalties for an Incarnate character.

These legacy items didn't stop the PCs from pursuing regular prestige classes. In my game, we saw an Arcane Hierophant (druid/wizard), a Fochluchan Lyrist, and a Soulblade/Illumine Soul all using these items - character builds that would be impossible with the scion system.

The big question was whether the penalties for these items were too harsh; and that is a vexed question. In general, a 20th level legacy item is worth around 200,000 gp. You could have a staggered plan for paying for its abilities and disregard the penalties... but there are problems with that idea as well.

(Abilities gained from 5th-10th level for the Items are worth about 2,000 gp each level; from 11th-16th they're around 5000 gp each, from 17th-20th its about 35000 gp each).


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## ehren37 (Jan 11, 2010)

Jeff Wilder said:


> Total Market Value (note that this ignores the x2 modifier for slotless items and the x1.5 modifier for multiple abilities): 164,040 gp.
> 
> Cost to Craft: 82,020 gp, 6560 xp, and Craft Magic Arms and Armor.
> 
> ...




WoL falls apart is if you have a crafter in your party. -2 to all attacks, -3 to saves and 14 HP isn't worth saving 27,000 gold.


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## pawsplay (Jan 11, 2010)

MerricB said:


> You have just stated that any power you gain past 4th level is irrelevant.




I don't remember saying that, and I definitely don't see how that relates to liking 3e.



> That if you have a concept for someone who can cast fireballs, because that's a power you gain at 5th level, it's not valid. Given that the general "sweet spot" for 3E is considered to be around 5th-13th level, that eliminates the best bit of the game.




Okay, you got me. You can't do the concept of Fireball Guy before 5th level.

So let me try again. If you haven't fulfilled your basic archetype by 4th level, your concept is not very focused. Taking a prestige class, whether Scion or otherwise, is not going to weaken the foundational set of abilities you already possess. Scion, as with all prestige classes, offers an opportunity cost. "I need to get 11th level in X classes to fulfill my concept" is not a meaningful concept when there is a real possibility the character could die at 10th level and never be resurrected. 

I have trouble wrapping my head around the idea that you need to be level 13 (for example) in order to fulfill your concept, when you are playing the character up through 12th level to get there. Since WoL basically reduces a character's abilities, it's as if to say: "My concept requires that I have the capabilities of a 13th level character who has been nerfed to about about 11th level." 

"I am playing a character that does not fulfill its own concept until several levels later," just seems suspect. The concept of a character who has already achieved does not seem to mess with the concept of a game that focuses on achievement.


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## MerricB (Jan 11, 2010)

ehren37 said:


> WoL falls apart is if you have a crafter in your party. -2 to all attacks, -3 to saves and 14 HP isn't worth saving 27,000 gold.




Quite possibly. Of course, it's highly doubtful that a crafter could create one item that did everything that an Item of Legacy did - certainly not for the cost - but let's leave that aside.

The major drawback with the Weapons of Legacy book is that the costs are perceived to be too high. That they worked for the two campaigns that I used them in can - to some extent - be attributed to the shocking mathematics of high level 3E when the penalties really began to kick in. When you need a 2 to hit, a -2 to hit isn't so big a deal. 

The more fundamental problem with Items of Legacy comes from the use of gold piece value as a method of balancing treasure...

Cheers!


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## Beginning of the End (Jan 11, 2010)

MerricB said:


> When you need a 2 to hit, a -2 to hit isn't so big a deal.




That depends on how you look at it: You're tripling the number of times you'll miss.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, WoLs don't add up: When you run the numbers, you discover that in the most optimized WoLs the discounted price is paid for on a 1-to-1 basis by the permanent penalties you accept for using the item. That looks balanced at first glance, but it's actually a terrible deal because you continue to suffer those permanent penalties even if you're not using the WoL.

(For less optimized WoLs, the math is even worse: You're now paying more in penalties than you're saving in gold.)

You're ALWAYS better off not paying the WoL penalties and simply using a "less" powerful item (which is, actually, exactly as powerful or possibly even more powerful once you factor in the cost of the penalties).

The entire WoL system is fundamentally busted. Which doesn't mean it's impossible to use (as long as you don't fetishize balance), but it does mean it's very poorly designed.

Particularly since it's so trivial to design it properly.


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## pawsplay (Jan 11, 2010)

Bottom line: why would you want a +4 sword that grants +3 to saves but costs you an untyped -2 to hit and -1 to saves, when you could just have a +2 sword that grants +1 to saves?


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jan 11, 2010)

pawsplay said:


> Bottom line: why would you want a +4 sword that grants +3 to saves but costs you an untyped -2 to hit and -1 to saves, when you could just have a +2 sword that grants +1 to saves?



That was exactly my thought when I read one of the examples... 

Though at least in 3.0 it was a difference whether you had a +4 or a +3 weapon... But Weapons of Legacy is 3.5, right?


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## Jeff Wilder (Jan 11, 2010)

ehren37 said:


> WoL falls apart is if you have a crafter in your party. -2 to all attacks, -3 to saves and 14 HP isn't worth saving 27,000 gold.



If you have a crafter in your party, he or she is willing to pay 6000+ XP, and you have 165 days of downtime ... I fully agree.


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## Vorput (Jan 11, 2010)

pawsplay said:


> bottom line: Why would you want a +4 sword that grants +3 to saves but costs you an untyped -2 to hit and -1 to saves, when you could just have a +2 sword that grants +1 to saves?




qft


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## MerricB (Jan 11, 2010)

Conversely, why would you want a +4 sword if you couldn't take any of the prestige classes you wanted and you could only play a Wizard, Fighter or Sorcerer at close to full effectiveness?

Weapons of Legacy suffers from the release of the Magic Item Compendium: a lot of the ideas it pioneered in the core system (putting a lot of bonuses on one item) were made core there. 

A +5 sword that gave +6 to Strength, +4 to Con and other assorted bonuses was pretty nifty when it was released. A pity that the penalties were higher than they should have been.

Big question: who here has used the Scion/Legendary Weapon system in play? I used the Weapons of Legacy system in two campaigns that went from 1st to 16th level.

Cheers!


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## coyote6 (Jan 11, 2010)

FWIW, I used neither; I thought the Scion system wasn't worth it, either.


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## MerricB (Jan 11, 2010)

coyote6 said:


> FWIW, I used neither; I thought the Scion system wasn't worth it, either.




Don't blame you. 

The most valuable thing about the WoL system was the way it gave you a system to create your own items with bonuses at various levels. I've got a feeling that you can strip away the penalties and use "as is" without too much of a problem... yes, it might cause some balance issues, but you need to pay attention to that anyway with magic items and treasure.

Cheers!


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## Vorput (Jan 12, 2010)

MerricB said:


> Big question: who here has used the Scion/Legendary Weapon system in play? I used the Weapons of Legacy system in two campaigns that went from 1st to 16th level.




I used WoL in a campaign I ran.  They lasted for a few levels till the campaign ended.  As I said early in this thread though, I ended up changing the way the weapons worked significantly.


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## Freakohollik (Jan 12, 2010)

MerricB said:


> Big question: who here has used the Scion/Legendary Weapon system in play? I used the Weapons of Legacy system in two campaigns that went from 1st to 16th level.




I halfway used the WoL system once. Running Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, a player found the Sunsword. He had no desire to unlock those penalties. It forever remained a +1 weapon. Does that even count?

I think they both involve too many penalties and needlessly complicate the system.  How about we add a third option? Who has used the artifacts straight out of the DMG? I found a Frostbrand in a high level 3.5 game. Loved it.


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## Jeff Wilder (Jan 12, 2010)

Freakohollik said:


> I halfway used the WoL system once. Running Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, a player found the Sunsword. He had no desire to unlock those penalties. It forever remained a +1 weapon. Does that even count?



Does it even count as what?  Every character I've ever had has had the option of using subsystems, some of which I've declined to use.



> I think they both involve too many penalties and needlessly complicate the system.



Fair enough.  I don't.  (Or, at least, I don't to nearly the extent of most of the people on this thread.)



> How about we add a third option? Who has used the artifacts straight out of the DMG? I found a Frostbrand in a high level 3.5 game. Loved it.



As far as I'm aware, a _Frost Brand_ isn't an artifact in 3.5.  It's just a powerful weapon with specific abilities.


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## coyote6 (Jan 12, 2010)

I don't think a _frost brand_ was ever an artifact, was it? Maybe in 2e.


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## MerricB (Jan 12, 2010)

coyote6 said:


> I don't think a _frost brand_ was ever an artifact, was it? Maybe in 2e.




No, never - just cool. (In both senses of the word! )

Cheers!


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## TheAvatarofSet (Feb 24, 2017)

I'm in a Forgotten Realms game currently and our GM is running us through the Demonweb Pits module. We're high level (15-18), so the GM has made some modifications to make the fights challenging. In that module, we've encountered two Weapons of Legacy thus far. One of them is the black bow. I have an archer character, so at first I thought "Great"...until I realized just how many penalties there would be, and for a few abilities that are very situational and might not get used often. By the time he gets to 20th level, he would have to sacrifice 16hp, -6 to all saves, and a -3 to attack bonuses? All this for a +4 bow (which he already has). Some of the abilities it grants are nice, but I wouldn't have him use that weapon if the cost was ONLY to saving throws, considering it would reduce all of them by 6, much less the attack bonus and hit point loss. I don't think these weapons are "balanced" at all...I haven't seen a single one where the cost is a worthwhile trade-off for the benefit. Interesting idea, but horrible execution.


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## TBeholder (Feb 25, 2017)

The idea is good.
It can work, the way Dying Legacy was done in Earthdawn (original, AFAIK), and perhaps expanded.
Or if reduced to simple "awakening" events combined with old good "property X is activated if the user has ability Y" requirements - less-MMO version of level scaling.
As it was done in that book, it's a mess. d20 is obviously badly fit for it either way, but the specific implementation is useless - doesn't make sense in Hack&Slash with "Global Magic Market" because not worth it, and doesn't make much sense in roleplaying because too tied to mechanics. And that's before it runs into that stupid "Gold Piece Magic" thing in D&D3.


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## Jhaelen (Feb 27, 2017)

Well, considering the thread necormancy, I probably already posted about my house rules somewhere in these nine pages.
In my 3e campaign I made extensive use of 'Items of Legacy'. At the end of the campaign (almost) every pc had one.
Basically, I translated all of the penalties into gold & xp costs. Worked like a charm!
Many of the official items are suddenly very much worth it. But I also boosted some of them.
(After translating the bonuses & penalties you have a pretty accurate idea of the item's gold worth, and can tell which ones are subpar - assuming you want them all to have a similar power level.)


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