Weapons of Legacy

[Uhtred]

So I was browsing the 3.5 books that I got from a friend and stumbled across "Weapons of Legacy," a book with weapons that level with characters so long as they complete certain tasks, full of easily adaptable adventure hooks and the like, and was considering sprinkling them in as random loot in my new campaign. My players are really loot-happy, and I kinda want to encourage them to actually look at/examine/use some of the things they loot, instead of just taking it to the nearest merchant and asking how much they can get for it. I've already introduced the concept that, in this campaign, things aren't always what they seem (One of my players found a quill that acted as a set of Nolzur's Marvelous Pigments, so now they occasionally examine an ordinary item. Sometimes.) so having that +1 Light Crossbow that's slightly warm to the touch turn out to be Flamecaster's Bolt, etc. seems like it could be a good way to enhance story/provide players with items they actually want to use.
Has anyone actually used the items in this book in a campaign? How well did they work? Are the adventure hooks really as easily adapted as they seem?

[Hiro Protagonest]

It's terrible. You can make custom ones that are worth it, but that's basically just using some bonuses to make up for the penalties and then using all the other ability slots on spell-likes.

So the only way it's really viable is by using it to turn the fighter into a pseudo-caster.

It'd be fine if you took out the penalties, but I'd rather just have the cleric or wizard Plane Shift the party to Ysgard or the City of Brass and look for something in the markets there than go on some sidequest to unlock more abilities.

[Gavinfoxx]

A lot of the weapons of legacy, as written, really, really, really, really, really suck. You lose dramatic amounts of character power just for minor bonuses... they were REALLY conservative with what they gave you in return for setting large amounts of character ability on fire. Give the characters the ability to make custom ones that are specific to their needs, and hurt at areas they don't care about, and it MIGHT be worth it. Maybe. Sometimes corner cases would be okay, though... As it exists in the book, though? Weapons of Legacy is a great idea, bad execution. Consider removing every character penalty associated with the use of the items, and just add minor quests or GP expenditure (no feat expenditure) to activate the abilities, as a start...

Remember, in D&D 3.5e, items are a requirement specifically to make your character MORE competent and able to overcome adversity. Items SHOULD be powerful; for several character types, they make up the majority of a characters' capability!

[Manateee]

Terrible book.

You can twist the system to do some useful things, but you'd be better off just winging it by directly augmenting their magic items as the progress.
Adjust WBL as necessary.

[huttj509]

Brilliant idea.

Execution...eeeeeeeeeh.

Take a look at what some of the weapons have.

Now look at what you need to give up at each stage to attune to it.

Does it seem like a reasonable trade?

Generally, the answer is 'no.'

While power is not EVERYTHING, DnD uses a lot of numbers. If you trade those numbers away, to get fewer numbers back, eventually things fall apart.

Edit: In addition, I found the way it was written to be fairly confusing. But hey.

[nyjastul69]

I agree that WoL is the wrong execution of the right idea. The idea is great. Having a weapon that grows in power as you do is a neat idea and very flavorful. The cost in feats, monetary expense and penalties is hardly worth it in most games. Maybe a WoL should be something like a feat cost and no monetary or associated penalties. Maybe they should have no feat cost but have a monetary cost and associated penalties. I wouldn't drop all three, but I would drop, or modify, at least two of the three costs.

Legacy Weapons can also have a very cool niche in games that don't have magi-marts as an assumption in every thorp, village, town, city and metropoulos. LW's can also be very effective in situations where getting to a thorpvillagetowncitymetropoulosmagimart is not viable. The World's Largest Dungeon by AEG is an example of this (I'm currently GMing this monstrosity.) By and large though, LW rules should be modified in some way.

[Agrippa]

I'd just drop the penalties, feat requirements and possibly the monetary costs. I'm currently working on a Legacy version of Stormbringer, so those changes would probably be only fair.

[Big Fau]

I'd just drop the penalties, feat requirements and possibly the monetary costs. I'm currently working on a Legacy version of Stormbringer, so those changes would probably be only fair.

Note: The Least/Lesser/Greater Legacy feats aren't actually feats, they're reminders. You don't have to take the feat itself in order to unlock a Legacy item's abilities, as completing the ritual gives the feat to you free of charge.

[Agrippa]

Note: The Least/Lesser/Greater Legacy feats aren't actually feats, they're reminders. You don't have to take the feat itself in order to unlock a Legacy item's abilities, as completing the ritual gives the feat to you free of charge.

Then what's the point of them in the first place?

[Mystify]

The idea of a scaling weapon is really cool. Its nice to have loot that you still care about in 15 levels. However, I haven't looked at that implementation, so I will defer to everyone else's assessment that its done poorly.

[nyjastul69]

Note: The Least/Lesser/Greater Legacy feats aren't actually feats, they're reminders. You don't have to take the feat itself in order to unlock a Legacy item's abilities, as completing the ritual gives the feat to you free of charge.

D'oh. I did a quick read through of the book and missed that. First off, a feat free of spending a feat selection on a feat isn't really a feat and shouldn't be refered to as such. Collins, Cordell and Schubert should have known better. Bad design! Bad design!

[Manateee]

Then what's the point of them in the first place?

You may have noticed some comments about the book's execution.

[Thurbane]

Agree with above - it's an awesome concept, but the crunch is just horribly done. The losses generally outweigh the gain from the item, and can generally be replicated with "standard" magical gear without drawbacks.

The two best things about the book are the Legacy Warrior (since it actually gives you another classes features 7/10, possibly with better skills), and the rules on creating your own legacy item, which will require a bit of work to actually get happening.

[huttj509]

OK, you know how in things like neverwinter nights, you might do something cool and gain a "feat: did something cool" that gives a benefit, is a bonus, but gets put with your other feats for easy reference? The attunement is like that.

You get the ability after performing the ritual. They called it a feat so you'd have somewhere to put it on your sheet, but you gain it as a bonus.

It's one of the things that REALLY confuzzles a lot of people.

[panaikhan]

I made two items for my WBD campaign.
A sword attuned to fire / ice. It mainly had damage-based abilities.
A shield attuned to air / earth. It mainly had defensive abilities.
I statted out different versions according to whether the items were wielded by casters / non-casters, making sure the penalties were not excessive or concentrated in one area.
I also made it painfully clear that each item had it's own agenda.

[Bonzai]

I like the book, if only as a source for ideas. More specificly, I like to convert the legacy abilities into abilities for Intelligent Items. All the niffty abilities are not to hard to price out and convert for item creation. Similarly, I like the old 2nd edition Diablo 2 item maker for the same reason.

Rules as written? Not generally worth it.

[Tyndmyr]

It's terrible. You can make custom ones that are worth it, but that's basically just using some bonuses to make up for the penalties and then using all the other ability slots on spell-likes.

So the only way it's really viable is by using it to turn the fighter into a pseudo-caster.

It'd be fine if you took out the penalties, but I'd rather just have the cleric or wizard Plane Shift the party to Ysgard or the City of Brass and look for something in the markets there than go on some sidequest to unlock more abilities.

This. I've had groups find about seven legacy weapons so far while I was playing. In every one, they sold them for whatever they could get.

Legacy weapons just aren't worth it.

[JadePhoenix]

Drop the penalties and they're fine, really.

[Serpentine]

I always play with them. In fact, every character either starts off with one from the start, founds their own through the game, or have opportunities to pick one up.

However, I replace the mechanical penalties with more roleplayey requirements ("must help drow who want to stop being Evil anytime the opportunity arises"; "spend a certain amount of time in the sun each week", etc). I also generally gloss over the monetay costs for the rituals as being FOR the ritual, and usually custom make them from scratch specifically for characters.

Regardless of the tweaks I make, I love Weapons of Legacy.

[JadePhoenix]

Also, founding minor legacies and using dark chaos shuffle is the best way to get feats in 3.5

[Lonely Tylenol]

I had a DM who literally forced the Weapons of Legacy on us. He gave me Banrhialorg as an item that the party had found, and told me that it was required that I take the legacy rituals and attune myself to the thing (he would not tell us the bonuses and drawbacks for the item, fully expecting me to take it out of ignorance, but being that I am also a DM, I knew better). I blanched.

The concept is great, but the weapons themselves are terrible. I've incorporated Weapons of Legacy into my own games, but only by reducing (but not outright eliminating) the penalties, or by keeping the penalties the same, but making the benefits much better. For instance, for a Bardic Swiftblade in my group, I made a legacy weapon that gave scaling Celerity uses over time (3/day Lesser Celerity, 2/day Celerity, and 1/day Greater Celerity), among other things.

Of course, he never got to use it, because I've converted the game to E6 long before introducing the Weapons of Legacy into the campaign, but I intend nevertheless to incorporate homebrewed Weapons of Legacy into the campaign--this time with no drawbacks to the weapon, lesser benefits (appropriate to an E6 game), and using either rituals (as per the usual) to advance the items, or allowing them to unlock legacies through a hard feat tax (as E6 seems fit to do for most everything else).

Basically: The idea is solid and adaptable to most games, as long as you can get past the fact that the content itself is nigh unusable and needs adapting to be worth anything.

[DarkestKnight]

I think the only way the weapons could be useful is if you had it at character creation, and could focus you levels around it. even then there would only be a couple of neat ones.

[tiercel]

I'd rather take Ancestral Relic than a weapon of legacy; much more straightforward, fits more easily into the existing system, and without the giant, not-worth-it downsides. (And this is coming from someone who really doesn't use BoED.)

[Iferus]

The concept is awsome. You can find very clear and workable fix in this thread.

Have fun!

[Tyndmyr]

I had a DM who literally forced the Weapons of Legacy on us. He gave me Banrhialorg as an item that the party had found, and told me that it was required that I take the legacy rituals and attune myself to the thing (he would not tell us the bonuses and drawbacks for the item, fully expecting me to take it out of ignorance, but being that I am also a DM, I knew better). I blanched.

Oh, the "it's a legacy weapon, but the stats will be a surprise" bit? Yeah, we had that happen once. We told him "look, if we don't know what it does, we're just gonna sell it, and buy crap that we DO know what it'll do".

He told us. It was terrible. We still sold them.

[Person_Man]

I agree with the general commentary of it being a great idea, but terrible in execution. A nice alternative is the Ancestral Relic feat from the Book of Exalted Deeds. You designate a single item as your relic, and from that point on you can sacrifice treasure to improve it. (Bypassing the need to sell your treasure and getting 50% of the list price). If your DM otherwise generally keeps to a normal handout of treasure and lets you benefit from your savings, it's a fairly good way to get a personal high powered item that improves with time in a long running campaign.

[Terazul]

Love the idea, but as many have pointed out the baseline weapons are just terribad. If you have a DM that lets you design your own that fits your thematics and what not, and also drop the penalties, then they become much more of a neat iconic item. Not to mention efficient, given by the end the gold cost for rituals will often be exceeded by the value of the effects they grant. Otherwise? Yeah, just go for Ancestral Relic/Item Familiar.

[Mystify]

I agree with the general commentary of it being a great idea, but terrible in execution. A nice alternative is the Ancestral Relic feat from the Book of Exalted Deeds. You designate a single item as your relic, and from that point on you can sacrifice treasure to improve it. (Bypassing the need to sell your treasure and getting 50% of the list price). If your DM otherwise generally keeps to a normal handout of treasure and lets you benefit from your savings, it's a fairly good way to get a personal high powered item that improves with time in a long running campaign.

I had a player use ancestral relic in a campaign. It worked out really nicely. Also, by RAW, it never says that the properties you upgrade it to must be a superset of its current abilities. Hence, you can start it out as a +1 flaming axe, then upgrade it to a +1 holy axe, then a +1 speed axe because you get holy from a class ability now, and now its a +1 evil outsider bane sacred axe of mighty smiting because you are going out demon hunting.

Its also free to change it to an equivalently priced enchantment so long as you have time for the 1 day ritual.

[imneuromancer]

A lot of the weapons of legacy, as written, really, really, really, really, really suck. You lose dramatic amounts of character power just for minor bonuses... they were REALLY conservative with what they gave you in return for setting large amounts of character ability on fire. Give the characters the ability to make custom ones that are specific to their needs, and hurt at areas they don't care about, and it MIGHT be worth it. Maybe. Sometimes corner cases would be okay, though... As it exists in the book, though? Weapons of Legacy is a great idea, bad execution. Consider removing every character penalty associated with the use of the items, and just add minor quests or GP expenditure (no feat expenditure) to activate the abilities, as a start...

Remember, in D&D 3.5e, items are a requirement specifically to make your character MORE competent and able to overcome adversity. Items SHOULD be powerful; for several character types, they make up the majority of a characters' capability!

LOL, this is exactly right. Played as written, most of the legacy items are awful. I found one in a game I am playing, and I researched it. I saw that basically you would give up a HUGE amount of spell slots, hit points, penalties to hit/saves..... just so I could get the equivalen of a lesser metamagic rod and a ring of protection +2.

That is, until about 18th level, at which point there was a cool power, but it would have cost about 150,000 gp to get it, and I could have just bought an item that did the exact same thing for about that amount of money.

So yeah, legacy items are best foisted off to some hapless NPC for a lot of money.

[Silva Stormrage]

While I agree most of the weapons are quite terrible, there is one good weapon in that book. Caput Mortem. It gives you the ability to have unlimited permanent reforming unseen servants. Considering each one can exert 20 pounds of force you can do quite a lot with them.

Mostly though take the system. Ignore the rules and the guidelines and just hombrew abilities that you like. Then get your dm to approve them. It will end up as a much more fun and interesting item.