Legacy Weapons Questions

[Milo v3]

Firstly are Legacy Weapons balanced in general? For example if I used the rules to make one as a DM while following an anti-undead theme for the weapon.

Secondly is it fine to give them to your players as treasure when they have no idea you are using the Legacy Weapons rules at all?

[Khedrac]

The general feeling is that the Legacy Weapons are rather weak as published:
Where they give nice abilities, fine, but where they give enhancement bonuses to stats it is at levels where you would expect the characters to have better.
Then you factor in the penalties , and what was an interesting idea becomes a weakening effect on the character.

As to your second question, that entirely depends on your DMing style, but I don't think many people would have a problem with it. However be prepared for them players to not realise (or appreciate if they do realise) what you have given them and just dispose of it as they would any other treasure they don't want to use.

[Aharon]

It depends on how well you design it. The menu space is large and contains both subpar (+x enhancement can be gotten via GMW) and excellent (never flat-footed) options.

The same is true for the penalties, they range from character-crippling to slightly annoying.

[Morithias]

I find one of the best ways to use Legacy items is to custom make them and ignore the "Weakening effects" and the "legacy rituals" by balancing it by not giving them as much treasure in the meantime.

Give them items, if one of your players is using a bastard sword, give him a legacy item bastard sword that increases with his power, and give legacy items to other people too, give the rogue a chain shirt, the wizard some kind of robe, and so on.

This gives them motivation to continue to adventure because their equipment gets better as they do.

It's probably one of the best ways I've found to motivate a player, short of stealing from the party.

Overall I find most of the legacy items aren't worth your time, unless you're doing some legacy champion cheese, or it's just MADE for your build, like the infiltrator was made for a changeling spy.

The best ones are custom made easily, be sure to work with your players and you'll get the best results rather then trying to just make them yourself.

Edit: Oh and tie the legacy into the campaign. For example if you're going to have a resurrected demon as the final boss, have his bastard sword be the sword that was used to slay that demon 99 years ago sending it to the abyss in the first place.

[Sir_Mopalot]

The biggest problem that I've seen with legacy weapons is that it takes a lot of a character's resources to maximize the use of the weapon, so if the character ever loses it, they're in some real trouble. And like the others have mentioned, the custom legacy weapons you can make are often going to be far more powerful than any of the in-book ones.

[Milo v3]

I'll be using the Menu's as guides and adding in new abilities so they will likely be slightly more useful than normal. All of the Legacy Items will be custom-made.

And so they don't get underpowered I'll reduce the penalties.

Thanks. :smallsmile:

[Gavinfoxx]

The thing is, magic items are unequivocally supposed to add power versatility, and capabilities to the player characters. They are part of the math of character ability, and are, in a very profound way, a reward system for playing the game. Why should there be ANY penalties or costs associated with them at all?