Legacy Weapons, why are they hated?

[Blackhawk748]

Ok ive been on here long enough to see that a lot of people seem to hate Legacy Weapons, and i have never understood why. Now i know that some of them are less than great, but the ones that are good, at least in my opinion, are pretty sweet.

Now heres the list of Legacy Items my group has experience with:

Merthuvial (slightly tweaked, it shot more lightning)
Banrhialorg
Thanifex
Exordius
and a custom one i made that followed the RAW, the Dragon Crown Staff

Now maybe we just got the good ones, but we were all happy with the weapons we had and we felt that the trad offs where worth what we got. So if anyone can explain why it seems that WoL is hated thatd be great.

[Fax Celestis]

It's the penalties.

[GreenETC]

The main problem is that most of the items are not worth the equivalent tradeoffs. Sure, they look cool, but it usually requires a slightly significant personal cost and some of the requirements to activate the abilities are ridiculously tough, like Blackrazor from White Plume Mountain, which needs you to sit on the Negative Energy Plane and gain negative levels.

[Crasical]

Custom legacy weapons can get pretty strong, but the printed ones aren't very good and the reputation for them being trash got around?

[Fax Celestis]

Don't get me wrong, I like legacy weapons as a concept. But as written they are uninspiring. For the most part, they don't really do anything a regular weapon can't also do if enchanted properly.

[Eldan]

The concept is very nice and interesting. Custom legacies can even be good. THe problem is, at least as written, they aren't really worth it over custom-enchanted weapons. It's not hate, really, it's mild disappointment. Not quite truenamer levels. Perhaps Shadowmagic level.

[Big Fau]

Don't get me wrong, I like legacy weapons as a concept. But as written they are uninspiring. For the most part, they don't really do anything a regular weapon can't also do if enchanted properly.

The enhancement bonuses to ability scores isn't something weapons normally do (they can, it's just prohibitively expensive). Legacy items are at least decent in conserving item slots, although only for ability score enhancers.

Legacy Champion+access to the Mutable Legacies optional rule can lead to some interesting combinations once you get the Replace Legacy Ability (Lesser/Greater). RAW, you can sub out something like Bloodcrier's Hammer's +5 enhancement bonus for 2 Menu E abilities, which can be further substituted for 6 Menu D abilities. Although that does involve sacrificing 2 levels of whatever other class you have to Legacy Champion.

[Chronos]

The enhancement bonuses to ability scores isn't something weapons normally do (they can, it's just prohibitively expensive). Legacy items are at least decent in conserving item slots, although only for ability score enhancers.
You should never need to worry about conserving item slots for ability score enhancers. Per the Magic Item Compendium, you can add an enhancement bonus to an ability score to any item of the appropriate slot, at cost (i.e., without the usual 1.5 multiplier for multiple abilities on an item).

Legacy items are also hard to understand. Like, if you found a new legacy item, do you automatically get the Least Legacy feat as a bonus feat? Or is taking the feat a requirement before you can found an item? What happens if you take the feat without having a suitably interesting item?