Rubberband_Man
2015-03-19, 10:27 PM
Hello Playground,
So as you may or may not know, there's a dnd supplement book called Weapons of Legacy. Its a cool resource with a lot of neat ideas and rules for making legendary weapons that are accessible at all levels. It's a very interesting resource and a cool book in general with a bunch of items you should definitely check out.
That being said, there are some parts of this book I find head-in-buttocks stupid
More specifically, I find the system for creating Legacy Items to be entirely contrived and haphazard. If you are unfamiliar with Legacy Items allow me to break it down...
Essentially a Legacy Item is a legendary item that becomes more powerful as the character using it levels up. Most Legacy Items begin granting abilities at level 5 and continue to level 20, but this is not always the case. This allows for a character of almost any level to pick up a Legacy Item. They have cool special abilities and a TON of flavor behind them. However, in order to unlock these abilities, the player must also pay a price. This price comes in three forms: Rituals, Ritual costs, and Legacy Penalties.
Special Legacy Rituals must be performed at certain levels to continue to unlock the item's potential. Rituals range widely in the actual task to be performed; they can be killing a specific enemy, swearing an oath of fealty to a certain person or cause, it can be making a donation to charity or stealing from the poor. There are three levels of ritual; least, lesser, and greater. The player typically performs the rituals at levels 5, 11, and 17, respectively, but these may vary depending on the item. Once a ritual has been performed, the player receives all the benefits of the item that his level allows. Upon reaching the level where the next ritual must be performed, the player receives no more benefits until he has performed the ritual. As sort of an addendum to the Rituals themselves, there are associated ritual costs to each ritual. Once the actual ritual has been performed, the player must then sacrifice a certain amount of wealth and perform a ritual to attune himself to the item. Each ritual has an associated cost and the player cannot receive the benefits of the item until he has payed it. Finally there are Legacy Penalties. The idea here is that in order to balance out the unbridled power of the legacy items, wielding the items is slightly detrimental to the wielder in other ways. This takes the form of penalties to BAB, HP, saving throws, caster level, and even the loss of spell slots and skill points. Depending on who the item is intended for, the penalties will be different. For instance, an axe intended for a barbarian would not have penalties to caster level.
These penalties are typically the reason that Legacy Items are seen as not worth it. The Rituals are usually flavorful and simple enough, if sometimes obtuse. The ritual costs are usually appropriate for their level, but they sometimes get a bit pricey. The biggest reason that Legacy items arent worth it is easily the penalties. There are tables in the book where a 20th level character who has performed all the rituals and payed the costs takes a -2 on all attacks, a -3 on all saves, and permanently loses 16 HP. The penalties usually far outweigh the benefits of the items.
And so we arrive at my main complaint with this book; the rules for creating custom legacy items.
This is purely speculation, but from reading the book it is pretty apparent as to what happened during its writing. Some of the developers at WotC had a bunch of cool ideas for awesome weapons with detailed backstory and awesome abilities. They began to write the book, implementing the system where items gain abilities as the player grows. They made the items they had thought up into usable items and tried to balance them so the items were each individually balanced. Near the end, however, someone realized "Oh no! We havent made a system to make custom items!" At this point, the devs copied and pasted every individual ability that each of the premade items had into the back of the book and said "pick from these abilities and quit complaining." As a result, there is a paltry selection of premade abilities with little room for experimentation. Well, after many hours of poring over this book, I believe I've extrapolated a method to the madness.
The rules for creating custom items goes like this: After determining which table of penalties you are going to use and deciding upon Legacy Rituals, you then begin to choose what abilities the item has. The abilities in the book are alphabetically ranked from A to I, A being the weakest abilities and I being the strongest. A, B, and C level abilities are unlocked when the Least Ritual is performed and its cost paid. D, E, and F level abilities are associated with the Lesser Ritual, and G, H, and I are associated with the Greater Ritual. A standard, 15 level legacy item would begin with one level A ability granted at each level from 5 to 10, one D level ability at levels 11 through 16, and one G level ability at levels 17 through 20. These abilities can be swapped out as follows:
1 B = 2 A
1 C = 3 A
1 E = 2 D
1 F = 3 D
1 H = 2 G
1 I = 3 G
And so many weak abilities may be traded for a few strong ones. However, the selection of abilities is rather limited and doesn't allow for much expansion.
I have created a system based on the one in Weapons of Legacy where spells may be abilities may be implemented by mimicking spell effects. I created these lists by looking at the abilities already in the book and categorizing them based on their spell level, kind of effect and several other factors. In a sense, this is a broad translation of the tables already in place.
NOTE: There are some abilities in the book that mimic class features, feats, and there are even some completely new abilities with no precedent, but for the large majority most of the abilities are based on spells. I plan on finding a way to implement a table of such abilities, but for now they are simply addendums to the spells.
So as you may or may not know, there's a dnd supplement book called Weapons of Legacy. Its a cool resource with a lot of neat ideas and rules for making legendary weapons that are accessible at all levels. It's a very interesting resource and a cool book in general with a bunch of items you should definitely check out.
That being said, there are some parts of this book I find head-in-buttocks stupid
More specifically, I find the system for creating Legacy Items to be entirely contrived and haphazard. If you are unfamiliar with Legacy Items allow me to break it down...
Essentially a Legacy Item is a legendary item that becomes more powerful as the character using it levels up. Most Legacy Items begin granting abilities at level 5 and continue to level 20, but this is not always the case. This allows for a character of almost any level to pick up a Legacy Item. They have cool special abilities and a TON of flavor behind them. However, in order to unlock these abilities, the player must also pay a price. This price comes in three forms: Rituals, Ritual costs, and Legacy Penalties.
Special Legacy Rituals must be performed at certain levels to continue to unlock the item's potential. Rituals range widely in the actual task to be performed; they can be killing a specific enemy, swearing an oath of fealty to a certain person or cause, it can be making a donation to charity or stealing from the poor. There are three levels of ritual; least, lesser, and greater. The player typically performs the rituals at levels 5, 11, and 17, respectively, but these may vary depending on the item. Once a ritual has been performed, the player receives all the benefits of the item that his level allows. Upon reaching the level where the next ritual must be performed, the player receives no more benefits until he has performed the ritual. As sort of an addendum to the Rituals themselves, there are associated ritual costs to each ritual. Once the actual ritual has been performed, the player must then sacrifice a certain amount of wealth and perform a ritual to attune himself to the item. Each ritual has an associated cost and the player cannot receive the benefits of the item until he has payed it. Finally there are Legacy Penalties. The idea here is that in order to balance out the unbridled power of the legacy items, wielding the items is slightly detrimental to the wielder in other ways. This takes the form of penalties to BAB, HP, saving throws, caster level, and even the loss of spell slots and skill points. Depending on who the item is intended for, the penalties will be different. For instance, an axe intended for a barbarian would not have penalties to caster level.
These penalties are typically the reason that Legacy Items are seen as not worth it. The Rituals are usually flavorful and simple enough, if sometimes obtuse. The ritual costs are usually appropriate for their level, but they sometimes get a bit pricey. The biggest reason that Legacy items arent worth it is easily the penalties. There are tables in the book where a 20th level character who has performed all the rituals and payed the costs takes a -2 on all attacks, a -3 on all saves, and permanently loses 16 HP. The penalties usually far outweigh the benefits of the items.
And so we arrive at my main complaint with this book; the rules for creating custom legacy items.
This is purely speculation, but from reading the book it is pretty apparent as to what happened during its writing. Some of the developers at WotC had a bunch of cool ideas for awesome weapons with detailed backstory and awesome abilities. They began to write the book, implementing the system where items gain abilities as the player grows. They made the items they had thought up into usable items and tried to balance them so the items were each individually balanced. Near the end, however, someone realized "Oh no! We havent made a system to make custom items!" At this point, the devs copied and pasted every individual ability that each of the premade items had into the back of the book and said "pick from these abilities and quit complaining." As a result, there is a paltry selection of premade abilities with little room for experimentation. Well, after many hours of poring over this book, I believe I've extrapolated a method to the madness.
The rules for creating custom items goes like this: After determining which table of penalties you are going to use and deciding upon Legacy Rituals, you then begin to choose what abilities the item has. The abilities in the book are alphabetically ranked from A to I, A being the weakest abilities and I being the strongest. A, B, and C level abilities are unlocked when the Least Ritual is performed and its cost paid. D, E, and F level abilities are associated with the Lesser Ritual, and G, H, and I are associated with the Greater Ritual. A standard, 15 level legacy item would begin with one level A ability granted at each level from 5 to 10, one D level ability at levels 11 through 16, and one G level ability at levels 17 through 20. These abilities can be swapped out as follows:
1 B = 2 A
1 C = 3 A
1 E = 2 D
1 F = 3 D
1 H = 2 G
1 I = 3 G
And so many weak abilities may be traded for a few strong ones. However, the selection of abilities is rather limited and doesn't allow for much expansion.
I have created a system based on the one in Weapons of Legacy where spells may be abilities may be implemented by mimicking spell effects. I created these lists by looking at the abilities already in the book and categorizing them based on their spell level, kind of effect and several other factors. In a sense, this is a broad translation of the tables already in place.
NOTE: There are some abilities in the book that mimic class features, feats, and there are even some completely new abilities with no precedent, but for the large majority most of the abilities are based on spells. I plan on finding a way to implement a table of such abilities, but for now they are simply addendums to the spells.