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Jack Mann
2007-06-30, 03:42 AM
I like the idea behind Legacy Weapons. I really do.

I just wish they were more worthwhile.

Seriously, I have yet to find one that's really even as good as a weapon you could purchase. They get a few non-weapon effects, but generally not worth the investment.

Let's look at Unfettered, which I'm using in a game right now.

First, it grows to large size in the hands of any medium creature with powerful build. It's basically a savings on fifty gold, and a kind of cool effect, I guess, if a bit Freudian.

It gives you charging minotaur five times a day, right off the bat (level 5). Not bad, since you generally aren't going to be using it more than once a fight anyway, but if you're a martial adept, you can probably get better charging maneuvers. If you're not a martial adept, there are probably better things you can do with your charge attacks as you go up in level. So, not bad, but it grows less useful pretty fast.

You also get an enlarge effect at level 10. This is pretty good for a goliath or half-giant, who can't be targeted by enlarge person. It's only once per day, but it's at least useful for the really tough fights.

You get a meld into stone effect at 12th. This is good for ambushes, and gives a small bonus to the attack roll of any stone dragon strike you make immediately after leaving the stone.

You get light fortification when you reach level 16. Meh. You should already have heavy fortification on your armor by this point, or at least medium fortification.

19th gives you stoneskin once per day. Damage reduction's nice. Of course, you can always let the wizard cast this on you instead, and it's a lot less likely to be dispelled.

At level 20, you get a Mordenkainen's Sword effect, except that it uses your strength and BAB, with the sword's enhancement bonus. This is... Well, the problem here is that you can do a lot better on your own just by holding the damned thing. I mean, if you intend the sword to be your secondary weapon, okay, but if you wanted this to be your main weapon (and you're paying a fair amount for it, so it should be), you're not going to be using this ability, except when you absolutely need to be using a force weapon.

It also gives you an enhancement bonus to strength. +2 at 9th, +4 at 13th, and +6 at 17th.

The problem here is that strength is almost certainly your main ability. You're going to boost this as often as possible, and generally long before the points they give. You want as much strength as possible, which means ignoring the sword's strength bonus in favor of a higher one from your gauntlets or belt for much of your career. Sure, at some points (when you can't afford the higher strength bonus, or after level 17), you've freed up the belt or gauntlets slot, but other than that, it's just not that useful.

Then its enhancement bonus increases, until it becomes +5 greatsword at level 18.

I don't think Wizards gets this, but almost no one gets more than a +1 enhancement on their weapons, and with good reason. It's easy to get nearly as good an enhancement as the sword gives you from a casting of Greater Magic Weapon. Just as good or better once you get some sort of CL boosters to your friendly caster. Even if there was no such thing as Greater Magic Weapon, weapon special abilities are just generally better than the enhancement bonus.

To add insult to injury, you can't add special abilities to a legacy weapon.

For these abilities, you have to spend 62,350 gold. Now, granted, this is cheaper than a +6 weapon, but you're also taking a -2 to attacks, -4 to reflex, and -12 to hit points. The abilities just generally aren't that great for what you've spent.

I dunno. Maybe some of the other legacy weapons aren't so bad. I haven't looked at all of them. But most of the ones I saw weren't a whole lot better.

To me, a legacy item should be at least as good as what you would normally have. And in the case of legacy weapons, it should be just as good a weapon. If you're using Unfettered, you're probably a melee build. You should not be worse off using Unfettered vs. the sword you would otherwise have had. Unfortunately, there's no real reason for a high level fighter to take the sword as anything other than a secondary weapon, something to sic on the enemy while he pulls out his regular greatsword so that he can do the real damage.

Legacy weapons have cool flavor, but I feel it's the wrong approach to make player pay for flavor.

Am I just crazy? Is it just Unfettered? Or do Legacy weapons need some work?

lord_khaine
2007-06-30, 03:45 AM
must admit it has generaly been my understanding as well that those weapons, at least those in ToB wasnt really worth the efford.

Closet_Skeleton
2007-06-30, 05:32 AM
Yeah, the idea of a magic sword that made you crap at hitting stuff just really turned me off weapons of legacy.

PinkysBrain
2007-06-30, 05:41 AM
There are some good ones. Shishi-O (pounce) and Ur (savage transformation is strictly better than deathless frenzy) are good at high level. Mau-Jehe's 9th level ability is insanely good if you build around it. Of the ToB ones blade of the last citadel is useful at high level. Most are pretty poor though.

I'm just going to design some weapons tailored somewhat to the players and throw them in the loot. Taking the default legacy weapons doesn't make much sense.

Serpentine
2007-06-30, 05:46 AM
I'm guessing you're not using the "Weapons of Legacy" book, just cuz I don't remember anything called "Unfettered". I can't really agree or disagree with what you said as I haven't really compared it in so much detail. I can say, though, that my group's been houseruling a few features. The constantly restrictive penalties as written in the book, for example, have been largely scrapped for custom-made, more specific restrictions. We're still getting it right, but we have things like having to do take time to avoid going temporarily blind from using magical goggles, extra meditation time, helping decent drow to escape the Underdark when offered an opportunity, or having to go home at certain intervals. The omens, too, are often at least a little bit useful - my tiefling's armour grows spikes when near fiends and the wearer always knows the direction of "home".

Saph
2007-06-30, 05:58 AM
Have to agree with you, sadly. Legacy Weapons are a cool idea, but horribly underpowered for what they do.

At low levels, you can't afford them. At higher levels, the limitation of not being able to add your own abilities to customise them makes them inferior to a shop-bought weapon. So the only time they're actually effective is at the mid-levels, and even then you're only getting a +1 enchancement and one or two abilities that probably aren't the ones you would have chosen for yourself.

What really cripples Legacy Weapons are the penalties. Losing Base Attack Bonus and Hit Points as a primary fighter?? Are you kidding me?? That's like designing an item for wizards that gives them an Int penalty. A Legacy Weapon has to be incredibly powerful to make up for losing BAB and HP, and they generally just aren't.

From a flavour perspective, Legacy Weapons are cool, but on grounds of effectiveness, the best thing you can do when you get one is sell it and use the money to upgrade your other items instead.

- Saph

Shhalahr Windrider
2007-06-30, 06:25 AM
I'm guessing you're not using the "Weapons of Legacy" book, just cuz I don't remember anything called "Unfettered".
Unfettered is a Legacy Weapon presented in Tome of Battle: Book of the Nine Swords.

OzymandiasVolt
2007-06-30, 06:44 AM
Saph, Weapons of Legacy includes rules for making your own weapon of legacy as you play, so you CAN add custom stuff.

Saph
2007-06-30, 07:15 AM
Oh, does it? I've only read Tome of Battle and a few other bits on legacy weapons, so my judgement of it might be a bit off.

I still think that the penalty to BAB and HP kills them, though. I don't understand why they put it in. You already have to 'pay for' the weapons with the rituals - why put an extra penalty on top of that?

- Saph

SpiderBrigade
2007-06-30, 07:22 AM
Very much agree with the issues Jack Mann raises. The basic idea of Legacy Weapons is really cool, yes. A legendary weapon whose potential you have to slowly unlock is great flavor. But the implementation isn't good.

First of all, from a flavor perspective the rituals seem really specific and a little arbitrary sometimes. To unlock the next level of abilities, you have to kill a specific kind of monster in a pre-defined way, and then spend money on incense or whatever? I guess they're going for a sort of "if you fulfill the prophecy, you gain power" flavor, but in that case the rituals should be more specific. So they hit a strange spot, flavorwise.

Also, the abilities on the items scale up slowly level-by-level. When you do the third ritual, the only thing you'll immediately notice is a slight bump in power (unless you waited a really long time to do it, in which case you've been missing out on the legacy abilities a lot.). So in other words you go on this supposedly meaningful quest to singlehandedly slay a giant, and meditate for days with expensive offerings, and your sword gets a +1 bonus. It has an anticlimactic effect. I would prefer for the weapons to either grant larger increments of bonus, or have the rituals toned down but made more frequent.

Now, in terms of mechanics, I also agree that the items are weak. What does it is the penalties/sacrifices. I was working on a custom legacy weapon for a wizard player of mine, and as a caster he's supposed to be getting either a caster level penalty, or a not-insignificant loss of spell slots. Yeah, right. The weapon would have to be SO GOOD to justify that that it would probably be overpowered.

Of course, I see the dilemma here. On the one hand, the item has to be cheaper than a normal magic item, or the lack of customization will cause players to shun it. On the other hand, it can't be so cheap that it is too good. So they add penalties. But here, there's another dilemma. If they make the penalties meaningful to the character, the item becomes a bad deal because it's abilities are canceled out by the penalties. In the OPs example, the weapon gives you a bonus to attacks and strength, and then gives a to-hit penalty? Ehhh? On the other hand, though, if you penalize things the characters wouldn't care about, the item is too good. For instance giving a wizard a to-hit penalty isn't going to do all that much.

Mechanically, the main appeal of these items is that they let you do some crazy things that would be impractical to get with regular magic gear. For instance a sword that lets you teleport a certain number of times/day, or similar spell-like abilities. But again, the penalties and limitations take away a lot of the "legendary" quality, and make it just a bad deal all round.

Zaeron
2007-06-30, 08:29 AM
I played in an extremely high powered, magical game where everyone got Legacy Items, and here's what I did.

First, the penalties are downright stupid. Who wants to use a sword that reduces your hitpoints and your attack bonus significantly? Removed them completely.

Second, I increased the frequency you gain abilities at. In my game, the item got the least level abilities every level from 1 to 5. From 6 to 11, it got the next level of ability, and from 12 to 17 the highest. 18, 19 and 20 were 'epic level' bonuses.

This was, admittedly, for an extremely high powered game. You could just as easily fiddle around with the progression in a less, well, awesome way. It's just as easy to start the item's progression at 3rd level instead of 5th.

At the very least though, the penalties should be removed, IMO, or as one person suggested, replaced with flavorful penalties that don't hurt the character quite so much. I'd rather Arador, Blade of Light and Other Good Stuff, wielded by Bob the Paladin, didn't penalize attack bonus and hit points, but instead maybe required that once per year you hunt down a demon and slay it in single combat to retain the powers of the blade. Or whatever

Another thing is that you could change the nature of the bonuses. That +2 STR is a lot better when it's an untyped bonus instead of an enhancement bonus.

evisiron
2007-06-30, 09:27 AM
I just finished Dm-ing a high powered campaign (were every player had them), and the weapons were fairly disappointing. The only ones people enjoyed was the rogue with the Stalking Bow (bonuses to hide, move silently etc) and the samurai with the Crimson Ruination, because it is nearly customed designed to kill red dragons, and everyone knew there was going to be a Col red dragon.

brian c
2007-06-30, 10:12 AM
I just finished Dm-ing a high powered campaign (were every player had them), and the weapons were fairly disappointing. The only ones people enjoyed was the rogue with the Stalking Bow (bonuses to hide, move silently etc) and the samurai with the Crimson Ruination, because it is nearly customed designed to kill red dragons, and everyone knew there was going to be a Col red dragon.

Heh... samurai. They need all the help they can get.

Neon Knight
2007-06-30, 10:20 AM
Heh... samurai. They need all the help they can get.

Judge not. It could be the OA Samurai, which is actually a worthwhile class.

Quirinus_Obsidian
2007-06-30, 10:44 AM
Judge not. It could be the OA Samurai, which is actually a worthwhile class.

True.dat.

I've got a Dragon Shaman in a wicked high level campaign that has Crimson Ruination. It has worked very well for me. The only things that I would change on it would be that it worked against all Dragons breath effects, and make it a Freezing Burst sword. The +4 enhancement bonus is nice (I happen to like them a lot; it may be kinda expensive, but, that is an always in effect bonus to hit and damage; you dont need to depend on a wizard [no one needs that]) and so is the Keen enhancement (do not have to take Imp Crit).

Fax Celestis
2007-06-30, 11:55 AM
Jack, you're welcome to rewrite Unfettered, if you like.

Jack Mann
2007-06-30, 03:33 PM
Well, this is a good opportunity.

Fellow Playgrounders, how would you fix Unfettered?

Certainly, the increased enhancement bonus should be changed to special abilities. So far, I'm thinking of charging and giantbane, and possibly eager as well.

For the strength bonus, I see two options. One is to change it to the a constitution bonus. Constitution isn't my primary stat, so I could afford to rely on the sword's bonus instead of getting an item of constitution. On the other hand, what about changing the type on the strength bonus? That would make it a lot more useful. Too good?

What should replace light fortification?

Should the costs be changed? Any of the other abilities?

Fax Celestis
2007-06-30, 03:36 PM
Why not make it a "legacy" bonus?

Quirinus_Obsidian
2007-06-30, 03:44 PM
Why not make it a "legacy" bonus?

That is interesting; instead of enhancement bonuses (in general with Legacy items; not just this one) why not make it termed "Legacy Bonus"? It is yet another way to get ability score increases, but does not restrict the fighter from wanting both a Belt of Giant Strength AND Unfettered. Good idea Fax :smallsmile:

Replace Light Fortification with Eager (for the generic fighter) or Berserk (for the Barbarians).

The costs should remain the same. Not too expensive for a high level character; and if the campaign is as highly powered as you say, GPs and PPs should not be that hard to come across. I would make the legacy rituals a little more involved, though.

Tor the Fallen
2007-06-30, 04:26 PM
If you changed it to "Legacy bonus", I would shift the ehancements it grants down by 2. So where you would normally get a +4, you'd get a +2. Then reduce the cost for that by 3/4.

Otherwise, you're just going to get absurdly huge ability scores, with +6 from legacy, +6 from an item, +5 from ability, +5 from tome or wishes, and possibly +2 from race. That could be 40 in your key stat by level 20.

Of course, that would be lots of cash blown on boosting your key score. Unless you're a wizard with craft wondrous, it's no skin off your back. Grab craft rod so those metamagic rods are half as much, and you've got more intelligence than anything in the MM.