G'day!
Well, my group has completed Three Faces of Evil, and I've now distributed three items of legacy to them.
The first is a legacy holy avenger. One of the PCs is playing a paladin, whose family once were knights of the Shield Lands, but since the nastiness of the Greyhawk Wars have been living in exile. The PC's father died during Iuz's invasion, and his sword was couriered to his family. Unfortunately, one Balabar Smenk intercepted the courier and slew him, taking the sword (and various items of jewelry) for himself. Spoiler: As the PCs have just caused Smenk to be disgraced and arrested,. the legacy holy avenger has been found amongst his things, along with the courier's message.
The second is an item of my own creation called the Staff of Dragon Tears. I originally created it for the party's sorceress, but she died during TFE. So, it's been changed to be applicable for the party's replacement wizard. The staff was found amongst the things of the Faceless One, a minion of Vecna. At present it seems to be a masterwork/+1 quarterstaff, that gives arcane spellcasters +2 to Spot checks; the item is of a blackish wood, with a golden claw holding an amber orb in which a dragon's eye occasionally appears...
The backstory for the Staff involves a elven wizardess and her gold dragon lover. Although the elf is long since dead, the gold dragon is now one of the seven who serve Bahamut! The final legacy ritual will require the wielder to go before him and submit to his judgement at how well they've followed the path of Good. (I expect that, for Age of Worms, it'll be pretty positive. )
The third item I didn't expect to be giving out. However, during the final battle of TFE against the Ebon Aspect, the barbarian slew it pretty much singlehandedly with his masterwork greatsword (and a tanglefoot bag and a 5' corridor). I ruled that the essence of the outsider has strangely interacted with the blade. Allustan noticed the changes, and suggested a ritual to the barbarian - this awakened magic within the greatsword, and it is currently a +1 greatsword that deals +2 damage against outsiders.
I thought about making it glow in the presence of outsiders, but that would be pretty pointless, as the paladin is actually an Aasimar, and it'd be glowing all the time. Perhaps only for evil outsiders...
As for powers of the weapons:
The legacy holy avenger is described in the WoL book.
The Staff of Dragon Tears will grant damaging spells (magic missile & fireball), along with many metamagic rod-like effects.
Alden's Greatsword will primarily be just a powerful magic weapon; although my notes suggest that cause fear (5th), enlarge person (9th), see invisibility (10th), haste (12th), darkvision (15th) and dismissal (16th) would be its other powers; although circumstances may change that.
Cheers,
Merric
Thanks for that post. I recently got my hands on a copy of Weapons of Legacy and have been debating whether or not to include a weapon or weapons of legacy in my Age of Worms campaign. I love the book and think weapons of legacy would be a great addition to the campaign. I'm not worried about imbalance because my player's made very reasonable characters according to a 28 point buy and standard character creation rules.
Rather, I'm worried about making weapons of legacy less special by making sure each player gets one. Conversely, I'm worried about playing favorites (or the perception that I'm playing favorites) by only giving out one or two weapons of legacy.
You said you've given out three. How many players do you have? Do you share any of the concerns I've voiced above and, if so, how did you justify giving out three?
What is the make-up of your party of PCs? My AoW campaign is set in the World of Greyhawk circa 595 C.Y. and the party consists of:
Human Fighter (favors a double-bladed sword)
Human Fighter-Rogue (uses whatever suits the job at hand)
Human Cleric of St. Cuthbert (favors the heavy mace and uses a heavy shield)
Elan Psion (Kineticist) that rarely uses a weapon at all.
It would be easy to design a double-bladed sword and a heavy mace (or shield) of legacy for the appropriate characters. The other two are a little trickier. I've got time to figure it out though. My players are close to 3rd level (having just defeated the owlbear at the Land farmstead but have yet to encounter Kullen and his gang).
Yep, I'm using WoL, too. So far, Shi-shi-O and the Bones of Li Peng are in my campaign. A couple more to come. They are fitting in nicely.
I finally put one of the short swords into my campaign. Unfortunately, that player just dropped from the campaign. I'll have to look for something else.
rooster
There are six PCs.
Really, I could have 6 items of legacy and it wouldn't decrease their specialness, because (a) they're all unique and (b) players look most at what *they* have, not what the group has.
The PCs are:
* Aasimar Fighter 4 (soon to be Fighter/Paladin) - that one will gain the legacy holy avenger
* Human Barbarian 5 - slayer of Aspects!
* Human Wizard 4 - the Staff of Dragon Tears
* Human Druid 5
* Elf Rogue 4
* Human Cleric (of Pelor) 3
The druid's player has been hassling me about one of the relics of Obadhai in Complete Divine, so I may well give him a corresponding item of legacy. :)
Cheers,
Merric
We're in Eberron, and our mage worked with me to create The Rod of Ages...he's a cataclysm mage (history-specific PrC with some nice S.A.s), so he really cares about the Age of Demons, Age of Worms, etc. The Rod focuses on those things as well, mirroring his learning as a cataclysm mage. It's basically a sage-rod, providing Int bonuses and skill bonuses, eventually becoming an intelligent weapon that acts as a portable scholar. It also works well against aberrations, with an ability we added that turns everyone's weapons within a 30' radius into byeshk weapons (overcomes DR of aberrations in Eberron).
I just picked the book up last week and plan on added one Weapon of Legacy. My plan is to turn the Metamagic Rod that the Faceless One had into a WoL. It will have been a rod/staff of a rival wizard to Vecna centuries ago. Vecna slew the wizard and took the staff, but never cared enough to learn it's history (his power was so great the rod meant very little to him). Vecna left it in his workshop/temple where the Faceless One found it. The powers for the rod will be based around exploration including perception powers, movement type powers (levitate) and some defense type powers.
One of the players in my AoW campaign has a weapon of legacy. The player and I had discussed having the sword his character inherited from his grandfather eventually becoming a magical one; so when the WoL book came out it fit perfectly, and so "Lionheart" was born.
The other players knew he wanted his sword to be something special, so no one took issue... in fact the player of the mage has enjoyed helping him discover the weapon's past. The group has just gotten to the Free City, and had their first doppelganger encounter, and his sword is coming up on its second power. As it grows in power I anticpate the others will want cool stuff too.
The cleric has been tything a fair ammount of his treasure to the church in hopes of getting something good (we use tything like layawy for powerful holy items), but other than that no one has made mention of it yet.
Please forgive my ignorance, are the WOL suggested in the TFE or AOW campaign? or is this a move us DM's can adopt?
Thanks
DM shane
You add these in on your own, unless there are official plans to include them in the written adventures?
rooster
One of my players does have a WoL (without knowing). His Valenar double-scimitar is an heirlom of his tribe and will become important during the caqmpaign.
<SPOILER>
However, I just flipped through Dungeon 129: "A Gathering of Winds" favours a pair of blades (a longsword and a shortsword). Even if they are not clearly mentioned as WoL, you could easily take them as such.
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In my game there's about four weapons of legacy, and the characters have them. They aren't allowed to read the book so that I can see how it works. So far, so good.
The caladbolg was used by a halfling psionic warrior/rogue for awhile, until he died.
The rod of trimeg is being used by a half-orc ranger. The divine spark is being used by the gnome cleric, who's now opened up both legacy abilities.
The infiltrator was used for awhile by the catfolk bard, but he has since died.
As for unbalanced, the weapons themselves haven't overbalanced the game at all. Since two of the characters died while using these weapons, I can only say that they aren't that overbalancing.
Killing PCs in AoW is fun and easy!
Yay - we start on Encounter at Blackwall Keep this Friday (after a month's break). I'll finally get a chance to go with my new items of legacy.
Cheers!