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This product is not available here on paizo, which is why I am posting my review here. I reviewed the first one in the series as well here on the forums. Below is my review for the product, I also added a review on Drivethru.
Legendary Blades 2 by Purple Duck Games
This product is 46 pages long. It starts with a credits, ToC and introduction. (2 pages)
Legendary weapons are weapons that get stronger as your PC levels up. The weapons have a base ability and then every two character levels the PC can activate one more power level of the weapon. There is ten such power levels. Meaning to access the final level the PC must be 20th level. This book is a follow up to the first book, this just has new weapons in it.
Legendary Weapons (39 pages)
There is 14 new legendary weapons.
Apocalypse Hammer - This is a weapon bent on destruction, it is inspired by the Norse myth of Ragnorok.
Gambit – A roguish short sword, grant some rogue like abilities, blink and the ability to store the weapon within their own body. I would have liked it if it appeared as a tattoo but it doesn't say in what way it is stored.
Giant Killer – Not what you would think, this is for small people only. Gnomes and halflings and it's bonuses work against anyone bigger than themselves, the bigger the target the more bonuses they get.
Heartwood Staff – A quarterstaff with druidic abilities. Can become a bane weapon at times, can also use it's bonuses to heal the user instead of adding to damage on attacks.
Hysteria’s Chosen – A morning star of confusion and madness. From Hideous laughter, disorienting, confusion and causing madness in others struck.
Mischief’s Bow – ability to use grease, luck, turn others gaseous, use it as a musical instrument. A bow for those that like to play pranks.
Night Axe – A norther great axe of night. Powers that deal with the cold north or the night.
Reaper’s Scythe – Originally appeared in a previous product Horrors of GOW. This scythe is inspired by the four horseman. It does bleed dmg(war), famine, plague, and death powers.
Shadowblade of the Dark Mistress – A short sword with powers of shadows and charm abilities. This blade was well inspired by me apparently by some comments I made about the first Legendary Blades book.
Spear of the Four Winds - deflection based spear with wind powers.
Spirit Glaive – A necromantic glaive. It offers protection vs necromantic magic, protection against dieing, ability to suck up souls of the slain and use them as short term buffs.
Stargazer – A wizards staff, some divination magic, star magic, and bonus is used by those with a low BaB, a +4 luck bonus on to hit. Letting a wizard or Sorcerer actually be decent in melee with the weapon.
Temple Sword – A temple sword of the temple of the moon. Can summon minions, a few magical effects like confusion, remove fear etc, and can add to defense. (I am not sure what a temple sword is or where it comes from. It needed a side bar listing the stats of the weapon and preferable where it came from)
Woodman’s Axe – A nature based handaxe. Can speak with plants or command them. Also has bonuses against wood and plants.
It ends with a OGL (5 pages)
Closing Thoughts. Tired of finding a magic sword only to dump it when you find a better one? Wish magic items where a bit more wondrous? Well this is the product for you. I personally love weapons and magic items like this. Ones that when you find them, they are different and grow in power with you. Something your PC's will likely always keep. Each weapon beyond listing all their powers and such, all have at least one page of history about the weapon. The fluff is well done and the art is pretty good. Each weapon has a piece of art. The rest is simple black and white text with no borders making it very print friendly.
Unfortunately it is not all good, there is a few errors and issues I had with the product. There is a couple of layout errors that I noticed, at least I felt they was errors. In Giant Slayer the table is listed last unlike the rest and it doesn't make great use of white space. There is a large gab between some of the weapons abilities and the rest. Mischief’s Bow has the table in the middle of the abilities. There is a couple of others like that as well. The layout style is not bad, but I would have preferred if all the charts had been first and all the powers listed after the charts. The final thing is near the end but between Stargazer and Temple Sword is a ad for another Purple Duck product. Then there is the temple sword and not listing it's base temple sword weapon stats or saying where it comes from.
This is a good book despite the few errors. It is bookmarked to each weapon which was nice. The only true blunder I would say is the temple sword, which is a shame. So whats my rating? I am giving this a 4 star, while the layout is annoying it doesn't detract from the value and the weapons are nice and I felt well balanced. I am looking forward to the next installment.
Thank you for your review.
Since its initial release we have gone back and completely revised the art and layout for this product.
A second review was posted on Rpgnow by Sean Holland as well.
If you wish to take a look at Legendary II: Legendary Weapons in its shiny new form please head over here
This pdf is 46 pages long, 5 pages are taken up by the SRD, the first page contains both ToC and editorial, leaving 40 pages of content for a very low price.
The first page introduces the concept of magical weapons that level with your character, providing the frame rules. If you have already checked out the predecessor of this book, Legendary Blades, you already know these.
After that, we get the weapons:
-Apocalypse Hammer: A hammer devoted to Armageddon, this one can damage the wielder and summon creatures associated with the end-times. It includes two statblocks for summonable creatures, an advanced riotus [sic!] Dire Wolf (CR 5), the mid-level summon being an elder fire elemental and an advanced crag Linnorm (CR 15). I liked this weapon, it's dangerous potential and the flair it has. I didn't like the one typo.
-Gambit: An acrobat'sblade that is the ultimate boon for groups sans rogues, as it enables the wielder to disarm traps and gain trap sense etc.
-Giant Killer: A Glaive for little people, this weapon is the bane of giant creatures and great for small characters.
-Heartwood Staff: A staff fashioned from a Treant's heartwood, this one didn't impress me too much. heard that one before. Plus: One ability talks about a "smite" ability that has not been mentioned in the weapon before. We also get stats for an advanced treant fighter 8 (CR 16).
-Hysteria's Chosen: A Hellraiseresque Morningstar of insanity and pain: What's not to like?
-Mischief's Bow: A Bard's bow/instrument focusing on luck and trick shots.
-Night Axe: A weapon forged against the creatures from beyond the stars, the theme is actually not darkness, but rather the void beyond. The weapon comes with a stat-block a CR 5 lesser from of Star-Spawn (Mi-Go).
-Reaper's Scythe: Inspired by Poe's "Masque of the red Death", this scythe brings pestilence and death. The mechanics for its famine ability are a bit subpar.
-Shadowblade of the Dark Mistress: The blade of the servants of the Succubus Reviewer Queen, this sword has acombination of charm and shadow abilities.
-Spear of the Four Winds: A cool, Asian-flavored spear that can conjure up damaging winds.
-Spirit Glaive: A Glaive that can grants soul-tokens that can be used in a variety of ways and bind souls. There is a rather awkward sentence explaining the token mechanic that feels like the sentence parts before and after the comma have been jumbled.
-Stargazer: A great staff for mages, this one uses star-associated magic and some divination-abilities. Nice. There is also a little piece of unobtrusive advertisement here.
-Temple Sword: A sword that focuses on light-abilities and summoning cohorts. I liked this one, though the table says it's a temple sword and no properties are given for the quality.
-Woodman's Axe: An axe doubling as a feather token takes focuses on taking out evil plant creatures.
The pdf closes with a ToC.
Conclusion:
Layout is quite printer-friendly and minimalistic, Editing has some minor glitches but none that really detract from the enjoyment of the pdf. I really liked that the weapons all come with quite cool computer-generated artworks, making it easier to picture the weapons and providing some nice pieces to show to your players. I could have done without the additional b/w-illustrations, though, as they somehow feel misplaced when compared to the nice weapon artworks. The writing of the prose has improved since the last installment and is more versatile - while, due to the nature of the book, it is still generic, the prose for the weapons is actually nice and makes you want to implement the weapons. Another improvement over the predecessor is, that some abilities are more complex /far-out, although I would have liked to see more of the rather unusual ones. I also like that we get some weapons that belong to other types than swords, as we had enough of them in the last installment and I could have managed without the ones herein. Usually I'd rate this book somewhere between 3.5 and 4 stars, but due to the extremely low price and some cool ideas, I'll settle for a solid 4.5 stars - There is still room for improvement, but this is a great purchase nevertheless.
I think Endzeitgeist might be looking at the non-revised version of this product.
That might be entirely possible, though I want to emphasize that 4.5 stars ist still an awesome rating and even without the glitches, I wouldn't give this book a full five stars, as that is reserved for books I consider absolutely stunning in content and/or design. :)
Great work, though and a significant improvement over the first Legendary Blades. I'm looking forward to reading more!
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That might be entirely possible, though I want to emphasize that 4.5 stars ist still an awesome rating and even without the glitches, I wouldn't give this book a full five stars, as that is reserved for books I consider absolutely stunning in content and/or design. :)
Great work, though and a significant improvement over the first Legendary Blades. I'm looking forward to reading more!
So where's your review of the Legendary Wonderous items that just came out? Hmmm?
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So where's your review of the Legendary Wonderous items that just came out? Hmmm?That might be entirely possible, though I want to emphasize that 4.5 stars ist still an awesome rating and even without the glitches, I wouldn't give this book a full five stars, as that is reserved for books I consider absolutely stunning in content and/or design. :)
Great work, though and a significant improvement over the first Legendary Blades. I'm looking forward to reading more!
Yeah! ;)
I'm actually really anxious to hear what BOTH of you think of the just released Ledgendary Items!
That might be entirely possible, though I want to emphasize that 4.5 stars ist still an awesome rating and even without the glitches, I wouldn't give this book a full five stars, as that is reserved for books I consider absolutely stunning in content and/or design. :)
Great work, though and a significant improvement over the first Legendary Blades. I'm looking forward to reading more!
I was not criticizing the review at all. I appreciate any reviews that are writing about PDG products. I just wanted to point out that some changes have been made to the product in terms of layout.
Thank you for taking the time to review it.