There are a number of different ways for the GM to get information to the players, or for the players to request information from the GM.
This is (partly) so you can get information about areas where there are no books, or no local informants (e.g., a lost city, or a legendary person that went missing.)
There are a lot of things high-level wizards can do that duplicate mundane tasks. This is just one of them.
I'm fair to mostly certain that you could do better with Oracle 1 (Lore)/Bard 5 and a Knowledge check most of the time, but one "bonus" to LL is this text:
legends that have been forgotten, or even information that has never been generally known.
This is the part where it could surpass your Knowledge checks of 60+ with the above character.
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Legend Lore used to be a cool spell. A legitimate spell. And one that, unfortunately, was difficult for many DMs to deal with when PCs cast it.
And thus the nerfing began until now, after many nerfs, it is sour, udder crap. (And is one of many individual reasons why the PrC "Loremaster" should have been redesigned to be a legitimate PrC instead of a useless, crap-bag PrC.)
Gaining information about the following might a bit difficult the mundane way:
legends that have been forgotten or even information that has never been generally known.
In my experience, it's almost always used on an item or place that is immediately at hand. Then the casting time is short enough and you get detailed information.
I agree that the other two castings are less useful.
This spell is just one of several spells that are primarily intended as a game mechanic supplied so that GMs can plausibly provide quest hook or other information directly to the party. Usually that's intended to facilitate campaign story lines. How much of or how useful the information is that you get depends on the GM. I have played with GMs who rely on the use of these sorts of spells to direct the party action, and I've played with GMs who consider these sorts of spells to be "cheating" and therefore give nothing of value when they are cast.
One of the things on my list of questions for the GM when I am entering a new game is "How do you deal with magic spells or items which magically provide information about the future, the location of NPCs or objects or the means to find a path to a new location?" Just doing that tends to make the GM think about divination, scrying, legend lore or other means of magically "circumventing" mundane investigation techniques.
if by "less useful", you mean "useless", then we agree: Legend Lore can be useful if the person or place is at hand.In my experience, it's almost always used on an item or place that is immediately at hand. Then the casting time is short enough and you get detailed information.
I agree that the other two castings are less useful.
It really depends on how your GM interprets "less complete and specific" and "vague and incomplete", doesn't it?
This is (partly) so you can get information about areas where there are no books, or no local informants (e.g., a lost city, or a legendary person that went missing.)No, since you must either:
- know some rumours, in order to get a cryptic rumour-like information.
- have access to a detailed source of informations, in order to get less detailed informations.
- or be in the place in question or with the person in question.
You can't use Legend lore if there are not at least some rumours (which implies the existence of informants), and you can't have detailed informations if you don't already have detailed informations.
Generally, one should at least get more than one has by casting legend lore. It specifically notes that the first two levels should give you "where to go for more information" in addition to whatever you get. If you're not getting at least that much, the problem is with your GM, not with the spell.
If all you have is rumors, the spell only tells you where to verify those rumors. If the rumors already tell you that, why would you cast the spell?
You are right, there are times where it is worthless to cast the spell. There are also times where it is worthless to cast other spells.
I don't know what to tell you: if I were your GM, here's how I'd rule.
Now in the latter two cases, maybe you could use Gather Information to find the same rumours. Or maybe not -- just buying a round of drinks in the local bar might not help, no matter how high you rolled. As noted in the Diplomacy skill, "The GM might rule that some topics are simply unknown to common folk."
It is clear you don't like the spell. I've seen it used to good effect in games. The spell is more of a roleplaying tool, some groups love it, it is very subjective.
The worst part is it's a bard spell. And something you'd expects bards to be really freaking awesome at. But because it's so incredibly marginally useful, if useful at all, as a spont. caster no reasonable adventuring bard would ever take it.
Bards should get it as a free spell known via class feature.
We finished an AP in which we saved the world, one PC got out aliv eeverone else Died and half the bodies were trapped in another dimension. The Dm said that if anyone ever cast Legend Lore theyd get revealed the PC which saved the world by shooting the evil artifact trapping the bad guy.
This seemed to fall under 'information almost no one would know' seemed appropriate use of legend lore. Though in this case it just made us feel better because in maybe 200 years when somone casts it they'll find out we were heroes :P
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If you only know "Rosebud" - this spell tells you it was the dog... who said it when dieing... and what movies have been made, books published, etc...
In other words, you can take a simple thing like an old buried stone with a funny picture nobody recognizes on it and get a bunch of GM Adventure Hook Information from it.
I've always understood this spell to be the ultimate unstoppable bane of liches and other secretive spellcasters. A lich can protect his mind from divination, can hide his phylactery in a pocket plane of his creation, and can wipe the knowledge of his one weakness' existence from all the world (murdering witnesses, burning lore, etc.).
But 2d6 weeks later, the players know of the phylactery's existence and can begin work at finding it.
Destroying a lich who has taken proper precautions would be literally impossible without this spell. Concealing a phylactery from the world is just too easy.
If anything, this spell is ungodly powerful, if highly situational. It makes it possible to get at least some information on absolutely anything. Repeated castings may reveal everything you ever wanted to know about a given subject.
For the second case, you already have a detailed source of information, which means: all relevant informations.
This is an assumption on your part and not specified in the text. It's not very specific in what constitutes detailed information, but if looking for, say, the hand of vecna, "rumours might be:
The hand Vecna lost to her traitorous servant still exists to this day.Detailed information might be:
It's the hand of the now-god vecna, lost before it's ascension to power, and that it can be used by replacing one's arm with it to gain magical powers.
That's much more detailed information, but you don't have the slightest clue about where it is.
Saying "detailed information equalls all relevant information" is just an assumption that MAKES the spell less useful. Why first jump to unfounded conclusions about what the spell does, and then complain that it's weak?
Isn't the other big advantage here that what you get from Legends Lore, while possibly cryptic and vague, has to be true? Unlike "mundane" rumours, I mean?