I have a player interested in taking the Ancestral Weapon feat from Book of Exalted Deeds that allows him to enchant his weapon without the need for a mage, and then he'd like to found a legacy using Weapons of Legacy as well. The combination of the two seems very off to me - since he'd be pumping unique special abilities into the weapon using the Legacy rules (like making it cast Cure spells and such) while giving it weapon special abilities and enhancement bonuses using the Ancestral Weapon feat. I'm not sure that they're really supposed to interact together - my reading of WoL is that it basically takes over the enhancement of the weapon entirely. On the other hand, he'll still be paying the AW feat, getting the penalties from the WoL, and paying for the rituals and the regular enhancements, and it would make his sword very cool.
Does anyone else have experience using WoL and AW, and/or any general advice or thoughts about the viable balance of this set-up?
Back from Thanksgiving bump?
I am currently running a long-standing game where (over a year ago when we started) one of the players mentioned wanting to do something like the Weapon of Legacy for his character. After some discussion from all peoples involved, we decided that the only way for it to be fair was to give it to no one or give it to everyone. We chose to give it to everyone. Since we weren't too enamoured with the WoL rules, we built our own. Each player has the cash equivalent to a +X weapon, where X = level/2 (rounded down). This cash doesn't count towards WBL and must be spent on a single item. Once an ability is added to an item, it cannot be removed. It can, however, be upgraded from a lesser version to a greater version.
It works great. Every character got to build the item they wanted and didn't have to worry about taking crafting feats to get interesting items, or banking on loot drops to fill necessary gear slots because they spent extra cash on interesting/flavorful items.
All that said, I don't see Ancestral Weapons being that much different than Master Craftsman (which also allows magic item creation without needing a caster). I'm not too familiar with the Ancestral Weapons feat, or how it would interact with Weapons of Legacy.
Both systems are different means to the same end, and as such, should not stack. They are both very cool and flavorful, and it's great when a PC asks for one: but asking for both on the same item is munchkiny.
You should simply be able to use this logic on your player. If you really need rules to back you up (and you shouldn't!) then the sidebar at the bottom of page 11 of WoL makes it quite clear that this combo is illegal.
Now, as an aside, you shouldn't let your player have free reign of creating his WoL weapon as he wishes. Read page 183, where it talks about balance and not letting the player design the weapon. The existing WoLs are balanced in that they are not custom-fitted to the character: if he's making his out to shore up his specific needs, then that's outside the scope of what WoLs are supposed to do.
That being said, I would allow some leniency in mixing things up. For example, the feat from BoED is technically Ancestral Relic not Weapon. To that end: why not have him enchant his amulet, helmet, or other peice of equipment with that feat? For example, in the Arthurian legends, the scabbard of Excalibur was actually more powerful than the sword Excalibur itself: so there's great precident. (And "sword & scabbard" fit nicely enough together to 'count' as one item in storyspace.)
Now to just inject some of my own opinion into it: if the character is getting the Ancestral Relic feat in order to qualify for the Annointed Knight PrC in the BoED, then I would allow having an unlocked WoL to count for that prereq: as I said at the top: they are different means to similar ends.