Are These Items Useful, or Use-Impaired? Weapons of Legacy [3.5]

[InnaBinder]

Specifically, would they be useful enough to the class(es) for which they are intended to overcome WoL's large levels of 'meh'?

Rerrit’s Armor
+1 Black Dragonhide Studded Leather
(Weapons of Legacy Table 4-4, substituting 19th level Skill point loss for -1 Attack penalty)
Intended for: Warblade/Scout
5th – Resistance +1
6th – Enlarge Person 1/day
8th – Cure Moderate Wounds 3/day
9th – Armor Enhancement +1
10th – See Invisibility 1/day
12th – Greater Blurring Armor Enhancement
13th – 1 round Haste, 5/day
16th – Invisibility, at-will
17th – Teleport, 2/day
20th – Regeneration (as Ring)

Ghislain Oath-Dagger
Masterworked Baatoran Steel Dagger
(Weapons of Legacy Table 4-7, substituting 15th level HP loss for -1 Attack penalty)
Intended for: Dread Necromancer
5th – Intelligent Legacy, Minor (INT 10 WIS 13 CHA 13)
6th – Creature Compass, Undead
8th – Ability Enhancement (DEX) +2
9th – Weapon Enhancement +1
10th – Metamagic, Lesser (Extend Spell)
11th – Darkness, Other
13th – Weapon Enhancement (Anarchic)
14th – Metamagic (Extend Spell)
16th – Cloudkill, 1/day
17th – Ability Enhancement (CHA) +6
20th – Wishes, 3

[PhaedrusXY]

I think I'd rather just buy the individual items... The only thing that makes Legacy items worth it IMO is the special abilities that aren't easily replicated, like Cunning and... well, that's pretty much it. 

[veekie]

Yeah, it's a nice concept to have items that scale with the player, but the costs...forget it.

Now, if Build-It-Yourself Weapons of legacy replaced the wealth system instead of dropping penalties...

[InnaBinder]

Thanks for chiming in, both of you.

One of the main reasons I'm looking at Weapons of Legacy is that the homebrew world the campaign is set in is very young, under 300 years of habitation by most of the sentient races, and is without Wizards or Artificers (I talked about it a little at 339: http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1142569).  As far as the longer lived races of the setting are concerned, that's less than a generation, and item crafters are understandably rare given the class limitations.  The aforementioned Legacy items are to be 'seeded' as the legacies of my players, whom I expect to provide much smaller 'parcels' of magical treasure otherwise.  That presumes that there are reasonable items to be created through the WoL rules, of course.

I don't know if that changes anything in anyone's responses or not, of course.  It does make 'just buying the individual items' considerably more challenging.

[veekie]

Well, I figure you can drop WBL, in exchange for penalty free legacy weapons, in that event.

[woodenbandman]

What's the estimated costs of these weapons at level 20? if it's in line with WBL, free weapons + lose the penalties would be good.

[InnaBinder]

What's the estimated costs of these weapons at level 20? if it's in line with WBL, free weapons + lose the penalties would be good.

*Binder's brain boggles at computing these costs while trying to build +/- 4 versions of his Iron Chef entrant* 

[veekie]

You could just base it off the weapon enhancement bonus costs. That's close enough for most purposes and goes pretty high.

[Akalsaris]

Rerrit's Armor: I'd say no.  Most of the abilities are easily gained in potion form (enlarge person, see invisibility, invisibility) or over-valued (regeneration, teleport). 

Dagger: I like this 1 more, though the capstone is a little odd, since you'll own the dagger forever.  Maybe house-rule it to 1 wish/year instead or something.  It's probably worth the investment, though the anarchic and additional +1 bonus are kinda useless since you will be slapping people with touch spells if you're ever in melee. 

[bihlbo]

Given the setting, I would completely remove all negatives and sacrifices built into the WoL. Basically, if you're getting less magic items, then having one magic item that is as effective as having 3-6 magic items makes an end result that is balanced and fair. In fact, you could build the WoL by looking at the loot you might otherwise give out in a normal setting (much like 4e loot parcel planning), and remove some items, adding their effects to the WoL. You might even add more on top of this, since an item is loseable, and with a WoL you have most of your eggs in one basket.

In fact, I'd use Legendary Weapons from UA, keep the WoL book around for inspiration, and consider heroic characters (the PCs) as having 1 scion level per character level for the purposes of qualification.

[InnaBinder]

In fact, I'd use Legendary Weapons from UA, keep the WoL book around for inspiration, and consider heroic characters (the PCs) as having 1 scion level per character level for the purposes of qualification.

At which point you're using so little of the Legendary Weapons as written that any actual use of them is essentially unrecognizable.