Forging Legendary Weapons

The weapons in Swords of Our Fathers are actually fairly standard fantasy d20 System magic weapons—except that we've tweaked them by adding abilities that characters can "unlock" as they advance in levels. The design goal here is to give a character a sword that the player can treasure—a sword that doesn't become useless after a few levels.

So when the Dungeon Master gives a character a magic weapon that's supposed to be "special" in some way, it really is—and the player treats it specially, too.

Creating these weapons takes a little bit of thought, but if you're moderately familiar with the d20 System (especially the Dungeon Master's Guide), you can design a fairly standard magic weapon, and then start layering improved abilities on it. You need to be careful not to go overboard, though; when that character reaches the final level of the prestige class for the weapon, it shouldn't be so powerful that a character of that level couldn't have purchased it himself.

Choosing a Prestige Class

The first step is to choose which classes are the most likely candidates to become the wielders of the blade. The blade scion prestige classes are divided up by the four fantasy character archetypes: battleblade scions (encompassing fighters, barbarians, rangers, and paladins); spellblade scions (wizards and sorcerers); faithblade scions (clerics and druids); and swiftblade scions (rogues, bards, and monks).

So, if you're designing a weapon that you want to be used by a wizard, you'll almost certainly want it to be a spellblade; a weapon destined for a fighter should be a battleblade, and so on.

Choosing Prestige Class Requirements

Requirements, as with all prestige classes, determine how easily a character can get into a blade scion prestige class. This is especially important with blade scions, though, because the requirements set the minimum level, and you need to know the minimum level so that you can gauge just how powerful the sword should be when the character first advances into the blade scion prestige class for it.

For example, the Vorsehung's defining requirement is its Base Attack Bonus minimum: +2. That means that a fighter, barbarian, ranger, or paladin could qualify for this prestige class by 2nd level, and be ready to advance into it at 3rd level. So the 1st-level ability of the Vorsehung has to be commensurate with the abilities of a 3rd-level fighter.

Similarly, the initial character level determines how soon the character will be able to access the weapon's 10th-level abilities, since, naturally, the character could plow right through all ten levels of the battleblade scion prestige class without multiclassing into anything else. In the case of the Vorsehung, that means that the wielder will be 12th level when he gains the weapon's final abilities. Knowing this range gives the DM some boundaries about what sort of powers and abilities the weapon can have.

Any other requirements are actually rather secondary, since the character can presumably acquire them on the way to meeting that minimum requirement. Making them really convenient to a certain class promotes the idea that the weapon was designed for characters of the class in question. Making them really inconvenient (such as feats that a character of that class wouldn't otherwise take) forces the player to make some difficult choices.

All of this, of course, is part and parcel of creating prestige classes, but it is important for purposes of designing the weapon's abilities.

Choosing Abilities

Legendary weapons have two aspects: the "public" abilities that any wielder can use, and the "private" abilities that only blade scions can access. The public abilities mainly determine the apparent value of the weapon, but they can also set the "theme" of the weapon. (The Vorsehung, for example, increases the wielder's Strength, even if the wielder isn't a battleblade scion.)

The DM can determine the legendary weapon's apparent value using the charts in the Dungeon Master's Guide (but the best means of determining a magic weapon's value are located in the Tome and Blood sourcebook). Now, Swords of Our Fathers fudges a bit on this subject, but keep in mind that if a group of 3rd-level heroes finds a sword worth more than about 10,000 gp, they're more likely to sell it than keep it, unless it's just terribly enticing to one or more members of the party. So make an effort to keep the apparent value of a legendary weapon within reach; that is, if a character couldn't buy it, you might consider cutting a few public abilities to cut the price. But remember: selling a magic weapon as treasure only nets the seller half the actual value. That aforementioned 10,000 gp weapon is only really worth about 5,000 gp, most likely divided four or more ways. That might sound like quite a haul—but look at what the party is giving up by selling it!

Abilities by Level

Start choosing abilities based on the theme of the weapon-which is also a good time to fill in that text that introduces the weapon. For the Vorsehung, the theme is enhanced strength, so most of the abilities will apply to Strength increases. Adding those in should be easy.

First, list out the blade scion's character level alongside the prestige class level, with the assumption that the character entered this class as soon as he qualified. It should look something like this:

Enhancement Bonuses

Now, since the weapon probably begins with an enhancement bonus, you have a starting point. In this case, it's a +1 bonus, so you know that you want to bump that bonus up to +2 around the time the character reaches 5th or 6th level. (That's about when the occasional +2 weapon would start showing up in the average campaign.) Using that same logic, +3 weapons would start becoming available around 8th level, and +4 weapons would begin appearing somewhere around 11th or 12th level.

So you can fill in a few blanks in the ability progression with enhancement bonuses, like so:

Truly Special Abilities

You're about halfway there; only seven abilities to fill in. This is where you can get creative. Design abilities that fit in with the weapon's theme, and start plugging them into the openings in the ability list. But where?

A good way to judge the right place to add a new ability is to determine the ability's caster level. Enhancement bonuses are always equal to three times the bonus, so that gives you a kind of progression to work with. With the Vorsehung, you can see that you need to fill in two abilities of below 6th-level power, two between 6th and 9th level, two between 9th and 12th level, and one more above 12th level-but probably not by much.

The Vorsehung, as an example, already grants any wielder enhanced Strength, which is roughly equivalent to what the spell bull's strength does. So, since bull's strength is a 2nd-level spell, that means that that ability is about the same as the +1 enhancement bonus: a caster level 3 ability. So the 1st-level ability should be somewhere in that neighborhood, but probably no better than a 4th-level ability. (Again, we're talking about a 3rd-level character.)

Increasing the versatility of the Strength increase is a more powerful ability, so it makes sense to move the other themed abilities into the higher levels of the battleblade scion progression. And, since nearly no one would take a prestige class that didn't grant some ability at 1st level, a Strength-related 1st-level ability is clearly in order.

Adding the Capper

None of these abilities so far have addressed the "destiny" part of the weapon, so an ability related to the wielder's destiny goes into the 10th-level ability slot. It makes sense to put it there thematically and mechanically: thematically, because the destiny of the battleblade scion is to reach 10th level; and mechanically, because every prestige class should have some sort of payoff for seeing the class through to the end.

Now the trick is to know when to stop. It isn't necessary to fill in every ability slot for a prestige class-especially one that grants a lot of powerful abilities. The Vorsehung is an especially good example of a weapon that doesn't need a full roster of abilities; its curse involves sticking with the prestige class, so the curse isn't so bad if the battleblade scion wants to keep taking levels of the prestige class. At least some of the ability slots, then, should be less than optimal choices.

The Final Details

Eventually, you'll need to know some hard data about the weapon, such as its hardness and hit points, and its cost. Cost, as has already been mentioned, is a function of the weapon's public abilities. How to determine hardness and hit points is covered in the DUNGEON MASTER's Guide, but it's easy to summarize.

Determine the hardness and hit points of a normal weapon of the same type (say, a longsword), then simply add the weapon's enhancement bonus to the total. For legendary weapons, use the maximum enhancement bonus; even if the hero hasn't learned how to get the most out of his weapon, the weapon is still very potent.

Filling in the Backstory

Finally, you need to provide a way for the players to determine that the weapon they have found is, in fact, a legendary weapon-and which one. The backstory provides a means of doing this, by presenting the weapon's history in legend form-then giving the characters a chance to know the legend.

Each legend includes a Knowledge check DC (or several, in the case of longer legends) that the characters can try for, to pick up a little clue about the weapon's origins. Eventually, smart players will put these clues together and catch on that the weapon they have fits the description of the weapon in the legend-and they'll also have a good idea of what the drawbacks of wielding it are.

That last part is important; if the weapon has some kind of terrible curse, it's worth the characters' time to find out about that as soon as possible. Certain divination spells could get them that information-but it's more fulfilling to the player if they actually get some use out of those ranks they put into their Knowledge skills.

Making Knowledge Checks

It's appropriate for characters to make Knowledge checks about a sword after they hear a rumor, song, or story about it or someone mentioned in its legend. As DM, you can choose to make players roll for each paragraph, or can instead have the players roll once and reveal all information for which the check succeeds. If characters hear about a person mentioned in a legend, the DM may limit the results to passages that involve that figure.

Retries are allowed only after the character making the retry gains an additional rank in the appropriate Knowledge skill.

Your Turn

Now that you know how to forge a legendary weapon, show us what you can do through our Legendary Weapons Not-A-Contest!