Name or describe a person, place, or object. The spell brings to your mind a brief summary of the significant lore about the thing you named. The lore might consist of current tales, forgotten stories, or even secret lore that has never been widely known. If the thing you named isn't of legendary importance, you gain no information. The more information you already have about the thing, the more precise and detailed the information you receive is.
The information you learn is accurate but might be couched in figurative language. For example, if you have a mysterious magic axe on hand, the spell might yield this information: “Woe to the evildoer whose hand touches the axe, for even the haft slices the hand of the evil ones. Only a true Child of Stone, lover and beloved of Moradin, may awaken the true powers of the axe, and only with the sacred word Rudnogg on the lips."
* - (incense worth at least 250 gp, which the spell consumes, and four ivory strips worth at least 50 gp each)
This seems to be only useful for creating a dramatic scenario, with no real effect on much.
Well... it could also help guide lost players looking for a clue on how to act next. But I agree this is more of a NPC spell
Edit : or allow the players to obtain information without there being a justified knowlegeable NPC to ask
I have a really smart player, she is looking up information on the names of legendary Items, then using this spell to get enough lore to begin tracing down where these items are. She gave me heads up that she is hoping to ensure the party is sufficiently equipped for the big bad guy that they currently are very outmatched by.
I love it, as it gives me the avenue to introduce them to give clear rewards, and if an item is not one that I want to give to the party, I can argue that it is either entirely lost to time(no recent legend lore can be found by the spell) or is in the possession of some creature or organization the party might be leery of angering. Unless they want to make another enemy which is super fun as well. I love it when players take the initiative of saying what their goals are, and this spell is designed to cut out an NPC going to the party and puts the steering wheel in the party's hands.
More bad design within 5e. I honestly dislike the person that thought, "Well, let's take everything good out of prior editions and leave players and DM's alike with only the most useless aspects and properties."
Legend Lore should be a ritual spell, this would increase it's value and justify the material expense.
Funny how in Sleeping Dragon's Wake Gallio Elibro asks 400 gp for casting this spell which cost 450 gp in materials.
It costs 200gp once (to buy the ivory strips) and then 250 gp of incense each cast. You can reuse the ivory strips an arbitrary number of times.
Of course, that 440 gp you mention in Sleeping Dragon's Wake is still cheap relative to Adventure's League Spellcasting Services costs (level squared * 10 + 2x the consumable cost + 10% of non-consumed materials cost). If you get someone to cast Legend Lore for you in AL, it's 770 gp.
What if you use this spell on the Deck of Many Things? Will it told you something about its effects?
Sure, but I'd dress it up as per the spell description: "[...]a brief summary of the significant lore[...]"; stories of people who pulled a card and the outcome, location of the Donjon some unwitting soul was sent to (bonus points if the party are looking for someone trapped by this card, but get information on a completely different adventurer), the limit of what you might learn with a single casting of the spell is up to the DM.
Also, since there can be many Decks in the world at a given time, the amount of information gained could refer to any one of them, and you could cast it again and learn the same information about a different Deck. The amount of red herrings or misinformation could be limitless.
It is one of a dozen spells that is more a DMs tool then a players one. However there are some games that do not give players things like Command Words for items easily. This spell gives those to them. There is also the fact that this can be used on mundane items to discover things that happened in the past. Like "hey we have to investigate who killed the king with poison. Lets cast Legend Lore on his cup in order to see who has handled it recently." This would cover the Legendary importance clause as it was the tool to kill a king which getting even a lead would be great.
That or it may tell you the tale of one who has used it in the past, or how it came to rest wherever it is currently, or even something super vague like "this deck is chaos personified great wealth or great doom is held within may they who guide the gamblers smile upon you if you draw from it"
I would say any Curse on an item would likely be revealed by the use of this spell, since Identify doesn't reveal curses, unless specifically stated by the curse
Just how much gold does your party have? Each casting is 450 gp
Wrong, each casting is 250gp. The 200gp in Ivory is not consumed.
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Does anyone know what 'Rudnogg' means? It sounds like an ale to me.
Helps provide meta information.
This is definitely one of those spells that seems completely useless 99% of the time and then completely derails your bbeg's plans when a player uses it at a crucial moment.
My guess is that Gondor backward was too obvious, so they put in 2 'g's and used a 'u'.
Or maybe 650gp. A wizards gotta eat...
You gotta wanna know pretty bad. I'm gonna figure the info is acceptably less reliable if you use 25gp incense and you make the PC sniff some burnt cat hair mixed with cinnamin, I mean sinamon, I mean parsley. Outta bring it down to 120gp.
Ivory? I think a bard named Bill told me "slips of Yew" works well for most things. Can even replace bamboo shoots in a liver stew.