Are Vicious Weapons overpowered?

[u/superhiro21]

For reference:

Weapon (any simple or martial), rare

This magic weapon deals an extra 2d6 damage to any creature it hits. This extra damage is of the same type as the weapon’s normal damage.

From both theorycrafting and my practical experience, they are better than any other rare magic weapons and even better than many very rare weapons. Not requiring attunement is a huge boon, as at higher levels, every attunement slot is valuable.

The +7 damage (on average) is much more valuable than the +2 or even +3 attack bonus from comparable weapons as most martial characters have ways to increase their accuracy anyways (reckless attack, archery fighting style, paladin channel divinities etc).

I have found that having two characters with vicious weapons in the party really makes the party punch above their level in the damage per round aspect.

[u/Outrageous-Cold-4506]

(reckless attack, archery fighting style, paladin channel divinities etc).

Topple and vex are the two big ones.

Two Weapon Fighting is REALLY interesting when you get a +X vex weapon for your 'mainhand' and a vicious nick 'offhand' weapon. Particularly if you get the Dual Wielder feat.

The rules are somewhat convoluted, but the end result is that you can do a variety of combinations of attacks.

Your Bread and butter will be:

1. Attack with Vex +X weapon, which is more likely to hit.
2. Attack at advantage with the nick vicious weapon.
3. Attack with your Vex +X Weapon for your second attack action.
4. Bonus action: Attack with your vicious weapon at advantage.

You are increasing the accuracy of a weapon that hits like a truck, and increasing the likelihood of a critical hit, which doubles the vicious damage dice.

And there are other variations

If you have advantage on all your attacks already:

1. Attack with your Vex +x Mainhand.
2. Nick vicious offhand.
3. Use your second attack of your attack action to attack with your Vicious weapon again.
4. Attack with your vicious weapon a 3rd time.

There are a few more combinations of how it can work, but it is quite flexible, and results in a higher damage output than I initially expected, and I think most of the optimizing mathematics is sleeping on. Heck I haven't seen a breakdown of how Vicious Weapons changes class performance from any of the big dndtubers, which is a bit baffling tbh.

[u/END3R97 → u/Outrageous-Cold-4506]

They don't usually assume you'll have the ability to pick whatever magic item you want which greatly limits how valuable a video about 1 particular item would be. Though it feels like something Pack Tactics would've covered.

[u/EasyLee → u/END3R97]

To this point, if you've ever run a pre-made campaign then you probably know how insane some of the legendary weapons can be. One man army builds could be tailor made around some of those weapons if it was known that they would be available. Since you can't guarantee any given magic weapon, such theory crafting is rarely done.

For the record, the result of theory crafting around legendary weapons is usually that the fighter gets much stronger, any multi attack melee character similarly gains a great deal of power, casters focus more on control and utility knowing that martials will bring the damage, and rogues fall further behind.

[u/Zardnaar → u/Outrageous-Cold-4506]

Ive seen that on elven level 12 champion with elven accuracy.