D&D (2024) Is Vicious the new Bloodclaw?

[EzekielRaiden]

ENworld seems very cheap when it comes handing out magic weapons.

No kidding.

 

[evilbob]

Thank you Zard for reminding me that this was a 3.5 weapon! I looked it up and now I see where it came from:

Vicious 3.5​

When a vicious weapon strikes an opponent, it creates a flash of disruptive energy that resonates between the opponent and the wielder. This energy deals an extra 2d6 points of damage to the opponent and 1d6 points of damage to the wielder. Only melee weapons can be vicious.
Price +1 bonus.

It seems like someone took this and modified it slightly: it's rare, which is worth the same as a +2 weapon, except they took away the penalty and the melee restriction.

Again: for me, a vicious weapon as-is should be a legendary rarity, and even then it would still be the best legendary weapon. Legendary + attunement would make a good, top-tier weapon.

Reducing the bonus to just 1d6 seems to be the best fix. Compared to a +2 weapon, that seems much more on par. I might even add back the damage, but reduce it to 1 (no need to keep the melee restriction). That way, high level characters with access to slashing resistance or the like could ignore it. Final version:

Vicious Weapon 5.5​

Generic variant, rare. This magic weapon deals an extra 1d6 damage to any creature it hits, and 1 damage to the wielder. This extra damage is of the same type as the weapon's normal damage.

 

[Zardnaar]

Thank you Zard for reminding me that this was a 3.5 weapon! I looked it up and now I see where it came from:

Vicious 3.5​

When a vicious weapon strikes an opponent, it creates a flash of disruptive energy that resonates between the opponent and the wielder. This energy deals an extra 2d6 points of damage to the opponent and 1d6 points of damage to the wielder. Only melee weapons can be vicious.
Price +1 bonus.

It seems like someone took this and modified it slightly: it's rare, which is worth the same as a +2 weapon, except they took away the penalty and the melee restriction.

Again: for me, a vicious weapon as-is should be a legendary rarity, and even then it would still be the best legendary weapon. Legendary + attunement would make a good, top-tier weapon.

Reducing the bonus to just 1d6 seems to be the best fix. Compared to a +2 weapon, that seems much more on par. I might even add back the damage, but reduce it to 1 (no need to keep the melee restriction). That way, high level characters with access to slashing resistance or the like could ignore it. Final version:

Vicious Weapon 5.5​

Generic variant, rare. This magic weapon deals an extra 1d6 damage to any creature it hits, and 1 damage to the wielder. This extra damage is of the same type as the weapon's normal damage.

It's not as good as some very rares and legendaries. Build depending of course.

No attunement only matters once you hit 4 items

 

[sjrnr]

Have you actually played 5.5, by chance? Your math makes a lot of generous assumptions that have zero chance of holding up in actual play, in my experience. Monsters had absurd offensive buffs.

A melee martial gets stomped so hard in actual melee in non-trivial encounters that you'll be lucky to not be rolling death saves on turns 3 and onward. That rules out pretty much any usage of Hex and Hunter's Mark.

Also, to use the guidance from 2024's DMG:

• A Rare item should cost 4000 gold (plus cost of the base item)
• Common magic items can often be bought in a town or city. Uncommon and Rare magic items are usually found only in cities (...). If you decide to allow purchasing items, you can limit them to cities, but you can reasonably buy a Vicious weapon in a weapon shop.
• You're supposed to roll on a Treasure Hoard about once per session; Roll twice or roll once or double the total for monsters fond of amassing treasure. You use the highest CR to determine the treasure range. A CR 5-10 has a hoard of 8d10 x 100 (4400) gp and 1d3 magic items. A CR 11-16 has a hoard of 8d8 x 1000 (36000) gp and 1d4 magic items.

Combining that, you can easily see your party should earn over 4000 gp per session starting at about level 3, and over 36000 gp per session starting at level ~7 (at least, that's the earliest level you can reliably destroy CR 11 bosses and their mooks).

So, you will have strong weapons pretty early, you will get upgrades often, and considering that martial class progression is still absolute ass after level 5-6, this is completely fine and by design.

Besides, there's plenty of items that are vastly stronger than Vicious weapons - Enspelled items, wands, consumables, +AC shields and armor, resistance rings, most of which aren't attunement in 2024 either. Vicious weapons are strong, yes, but their function is mostly to be an excellent sidearm to use your weapon masteries with, and to ensure your secondary mode of damage (ie. Vicious Longbow for GWM Barbarians) is not absolutely garbage against the HP inflated 2025 Monster Manual.

The only change I'd make to Vicious weapons is to introduce greater variants with a Very Rare +3d6 damage, and Legendary +4d6 damage, also without attunement requirements.

TL;DR: Vicious is OK, there are vastly stronger items, would add a +3d6 Very Rare and +4d6 Legendary variants without attunement.

 

[Zardnaar]

Have you actually played 5.5, by chance? Your math makes a lot of generous assumptions that have zero chance of holding up in actual play, in my experience. Monsters had absurd offensive buffs.

A melee martial gets stomped so hard in actual melee in non-trivial encounters that you'll be lucky to not be rolling death saves on turns 3 and onward. That rules out pretty much any usage of Hex and Hunter's Mark.

Also, to use the guidance from 2024's DMG:

• A Rare item should cost 4000 gold (plus cost of the base item)
• Common magic items can often be bought in a town or city. Uncommon and Rare magic items are usually found only in cities (...). If you decide to allow purchasing items, you can limit them to cities, but you can reasonably buy a Vicious weapon in a weapon shop.
• You're supposed to roll on a Treasure Hoard about once per session; Roll twice or roll once or double the total for monsters fond of amassing treasure. You use the highest CR to determine the treasure range. A CR 5-10 has a hoard of 8d10 x 100 (4400) gp and 1d3 magic items. A CR 11-16 has a hoard of 8d8 x 1000 (36000) gp and 1d4 magic items.

Combining that, you can easily see your party should earn over 4000 gp per session starting at about level 3, and over 36000 gp per session starting at level ~7 (at least, that's the earliest level you can reliably destroy CR 11 bosses and their mooks).

So, you will have strong weapons pretty early, you will get upgrades often, and considering that martial class progression is still absolute ass after level 5-6, this is completely fine and by design.

Besides, there's plenty of items that are vastly stronger than Vicious weapons - Enspelled items, wands, consumables, +AC shields and armor, resistance rings, most of which aren't attunement in 2024 either. Vicious weapons are strong, yes, but their function is mostly to be an excellent sidearm to use your weapon masteries with, and to ensure your secondary mode of damage (ie. Vicious Longbow for GWM Barbarians) is not absolutely garbage against the HP inflated 2025 Monster Manual.

The only change I'd make to Vicious weapons is to introduce greater variants with a Very Rare +3d6 damage, and Legendary +4d6 damage, also without attunement requirements.

TL;DR: Vicious is OK, there are vastly stronger items, would add a +3d6 Very Rare and +4d6 Legendary variants without attunement.

My plan is to put vicious on secondary weapons. Otherwise you just suck.