Damage

Damage is a measurement of how harmful an attack is to a character. When a character takes Damage, it is subtracted from their Hit Points. Damage will cause death when a character's Hit Points reach 0.

Influences

Weapons all have base damage values. The final damage delivered to the target, can be possibly modified by various factors, depending on the game:

Mechanic	Fallout/2/Tactics	Fallout 3	Fallout: New Vegas	Fallout 4	Fallout 76	Fallout: The Roleplaying Game
Critical Hit
Condition					e	k
Damage cap					i
Damage evasionf
Damage Modifier
Damage Resistancej
Armor penetration			a	h	h
Damage reductiong
Damage Threshold
V.A.T.S. multiplier		b	c	d

^ ^a Fallout: New Vegas features a few weapons that completely ignore DR, even if few enemies actually have DR.
^ ^b Damage done to the player in V.A.T.S. is reduced by 90%.
^ ^c Damage done to the player in V.A.T.S. is reduced by 25%. Base melee/unarmed damage done by the player is doubled.
^ ^d Damage done to the player in V.A.T.S. is reduced.
^ ^e Weapons cannot be equipped when their durability reaches 0.
^ ^f Chance to avoid 100% of incoming damage. Fallout 1/2/Tactics does this via AC, Fallout 4 does this via the Unstoppable perk, Fallout 76 via the Serendipity perk.
^ ^g Incoming damage is reduced by a percentage (i.e. mitigation is linear). In Fallout 1/2/Tactics/3/New Vegas, "Damage Resistance" is this; in 4/76, it occurs after Damage Resistance.
^ ^h Reduces the target's Damage Resistance value, and calculates damage based off of that lowered value.
^ ⁱ Only used in Fallout 76 PVP. An end-of-calculation limit on how much maximum damage can be dealt per hit marker to another player. This value is 110.
^ ^j In Fallout 1/2/Tactics/3/New Vegas, "Damage Resistance" is "Damage Reduction" in this table; in 4/76, it refers to a non-linear multiplier applied before any linear multiplier.
^ ^k In Fallout 2d20, weapons can be destroyed, but there is no strict weapon condition in the base rules. The only pieces of equipment with a condition value are pieces of Power Armor that can be destroyed after taking too much damage.

Types

There are different types of damage, depending on the weapon of attack:

Icon	Type	Description	Fallout/2/Tactics	Fallout 3	Fallout: New Vegas	Fallout 4	Fallout 76	Fallout: The Roleplaying Game
	Normal e	The vast majority of damage from all weapons.
	Energy	Damage dealt by lasers, fire, electricity, cold and a variety of other sources, including weapons which inflict more than one damage type, such as plasma.
	Radiation	Damage dealt through radioactive sources such as certain weapons or environments. c
	Fire	Damage from flame-based weapons and explosives, occasionally residual.				d		k
	Cryo	Damage dealt by cryogenic weapons.				d
	Poison	Damage dealt primarily by toxins, typically from a bug, but also including some exotic weaponry.
	Laser	Damage specific to laser weapons.
	Plasma	Damage specific to plasma-based weapons.
	EMP/Pulse	Damage from electromagnetic weapons, generally good against robots.				4emp
	Electrical	Hidden and used by very few weapons.a		/ b	/ b	d	f
	Explosive	Damage from otherwise unspecial explosives.				g	g
	Bleed	Damage-over-time from certain weapon mods.				h	h	k
	Pure	A new damage type implemented in Fallout 76, used exclusively for the wendigo colossus

^ ^a Not shown in the games that use it, Electrical damage is only caused by the alien blaster, YK32 pulse pistol and YK42B pulse rifle.
^ ^b Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas use "energy" damage to represent the residual effect of the Tesla cannon, though it has the appearance of electricity sparking.
^ ^c All Fallout games contain environmental radiation damage of some variant. The table is representative of radioactive damage dealt by weapons like the gamma gun.
^ ^d Exists in the game files, but is not used anywhere.
^ ^e Also known as physical damage in Fallout 76 and Fallout: The Roleplaying Game.
^ ^f In Fallout 76, it is used only by the Electrically Charged mutation, but calculates using Energy Resistance. This effectively makes it energy damage, but grants special immunity to certain effect interactions.
^ ^g In Fallout 4 and Fallout 76, explosive is not its own damage type, rather it is a damage sub-type. Explosives are a way to deal proper damage types. For example, a missile launcher will create an explosion that deals physical damage, while a plasma grenade will create an explosive that deals both physical and energy damage.
^ ^h In Fallout 4 and Fallout 76, bleed damage is not its own damage type, rather it is a damage sub-type. Bleed damage will deal physical damage, but is exempt from being reduced by Damage Resistance.
^ ^4emp "Pulse" weapons exist, but deal energy damage rather than a distinct type; bonus damage against robots comes from a legendary weapon effect.
^ ^k Bleed and fire are not types of damage in and of themselves, but a type of damage that appears on critical hits to the torso for bleed and an additional affect with some fire-based weapons.

Special exceptions

• Fallout Tactics adds Gas Damage. It also re-categorizes "Laser" as "Energy" damage.
• Van Buren adds Ballistic, Bio and Heat damage.

See also

• Combat

The computation formula of the final damage for each game is described in more detail in this article.

• Damage (Fallout 76)