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[edit | edit source]
Weapons all have base damage values. The final damage delivered to the target, can be possibly modified by various factors, depending on the game:
^ 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%. 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. Used only by the Serendipity perk.
^ g Incoming damage is reduced by a percentage. Occurs after damage resistance calculation.
^ 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.
Types[edit | edit source]
There are different types of damage, depending on the weapon of attack:
| Icon | Type | Description | Fallout 1/2/Tactics | Fallout 3 | Fallout: New Vegas | Fallout 4 | Fallout 76 |
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Normal e | The vast majority of damage from all weapons. | 
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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. | 
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Radiation | Damage dealt through radioactive sources such as certain weapons or environments. c |
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Fire | Damage from flame-based weapons and explosives, occasionally residual. |
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d
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Cryo | Damage dealt by cryogenic weapons. |
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d
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Poison | Damage dealt primarily by toxins, typically from a bug, but also including some exotic weaponry. |
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Laser | Damage specific to laser weapons. |
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Plasma | Damage specific to plasma-based weapons. |
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EMP/Pulse | Damage from electromagnetic weapons, generally good against robots. |
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Electrical | Hidden and used by very few weapons.a |
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f
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Explosive | Damage from otherwise unspecial explosives. |
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g
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Bleed | Damage-over-time from certain weapon mods. |
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h
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Pure | A new damage type implemented in Fallout 76, used exclusively for the wendigo colossus |
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^ a Not shown in the games that use it, Electrical damage is only caused by alien blaster, YK32 pulse pistol, and YK42B pulse rifle.
^ b Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas use "energy" damage to label the residual effect off 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.
^ 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 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 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.
Special exceptions[edit | edit source]
- Fallout Tactics adds Gas Damage. It also re-categorizes "Laser" as "Energy" damage.
- Van Buren adds Ballistic, Bio, and Heat damage.
See also[edit | edit source]
The computation formula of the final damage for each game is described in more detail in the combat article.
