Fallout 4 Unarmed Damage Calculation

This means that with high enough Unarmed skill one will actually lose damage by equipping them. For example, base melee damage ('Punch') is 1-3 damage. With Unarmed of 55%, that becomes 'Strong Punch' which adds 3 damage, for a total of 4-7. Meanwhile, brass knuckles have a damage range of only 2-5 - so one is better off without them.

• Fallout 4 Unarmed Damage Calculation Form

Since Strength affects melee/unarmed weapon damage, I was trying to figure out the highest amount of temporary strength you could have. Here's what I got. This is obviously full build and only possible fairly far into the game.

10 Strength base, with bobblehead boosting that to 11, this is a given.

Let's look at perks:

Big Leagues 4 (5 preferably, but displayed damage is currently broken on it so for testing purposes I'm only using 4. However, this means you will be doing +20% damage when they fix this)

or

Iron Fist 5 (or both this and Big Leagues, though this rank 5 damage seems to be fine, however I wouldn't suggest unarmed if looking for maximum sneak attack damage because it does not properly get the 10x bonus from Ninja unlike melee weapons)

Rooted 2 (+50% in VATS, essentially)

Lone Wanderer 3 (+25% without companion)

Bloody Mess 3 (+15% flat)

potentially Black Widow 3 for +15% more damage against males if you care.

Party Boy/Girl 2 (for alcohol later)

Solar Powered 1 (+2 Strength/Endurance in sunlight)

You'll want Better Criticals, Melee Bobblehead and all 10 Grognak the Barbarian Magazines for maximum critical damage. Ninja 3 for sneak attacks.

And our equipment:

Grognak Costume (+2 Strength, around +20% melee damage. Indispensable even if you can't wear underclothing and chestpiece)

Left Arm/Right Arm/Left Leg/Right Leg with the Fortifying legendary effect (+1 Strength/+1 Endurance)

Headgear with the Fortifying legendary effect(+1 Strength/+1 Endurance) - not sure how common this one is, legendary headgear seems to be rather rare.

Equipment: +7 Strength, +5 Endurance, +20% melee damage.

I hope you like drugs. Because it's time for chems and alcohol, they go perfectly together.

Dirty Wastelander (+3 Strength normally, +6 Strength because of Party Boy/Girl 2)

Bufftats (+3 Strength)

Psychobuff (+3 Strength, +25% damage)

X-Cell (+2 Strength)

Fury is a chem that I'm not sure if it works or not. It's supposed to give +50% melee damage, which is huge if it does work, but it does not update the damage at all, so I'm unsure.

Overdrive seems to work with Psychobuff (thanks /u/sahome for informing me), but it doesn't affect displayed damage like Fury.

Mysterious Serum is a quest item that you may only have one of on you at a time, but if you take a certain path in the Cabot quest, you can get more, from the Wiki:

If the player decides to free Lorenzo Cabot at the end of The Secret of Cabot House, the player gets access to an infinite supply of this item, with a few caveats: one may only receive one at a time and only when the Sole Survivor has none left, you may not sell or store the serum in any way.

This gives you +5 Strength.

Chems/Alcohol: +19 Strength, +25% Damage, +50% Melee Damage (if Fury works), +25% additional damage? (if Overdrive works with Psychobuff)

Alright, roundup:

11 (Base) + 7 (Equipment) + 19 (Chems) + 2 in Sunlight (Solar Powered) = 39 Strength in sunlight, 37 otherwise.

Well that's annoying... 39 just doesn't look as good as a round 40. Can we get another +1?

Yes, but it requires the use of the SPECIAL book at the start. Get 10 strength, then use the chem Daytripper to lower your Strength, and then use the SPECIAL book to raise Strength when normally you couldn't. Then get the bobblehead, and you have 12 Strength. Not necessary, and my character missed that obviously, but if you want that sweet 40 (38 w/o Solar Powered), that's all I know that you can do.

So what's the damage at the end of all this? Glad you asked. 40 Strength: With a Heated Super Sledge, no legendary modifiers, this is doing 1018/97 ballistic/energy damage. The Rockville Slugger is doing around 815. With the 'Brawling' mod on both of the armor pieces, the Large Deathclaw Gauntlet is doing 1002 damage. A Puncturing Power Fist is doing 970. Find a Instigating (2x damage at full health) or a Two Shot (2x damage?) legendary modifier on these weapons and you'll be doing close or more than 2000 on them.

I imagine Strong's companion perk would help if you get to low HP too, if you have that. I'm probably forgetting something, but this is the highest I've been able to come up with.

For reference, a sneak attack critical with my favored weapon the Heated Super Sledge at maximum Blitz range on a Legendary Mythic Deathclaw (level 91+, 300/400 defenses ballistic/energy) on Survival.

The damage ranged from ~11000 at the lowest to ~46000.

Fallout 4 Unarmed Damage Calculation Form

But when I used a Heated Super Sledge with the Instigating mod, that seemed to be ~22000 on every above attack minimum, averages at about ~45000... even as high as ~92000. Makes sense, since it was straight up doubling the above damages I think. I'm not sure why all the damages are inconsistent, considering I was simply loading a quicksave to do it again.

Criticals from max blitz range without a sneak attack with the above seem to vary from ~2500 to ~4500.

I forgot about the chem Calmex, which adds 2.0x to your sneak attack multiplier. Assumedly, Deacon's companion perk would make that 12.2x with melee weapons, but it didn't seem to affect the damage weirdly. Damage calculations seem really... inconsistent and I'm not quite sure what leads to it.

Fury (and Overdrive when stacked with Psychobuff) seems to do literally nothing.

Sometimes Bloody Mess would activate and those attacks seem to do more damage (like Critical from max blitz range without sneak attack doing like ~9000, which is weird). I'm not sure why.

If you want to be cheeky and take the bugged Yao Guai Roast, you can do over 100k damage, usually 130-150k.

Gauss rifles, what are those?

With no chems, it will also outdamage a Gauss Rifle if we're talking pure one hit damage.

Against Guass Rifle: Testing the same way I did above, critical sneak attacks with an Instigating Super Sledge (520/77 with no chems) did ~7800 on average with no chems, but could reach as much as ~45000 with a bloody mess explosion. An Instigating upgraded Gauss Rifle with suppressor, Mister Sandman, Rifleman etc did as low as ~3000 and as high as ~5600 with a head shot critical sneak attack. The biggest thing is that the Gauss Rifle could not one shot it without the sneak attack, still with a critical, while the Heated Super Sledge always could. So yes, it will outdamage a Gauss Rifle normally.

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