In my games, I tend to become so immersed, I use the sniper scope to check my path before I move on. I've seen many fights in this scope, battles unaware of my presense. I can get a good sense the game's HP rating often dictates the winner, so I wanted to put the theory to the test.

I had just completed the Dunwich building (love the spookiness of that place), and remembered there were a few brutes, just north, guarding a transmission tower. I get to the area, and sure enough, there's a brute and a regular mutant. Now, to find a DC. I whip out my scope, and none are around.

I travel a bit and finally find one, but it's a good distance from where I need it to be. Time to kite. I fire a few shots toward its direction (not hitting it), and sure enough, it starts to charge.

I turn and ru, er, walk really fast back to the mutants. It didn't take long for it to catch up, so for a good distance, every two hits was replaced with two stimpaks. Geez, the thing's just mean.

I get to the top of the hill, and sure enough, the mutants immediate start firing into the DC. I head over to the ledge to get away from the DC, and jump down. Thanks to the InvisiFence™ outlining the wasteland, the DC shifted its focus on the two mutants.

The winner: DC, easily, although nearly 2/3 of its health was depleted, thanks to the two automatic weapons being fired at it.

I jump back up and finish what the two mutants couldn't do.

This made me wonder: just how in the hell is anyone left topside. I seem to be the only person who knows how to take down a DC, so why are there so many people wandering about in the wasteland? If I can't outrun a DC, I know they can't! Hell, even those wearing power armor can't stop this thing, and they're packing serious heat!

Now, I need to kite 3 Talon agents to a DC to monitor that outcome.

So, has anyone seen a DC die in the wild outside of your own awesome skills?

I haven't seen anything wipe out a Death Claw. I've seen sentry bots knock down the health a lot before going down, but that's it. Another reason why I take Fawkes with me.

enclave take them out pretty well, commanders are no match but the soldiers can do some damage, but if theres less then three soldiers then theres no chance. i saw a bunch of overlords take out a behemoth once. the behemoth didnt even get a hit.

In the base non-modded game you're probably correct that Deathclaws are the alpha predator that will take out just about any enemy in the game in a strait up 1 vs 1 fight. I haven't played vanilla in a while however, and I can tell you that Deathclaws are dead meat in my game as I run FWE.

The FWE mod alters weapon damage to be much higher than in the base game so ANY melee NPC/creature is usually torn apart by ranged weapon users long before they can close the range and inflict significant (or any) damage on the ranged user. I very rarely see DCs win inter-faction fights while wandering the wasteland in my game. Things like Sentry Bots with gattling lasers and missles that cause knockdowns will just utterly destroy them before they can take even a sliver of health off of the bot. Even weak Super Mutants, standard ones and the like with weak weapons like assault rifles will usually win a fight vs a DC in my experience, especially as SMs are usually in squads rather than single wanders.

The only ones that might do ok are Enclave modified high level DCs like Patriarchs and Matriarchs (mod added) or base unmodified ones that you can find at high levels wandering the wastes in some of deadly areas on the outskirts of the map. Deathclaws are not really something I worry about in my game, although there have been occasions where they jumped me and I had a less than optimal weapon out to fight them with. They can be rather stealthy when they try to be and because they're melee attackers, there are no weapon sounds or impacts to warn you that you're under attack if you don't notice them right away.

What I worry much more about are things like a group of Super Mutants with heavy weaponry or a pair of Sentry Bots tracking you down or a squad of Talon mercs ambushing you unexpectedly. Those types of things where you are under fast and heavy incoming weapons fire will mess you up big time, no joke.

I was playing FO3 last night and now every time I go near a Deathclaw Pet (the ones the Brotherhood of Steel have enslaved) it now follows me. Well, there was one of those Enclave camps near Dukov's place so now I have a Pet Deathclaw following me around. I do not want this thing following me, so I figure out how to get it killed. It had been a while since I been to the Mall, all the Super Mutants had re-spawned.

So, I fast travel to the History Museum and a Super Mutant decides to come over to play. Of course I am worried about the ghoul girl that walks around there so I run up to do something about it. Heck, that Deathclaw ran past me, took out the Super Mutant in one swipe. Then he runs off and takes out the other 5 in that area. I go a little ways towards the Capital, and he takes all those out. This Deathclaw cleared the Mall of Level 26 Super Mutants, Brutes, Masters, and Overlords. When he came back to me, he still had more than half his health.

So, Super Mutants, in any version less than a Behemoth, do not stand a chance against a Deathclaw. At all. Ever.