The Canon Contradicts the Canon

Right before you start Honest Hearts in the cave, you can talk to Ricky, (the guy in the vault suit) and he will claim that he killed a Brotherhood of Steel Paladin and the Courier tells him that he's full of [censored] and then Ricky explains that he killed him by shooting him in the eyeslit part of the helmet (trying to make his story more believable) and if you have Power Armor Training the Courier discredits that claim by revealing that even the "eyeslits of T-series Power Armor are bullet-proof, [so you're lying]."

You can look at that and come to your own conclusions.

In lore power armor is supposed to deflect small arms fire off of it, so technically it does follow canon.

Not in game canon.

Nothing new really. This has been gone over many times before.


In lore, power armor is supposed to be bullet-proof, or very near to it.

In game though, that can't really be replicated, so its just a powerful suit of armor.

The game doesn't always reflect the lore to the letter. Perfect example: Enclave power armor in Fallout 3 is supposed to be miles ahead of the T-45d model, but in-game its not.

There's a mod called powered power armor. The reason I don't run the mod is because it doesn't allow you to shoot in third person....which is how I fight.

It will make your power armor just like lore in an intelligent way, it's meant to be run with project nevada.

There's a gorgeous suit of Hardened T-51b power armor in the mod located at Dead Wind Cavern.....took my a week to find it cause idiots would refuse to tell me where it is having me search the wasteland everywhere for it.

Whats the point of new toys to find if you already knew where it was?

Ok Martyr, let's say you want a unique police pistol really bad. And then I tell you, it's out there in the wasteland go look for it.

Lore Wise it is bullet proof to small arms, able to reflect even missiles.

Game wise it is bullet proof and can take a hell of a lot of damage. These games are Fallout, Fallout 2 and Tactics. Back when PA was rare and before damage deterioration.

Then Bethesda came along a nefted the hell out of it. No damage threshold and had PA all over the damn place. Also made it lootable and added damage deterioration.

Obsidian brought back damage thresold but it's still nerfed and will always be, because people want PA handed to them as if it was candy

So anyways it's a game mechanic that causes PA to be weak, in Fallout 3 and New Vegas.

Canon wise PA is the most bad ass armour you can get, makes you a walking tank!

There is no such thing as ingame canon, that's called gameplay.

And gameplay wise it would be to unbalanced to make power armor lore correct so they have to nerf it really, really badly.

It should not be that way in the next game IMO.

You should learn basic usage of FNVEdit and/or GECK, that's how i locate all the fancy stuff And of course the "player.additem" to sample it before going to get it

You know you really couldn't make power armor lore accurate in game because if you did it would totally break it, you'd either have to make enemies tougher which would piss people off who didn't like power armor and couldn't complete certain quests without it, or you would have to do what they did, nerf it to hell but still make it the strongest armor in the game so it would be more appealing to people to use it.

Meh. What's the point of Power Armor that makes you invincible?

Fallout 3 and New Vegas have a fair amount of hand-holding built into the game engine, but an "I win" button like bulletproof PA would be taking it too far.

You make it really, really rare (you don't make it lootable from the fallen either), but you also allow stuff like anti-material/Gauss rifles to get through to some extant (even a partial penetration should create some behind armor effects).

That would make sense given it seems each suit has to be adjusted to the person using it

I have a quick self made mod that does one thing, makes the threshold bleed through go from 20% to 2.5%.

Small arms really does bounce off you then if you wear power armor.....but the oppersite is also true, you need some powerful armor piecing stuff to kill of anything with high DT. I keep it like that even when not playing a power armor character, feels way more realistic.

In New Vegas there is a bleed through effect on all armor that allows enemies to damage you regardless of what you wear. Lore wise power armor can deflect many tpes of fire arms, the wiki claims 2500 joules.

I am definitely going to slit my wrists because of this. Something in Fallout doesn't make sense? My life is ruined!

Canon, lore whatever. All i know is how can any big bad suit of armor be the best at deflecting anything with a big huge fan on the back that says "shoot here"

If I wanted to save the devs asses I would point out that bullet proof is usualy used for things that are bullet resistant, like the kevlar west. Also the point with the Courier objection is that the eye-slits are as well protected as the rest of the body (or almost).

Also the PA have a DT 20+ and most smallfire arms do less then that, so its almost true.

No the "crime" is the uppgraded medium-type armors that rivals the PA. Can I suggest a roof for medium-type armors at say 15 from here on, Bethesda? Or kick up PA to 30 ?

But yes the Riot Gear looks great!!

An expected side effect of game-play needs differing from lore.
Though power armor is built as a tank replacement and even a missile would have a hard time of taking one down easily, the game necessitates that it you as a character have to be able to take one on alone.

That said, I agree with Daveh. The 20% bleedthrough and DT only marginally better than the better medium armors really seems on the low side.

Hee hee, Hee.

We basically just use the term bullet proof loosely.. enough bullets could penetrate anything. And lets face it.. in Fallout world you have an overabundance of bullets.

The Courier said even the eyeslits could not be penetrated by small arms.

Sir, I'll direct you to the Fallout wikia. Type that in Google and have fun.
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As for this discussion, Power Armor isn't supposed to be 100% bullet proof, just incredibly powerful. It's basically Kevlar 3.0 all around your body with no gaps. Even Kevlar succumbs to powerful rounds or something like a minigun. Power Armor would also succumb to prolonged bullet showers.

the simple answer is that game mechanics do not always accurately reflect the lore.