Three-Card Bounty though.
looked up the quest at the wiki. It seems the only penalty for a mangled head is a loss in caps
Dhatri will give you 250 caps per bounty (50 caps if the head is mangled)
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Three-Card_Bounty
Guns beat the heck out of energy weapons in most situations, anyway.
I hear that. Guns are by far my favorite but I do RP with Energy Weapons on my NCR playthroughs as a self-absorbed merchant family heiress who is later estranged from said family and then exiled to the Mojave so she has to get a job as a Courier. She's greedy and corrupt and only promotes the NCR's interests to further her family's energy weapons business looking for contracts to the NCR to fill the gap left by the Van Graffs'-NCR rivalry
Wait, what were we talking about again?