Had some issues with some perks and wondering if anyone in the modding community had any answers

two questions

1) I do not have Dead Money, but Cass is able to knock back enemies when using her default caravan shotgun as if she had the And Stay Back perk. Checking the wiki got me nothing conclusive. Does she always have it? Is it only with her default weapon? Since I've never had DM installed, is it a bug that she has the perk?

2) Would having both Better Criticals and Ninja perks negate the penalty to critical damage when using melee weapons after taking the Heavy Handed trait? Again, the wiki does not give conclusive evidence here. Would a testing mod be able to spit out numbers or would it require extensive testing? If testing is the only option then don't worry, I'll just wing it :toughninja:

thanks for any help folks

A quick check with the geck show that Cass's Caravan Shotgun does not have any knockback effect on crits. All shotguns do have pretty high kill impulse and will knock a target back pretty good on death. Are you sure she's knockin' 'em back without killin' 'em?

As for the other, I'm pretty sure Ninja is still borked. There's a couple of guys around here who know these perks alot better than me, so maybe they'll see this. I can always try to test 'em out the old way if I get a chance.

Edit: It looks to me like better crits and ninja, at least on a successful sneak attack, will recover more than you lose on heavy handed.

-gunny out.

Ninja is borked. It multiplies your crit rate by 1.15. It does not add to it like all the other crit perks. Better crits only increases will not offset heavy handed.

Edit: realized you were talking about the sneak attack dmg bonus. It should technically neutralize out heavy handed. But if you plan to get lots of stealth melee hits then you are better off dropping Heavy Handed.

i lol'd both times I read this. Why? Dunno. And Gunny, I knew I could count on you. Maybe the Marines aren't so bad after all (said the squid to the jarhead)

anyway, brass tacks and all that: SOrry I should have been more specific. My idea is to 1) Have Heavy Handed to increase general melee damage for "everyday" use, that is, situations where I'm just running around the Mojave and not sneaking around; and 2) Take whatever perks I can that will get me as close as possible to either nullifying (or breaking) the crit damage penalty which by my off the cuff research on the wiki looks like Ninja (during sneak crits) and Better Criticals (for both Sneak crits and all others)

with my public-school-math-skills I'm reading on the wiki that Heavy Handed lowers crit damage by 60% and Better Criticals increases crit damage by 50% leaving me at a 10% crit penalty assuming ofcourse that any of this is additive and not multiplicative. Conveniently the police baton does 10 damage and 10 critical damage, making it nice and even for calculation. BD = Base Damage, CD = Critical Damage, Sneak Attack Critical = SAC, BC = Better Criticals, HH = Heavy Handed, NJ = Ninja

w/o HH: 10 BD + 10 CD = 20. BD + SAC = 30 . BD + BC = 25 . BD + BCSAC = 40. BD + (BCSAC+NJ) = 47.5

w/ HH: 12 BD + 4 CD = 16. BD + SAC = 20. BD + BC = 18. BD + BCSAC = 25 TCD. BD + (BCSAC+NJ) = 27

so if my math is right, Heavy Handed is god awful even with Ninja and Better Criticals. Anyone care to double check? I typically only ever have 6 LK on my melee Couriers (and even then do not melee 100% of fights) but despite not having a super high crit rate I cannot see how Heavy Handed would win out. It feels as if your Courier were to use any melee weapon that was capable of crits you'd be better off without HH? It seems counter intuitive that Heavy Handed would net more damage over a spread while Sans Heavy Handed would give you larger single hits if you got a critical? I'm more confused than when I started

Heavy Hand is good on weapons with low crit damage, and about even for Unarmed. But with Elijah's Mumble then you really need low crit chance for it do worth while.