Hey guys, first post and my first fallout experience. I love it. Anyway, I'm playing ranged stealth with pistols and I'm reading all these stealth guides.They seem a little rushed perhaps. This proabably wont be my first post on settleing some of the contradictions.

Nearly all of these guides rate sandman very highly.
why?

From what I read, sandman boosts sneak attack damage for silenced weapons. Huh? We already have ninja boosting this by a whopping 50% per rank. If sandman is simply stacking more of these with an additional condition (suppressors) its useless.
Sneak attack would multiply any base bonuses we have, so every damage boost perk would get multiplied by ninja, while i assume sandman is just added to it, and there are a ton of damage perks besides sandman we can take.

Am I missing something here?

It is a good bit lower on the perk tree. Generally the perks that need 8 in a stat should be more powerful than ones that need a 3 or 5 or something. It is just a way to get a similar effect at a lower stat cost. I went for ninja since I had a high stat anyway so I am not sure how sandman works or how it interacts specifically with ninja. Reading the perks however they are both multipliers so should stack.

Ok, looked over it properly, sandman needs 4 agility, ninja needs 7. Agility adds more AP in vats, that is pretty much the only relevent thing it does, which stealthy characters might not use, I know I very very rarely use vats. 5 agl perk just makes AP regen faster, useless if not using vats often. 6 is moving target, extra damage resist when sprinting, probably fairly useless for a stealth style unless you keep getting spotting and have to run away all the time while getting shot in the back. 8 is faster reload, focused on vats, and 9 and 10 are vats specific. So many people who don't use vats and who don't run around sprinting during fights would probably have no reason to go above 4 agility, the only reason to go above it if not using vats is to get ninja, and that is only relevent if you are going specifically for sneak attacks. So sandman is a way to add extra sneak attack damage without investing very heavily into it. But you are correct, ninja is definitely a better perks if you have access to it and are picking between that and sandman.

edit, typo

edit2, adding more info.

Yeah, thats what I thought too. They are both multipliers and stack, which is far from desirable. At rank 2 ninja i'm multiplying base damage 3x. That means my 20% boost from something like gunslinger would be 60% on sneak attack and its always on even if i dont sneak attack.

Even without ninja, sneak attack is 2x damage. Stacking base damage still makes stronger sneak attacks then sandman without additional conditions.
I understand lower ranks should be less ( even though there are many exceptions) but if this is the way it works its pretty freaking insignificant.

EDIT- five thousand typos fixed.

I think the wording of both of the perks is a bit confusing too. I am not entirely sure how each of them work judging from the wording. Ninja perks go sneaks attack do 2.5x normal damage, 3x normal damage, and 3.5x normal damage. Now, assuming sneaks attack initially do 2x normal damage than that is +50% each rank, but it doesn't directly effect base damage at all. This is exactly the same as sandman but just significantly more added % and without the silencer qualifier.

I have a feeling that the bad wording is hiding something. Its possible that sandman adds to base danage and the sneak attack and silencer are both just conditions. I just cant tell without testing unless someone else already has.

No idea how it works but with maxed out Sandman and Ninja perks plus Deacon's Cloak And Dagger perk, my sneak attacks are doing 5.9x damage.

I'd say it's worthwhile. Besides, if you favour stealth then it's on the way to Ninja anyway.

Combine a high multiplier with a high damage weapon like a gauss rifle, which can be silenced by the way, and you are talking some serious alpha damage.

Yeah its worth it, but in order of priority i think the guides are misguided to call it an early essential. Dont focus on just the multiplier, becuase it multiplies the base damage. From a numbers perspective its equally important to boost the number it multiplies, and if sandman is only adding a small boost to sneak then the base multiplier perks are far more beneficial.

multiply 10 base damage by 5.9 and you get 59
multiply 12 base damage by 5.4 and you get 64.8

In the first example 5.9 s your sneak.
in the second example i removed 3 ranks of sand man for a single 20% base perk (like rifleman or gunslinger).

Its worth it at like level 30 maybe once i maxed out literally any other damage skill. Honestly its so weak as its written i have a hard time believing thats how it works, but if it is its a big thing to consider.

Edit- i pulled the 7.2 sneak from a different thread and went back to change it to 5.9. i think 7.2 is the theoretical max.

Yes, the base damage increasing perks are nearly always better, commando, gun slinger etc.. gun nut and stuff are probably better too because they also increase your base damage because you can modify your guns. Ninja is better than sandman because bigger bonuses, yes.

But it is the stat cost that would balance sandman and ninja. If you have an agility of 4. It would take 6 perk points to max out ninja, 3 to max out sandman and that is hard to swallow at lower levels when you can only put a single point into a perk. Spend 1 perk point to get the first rank of sandman, or 4 perk points to get the first rank of ninja and 3 useless stat points? Ultimately that isn't relevent in a game that has no real level limit, you will eventually get them all. I think that is why they suggest it as an early game investment, you pick one point in gunnut, one point in commando, and another point in sandman. 3 perks, all available from the start of the game and all with low stat requirement. You need to be level 30+ I think to get the final perks in a lot of those so early one you can easily pick up single level perks in a bunch of stuff.

what I want to know is, has anyone found a real use for the sandman instant-kill of someone sleeping, I've never seen a sleeping gunner and very rarely a raider, I mean I guess if you want to go around murdering the innocent it's useful, but they are generally very weak anyway and wouldn't be hard to 1-shot while sleeping without the perk.

insta-kill the swan.

lol yeah right

on its own it isn(t that special and the bonus isnot that much however combined with the ninja erk znf otherd amage boosting perks it is a almost must have if you are playing a sniper build

Sandman is good. Maybe not as good as Ninja, but supplements Ninja very well. Bonuses from Ninja are additive, while Sandman and Cloak & Dagger multiply the bonus. So with Ninja 3 we have x3.5 damage x1.2 Cloak and Dagger = x4.2 base damage x 1.5 Sandman = x6.3 base damage.

Also if it works similarly to crits, other bonuses, like Rifleman, are not multiplied. Just the weapon modded damage.

That is not what I got from reading the perks, they both multiply sneak attack damage, neither of them effect base damage.

I meant Ninja adds 50% base damage to Sneak attacks per rank. Max with Ninja 3 only is 3.5x base damage (probably excluding Rifleman bonus).

But Sandman and Cloak & Dagger further multiply the bonus: 3.5 x1.2 (C&D) x1.5 (Sandman) = 6.3x base damage.

However there are some bugs and if you add the perks in the wrong order, you may end up with 5.9x or even less.

Sandman kills are almost impossible without that sneak perk were it no longer matters that you walking or running before then I was lightly pressing on the anolog stick to move as slow as possible but a lot of times especially with higher class enemies wake up when im still to far to get the prompt kill. But after that perk its a whole other story

Ah, on the PC there is a button for walk, C I think it is. So I could walk while sneaking if I wanted to be quiet, maybe there is a way to do it on the consoles too.

I have done a few sandman kills but yes, it is extremely limited and you wouldn't really ever miss it if you didn't have it. I got sandman after ninja because I have the stat for it but I can see why someone would get sandman before ninja, if they have agility 4 and didn't use vats.

so the strange gets stranger?
This makes sense, lots of games are very unclear on whats additive and whats not. It would help explain why ninja includes the 2x base sneak in its stats when the others dont.

What is the right order?

That would be the question, but I suspect you are all reading way too much into this. We obviously haven't seen into the guts yet, but I'd bet quite a bit that ALL multipliers from ALL applicable sources are summed, and THEN applied to the base damage.

It doesn't matter or how you apply multipliers, basic maths rules tell us that the answer would be the same. It is when you start adding and subtracting stuff that the order becomes important. When it says adds a 50% bonus or something like that. It is exactly the same as 150% multiplier, or does 1.5x damage etc.. Just different ways of saying the same thing.

Unless it's a bug, there is no way it works like that. It just doesn't make logical sense. I think the "whatever times" multiple thinking has you all confused. Instead, think of all these things as additions to the base modifier of 1.

It should be: BaseModdedDamge X (100 + BaseSneak%Boost + Rifleman%Boost + Ninja%Boost + Sandman%Boost + CloakDagger%Boost - Armor%Reduction ± etc)

Exactly. See my clarification above.

Only I'm quite confident it doesn't work like that. It is correct for Ninja and may also be right for Rifleman (not sure if Rifleman shouldn't be added separately from sneak bonuses though), but Sandman and Cloak and Dagger are definately multiplicative bonuses - so should be outside brackets. No idea about armor reduction, but I'd guess it lowers the enemy damage resistance.

Seems like I can't post links for som reason, but google "psa cloak and dagger perk is bugged with ninja" to find the answer on the correct order of perks to get max sneak attack damage.

If that's true, then so be it. I don't quite care enough to actually research it. But from a programming standpoint, that's madness. If it works as you say, it's probably a bug.