Why are Deathclaws so damn deadly?

[AxlDave]

I did some testing of Damage Resist and Damage Threshold for a mod I'm making, including changing the Game Settings of fMaxArmorRating and fPlayerMaxResistance to 100 each. This should, I believe, allow all resistances to max out at 100%, as well as raise the 85% cap on DR when calculating combat damage to 100%, allowing Damage Resist to completely eradicate all damage. Most of my testing supports this.

 

I say most, because when I go up against 3-5 Deathclaws with 100% DR and even up to 200 DT, I get mauled in a matter of seconds. To put this in perspective: with the same stats, I took on the entire of Camp McCarran, Black Mountain, and Hidden Valley without breaking a sweat or losing so much as 10% of health - and that was only because I had a 95% Energy Resist in Hidden Valley.

 

Now obviously anything called Deathclaw is probably going to hurt quite a lot, but this just seems a bit excessive. Is there something special about Deathclaws, a script or an actor effect that allows them to at least partially ignore all damage reductions? If so, where do I find it? Or is there something here I'm missing?

[spartenkiller897]

There might be an actor effect on them, check the NPC editing menu and look under actor effects...

[sgtKraigO]

I'm not familiar too how DR works, I just kill stuff. But wouldn't 100% mean they can't take any damage what so ever?

[jazzisparis]

First of all, the maximum effective DR is 85%. The minimum damage sustained from an attack is 20% of the base damage, regardless of DR/DT.

Even if your DR/DT are both super high, a Deathclaw will still hit you hard.

[AxlDave]

@ spartenkiller897

I have, I've checked Actor Effects, Object Effects, Base Effects, Scripts, Weapons, everything I could think of but the only things I found were a Deathclaw Knockdown effect (irrelevant as I have Stonewall) and a Deathclaw Poison effect, which after setting it to 0 changes nothing. So it cannot be either of those, I assumed it was some cleverly hidden script or effect that I had missed.

 

@ sgtKraigO

It should do. I mean, mathematically that is the case, unless someone's snuck in an extra variable only for Deathclaws that gets added on after all calculations. That's kinda what I was hoping someone could tell me.

 

@ jazzisparis

Unless you change the Game Setting fMaxArmorRating from 85% to 100%. Then the Damage Resist should be able to reduce 100% of the Damage, meaning that the maximum Damage that can get through is 20% of 0, ie 0. This appears to happen with every living thing except Deathclaws, which is what leads me to believe there is something special about them. I need to know what that is.

[ethanv131313]

Maybe they have an effect on them that causes them to ignore armor? Kinda like the deathclaw gauntlet in fallout 3.

[luthienanarion]

Maybe they have an effect on them that causes them to ignore armor? Kinda like the deathclaw gauntlet in fallout 3.

I'm almost certain of this. That's what makes them challenging opponents.

[jazzisparis]

Maybe they have an effect on them that causes them to ignore armor? Kinda like the deathclaw gauntlet in fallout 3.

That may well be the case, though there is nothing, at least not in the GECK, that would indicate it. I guess it is possible that creatures whose "weapon" is not a weapon per se (i.e. a separate object) but is actually rigged to their skeleton, ignore DR/DT. If this is indeed the case, then I would expect it to apply to other creatures, not just to Deathclaws. This should probably be investigated further.

[AxlDave]

Maybe they have an effect on them that causes them to ignore armor? Kinda like the deathclaw gauntlet in fallout 3.

 

That's what I thought, but as is mentioned above I can't find it anywhere. In my latest testing with maxed out Resists, I fired Euclid's C-finder at my feet and barely got a scratch. It seems rather ridiculous that a few Deathclaws are more powerful than the entire energy of the Sun focused on one point...

[Mishaxhi]

It is strange. The Deathclaw Mother is given the Psycho perk via script, a hidden perk that gives her +25% damage or something.

 

I'm wondering if a similar thing happens to other deathclaws, though the only perk that it could be is Piercing Strike, and I can't find any untoward references to that anywhere.