Interesting occurrence happened to me just about now. Of course, interesting occurrences happen to me ALL the time (has something to do with that ancient Chinese curse...), but this actually was more of a "hmm" than "OMGWTFNOTAGAIN!" moment.
Messing around with a new character (testing, testing, 1, 2, 3
), I made a 3 strength weakling (just enough to hold the 10mm while I check out some things). I also gave the character the Finesse trait (which likely also impacted what I'm about to describe).
Having run into an encounter where two Regulators got their asses handed to them by a bunch of dogs (I think anti-Pariah was with them since the critters got crapload of crits on those guys), I actually ended up with more caps than I expected.
I bought the Desert Eagle and some ammo. JHP, to be exact. The next encounter was with.. Raiders, Marauders, or whatnot. One of the city-map encounters with "bandit" human group.
Emboldened by the recent purchase, I made a few shots before running away. All scored
no damage against the opponents.
I tested it on another group of human-enemies, with same result.
Against pig- and molerats, I did get decent damage. Of course, those targets were unarmored.
Reading up on the ammo types, I realized that I was running into the DR modifier for .44 JHP combining with the Finesse damage reduction and likely penalty for shooting a weapon with 1 STR higher requirement for proper handling. Still... it seems kind of silly to shoot a gun at somebody at close range, have the bullet hit, and get no damage whatsoever (especially when it was a regular hit against the eyes. Damn those polymer-enhanced contact lenses!).
I realize this is an outcome of attempt at balancing various weapons, and a very unlikely scenario to occur, but perhaps it would be possible to add a minimal damage threshold for each weapon according to total armor coverage to avoid similar situations? For instance, the aforementioned bandits were not wearing much in terms of head protection. I realize the graphic system has its limitations in that area, but even wearing some sort of leather-metal head coverage they would still be not as well armored as, say, a person in power armor, thus allowing at least for some damage to occur.
Just rambling on. I hope my point is apparent if not exactly clearly presented.
Thoughts welcome.