Finesse mechanic during criticals

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Perkyguy

First time out of the vault
Im reffering to the fallout 2 finesse. Im assuming its the same for all FO games, but that may not be the case.

The perk raises critical and lowers normal damage. I would reffer to an exact % damage is lowered by, but at the time im writing this the fallout wiki is offline, so i can only say that Tactics' finesse lowers dmage by 25%.

What i am curious about is after you score a critical hit, does the critical's damage get lowered? An example: a shot that causes 20 damage will score 15 (in tactics at least). A 2x critical on the same shot will do 40, so will the finesse crit cause 30 or 40?

100 attacks
times x damage + times x critical
normal 90x20 + 10x40 = 2200
finesse 80x15 + 20x30 = 1800

If the damage reduction from finesse lowers the critical damage, then it kinda defeats the points of getting it. I must've played about 20 times through fallout 2, finished a Tough guy solo twice on tactics and i've never chosen this perk, because of this reason - that my criticals are doomed to be, although more often, never devastating.
I am about to start another fallout 2 game and im considering finally giving finesse a try, so i need to know this.
 
I played once with the Finesse, but I also had Magnus Weapons Redone mod, so I don't know if this is true, but te damage mechanism seemed...broken. My criticals were lower then often non-critical hits and I kept hitting for 5-6 points of damage, with fairly good character.
 
I just finished FO2 with a Finesse / Luck 10. I think Finesee add 5% to crit chance. You can certainly do ridiculous damage with crits, especially when you get the "better criticals" perk. However, through out the mid game, you kind of need to do a critical to actually damage anyone... I just let my NPCs do the heavy lifting.

I think the 25% reduction is applied before the crit muliplier.
 
So with a luck of 8,9,10 finesse becomes a big burden with sniper, since you will get your crit anyway, but you will cause alot less dmg, than otherwise
 
Actually, finesse adds +10 to critical chance.
Other than that I don't have anything to say since I don't use it myself.
 
Yeah, I never got sniper because my perception was too low.

Hmmm... I know that by end of game I had a 25% crit chance.

I thought that was:
10 - from luck 10
5 from finesse trait
5 from more criticals 1
5 from more criticals 2

But either it was 30% or there is no 'more criticals 2'
 
Finesse is 10 % crit and you dont need any perception at all for sniper. I got it with a character that started with 2 perception - 2 mentats and 2 jets = 6 bonus
 
Info at The Vault and Vault-Tec Labs.
Finesse adds a +30% DR mod to all attacks. (This would make AP ammo somewhat useful if it didn't have the 1/2 damage mod.) Armor-bypassing criticals ignore the DR mod, and so are not affected by Finesse. Most of the good criticals bypass armor, so the drawback is somewhat diminished once you get Better Criticals.

The critical damage multiplier is applied before other calculations (I think it is added to the ammo damage mod). Continuing your example with a weapon that does 20 damage, no ammo modifiers, unarmored target, 10% crit chance, and 2x criticals or 2x bypassing armor criticals:

100 attacks
times * damage + times * critical
normal 90 * 20 + 10 * 40 = 2200
normal b.a. 90 * 20 + 10 * 40 = 2200
finesse 80 * 14 + 20 * 28 = 1680
finesse b.a. 80 * 20 + 20 * 40 = 2400

Doesn't look so great. Consider what happens when shooting someone with leather armor (DT 2, DR 25):
normal 90 * 13 + 10 * 28 = 1450
normal b.a. 90 * 18 + 10 * 38 = 2000
finesse 80 * 8 + 20 * 17 = 980
finesse b.a. 80 * 18 + 20 * 38 = 2200

Combat armor (DT 5, DR 40), 3x criticals:
normal 90 * 9 + 10 * 33 = 1140
normal b.a. 90 * 15 + 10 * 55 = 1900
finesse 80 * 4 + 20 * 16 = 640
finesse b.a. 80 * 15 + 20 * 55 = 2300

Same, luck = 1:
normal 99 * 9 + 1 * 33 = 924
normal b.a. 99 * 15 + 1 * 55 = 1540
finesse 89 * 4 + 11 * 16 = 532
finesse b.a. 89 * 15 + 11 * 55 = 1940

I haven't tried adding ammo modifiers, but there's definitely a pattern here. Once you have Better Criticals and Sniper, Finesse lets you do a bit more damage, but until then it's a significant drawback, and once you have Sniper, the critical chance bonus doesn't matter much. Not a very useful trait.
 
Its a very good perk for a "Sniper" character, the beginning is hard, but it gets very good at midgame and when you get Sniper it loses use. Then its time to exchange it with Fast Shot using Mutate!
 
Well seems that the only way to get the finesse work for you is to always score an armor bypassing critical and never any other or a normal hit. Basically anything but aimed shots to the eyes or groin wont give you a benefit.

One huge drawback is that finesse totally messes up burst weapons. Every bullet gets a 30 DR and you, obviously, cant aim them.
 
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