How does a Legendary weapon with a Radiation effect calculate Damage?
Today I was playing Fallout 4 when I suddenly found a legendary enemy which dropped a laser rifle with 50 damage per extra case radiation, but then I proved I couldn't see the difference between this laser rifle and a normal rifle.
How does radiation damage work?
41 Answer
All "Irradiated" legendary weapons deal radiation poisoning in addition to their normal damage.
Radiation poisoning (from the wiki) functions exactly like environmental radiation: each 1 point of radiation poisoning reduces max health by .1% (so 50 points of rad poisoning reduces max health by 5%). This gets reflected as actual damage, even if a character is at full health. Moreover, since this directly affects maximum health, this is damage that can't be healed: even legendary enemy mutations or the "resethealth" console command will restore health only up to any limits from radiation poisoning.
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