Character condition

Condition can refer to two things — either the condition of the character or (in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas) the condition of their equipment.

Personal condition
There are many things that can alter your condition. There are different kinds of poison, chems, drugs, wounds that all influence your condition.

Your Character can be:

Or can have crippled limbs like:

If you suffer from multiple crippled limbs you can even become Immobile.

Equipment condition in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas
Note that any equations are not to be taken as literal representations of what happens in-game, but as accurate, general representations of the logic.

The condition of your weapon/armor directly affects its value and damage.

Value
The value of an item is calculated by :
 * $$Final\ value = Base\ value \times Condition ^ {1.5}$$


 * Condition is a number ranging from 0 to 1.

For example, the 10mm pistol has a maximum value of 225 Caps when in perfect condition. At 50% (or 0.5) condition, the pistol's value is 0.5 ^ 1.5 = 0.3535, or 35.3% of its base value (225) : 79 Caps.

Damage
As condition degrades, non-melee weapon damage will scale linearly from full damage at 100% condition to roughly two-thirds damage at 0% condition for single-shot ranged weapons and roughly half damage for fully-automatic ranged weapons and melee weapons.
 * $$Dam_{Skill=100}=Base \times (Minimum + Condition \times (1 - Minimum))$$


 * Condition is a number ranging from 0 to 1.
 * Minimum is .66 for single-shot weapons, .54 for fully-automatic weapons, .5 for melee weapons.

For example, the 10mm pistol has a base damage of 9. At 25% condition and 100 Guns, the pistol's damage would be:
 * $$Dam_{Guns=100}=9 \times (.66 + .25 \times .34) = 6.705 \approx 7$$

In another example example, the assault rifle has a base damage of 38. At 25% condition and 100 Guns, the assault rifle's displayed damage would be:
 * $$Dam_{Guns=100}=38 \times (.54 + .25 \times .46) = 24.89 \approx 25$$

If the condition of a weapon degrades all the way to 0%, the item is broken and cannot be used until repaired. In the case of equipped armor and clothing, bonuses to skills or attributes will still apply even if the item is broken, but once removed it will have to be repaired before it can be re-equipped.

Another consequence of poor condition when using weapons is the reload animation. The lower the condition of the weapon, the more likely it is to jam, causing the player to adjust the magazine, thus taking longer to complete the animation. A weapon with 100% CND will never jam, while weapons in a poor state of repair will jam quite frequently.

Armor condition
Armor's damage resistance and damage threshold are similarly affected, though skill is not necessary and the value for Minimum is .62:
 * $$DR\ or\ DT=Base \times (.62 + Condition \times .38)$$

Weapon degradation
All equipable items in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas have item health, which helps determine how quickly a weapon degrades from use and from being hit in combat. At full item health, a weapon is in 100% condition. Similarly, at close to 0 item health, a weapon is about to break. In Fallout 3, item health decreases per use by a percentage of the base damage of the weapon.
 * Small Guns degrade at 3% of base weapon damage per shot.
 * Energy Weapons degrade at 4% of base weapon damage per shot.
 * Melee Weapons degrade at 5% of base weapon damage per attack.
 * Big Guns degrade at 6% of base weapon damage per shot.

For example, the Plasma rifle (Fallout 3) has a base damage of 45 and an item health of 900. Each shot will decay the health by 1.8 health, which means that it takes 500 shots to take this plasma rifle from full condition to broken. Shots fired in V.A.T.S. cause increased degradation, at four times the normal rate. So in the above example, a shot fired in V.A.T.S. would cause the item to lose 1.8 x 4 = 7.2 health.

In Fallout: New Vegas however, weapon condition degrades at a flat rate of 0.2 item health per shot. V.A.T.S. does not impose an additional penalty, but various types of ammunition can increase or decrease the degradation rate (indiciated by a "CND x 1.5" or similar in the Pip-Boy 3000, which means a 1.5 multiplier for decay). Having Raul Tejada as your companion can make a weapon degrade slower (a .5 multiplier for Regular Maintenance, a .25 multiplier for Full Maintenance).

Due to a small bug, weapons cannot be repaired to 100%. Weapon condition will be about 0.6 to 1 HP less than 100% maximum.