Frag Grenade (Fallout 3)

The frag grenade is a weapon in Fallout 3.

Characteristics
The frag grenade is a standard grenade creating an explosive blast and dealing significant damage, with a high chance to cripple limbs. It seems to have the same blast radius as its more powerful energy-based variant, the plasma grenade. They are commonly used by melee equipped raiders and super mutants when they are out of melee range.

Thrown grenades are affected by physics; they may bounce or roll unexpectedly if not thrown carefully. However, in game physics can also be used to your advantage; such as throwing grenades through doorways or bouncing them around corners to attack enemies who cannot see you.

Grenades are an optional target in V.A.T.S., and can even be shot out of the air, causing them to detonate. This can be used to your advantage, as they will deal damage to an enemy if they are holding them or in close proximity when they explode. Grenades can be thrown point-blank in V.A.T.S with less danger due to the fact you only take 10% of the damage in V.A.T.S. you would take when outside V.A.T.S.

A grenade that has been thrown toward you will show up on your HUD as a red arrow denoting its direction relative to you. Move in the opposite direction as quickly as possible to escape the blast radius and minimize the damage to both your overall health and your limbs.

It is also possible to plant a live grenade on an NPC by passing one from your inventory to the NPC's inventory via reverse-pickpocketing. This will kill the NPC, regardless of how much health he has, making the frag grenade far more deadly. If you get caught putting a grenade in an NPC's inventory, they act as if you were normally stealing something from them, and return the grenade to your inventory though it won't detonate. If you successfully kill a NPC using this technique you will earn the Psychotic Prankster achievement.

Behind the scenes

 * The frag grenade does not appear to expel any fragments; the damage radius also supports this. It seems that the frag grenade works more like a Concussion Grenade.

Bugs

 * Destroyed grenades; i.e targeted in V.A.T.S. and shot out of an opponents hand, have a condition of zero yet you can use other broken grenades to fix them thus restoring its firepower. This may not be a bug, as one could combine parts from two broken grenades to create a makeshift functional grenade in real life.
 * When a missile launcher is broken from launching a missile, if you have one grenade/mine of any particular type in your inventory, e.g. having one frag grenade, and it is the next weapon you equip (not hotkey, you have to open the Pip-Boy first and select the weapon), you will have unlimited ammo for that particular grenade/mine until it is unequipped. The next grenade/mine thrown after the first will be invisible while held in the player's hand but will appear once thrown. You will then perform the 10mm pistol's reloading animation, and have another grenade ready to be thrown. This is an excellent way of obtaining many bottlecap mines as they can be disarmed and picked up, adding them to your inventory to be used at any time. V.A.T.S, unfortunately, cannot be used until the weapon is unequipped. It is important to note that when placing the mines, they should not overlap one another, as disarming and taking a mine beneath another will cause the top mine and any other touching mines to vanish.
 * The mentioned-above glitch could be used with cryo mines from Mothership Zeta.
 * North of the Chryslus Building you can find two raiders equipped with melee weapons and frag grenades. Both of them may spawn five half condition frag grenades, which do slightly less damage than normal ones. This makes them semi-unique, as grenades and mines are typically found in perfect condition.
 * Sometimes, when using frag grenades in V.A.T.S. a glitch can occur where during an entire round, all of your grenades will not do any damage to the opponent, no matter if they were on target or not.
 * More often, the first grenade of a round in V.A.T.S. will inflict no damage where the rest will act normally