Heavy Handed

Heavy Handed is a trait in Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout Tactics.

Fallout and Fallout 2
You get +4 points of Melee Damage, but your critical hits have a -30% modifier to the critical hit tables.

Fallout: New Vegas
Your Melee and Unarmed attacks do more damage, but less critical hit damage.

More specifically, your Melee and Unarmed damage is increased by 20%, but your Critical Hit damage is reduced by 60%, but only for those two weapon types. However, since you inflict more damage consistently with Heavy Handed, Critical Hits are less of an issue, unless one relies on sneak attack criticals as a major source of damage or if the character criticals often due to perks, Luck, and high weapon modifier.


 * Weapons most useful with Heavy Handed:
 * Thermic lance: Only 10 critical hit damage.
 * Chainsaw: Only 8 critical hit damage.
 * Ripper: Only 5 critical hit damage.
 * Rebar club: Extremely low critical hit chance (maximum critical chance of 33%).
 * Nailboard: x0 critical hit multiplier.
 * Pool cue: x0 critical hit multiplier.
 * Rolling pin: x0 critical hit multiplier.
 * Cattle prod: Only 5 critical hit damage.
 * Two-Step Goodbye (GRA): Only 10 critical damage

Heavy Handed with Criticals
Assuming a Critical Hit chance of 7.5% (base 5%, multiplied by a machete's x1.5 Critical Hit chance), a player will Critical Hit once out of 13 to 14 swings, on average. So, a machete's damage with and without Heavy Handed should work out to the following respectively:
 * Without Heavy Handed: 13 swings * 11 damage + 1 crit (+11 damage) = 154 damage
 * With Heavy Handed: 13 swings * 13.2 damage + 1 crit (+4.5 damage) = 175 damage


 * $$\text{Base crit} \times (1 - \text{Heavy handed} ) \times (1 + \text{Better crits} ) = \text{Crit damage}$$

Example: Using a cattle prod.
 * $$5 \times 40\% \times 150\%=3$$

As with most percentages in Fallout: New Vegas, however, the penalty functions as a multiplier instead of just subtracting from the base. Therefore, when combined with perks such as Better Criticals, Elijah's Ramblings or Just Lucky I'm Alive, the final critical damage dealt will be 40% * 150% = 60 rather than 90% or 72%. However, since critical hits are considered before Damage Threshold whereas damage buffs like this perk are considered afterwards, the benefit will be lower in practice.


 * See also
 * Critical chance
 * Fallout: New Vegas combat

Fallout Tactics
You get +4 points of melee damage, but your critical hits have a -20% modifier to the critical hit tables.

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