Stagger



Stagger or Staggered is an action and condition in Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76.

Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas
The only consistent method to cause stagger is to cripple a limb. Crippling a limb puts an enemy in pain state where they grasp or recover from the limb that was just crippled; leaving them open for subsequent attacks.

Fallout 4 and Fallout 76
Both the player character and some enemies have the ability to stagger. For the player character, crippling limbs still causes a stagger state, and some perks also give weapons an inherent stagger chance. Attacks from enemies, such as the deathclaw and yao guai, have a chance to stagger on heavy attacks. The yao guai in particular has a 100% chance to stagger.

Some enemies are also immune to stagger affects, such as super mutant behemoths for its size alone and all robots (but limbs can still be destroyed).