To put both my view and question blunt and simple...
Is their even a point to it? :shrug:
Seems a waste of points.

You need it to craft some items (like bottlecap mines), you need it to get the dynamite from Pete in Goodsprings. Higher values will make frag mines and grenades more useful. But if you don;t play that way, then you can use the points elsewhere. I can't think of the specific use offhand, but I am sure the Boomers value a high explosive skill.

The boomers only have 1 dialogue option that I've found that involved explosive and it was mixed in with a lot of other checks (loved that conversation). Explosives are only necessary if you like blowing stuff up. Otherwise don't bother.

But i can blow stuff up just as easily without it?
Equip Grenade --> Throw Grenade --> :nuke:
Yes?

Well yeah if you throw a hand grenade it will blow up but it won't be as effective it your explosives skill is at 16.
I found some dynamite and thought "well these has to do some decent damage". Threw one at a radscorpion, got a full hit, that only pissed her off...

well one fun thing about explosives is you can combine an explosives character run with a luck 1 character run. I just gotta see what happens when you have 1 luck sooo...

Not if you aren't doing an explosives build.

Why would anyone do that; that's like making a barter build. Your going to get nowhere fast.

To be honest, the honest, the only time you'll NEED your explosives skill is during that quest 'Why can't we be friends' in Vault 19 (depending on which path you go down on the quest)

Erm okay?
You get tons of explosive from either joining Powder Gangers or killing them.
Then you will frag/plasm/pulse grenades from vendors and looting.
Then you will get grenade rifle and grenade launcher and lastly grenade machine gun.
It actually have a very wide variety of weapons to use.
I'm going to try it after I'm done with my unarmed character.

I think, however I may be wrong but it seems to me the area of effect increases as your skill raises.

You can get quite far with barter. It's almost as useful as speech, which is the strongest skill in the game.

As someone who likes to use speech in RPGs, I have to disagree



Science has got to be the most important non-combat skill in the game.

there is a whole line of weaponry and build specific perks from the "explosive skill" on top of speech options.... how can it be considered useless?

It's 100% viable.

Fat Man
Grenade Launcher
Grenade Rifle
Grenade Machinegun
Missile Launcher

Dynamite
Frag Grenade/Mine
Holy Frag Grenade
Incendiary Grenade
Plasma Grenade/Mine
Pulse Grenade/Mine

Bottlecap mine
C-4 Plastic Explosive
Powder Charge
Time Bomb

Pretty sure that only the damage increases. But damage decreases in a fall-off manner as you get farther away from the impact point. Some explosives have a large radius / small damage, so it seems like they affect a wide area evenly. Others are more concentrated using a smaller radius with a very steep fall-off as a result.

Playing high energy weapons and explosives dude now on vh/hc. High hitpoints and DT . Flamer + Pyromaniac perk , and 2 ranks of Demo Expert so far . Playing with grenades and bottlecapmines , definitely viable , especially indoors . And different if you are bored to death with guns . Dont have Missile Launcher or Grenade machinegun yet .

I know I can take them down faster even with low gun skill and some revolver , but wanted to try something different .

Science, the most important non-combat skill? EW ammunition crafting, conversation checks which are usually accompanied with a Speech option and terminals that are usually accompanied with lockpicks?

Am I missing something? I just buy and find the rarer ammunition(s).

I seem to recall...

I just completed a play-through with an explosives build. My Tags were: 100 explosives, 100 sneak, 100 medicine (for when i get too close ) You still get the sneak attack bonus from explosives, and when you get a whole bunch of enemies bunched up you can do massive amounts of limb damage (or kill them all outright). Also once I got my hands on a missile launcher and 40mm grenade launcher I was able to take out groups of enemies so much faster. The only downside is that you really do need to watch your ammo, as you can run out REALLY fast, so working up Guns, EW, or melee a little bit is pretty necessary.

My one real complaint would be the lack of cherry bombs in the game. During my entire play-through I didn't find enough cherry bombs to make crafting Bottlecap mines worthwhile, which was a real downer because they were my bread and butter in FO3 when dealing with Super Mutant Masters, and Deathclaws (another reason to keep Guns/EW/Melee up). I did start to use explosives a little less towards the end game, as I discovered the awesome power of the Anti-material rifle, but I did still use the launchers whenever I could get the drop on enemies clustered up.


There weren't all that many situations when the explosives skill opened up dialogue options - its probably on par with Guns, or any other combat skill. Its really better to look at the skill as its own combat option, as the perks you get for it (10x better then FO3) really compliment going for an all out explosives build. You can increase throwing range for the 'nades, increase area of effect of all expl. dmg, and increase dmg up to 60%. After getting all those perks , 1 frag grenade, or 40mm grenade did about 134 dmg, then factor in the pump-action you get with the grenade launcher and you'll make mince meat out of any group of enemies in no time.

So as far as I'm concerned, an all-in explosives build can work really well if you use the skill in the most optimal way - which is to hit as many guys with 1 blast, and having the various modifiers can mean the difference between a lot of limping angry guys w/ guns, or just a lot of corpses.

Some explosives seem dramatically underpowered (come on, Fat Man), but it seems like a fun skill for a crazy playthrough. Personally, I am saving my Explosives Build for a character with Wild Wasteland, the Chem perks for use with Psycho/Slasher, and both Mysterious Stranger and Miss Fortune (and Isn't there also some kind of uber-explosive available if you play on Wild Wasteland?). For backup, I will be using the biggest sword I can find. (Unarmed is too good, so I'd be too tempted to use it over the things that go boom.)

Totally underpowered. It it kind of dumb. I get that Obsidian was trying to 'balance' the weapons - but dude. What they should have done was kept explosives weapon damage high - but made it even harder to find ammo.

Just today, while exploring Vault 34 *shiver* I ran into a pack of ghouls as you enter the Armory for the first time. Perfect time for some Boom-Boom I thought. Three 40mm grenade rounds into the group didn't bring any of the ghouls below 60% health. Then I died. What the hell? Awful.

The next time through I simply pulled out the .44 magnum. Two reloads and six head shots later all the ghouls were wasted.

Playing on Very Hard, hardcoe, Explosives Skill at 75 - no additional perks; Guns at Skill 80 - with a few perks.

Am I missing something? Are explosives even worth using anymore?

I find mines and place-able explosives somewhat useful as traps, but not worth raising the skill for alone.

My main issue with them though is thrown explosives have such unrealistic physics and bounce all over which makes aiming them ridiculously difficult and it ends up being a waste of time even trying unless I use VATS.

With demo expert x3 your explosives do 60% more damage, I for one love the launchers.

Perhaps if explosives did decent damgage - but not great, I might be persuaded to dump six levels worth of perks into explosives - but my attempts have meet with HARDLY ANY DAMAGE. I refuse to believe that an additional 60% would make that much of a difference when the current damage is abysmal.

OR to it another way - what is the point of using so many perk/skill points to make a weapon category decent, when guns already output a very high level of damage?

And THAT is the key question, I think.

I suppose the answer they expected was that explosives theoretically do area damage while guns are less effective against a group when using VATS ... but that's only if you don't count machine gun spray, which does better area damage than any explosive I've used.

The real answer, I think, is just that explosions are supposed to be cool in and of themselves.