Evening ladies and gents.

I can imagine that this is a very basic question. And the fact that I even ask it reaks of noobishness and general lack of know-how.

BUT I was wondering about the effect that the weapon skills has on gameplay. I am at the moment a Guns user and I do not have that high stats in the skills Guns (40 at lvl 10). And I'm wondering what effect the skill has on the game. Yes, I have googled and read the manual and such, but I just don't get it. This description I found on gamefaqs in a detaild character build guide: Guns determines your effectiveness with any weapon that uses conventional ammunition (.22 LR, .357 Magnum, 5mm, 10mm, 5.56mm, .308, .45-70 Gov't etc.). What effectiveness does that imply? Your aim in VATS is a given I guess. But what else does it effect? Can't say Ive noticed any change in damage or duration, aim of anything realy. Except for the chance to hit in VATS. And since I only use VATS on ocation I start to wonder, what is the point of raising said skill? Sure, we have the PERKs., but the only PERKs that seems good enough to invest in (read: rise gun-skill and spend a PERK on) is sniper. And that PERK only require 60 in Guns or something close to that.

I also wonder about melee, explosives, unarmed and laser weapons. Does the damage scale with the skill? If thats the case, how much?

Pardon the spelling.

The higher the weapon skill, the more damage the weapon does.

Your gun skill has a very large effect on how much damage you do with guns. For instance, go into your inventory and look at the DAM for any Gun you have that is fully repaired (that's your DAM at 40 skill) then go to the Fallout wiki and look at the DAM for that weapon. The DAM shown in the wiki represents a fully repaired weapon at 100 Gun skill.

If you don't raise your gun skill you will come up against enemies whose DT you will not be able to overcome.

It affects:

damage per shot
accuracy (VATS) and spread/sway (non-VATS)

The accuracy penalty is significantly worse if the weapon has a skill requirement and you are under it.

Ok! Thanks for the quick post. Sounds simple and fun. This is how I hopped it worked!