It's not as useful as a combat skill, but it is balanced out by helping with traps and a lot of conversation/quest checks. For a stealthy character that avoids combat, it could theoretically be a primary skill (just drop some mines, reverse pickpocket some grenades, and so on). It could stand to do more damage, though.

Some good ideas, but what if you kept explosives in a 'support' role, but just made them better? Like allowing them to crit. I don't understand why they can't crit.

Most likely because they are AoE weapons.

If you pull up the GECK for FO3 and look at the Big Guns weapons you will find that only the Flamers, Heavy Incinerator, Miniguns, and Gatling Lasers can crit, and are not listed as AoE weapons despite being able to cover an area with their projectiles (yes, a flamer uses projectiles, you just can't see them due to the flame effect). The rest are all explosive weapons of one sort or another, and as such their projectiles have an AoE Object Effect attached that is used for damage purposes. Since the number of targets in the blast radius changes constantly, the crit check would have to test against the current number of eligible targets with each shot, and that could get rather complex in a hurry. Fwiw I tried giving these weapons a 1.0 crit multiplier, and it had no effect since the weapon itself is not doing the damage.

@Seraphian:

Yeah, I'd forgotten about that when I was typing that idea out, but then I'd never really tried to do much modding of the explosive weapons other than just increasing the damage of a couple, since there was really no need when dealing with DR instead of DT since straight +DMG works in a DR system.

Ahh interesting. So basically it isn't within the powers of modders to add a 'crit check' step to the process that tags a "x2" multiplier on the damage calculations for the AoE object?

Explosives in my experience don't even make that good a back up skill, maybe later on at higher skill level, but depending on your build it may not be worth it.
High explosive skill level traps are less in NV and speech based checks are slighty more common I think 6 instances at least, but guns have at least 4, and a barter of 60 will serve much better if your looking for more dialogue options.

A frag grenade at 40 skill will have difficulty with a rangers DT and as a thrown explosive one shot and dealing leg damage, better too max out guns, melee, h2h, or EW for plasma weapons and aim for the head.

Pranking explosives on NPC's is more about sneak, and less with explosives so again is not that necessary imo.

In all incarnations of fallout.. I've used explosives as a back up .. and yet never put any points whatsoever into explosives. It seems useless to put points into something that already does such great damage. No matter what the skill usually reaches 40 in F3 and FNV without me having to touch it. I mostly just use landmines. Every now and then I might toss a grenade If I spot a group of enemies off in the distance.. But nothing feels better than sneaking into a place.. laying a bunch of landmines down a corridor,, hiding in a corner and firing your weapon to make the baddies come running down the corridor in search of the noise. If one happens to make it to where I am .. they are usually crippled and are easily taken down with a bullet.

It''s definitely a secondary skill.. I wish there were more skills I considered secondary.. Lockpick and Science were skills you didn't necessarily need in the older games.. but at any skill level they were useful. They just weren't implemented correctly in the new games.

It is very doable as a stand-alone skill. My first character was an Explosive only. It's hard finding enough Incendiary though.

BTW Harmy, it's your advice that showed me exactly what the problem was with explosives DT penetration, thanks

It was? Great to hear

If I might be allowed to steer the conversation a little bit.... The question wasn't whether Explosives is a secondary or backup skill. Because it clearly is, for the reasons I outlined. The question was, should it be. That is, does it make good sense that Explosives is not viable as a character's primary means of attack, or, should it ideally be expanded so that a player can realistically only use their Explosives in combat like all the other attack oriented skills.

(And planting explosives on people or doing the Phantom Of The Landmine Opera approach doesn't count because those are "Explosives makes a great side dish to a main course of Sneak".)

But you can use it as a primary weapon skill. I've played from start to finish with only explosives. I bought my first Dynamite from Chet (After selling the varmint rifle plus ammo), killed a Powder Ganger with it, and got enough Dynamite for more attempts.

When I got to Novac I bought my first Grenade Rifle for 78 Caps, plus four 40mm Grenades for it. I also found the odd Grenade here and there.

Then, when I came to Freeside I looted the Van Graffs with a Stealthboy and got around 10-14 of Plasma Grenades and Mines.

I sold the rest of the EW Weapons and bought myself a near-broken Grenade Machinegun and 67 HE Grenades.

After that, I ransacked the Boomers and got another 20-30 of Frag and Plasma Grenades and Mines.

After that it was a cakewalk keeping myself into business.

They should add some weaker improvised/crafted explosives like a lot of the ones in FO: Tactics for early game. As for high end explosives, they should definitely make missile launchers more accurate and powerful. The missiles should at least have guidance systems.

the ability to create a large number of simple grenades at workbenches out of very common ingredients.

or, bring back the rock-it-launcher as a low level explosives weapon

They should move Flamers to explosives.

Flamers doesn't explode.

It is a support skill. The idea is that you choose another primary weapon skill, and possibly put points into Explosives to make it a more effective backup.

If it was a support skill, it wouldn't require 6 perks out of possible 15.

On that note.
Demolition Expert should be two ranks with +30%DMG instead of three ranks with +20%DMG.

Flamer should not be explosive....it is just like saying Tesla Cannon should be explosive because it is AoE.

I guess using explosive exclusively would require same if not more mentality change like Guns to EW or Range to Melee. But explosive is still on the shafted side if you ask me,

I do think they messed up the tier system though.
If Powder Charge and dynamite is suppose to be tier one then it was poorly implemented.
Dynamite is hard as hell to use outside of VATS since they bounce like crazy and powder charge isn't available in shops IIRC.
So there should be more of both available in the start of the game.

Then we come to other grenades and mines, I always fear that I might need my incendiary grenade for the next encounter so I end up never using it since I hardly find any and they're a one time usage item.
So, there should be more explosive items available at all general stores and weapon shops.
Or being able to buy grenade packs, one pack = 6 grenades, or even being able to craft grenades in bundles.
Point is: I feel that there isn't enough ammo and I always worry that I won't find any new ammo for a long time so I end up not using the explosive weapons, their availability should be better.

Maybe have Easy Pete be an exclusive explosives merchant through an explosives speech check.
And maybe having someone in Novac deal exclusively in explosives as well.
And then a weapon store in Freeside or West-side also dealing exclusively in explosive materials.

And right now there's 5 weapons which use ammo and are not one time usable's and they can be hard to get ammo for in shops and they don't pack enough of a punch for being explosive weapons.
I know the skill needs to be balanced but still, it can be kinda frustrating to play an explosives character.
At least with Big Guns in the old games the ammo was always available and reliable.

Explosive weapons are supposed to be support though.

It should be a combat skill which can stand up on it's own.

Why?

I think it's absurd that a Fat Man doesn't even really hobble a deathclaw, while I can take them down in 1-2 hits with my best Unarmed weapon, and I think it's silly that you need to spend at least three perks to get it close to feeling "right." But I think you'd be nuts to rely on Explosives as your primary combat skill, even if they were implemented more realistically . Explosives should be big-damage, big-risk, with a high area of effect and the constant chance of blowing up in your face when used on enemies who close in on you quickly. Loading slugs into a Grenade Rifle doesn't make it a versatile Explosives weapon; it makes it a Guns weapon.

I suppose I′m nuts then.

With Hit The Deck, Adamantium Skeleton, and Toughness, you can definitely use a Grenade Rifle close range. I′ve gone through the whole game with Explosives.

I think it's kind of farfetched to have explosives as a primary weapon skill. I really don't see why realism should be bent enough to provide "safe" explosives. If you bounce a grenade off a wall and it explodes at your feet, you should die horribly, just as you would IRL.