Legendary Weapon Elements

The legendary weapon properties in Fallout 4 aren’t deserving of the name. Not having to be reloaded or doing more damage to a particular type of creature are rather boring abilities, when there’s so much potential under the name “legendary.” I’d like to propose a system where legendary weapons and armor can have multiple legendary properties, drawn from a list where each property can significantly change how a weapon is used. Some of these properties will be mutually exclusive, like gamma guns and ‘bonus damage against ghouls’ should be. The objective behind these properties is to significantly change how someone uses a weapon or armor piece, rather than just having a bonus that sometimes applies and is otherwise ignored. A property is good if you think that most folks would not like it, but some folks would love it.

To be clear: The objective of these legendary properties is to make an item either situationally useful, or require a player to significantly alter their methods to make use of them. However in those situations or that altered use, they’re indeed legendary.

Beneficial Weapon properties

* Betrayer: Deals massive damage to creatures that are friendly or neutral towards you, deals half damage to hostile targets. This would be quite useful for someone with the high charisma perks that allow them to pacify targets.
* Blinding: Chance to disorient the target (Reduce awareness range), but the user’s vision is blurred while holding the weapon. Mr. Magoo versus the raiders.
* Center mass: Deals bonus damage to non-VATS shots to the torso, but half damage to limbs and head. In VATS increases torso hit chances, reduces head and limb hit chance. A nice chance from the chain of headshots.
* Disposable: This weapon comes with a large supply of ammunition (Such as 999 rounds for an automatic weapon) but cannot be reloaded and is destroyed when the last bullet is fired.
* Electro-disruptor: Energy weapon deals bonus damage to robots and synths, cannot harm humans, ghouls and beasts. Great for specific missions, not so much for roaming.
* Executioner: Increases chance to hit in VATS on targets below 50% health, decreased chance to hit on targets above 50% health. Saving VATS for finishing rather than opening moves.
* Fallout: Humans killed with this weapon may turn into frenzied feral ghouls. Great for taking on large groups, not so much if the ghoul then comes for you.
* FEV: Humans killed with this weapon may turn into frenzied super mutants.
* Gatling: Automatic weapon fires faster the longer you hold down the trigger, but keeps firing for a moment after you release the trigger.
* Kinetic: Bonus damage while moving, with an extra bonus for a few seconds after a sprint. Damage penalty when holding still.
* Loose gears: Automatic weapon accuracy increases the longer you fire, sometimes uses more than one ammunition per shot.
* Loot over levels: Creatures damaged by this weapon award only 10% as much experience, but significantly more loot
* Massacre: The next shot after killing a creature gains a huge damage bonus. If you miss with this shot, you take damage.
* Money to burn: Uses caps for ammunition and deals damage based on your bartering ability (Charisma plus perks plus magazines)
* Overpowering: Deals bonus damage if the target’s highest damage resistance is to that weapon’s damage type. For example if a creature has higher energy armor than physical armor, then an overpowering energy weapon will deal bonus damage against that target, while an overpowering physical damage weapon would not.
* Painting: Deals very little damage, creatures hit by this weapon have the recon scope marker applied and are very easy to hit in VATS.
* Purifier: Deals bonus damage to mutants, ghouls, synths and beasts. Hitting a human or robot will damage the user.
* Rad charging: Like recharging, but only recharges when the user is exposed to radiation. Amazing in the glowing sea, but a pain to reload elsewhere.
* Recharging: An energy weapon that does not use ammo. Instead it has an internal battery that recharges over time.
* Regenerating: Slowly refills ammunition of the current magazine of ammunition. So if you have a 6 shot revolver, and fire five shots, it will slowly refill to six shots. The rate of regeneration depends on the ammo type (5mm and .38 regenerate faster than fusion cell and plasma cell). Free ammo if you don’t mind walking around without a full magazine.
* Shedding: Has a chance to knock off armor pieces of humanoid targets (Similar to power armor mechanic), but only pieces with a higher armor value than what the user is wearing.
* Solar Powered: Like recharging, but with a much larger battery. Can only recharge when outdoors during daylight.
* Spray & Pray: Has a high chance not to consume ammunition when fired, but terrible accuracy.
* Sputtering: Fire rate on an automatic weapon varies up and down as you fire it, but overall is significantly higher than normal.
* Static: Deals extra damage to enemies with an energy weapon in their inventory, or are wearing raider or metal armor. Deals very little damage to other enemies.
* Stealth mag: Gives you 1 second of stealth boy effect when reloading, but exposes you to a burst of radiation each time you do so.
* Temperamental: Shots randomly do 0.1x to 2x damage, resulting in overall higher damage but unreliable per-hit damage.
* Water powered: Like recharging, but only recharges in the rain or when standing in water. Increased fire rate when standing in water.
* Wheel of misfortune: Deals +200% damage to one specific limb (Left arm, right arm, left leg, and right leg) outside of VATS, but only 50% damage to any other body part. When you hit this part on a target, the bonus changes to a random new limb.

Cursed properties: For items with many legendary properties, one option is to have a “cursed” property added to balance out the increase in power. Thus a player might get an amazing weapon, but it has one of these properties that make them hesitant to rely on or frequently use the weapon. They should be severe enough that a player has to take them into consideration when using the equipment instead of just “living with it.” The balancing dynamics will be determined later.

“Cursed” weapon properties.

* Contaminated: Constantly exposes user to radiation when held.
* Electronic lock: User must complete a time-limited hacking minigame to reload the weapon. Failure locks the gun for an hour.
* Fragile circuits: Any nearby explosion (grenades, cars, fat man, missiles, etc) disables the weapon for several minutes.
* Heavy shot: Bullets have exaggerated drop-off, such that you need to aim upward to hit enemies any significant distance away.
* Hydrophobic: Weapon can’t be used outdoors during rain. Stepping in water disables the gun for an hour.
* Inefficient: Energy weapon consumes more than one ammo per shot
* Jamming: Bullet weapon will often need to be reloaded before magazine is empty.
* Leaky: Energy weapon that exposes the user to radiation with each shot.
* Overheating: Putting the weapon away shortly after firing will set the user on fire.
* Reload-bane: Weapon cannot be manually reloaded; you must empty the magazine to reload it.
* Slippery: Each time you fire this weapon, there is a chance you drop it.
* Spikey: Weapon deals damage to the user each time it is reloaded.
* Sputtering: Automatic weapon fire rate randomly drops to very low fire rate.
* Turret: User can only walk with this weapon equipped, and for 10 seconds after putting it away.
* Unstable cells: Reloading the weapon before the magazine is empty inflicts energy damage to the user (Energy weapon)
* VATS drain: AP is reduced by 75% while this weapon is equipped.

Beneficial armor properties

* Berserker: Gain major bonus to damage resistance after killing a creature, but a penalty to damage resistance once the bonus wears off.
* Bonded: Provides great protection, but has no benefits if you have no follower or your follower is a knocked-down state.
* Cowardly: Take significantly less damage from behind, more damage from the front.
* Danger Close: Significantly reduced damage from your own explosions but your range on the fat man and thrown grenades is significantly reduced as well.
* Defender: Gain significant armor and AP regeneration for several minutes after passing through a settlement, based on the population and happiness of that settlement. Below average armor when this benefit wears off.
* Demolition Derby: Gain a bonus to health, AP and armor for a short time after blowing up a vehicle.
* Homesteader: Bonus armor based on the happiness of nearest settlement. Low happiness can result in an armor penalty rather than bonus.
* Jingling: Constantly alerts nearby enemies, but wild animals will avoid you.
* Jogging: Reduced AP usage when sprinting, but slower overall regeneration.
* Marathon: Uses all AP immediately to sprint, but can continue to sprint while at 0 AP.
* Rad purge: Using a radaway also gives a small amount of rad resistance. Using a rad-x removes a small amount of radiation.
* Sensitive: Get a bonus when your companion approves of your actions, take physical damage when a companion disapproves of your action
* Sticky fingered: Automatically loot ammo, caps and food from nearby containers, even if doing so makes you overburdened.
* Thin: Weighs nearly nothing, but take extra damage from explosions


“Cursed” armor properties.

* Hoarding: Junk items, weapons and armor will randomly be looted from the environment and nearby containers, up to 95% of your carrying capacity.
* Rad trail: Exposes wearer to radiation when sprinting.
* Waterlogged: Unable to run for some time after entering water. Dramatically increases radiation from water immersion.

I’d love to hear your suggestions for adding to the list!

Please note that right now we’re not concerned with the numerical balance on the legendary properties. Right now we’re just collecting ideas of what could work in the setting that would be fun to play with.