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[Deon]

It does if you use gameplay balancing/changing mods .

[Grakelin]

Bullets don't always kill in one shot. Most of the time, they don't actually kill the target. So poison just makes it a sure thing.

[dragonshardz]

Welp, it just crashed as I walked into Novac. Not bad, considering how buggy it's supposed to be.

[mainiac]

Also more to the point, several very toxic poisons can be fairly easily derived from plants that are native or widely cultivated in North America.  Ricin springs to mind.  Given how common and cheap castor oil is, I'd be very surprised if castor seeds weren't available in the wasteland. 

While the extraction process requires a couple items that aren't found in the typical household, it would certainly be within the capabilities of one of the more technically adept factions like the NCR, Followers, Gun Runners, etc let alone someone like the Brotherhood of Steel, who would have no trouble making it.  Furthermore, the Brotherhood would already have the blueprints for large scale extraction from pre-war documents since the extraction process was invented prior to the fallout divergence point.

Ricin is deadly when injected in small doses, such as on the tip of a .22 bullet.  Without any Geneva conventions to keep people from using the drug, I imagine it would be a very useful poison for high level targets where you want to make sure they aren't going to recover.

[Deon]

It would be useful even for those who cannot afford ammo and use bolts. It makes me wonder, why spears/knives but no bows/crossbows?

[Dakk]

How do you deliver poison through a bullet though? Unless the poison is inside the projectile and said projectile is designed to break INSIDE the victim but somehow strong enough to not blow apart when it hits the skin, its a pretty dumb way of poisoning someone. You can't just coat a bullet with poison and shoot it, the ignition and super hot gases would incinerate anything. The only seemingly viable way to poison someone with a bullet is lead poisoning from the projectile itself.

[Frumple]

Can't say I'm entirely sure, but there's been at least one large scale military agreement (Re: Hague Convention) that banned their use by military, so someone's apparently figured it out.

Googling now, 'cause this actually interests me. I'd imagine a fragmentary bullet could manage to put something poisonous on the inside, but how else you'd go about it I'm not sure.

EDIT: Seeing a number of tertiary references to poisoned bullets, but nothing direct yet. Apparently mercury can be used, somehow?

E2: Oh hey, American Civil War reference: "Some of these parties retain the bullets, which prove beyond doubt that such death-dealing missils were used by the Federal army. Says Mr. Hayden 'The bullet was in two parts, one hollowed out and the other also hollow, being encased in the larger and containing the poison, the latter being loose would slip out and remain in the body or pass through leaving its poison.'"

WW1, I believe: "Moreover, the shrapnel bullets, instead of being smooth, were especially holed and dented. When analysed by a French Government chemist the coloured powder was found to consist of a mixture of white and red phosphorus. The holes in th bullets were designed to carry the chemicals into wounded bodies."

I guess that's enough searching. Poisoned bullets, ladies and gents.

[Eugenitor]

Mercury is a heavy metal, making it nice for an assassin to fill a hollow-point with.

But yeah, unless you have some fast-acting stuff, most "holy-crap dangerous" poisons will cause unconsciousness in a matter of minutes. The point of bullets is to make the other guy dead right now.

Edit: Unless you're doing trench warfare and trying to win by attrition of the wounded, apparently.

[mainiac]

How do you deliver poison through a bullet though? Unless the poison is inside the projectile and said projectile is designed to break INSIDE the victim but somehow strong enough to not blow apart when it hits the skin, its a pretty dumb way of poisoning someone. You can't just coat a bullet with poison and shoot it, the ignition and super hot gases would incinerate anything. The only seemingly viable way to poison someone with a bullet is lead poisoning from the projectile itself.

A .22 is probably going to embed itself in the skin instead of penetrating through.  Even if it off the bone, it would probably leave behind a smear of a solid or liquid poison on the front of the bullet.  As I said, Ricin would be a good poison for such circumstances.

Also, slower moving bullets, such as are fired from older guns or embeding projectiles like shotgun buckshot would be excellent vehicles for a poison.  'Cowboy' repeaters and shotguns are pretty darn common in the Nevada wastelands.  But even with a modern gun, you could easily modify it to fire the projectile more slowly by simply reducing the charge in the casings for your poison rounds.  They wouldn't be good at a distance, but at a shorter range, they'll be more likely to embed themselves in the target.

[Sergius]

Also more to the point, several very toxic poisons can be fairly easily derived from plants that are native or widely cultivated in North America.  Ricin springs to mind.  Given how common and cheap castor oil is, I'd be very surprised if castor seeds weren't available in the wasteland. 

While the extraction process requires a couple items that aren't found in the typical household, it would certainly be within the capabilities of one of the more technically adept factions like the NCR, Followers, Gun Runners, etc let alone someone like the Brotherhood of Steel, who would have no trouble making it.  Furthermore, the Brotherhood would already have the blueprints for large scale extraction from pre-war documents since the extraction process was invented prior to the fallout divergence point.

Ricin is deadly when injected in small doses, such as on the tip of a .22 bullet.  Without any Geneva conventions to keep people from using the drug, I imagine it would be a very useful poison for high level targets where you want to make sure they aren't going to recover.

According to my extensive scientific knowledge based on the viewing of one episode of The Mentalist, ricin is deadly over a kinda long time (several hours? I wouldn't shoot somebody so that there's a chance they'd be dead the next day untreated). Wikipedia shows is as even far less lethal: basically you die of diarrhea over several weeks. The treatment is also very effective, even after it's too late for a stomach wossname, cleaning, and there's a chance you'll manage to digest the stuff before dying.

If I coat bullets with poison, it would probably be something that causes instant paralyzation, even if not death. Choking to death in seconds would be a plus. Scorpion and some types of snake poison seem appropriate. Even in real life, lethal gunshots aren't likely to disable the enemy instantly.

[Asehujiko]

I like that the "walking tank" and "heavy weapons guy" companions don't overlap anymore.Watching Fawkes tear shit up with impunity was fun for a few minutes but made everybody else except maybe the paladin look useless. Now you actually get to choose between somebody in power armor who insists on punching things and a sniper that refuses to wear a helmet. Unless there's some ridiculous endgame ally with the most health, DT, and a giant gun at the same time here too.

Additionally, I still can't get any free repairs from major Knight. And the game starts lagging badly when three's 3 or more people on screen. And the sound is a bit offcenter. And I can't get my punchy companion to swap her 10mm pistol for a 10mm smg. Anybody has any fixes for these problems?

[Mindmaker]

Ow cmon.
The NCR could reward me with a good weapon, for doing all their dirty work.
All I do, is gathering great melee weapons in all of the legion camps.

[motorbitch]

most bullet injurys are not lethal. not even all head-shots are. using a lethal-save poison in bullets totally makes sense - if your intention is not to disable your opponent , but to make sure it will die.
that's why poisonous bullets are banned by the hauge convention: they don't offer a direct military use (they only make already disabled enemy's suffer more).
as said before, these bullets where used by spies for assassinations. here, the time it would take for the victim to die wouldn't even matter.  (like: anyone remembers that russian that was poisoned with polonium england some years ago?)


anyway, i didn't made my mind if i would want such bullets in fallout and if it would fit the gameplay. i totaly think it would fit the atmosphere of the game, however.
i don´t think balancing would be to much of an issue. a karma hit for the player when he uses such ammo and restrict it to the evil npc fractions should do it.

[Virtz]

Additionally, I still can't get any free repairs from major Knight.

Supposedly it wasn't intended to work that way and was patched out. There's supposed to be some different kind of bonus, but I dunno. Everything worth anything costs tons to fix.

[BigD145]

Additionally, I still can't get any free repairs from major Knight.

Supposedly it wasn't intended to work that way and was patched out. There's supposed to be some different kind of bonus, but I dunno. Everything worth anything costs tons to fix.

There is always the general purpose weapon fixing aid item.