Sunday, 18 May 2025

Adam Smasher vs Frank Horrigan (Cyberpunk VS Fallout)

 

"Obedience is the key that opens every door."


Adam Smasher, Night City’s Boogeyman from Cyberpunk  


Frank Horrigan, Genetically Engineered Enclave Soldier from Fallout 


There have been a lot of people who have wondered what the future might hold for us, and while some are bright, others are decidedly less so. But even in times like these, legends can make themselves known. Originally two normal men, these two would end up undergoing many modifications that turned them to some of the biggest nightmares their worlds have seen. And as the fiercely loyal weapons of groups with far from savory intentions, they’re more than prepared to crush any upstart that gets in their way. But what happens when these two unstoppable forces clash? Can Adam end this mutie’s road? Or will Frank smash him down to…you know. Come along to Saul’s VS blog to find out who would win a DEATH BATTLE!!!!

Before We Go Anywhere

For media, we’re going to be covering everything that’s canon. We've covered everything from their direct appearances (Cyberpunk: 2077, Fallout 2) to non-direct appearances. This includes the comics, novels, tv shows, guides, interviews, and even the various board games. No stone has been left unturned.


Something important to note is that our research is from the ground up. Both franchises have had blogs before (Most notably The Mandalorian VS Courier Six by Bang, which I was a part of). While these were good blogs, we want to analyse both of these through a new lens. Credit to Bang’s blog for some calcs we nabbed. 

Background

Adam Smasher

“You think you’re special because you’re scrappy? Don’t make me laugh!”

Welcome to Night City, a rather dangerous place founded in 1990 on the borders of North and South Carolina. From there, you have your typical city problems: gang violence, corporate corruption, typical Gotham-esque behavior. And beneath all the bodies comes one of the most dangerous men in the world. To some, a hero of the Fourth Corporate War. To others, a full-borg boogeyman; a walking nightmare. To all, a living legend who fills graveyards on his company Arasaka’s orders. This behemoth is none other than Adam Smasher.


Before he became the Legend we know of today, Adam was born in New York, creating a new gang in time of The Collapse. However, the army quickly broke apart, leaving him as the only man remaining until he enlisted in the Army. That didn’t last, however, as several years later, he was discharged for bad conduct-which given the standards of the time, is saying a lot. After his discharge, Adam became a gun-for-hire for his hometown.

This job served Adam wonderfully, as he was paid well and gained a rather infamous reputation for his more brutish and sadistic personality. His status there eventually caught the eye of the Japanese corporation, Arasaka. They offered Adam a job that eventually left him severely wounded as a result, which would change everything for him. Adam took a deal that converted him from a regular brute mercenary to a full on cyborg, not caring about the status of his humanity anymore.


Adam would keep working with Arasaka, taking on a long list of jobs as their personal Boogeyman. He would take any task as long as he can cause as much destruction and spill as much blood as possible. He would also develop rivalries between Morgan Blackhand and Johnny Silverhand, both of which would oppose Smasher. Morgan’s battle was that of an idealistic clash, challenging Adam’s “meat vs metal” philosophy, while Silverhand would rack up damage towards the company Adam was working towards. Despite taking care of Silverhand during the infamous Night City Holocaust, Adam wasn’t able to settle his dispute properly with Blackhand before being severely damaged from a nuclear warhead that leveled Arasaka Towers, interrupting their fight. Morgan’s fate was left unknown.


But what we do know is that Adam would survive this, however, bigger, better, and more technologically advanced. He would continue being their personal bodyguard for as long as possible, even taking down more modern legends like David Martinez and his entire gang along the way. Even when the CEO of Arasaka at the time, Saburo would be assassinated by his son, Adam did not care. All he wanted was pure unadulterated violence and fun, so who cares if a shift in management happens?


This bloodlust would eventually come to bite him in the ass through his encounters with the mercenary V, who’d storm Arasaka tower with his old rival Johnny Silverhand in his head. Despite his best efforts, Smasher would eventually be bested by V and would be left either incapacitated or just straight up dead.


While his death would send shockwaves around NC, immortalizing his blood-spilled legacy, there have been little that've lived to tell the tale of meeting its Boogeyman. And if you ask them, well, let’s just say there’s a good reason he is called Adam Smasher.



Frank Horrigan

“Me, Frank Horrigan, that’s who. United States Secret Service. You aren’t going anywhere from here.” 

Before the end of the world, The Enclave was something to fear. Originating before the bombs dropped, this was a deep-state organisation that covered up many conspiracies and secrets. When the bombs dropped, the Enclave lived, the members priding themselves on being ‘pure’ mutation-free healthy humans with the right to rule over the ruined wasteland which had become America, which they’d do with their many soldiers in power armor armed with all the weapons they could scrounge up. But the most feared weapon was their greatest experiment and most feared soldier, Frank Horrigan. 


Originally acting as the personal bodyguard of the Enclave’s president Dick Richardson, Frank would grow up indoctrinated and very loyal to the new country. But during an expedition to the Mariposa Military Base, he’d end up exposed to another dirty secret of Pre-War America, a super soldier serum known as the Forced Evolution Virus. He’d end up being taken in by Enclave scientists who experimented on him, upgrading the virus and granting him cybernetic implants. This would evolve him from a simple soldier to the deadliest weapon in the Enclave’s arsenal, enabling him to carve a bloody path across the west coast. 


But all roads end somewhere, and for Horrigan, he’d end up in conflict with an equally legendary figure. The child of the Vault Dweller from Vault 13, this Chosen One would have journeyed across the wastes to save their tribe, ending up in conflict with the Enclave along the way. After causing a meltdown on the Enclave’s oil rig base, Frank would personally come to blows with the Chosen One, being the final opponent on their journey. While this was a battle Frank ultimately lost, he still proved himself to be the greatest challenge the Chosen One took on, and there’s no wonder that even after his death, few believe there was ever any being who walked the wastes that was quite as deadly as him. 

Experience

Adam Smasher

With over 50-60 years of mercenary work and experience in the military, Adam is an absolute MONSTER, earning the title of the Boogeyman of Night City. He’s incredibly skilled with several firearms, and despite what his build shows, is much quicker than most other people in the universe. Given how little humanity Adam has left in him due to the cybernetics, Adam is effectively the most technologically advanced out of everyone in Night City, yet doesn’t suffer the effects of cyberpsychosis than most. He would take on any mission Arasaka give him long as it isn’t blatant suicide or betrayal.


He has fought and taken down several other Night City legends, like Johnny Silverhand, David Martinez, Rouge (depending on your ending in 2077), and matched Morgan Blackhand in close-quarters combat. While his fighting style seems to be more simplistic and reliant on brute force, Adam is smart enough to use his resistances and advantages when needed.

Frank Horrigan

Frank Horrigan’s history is a mystery, but we know that he’s had many jobs within the Enclave itself. From being the personal bodyguard of President Dick Richardson, wasteland patrol, to the (not-so) secret weapon of The Enclave. Frank Horrigan never fights anyone who can give him a true challenge, able to intimidate and overpower anyone who might challenge him physically. From humble Farmworkers to a sentient pack of Deathclaws, Horrigan punches his way through most challenges.


Of course, it’s not like he can’t evenly fight people with experience fighting. He’s a match for the Chosen One, who’s had experience dealing with a lot of the weirder bullshit of the wasteland, and has taken on a wide variety of enemies. And this also includes his companions, which includes Marcus, an intelligent super mutant who would go on to found the successful mutant settlement Jacobstown, and Skynet, a self sufficient military AI who has been around since before the Great War. 

Equipment 

Adam Smasher

Adam Smasher’s Fists

The Edgerunner mission book considers his fists to be weapons. Of course, they are, it’s just funny that they’re included here. 


Pop-Up Autoshotgun

Attached to his shoulder, Adam Smasher can pop up a shotgun that fires deadly rounds. These contain deadly armour-piercing rounds. 

Adam Smasher’s Chain Gun

Adam owns a high-power Chain Gun that’s full auto, it fires the same armour-piercing rounds as his shotgun does. 

Ba Xing Chong 

Found in Adam Smasher’s home after killing him, the Ba Xing Chong is a high-power shotgun that fires two shells, launching eight explosive projectiles. The shotgun also has a modifier attached that allows it to target up to six enemies, auto-locking and damaging those caught in its blast range, although you need Smart Link cyberware to enable this.


Think you’re a bad shot and you’ll blow your legs off? Well, Ba Xing Chong enables this. When you’re below 25% percent health, reload time is reduced by 40%, you take 45% reduced damage, your crit chance goes up by 50% and hits have a 20% chance to burn. 

Tsunami Arms Helix

Back in the far-off future of 2020, Adam’s main gun of choice was this massive auto shotgun, which can pump out binary 10-gauge shells at 1300 rounds per minute. 

United Armaments CLAW

Another shotgun he’s utilised is this, which is a semiautomatic 4-gauge shotgun with room for attachments. 

Magnum Opus Hellbringer

This behemoth of a revolver can only hold 3 rounds per chamber, but it launches .666 calibre rounds which can hit harder than a hunting rifle, meaning it can make even other guns seem like toys in comparison. 

SlamDance Inc. Hyper-Hammer

This is a solid-tungsten sledgehammer with a built in rocket booster, allowing it to accelerate itself to hit enemies at near-supersonic speed. It can also be used to reduce armor levels when it hits, though it needs to replenish on jet fuel after two uses. 

Shoulder-Mounted Rocket 

Attached to Adam Smasher’s shoulders are rockets he can fire at high speeds. 

Sandevistan

Described as a “rudimentary implant” by Adam Smasher, the Sandevistan acts as a mini-time slow for everyone else but you. Of course, this isn’t a time-slow, but more akin to a speed-up. The tabletop version of Edgerunners portrays this by granting Adam Smasher extra move and attack actions during his turn. On top of this, Adam takes no damage when using his Sandevistan and it’s always active. Adam is quite literally born different. 

Cyberware 

Since Arasaka has been working on Adam like a group project, he’s fitted with the latest (and greatest) Cyberware money can buy. His tech is described as being heavily modified and upgraded by Arasaka, so his tech should upscale the lower versions of this tech. Below is a list of Cyberware Adam has access to. 


Frank Horrigan

Power Armor

Donning his special suit of power armor surgically grafted to his body by the scientists who worked with him, this armor is specially created to Frank Horrigan’s needs. Firstly, it keeps pumping him with drugs and stimulants to keep him alive. While we don’t know exactly what these drugs are, they at least contain Stims that heal him at the end of his turns. It’s important to note that the armor is bonded to him. So bonded to him that increases his damage, and causes damage to those he falls near, without causing damage to himself. Oh, he can also breathe underwater and in toxic environments with it. 

Plasma Rifle

Described as his “Agitated Recoil Compensated Tactical Targeting Plasma Rifle.” by the RPG, this semi-automatic rifle fires rounds that cause Energy Damage. Energy Weapons within Fallout cause disintegration on death (as seen with this Mirelurk Queen). This Plasma Rifle is so strong that it can bypass your armor with enough damage and knock you to your feet. 

Big Bad Knife

When Frank runs out of ammo, he will use his arm-mounted Big Bad Knife. There's nothing special about this apart from it being his Big Bad Knife. 

Powers And Abilities 

Adam Smasher

Stats

In Cyberpunk, stats exist to determine how good your character is at that particular thing. The stat block you see above belongs to Adam Smasher. 


INT: Intelligence, determines how bright, clever, and aware you are.

REF: Your response time and coordination, used for ranged weapons

DEX: Your athletic ability, used for melee and brawling.

TECH: Your ability to manipulate tools and instruments 

COOL: Your ability to impress and influence others.

WILL: Your determination, courage, and ability to keep going in the face of adversity

MOVE: Your speed of movement when running, swimming, climbing, etc.

BODY: Your raw strength and endurance.

EMP: Empathy for others, which Adam Smasher lacks. 

Skills

Next to stats you have Skills, representations of things your character can do. The higher your skill level, the better trained you are in that specific category. Skills are often linked to a specific stat, like Melee weapons being linked to the DEX stat. These skills can be used in skill resolution checks, where you’ll determine how good you are at that one specific thing. 


Athletics: Skill in jumping, climbing, throwing, swimming, and lifting weights combines the basic elements of any high-school-level school program with throwing weapons.

Autofire: Skill for keeping a weapon’s Autofire firing mode on target through recoil

Brawling: Fighting and grappling with brute strength.

Bureaucracy: Skill in dealing with bureaucrats and how to get information out of them.

Conceal/Reveal Objects: skill for hiding and finding objects that’ve been hidden. 

Concentration: Skill of focus and mental control, encompassing feats of memory, recall, and psychological control. 

Conversation: Skill in extracting information without alerting people.

Cybertech: Skill in identifying, understanding, and repairing Cybernetics.

Drive Land Vehicle: Skill of driving land vehicles.

Education: Skill in general knowledge, equivalent to basic school education, knowledge of basic subjects like math and history. 

Electronics/Security Tech: Skill of identifying, understanding, repairing, countering, and installing complex electronic devices like computers, cyber-decks, personal electronics and electronic security systems.

Endurance: The Skill of withstanding harsh environmental conditions.

Evasion: Skill for getting out of the way of someone attacking you in melee.

First Aid: The Skill of applying medical treatments to stabilise a patient or treating the most common critical injuries.

Handgun: Skill for accurately firing handheld projectile weapons.

Heavy Weapons: Skill for accurately firing extremely large projectile weapons, including grenades and rocket launchers. 

Human Perception: The Skill of reading a person’s facial expressions and body language to discern emotional state and to detect deception. 

Interrogation: Skill of forcibly extracting information from people. 

Local Expert: Knowledge of Night City, including locations and customs. 

Melee Weapon: Skill of fighting with melee weapons. 

Paramedic: Advanced skill of applying medical treatments to stablize a patient and treat moderate-level Critical injuries. 

Perception: Skill of noticing what’s around you and spotting hidden things, like clues, traps, and people using the Stealth skill. But not objects hidden with the Conceal/Reveal Object skill. 

Persuasion: Skills of convincing, persuading, or influencing individuals. Also, the ability to talk others into doing what you want. 

Resist Torture/Drugs: Skill of resisting painful effects, including interrogation, torture, and drugs. 

Shoulder Arms: Skill for firing shoulder-braced projectile weapons like rifles and shotguns.

Stealth: Skill of moving quietly, hiding, doing an action discreetly, or otherwise evading detection. Other characters can try and find you with their Perception skill. 

Streetwise: Skill of knowing where to get illegal and contraband things, talking to the criminal element, and avoiding bad situations in bad neighbourhoods. 

Tactics: Skill of managing a large-scale battle effectively and efficiently. A character with this skill usually knows what must be done to direct a battle and how an enemy force may react. 

Wardrobes and Style: Skills of knowing the right clothes to wear, when to wear them, and how to look cool even in a burlap sack. So yes, he wins the drip-off.


Smasher ICE 

Using enough hacking-based abilities on Adam Smasher causes him to use his Smasher ICE. This ability tracks your location and temporarily prevents you from using any quick hacks. 

Frank Horrigan

Super Mutant Physiology 

Frank isn’t human, at least not anymore. Due to exposure to an experimental super soldier serum known as the Forced Evolution Virus, or FEV for short, he’s become a super mutant, though as he’s designed to be superior to all previous mutants, he’d prefer to be referred to as just an experiment. By copying and regenerating the DNA of those exposed to it, FEV causes exposed subjects to mutate into a hulking form far stronger than a normal human. It also allows for longer lifespans and immunity to radiation and disease, though it can also lead to a decrease in intelligence. 

S.P.E.C.I.A.L

In Fallout, everyone is SPECIAL. What is special? Well, it stands for:


Strength: Covers carrying weight and how strong your melee and unarmed attacks are

Perception: Covers awareness of your surroundings, letting you detect enemies faster

Endurance: Covers total health points and how good you are at taking damage

Charisma: Covers your disposition to others and your ability to talk to people

Intelligence: Covers general knowledge, ability to repair equipment, and hacking technology

Agility: Covers how fast you can do actions in combat, as well as reactions for dodging

Luck: Covers a bit of everything, as well as the random chance things work out in your favor


What you see above is Frank Horrigan’s stats. Now, they usually cap out at a sweet 10, but Frank Horrigan has three extra stats in Strength thanks to his armor.

Let Rip 

Once in combat, Frank Horrigan can add the fire rate of his Plasma Rifle to the weapon's damage. 

Legendary Damage

Being special, Frank Horrigan has legendary damage. Due to being a master of his craft, he can use Let Rip one extra time during combat. Not only that, but he undergoes a forceful mutation when he’s reduced to below half his regular health. This increases his speed and lets him spend an AP point to attack with his Plasma Rifle. He also regains the use of Let Rip. 

Big

Being a bigger character than normal also means he’s got more health than normal, and he’ll need to take more damage to be critically damaged, but he also has lower defence. 

Wasteland Warfare Abilities

The miniature squad building game Wasteland Warfare gives several other abilities for Frank to use in combat

  • Barge - He can charge through smaller barriers and walls

  • Aura - Enemies near Frank suffer a -2 penalty on any skill checks not used to attack him

  • Enraged - When he suffers damage, his next attack can reduce armor or deal a damage effect

  • Boom - When activated in battle, he gains 2 critical points

  • Impair - When shooting his rifle, he can directly target and injure a target’s arms at the cost of lowering his damage by 3

  • Unyielding - He’s immune to all conditions

  • Violent - His close combat attacks can reduce armor or deal a damaging effect

  • Unpredictable - When activated in battle, he has a chance to gain an extra action point

Resistances 

Adam Smasher

Frank Horrigan

Feats

Adam Smasher

Overall

  • Night City Legend for over 60 years

  • Defeated Johnny Silverhand, Rouge, David Martinez, and all of David’s gang

  • Matched Morgan Blackhand in combat

Power

Durability

Speed

Frank Horrigan

Overall

  • The most feared soldier of the Enclave

  • Led numerous successful assassinations and missions

  • Kept up in a fight with the Chosen One and their party

  • Is the best final boss in the Fallout series

Power

Durability

Speed

  • Can keep up with the Chosen One in combat

  • Superior to Enclave troops, who can pilot Vertibirds (Mach 0.65)

Scaling

Adam Smasher

Johnny Silverhand + V

The 2 main characters and rivals to Adam Smasher. Adam was able to kill Johnny all the way in 2023, making scaling to even upscaling to his present-day more apparent. While Adam did eventually lose to V in the end, he still was a big enough threat and can hurt V in his boss fight, making scaling straightforward from there.

David Martinez

If even David with the Cyberskeleton designed for Adam himself couldn’t match him, he has no chance against him in his base form. Because of this, Adam Smasher very easily upscales above David Martinez’s regular feats, and scales to what the Cyberskeleton can do.

Other Cyborgs

Being the top dog in all of Cyberpunk and walking through a ton of Night City’s normal scum, it stands clear that Adam Smasher would be above most people’s pay grade, and thus, upscale their feats.

Frank Horrigan

The Chosen One

(yes this image is for The Vault Dweller but Chosen One has no canon design rip bozo)

The Chosen One, the protagonist, the survivor of the village. The Chosen One is our central protagonist within Fallout 2 and comes across Frank Horrigan during the endgame and can beat him. Whether it’s through unarmed combat, guns, or laser weapons, Frank and The Chosen One are relative in combat. 

Other Fallout Protagonists

While Frank Horrigan hasn’t met any of the other Fallout Protagonists, he can scale to them. The most notable chain here is through Fallout 2 Companion Marcus, who appears in Fallout: New Vegas, and can handily be killed by the Courier. As for the other characters? Well, S.P.E.C.I.A.L is a direct indicator of your abilities within Fallout. All Fallout games can be beaten with the lowest of stats, which Frank would be vastly upscaling.

Fallout Companions 

In Fallout, you have companions, and Frank Horrigan can mow down all the companions in Fallout 2. As for other companions, Marcus can fight the New Vegas Companions, and Frank should be vastly upscaling the companions in the other games. 


Various Wastelanders

War, War never changes, and the enemies don’t either. This section is dedicated to the many enemies and NPCs throughout Fallout, all of whom are fodder Frank upscales.

Weaknesses

Adam Smasher

You’d think being completely inhuman without the risk of going insane and losing control would stomp out any weaknesses you could have, but in the case of Adam Smasher, the truth sheds a surprising result. A notable example is pain; since Adam has forgotten what pain felt like until his defeat at the hands of V. Naturally, this would mean any attack a bit higher than his pay grade would completely catch him off guard.


Also, as insanely deadly as his arsenal is, most of it would run out over time. While that wouldn’t stop him from being a massive threat, it does mean Adam can be lured to close quarters eventually, which would leave him more open for attacks given his fighting style is much simpler there.

Frank Horrigan

For as powerful as Frank is, there are a few notable weaknesses. For one, he has low intelligence. His intelligence is so low, in fact, that he had many psychological problems even before becoming an FEV mutant. After becoming a mutant, Frank’s intelligence only drops further, which makes him particularly susceptible to the Enclave’s conditioning and testing programs.


Also, his gear isn’t indestructible. His gun does have an ammo cap and can run out rather quickly in combat, leaving him without his ranged options. Not only that but enough damage to his armor can temporarily stagger him. Of course, his biggest weakness is that if his armor gets removed or he is left without his supplements, he will quickly die. 


Before The Verdict

Adam Smasher

Cyberpunk Explosion Feats

2 major explosion feats for Adam have popped up, and have caused a bit of controversy on their usage. Those being the Arasaka Holocaust explosion and the more recent of the bunch, RED’s bomb destroying an entire neighbourhood. Now, are these viable or fall into the realm that Homelander’s nukes are in? Well, let’s check them out!


Arasaka Holocaust: An infamous scene in Cyberpunk’s world was the event in 2023, where Johnny Silverhand set up a nuke that obliterated not just Arasaka towers but other areas in Night City. Adam has been shown to survive the blast while others didn’t, BUT the distance of where he was from the blast was unclear.


Judging from Johnny’s memories in 2023, Adam was on top of the building before the blast was impacted, but Johnny also sent the bomb down Arasaka towers via shooting down the elevator cable, and later on, we do see the explosion on top of Arasaka towers, making this the best distance we have for Adam’s distance with the blast, especially since that is where he’d fight Morgan Blackhand before the bomb went off. In Cyberpunk RED’s book, it’s mentioned to be a .1 kiloton bomb. Based on the info we had on this + the distance Adam had, the blast Adam would take got around… 0.02 tons of TNT. Not exactly the best feat, huh?


Well don’t worry. THAT was 2023 Adam. This Adam is much more powerful with more impressive feats he’d scale to, especially with our next explosion feat…


Cyberpunk RED’s “Block” Explosion: In Cyberpunk RED, there’s an explosive in game called a big bomb that has a blast radius of an entire “block,” or neighborhood in Cyberpunk slang, and with some enhancements, your player avatars can survive the blast, regardless of the outcome of the 10d6 dice roll. The feat itself is fine, but an argument to them was Adam scaling to them at all. People have their different thoughts on this idea, so let’s look at the 2 edges of this sword.


Argument For: To begin the explanation, we will start with a synopsis of Cyberpunk RED’s hit point system. Hit points in RED are determined by two stats: Willpower (shortened to WILL) and BODY. The equation is 10 + (5[BODY and WILL averaged, rounding up]). With no implants or other augments to the character, the player can max these two stats out at 8. As shown by the health chart, this would put their base health at 50. The big bomb, said 10d6 dice roll, neighbourhood-destroying explosive, should normally obliterate the player. Luckily for them, there are a few pieces of armor and Cyberware that allow them to survive. 

These include Linear Frames Beta and Omega, Light Armorjack, Medium Armorjack, Heavy Armorjack, Flak, and Metalgear (:]).


Now, you may ask why Adam would scale, given that the technology used is something we never see Adam interact with directly, but it’s quite simple. There is a very straightforward argument that would allow Adam to scale to and possibly above the equipment. First, we should clarify that Cyberpunk RED takes place in 2045, 32 years before 2077 and with more primitive technology than what we see in the video game and anime. For a more direct showing of his upscaling, there is Adam destroying a significantly more upgraded exoskeleton: the Cyberskeleton. The Cyberskeleton is a prototype of a new machine developed by Arasaka, built originally for Adam himself, but instead used by David Martinez. In their fight, Adam decimates the Cyberskeleton, tearing it apart with his bare hands. Seeing as this machine is using tech that is decades more advanced and has its own showings listed above, it should outclass things like the Linear Frames from 32 years back.


A more roundabout but still viable way of scaling Adam is V’s ability to damage the Militech Exoskeleton. In Cyberpunk 2077, one of the Cyberpsychos V can pursue is Chase Coley, who utilizes a Militech Centaur unit to ravage a construction site. If V were to engage, they can damage the Centaur with their weapons. 


One argument I’ve seen against the value of this explosion is it being ~170 times stronger than the bomb that was used for the Arasaka Holocaust, which was treated as a major event in-universe. In response, I feel it is necessary to bring up that the Arasaka Holocaust happened in 2023, the third year of the Fourth Corporate War. Not only is this an event 22 years prior to RED, offering plenty of time for the advancement of technology once more, there was another 1-2 years of war after this, which should significantly drive innovation in weapons and battle gear specifically. 


TLDR: Not only do RED’s players use tech that is inferior to 2077-the tech Adam has, but also he has a direct scaling chain towards the Exoskeletons that allow players in RED to survive it. Fundamentally, it makes zero sense for RED’s tech to be so vastly tougher than everything else in Cyberpunk given the age difference. Since RED’s players with inferior exoskeletons and other tech can survive the bomb, and Adam/V can tear through more modern exoskeletons, it would only make sense for Adam to scale to the blast.


Argument Against:


The Big Bomb is certainly a big feat in Cyberpunk, and easily the biggest AP argument. However, we believe the arguments for it scaling to Adam - or anyone, really - are very flawed.


First of all, the calculation does not take surface area into account, due to the fact we don’t actually know how far the player character is from the bomb to begin with when it goes off - saying they tanked it point blank is frankly absurd, and even if you use just a single meter of distance and the surface area of the human body, it would fall from 11 kilotons to 643 tons, a huge difference. However, the fact that this surface area is unaccounted for and the fact we have no real distance to judge off of for how far people are from the bomb when it goes off reliably, it’s incredibly generous to give anyone scaling to the feat in the first place. 


However, even if you were to say that characters from RED would scale, there’s still not a reliable scaling chain to Adam. While yes, technology can improve over time, we don’t actually have any scaling chains to any of the technology in RED that would apply to Adam himself, or anyone in 2077. Just vaguely saying they’d scale because of better technology is odd to use when the progression of technology even in our world isn’t so black and white - we have “better” technology and weapons then the Tsar Bomba, sure, but that doesn’t make them more powerful then it. 


Also, third of all, and we hate to be the ones to say it, this is an incredible outlier for the series. Even using the lowballed surface area version, this feat is almost 10x greater than any other Cyberpunk feat, which combined with the inability to know the distance the characters are from it and the lack of any reliable scaling chains to it, mean that we consider the feat pretty dead. At best, it could be used in conjunction with similar higher ends from other series.

Johnny and V’s Memories

A major plot point in Cyberpunk 2077 is V and Johnny’s relationship, and how V had gone through Johnny Silverhand’s memories once he had Relic in his system. A question arises, “could you potentially get a processing feat for this?” To that, it’s fairly complicated.


V and Johnny do straight up have dialogue that their memories are intersecting with each other, as well as times in the game where you look through Johnny’s memories to uncover information, like with how you meet Alt Cunningham with the Voodoo Boys (the worst gang in Cyberpunk), and the beginning where you play as Johnny. The big issue is applying this to speed in the first place. It took a fair amount of time for Relic to actually kick in-all the way until V got betrayed by Dexter DeShawn, actually. Not having a timeframe is definitely the worst part, albe you can come up with one depending on how long it took for Goro to pick you up.


Regardless, even if you argue processing speed, it wouldn’t get that high. Johnny was 34 up until he died, and to put into perspective, a 69 old man processed in 11 seconds only got relativistic. This is hardly the best speed feat you can come up for with Cyberpunk.


Another quick side note, while it IS heavily theorized that Johnny was lying about his memories, there isn’t a direct confirmation of that theory, as well as them being the only visuals we have in 2023. They will be used as sort of a guideline, but can be taken with a grain of salt.

Frank Horrigan

Nuke Feats 

Perhaps the most contentious topic in the Fallout VS debating community is Nuke Scaling, or the argument that characters can scale to the strength of nuclear blasts. This does make sense, as given the central conceit of the series is about nukes causing an apocalypse, it’d narratively raise some odd implications if you assume characters can actually tank a nuclear blast VS wise. In this section, we will be breaking down each nuclear explosion, the people who arguably tank them, and discussing their individual validity. 


Moira, Gerard, and the Megaton Nuke: Perhaps the most iconic instance of a bomb dropping in the series is from Fallout 3, where the Lone Wanderer can potentially nuke Megaton. First off, it is worth noting that Megaton getting nuked is a choice that we can safely say canonically did not happen, as not only is the Lone Wanderer generally treated as a good guy in lore who wouldn’t do this (water bottle donation notwithstanding), we do have a direct confirmation from the Afterword of the Prima Game Guide, which was written with help from some of the game’s developers, that they ended up disarming the nuke canonically. 


But even ignoring this, while there are a few characters who seemed to have survived it, context makes it fairly questionable to assume they were actually in the blast. Most notably, there is Moira, as if you go back to Megaton after the blast, she’s there implying she was blasted by it, but survived and became a ghoul. However, if you ask her about it, she clarifies she was not actually in the town at the time, and even directly comments she was lucky to not be, implying even she thinks she would have died if she was actually blasted by it.


In Broken Steel, there’s also some characters who arguably survive it from the Holy Light Monastery, an area added from the DLC, as Mother Curie and Brother Gerard were also turned to ghouls after the fact. But much like Moira, there’s not much reason to assume they were in the blast. Not only is the Monastery a good distance away from the town, but the fact Gerard specifically mentions that they just came to Megaton implies they were not there when the blast happened. While this statement could be interpreted to mean he’s saying they were hit with the blast, “Atom’s Light” is one of many terms used by the Children of Atom typically to describe radiation, not the actual nuclear blasts themselves, for which the proper term would be “division”. So this statement is him explicitly confirming he was only irradiated by the blast’s fallout, not that he was within the blast itself. As such, this blast is inapplicable.


Nuclear Anomaly Perk: Also from Fallout 3's Broken Steel DLC, there's the Nuclear Anomaly perk that allows the Lone Wanderer to explode when low on health. The description of the perk directly describes it as causing a nuclear explosion, so does that mean the Lone Wanderer can just scale to the explosions of a nuke by way of just making one? Well, first off, it's worth noting that other sources describing the perk have just used the more general term of explosion. But beyond that, it's also worth noting that a "nuclear explosion" with no other description does automatically mean it's meant to be comparable to a stronger nuke. The term "nuclear explosion" just refers to any explosion caused by a nuclear reaction, not just that of a nuclear bomb.  


Why clarify this? Well, unlike all of the other cases of nuclear blasts in the series, this is explicitly not caused by an actual nuclear bomb, it's just the Lone Wanderer directly creating it. So there is no real reason to assume the explosion they create is automatically as strong as a nuke. Especially given the blast is a very small radius equivalent to the blast radius of a mini-nuke, which are far lower in power than the bombs which are more directly part of the other cases mentioned here. And this does have real life precedence, as the mini nuke launching Fat Man is fairly similar to the M28/M29 Davy Crockett Weapon System, which is a nuclear bomb launcher that launches nuclear warheads worth only 10 - 20 Tons of TNT. 


And it's also worth noting that this perk, by design, is not an attack the Lone Wanderer actively does. It's a defensive one that's used when you're low on health, at which point it will activate involuntarily. This means the idea that it directly correlates to the Lone Wanderer's personal physicality is also rather questionable, as it's not meant to be a process they can just do whenever they want. While the blast is one the Lone Wanderer survives, the fact it’s still able to damage your armor and cripple your limbs while healing you could indicate the Wanderer surviving the blast is just meant to be game mechanics. Which is especially so given neither description of the perk directly calls attention to the fact it can still damage your armor and limbs, which could indicate it’s a bug. And the blast’s power is also completely unaffected by your stats, so the argument that anyone can scale to it because they have higher stats is also fairly questionable. Ultimately, this feat is debatable, though it’s a bit too vague to be used as more than supporting evidence, and given context it’s unlikely to give particularly impressive numbers on its own. 


Cooper Howard, Fallout Show, and The Great War: During the opening of the Fallout show, Cooper Howard and his daughter are at a party when the bombs drop, with Cooper Howard surviving and becoming The Ghoul. The only issue? We don’t know how Cooper survived the blast or how close to its impact he was. And considering how it’s been directly stated that the people who survived the Great War did so specifically by finding hiding spots or not being in areas where there were nuke impacts and every case of characters outside the Vaults surviving the War also lines up with that idea, it’s fairly unlikely his survival was due to tanking one of these nukes offscreen. So this feat is inapplicable. 


Codsworth, Vault-Tec Rep, and the Fallout 4 Nuke: Fallout 4 opens with you seeing the detonation of the nuclear bomb. While your character is frozen in the vault, multiple characters seem to survive this explosion. You can find Codsworth tending to the garden when you unfreeze, the Ghoulified Vault-Tec Rep you met at the beginning of the game, and your entire neighbourhood turned into feral ghouls. So? What happened? Did all of them manage to survive the nuclear bomb? Well, no. If you re-look into the Fallout 4 explosion it takes place incredibly far from where your character is located. This is amplified by the existence of the Glowing Sea. For those who’re wondering, The Glowing Sea is a dedicated part of the map surrounding the Crater of Atom, where the detonation happened. Guess what? Nobody survived the impact site. The Fallout 4 characters were nowhere near the nuke. So the explosion itself is inapplicable to use. 


However, the bomb launches a shockwave right as you sink into the vault, and it should be fair to subject people like the Vault-Tec Rep and your neighbours to this shockwave as they were still outside. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to calc this. 


Fallout 76 and the Scorchbeasts: In everyone’s favorite Fallout game, there’s the big final boss of the original in the blatantly remodeled dragons from Skyrim Scorchbeasts. Now they are notable due to a mechanic in the game where players are able to launch nukes at targets on the map, since as this video breaks down, if you try to get smart and nuke these bosses, they’ll be unaffected by it. While this might seem like a fairly clear cut instance of them tanking the nukes, the issue is that they don’t take any damage from the nukes, as getting hit by them ends up resetting the boss fight entirely. This suggests that the Scorchbeasts not dying is simply a result of game mechanics, as it would be a pretty big oversight if players were able to cheese the final boss just by getting their buddy to nuke it. The lore around them also makes the idea of them canonically tanking it questionable, as the entire point of the 76 PCs getting access to these nukes was specifically to kill the Scorchbeasts and reseal the fissures they came out of, meaning the Scorchbeasts being able to just tank nuclear hellfire doesn’t make much sense from a narrative perspective. As such, this is inapplicable. 


Fallout Shelter Vault Door Busting: In the mobile game Fallout Shelter where you’re able to build your own Vault, there’s a mechanic where occasionally enemies will attack your vault by directly busting their way through the vault’s door. This is notable as other bits of lore have indicated Vault Doors are designed to directly survive nuclear blasts, and given the characters doing this are random fodder enemies, most characters could scale. However, multiple issues make this assumption unjustified once you break it down more. First off, while the element of Vault Doors being able to survive nukes is a fairly consistent statement, it’s also been consistently stated that, because the doors can tank nukes, they’re impossible for enemies to breach from the outside forcibly, so this mechanic is already fairly contradictory to the lore of the main games. It’s also worth noting that the verifiability of Vault doors being able to directly tank nukes is itself questionable, as not only are these statements mainly from Vault-Tec, a shady company that has regularly lied about details with the Vaults (ie: the various experiments no one knew about until they were sealed in them), in the one case of a Vault door actually getting directly nuked in canon with Vault 87, the nuke damaged said door beyond repair while trapping everyone inside. Finally, Fallout Shelter, in general, is in a pretty questionable spot canon-wise, as not only are even basic details like the location of the game’s Vault left fairly vague, it also includes oddities like having a character from Fallout 76 be alive and well despite all the other named characters being from almost 200 years later canon wise, as well as having various characters from the show, which takes place in Los Angeles, be in a game that otherwise has more evidence of being somewhere on the East Coast. So this is ultimately inapplicable.


Lonesome Road’s Warheads: The most solid case for this argument comes from the Lonesome Road DLC of New Vegas. There’s a recurring obstacle during the gameplay of the game in nuclear warheads which the Courier can manually detonate. And both enemies and the player can survive being right next to them as they go off. Not much to clarify for context, as you can directly do this in gameplay even with endurance at one and no armor. But the issue is in the question of how strong these warheads are, as just measuring the blast in the game only yields 0.107 Tons of TNT. While canonically they could be considered stronger, as their real life equivalent, the LGM-25C Titan II ICBM, has an explosive ordnance equivalent to 9 Megatons, that still leaves a very large disparity between how strong they are in game and how strong they could be claimed to be. However, the game itself contradicts this, as these same warheads are used on the Courier’s Mile to create a far bigger explosion than shown normally in gameplay, lending credence to the idea of them being stronger than 0.107 tons of TNT. Though the bigger issue is that, as the rest of this section shows, all of the other potential instances of scaling to the power of a nuke in the series have major caveats, meaning this element can likely be considered to be an outlier, as this is the singular verifiable case in the series of someone directly surviving the blast of a nuke. However, you could argue for it, as it is undeniably a direct instance within gameplay. As such, this feat is ultimately debatable.


Speaking of which, there are a few more arguable cases of characters tanking nukes during the story of the DLC. If you choose to nuke the NCR and/or Legion in the ending, you can visit the new locations of Long 15 and Dry Wells, which are the areas that just got nuked and are now inhabited by a bunch of irradiated soldiers of each faction. While this could imply these enemies tanked the blast, the issue is that, like Cooper’s survival, we have no real context for how they survived the blast or how close they were to them, as they’re permanently aggressive enemies you can’t talk to with no lore clarifying anything. There’s also the enemies in The Courier’s Mile, which was similarly made deadly due to a nuke you launch in story, but with that one we explicitly see the nuke explode in midair over the location, meaning none of the enemies in the area got exposed to the blast, only the fallout of it. So yeah, these would be inapplicable.


Conclusion: Nuke scaling remains a fairly debatable idea for Fallout stats, as while the Courier surviving one is relatively clear-cut and the Lone Wanderer being able to create them could give validity depending on the interpretation, all of the other arguable cases of this in the series have context that deems them inapplicable, which can also cast doubt on the validity of the other feats in terms of consistency. Multiple people on this blog have differing opinions on how valid this line of scaling is, so this is ultimately something we’ve left up to the reader to determine the validity of. 

Fallout Speed

Another notable speed feat for Fallout stats involves VATS, the special targeting system used to directly target enemies that’s built into every Pip-Boy, and which are used by most of the protagonists of the series. Rather notably,  in 3/New Vegas, when it’s in use it causes everything in the world, including projectiles, to be seen as frozen in time, which can even include lasers. This is notable because the Wired Reflexes perk from 3, which increases your chance to hit in VATS, directly describes itself as enhancing your character’s reaction speed, which implies VATS freezing projectiles means it enhances the user’s reactions to the level where it can view these as frozen, which gives them massively faster than light speeds. While that is pretty impressive, the issue for this debate in particular is that this is something that is only possible with VATS. This is a very specific and temporary ability only a few in the Wasteland have, and there are no cases in the series of anyone directly blitzing the speed of VATS while it’s active. This means that Frank, and for that matter anyone in the series who does not have access to VATS, should not be able to scale to these speeds. 

Verdict

Team Adam Smasher 


Stats


Adam Smasher and Frank Horrigan, due to their status as big monstrous bodyguards have amassed quite a large list of feats and accomplishments overall, but how do they stack up to each other? Well, let’s get to it, starting with strength.


Off the bat, Adam and Frank have very similar feats from one shotting normal enemies in their own verses, tank gunfire and explosions, and more. Both are also on top of the food chains throughout their respective universes overall prior to their defeat as well, making them upscale in strength as well. Then we get to the actual scaling overall, and, surprisingly, both are pretty relative in terms of strength there! Adam destroyed the Cyberskeleton, which was able to make a massive crater worth around 74 tons of TNT. Pretty consistent with V surviving a oil tanker explosion worth around 63 tons of TNT, putting Adam in the City Block range safely.


As for Frank, he can tank lasers that can vaporize the Robo Scorpion, worth around 63 tons of TNT as well, which also gets city block, as well as the Nuclear Anomaly perk from the Lone Wanderer being very similar to the Fat Man explosions that got 20 tons of TNT, putting him in city block ranges.


Comparing the 2’s safest ends, both are pretty relative to each other, with Adam having a slight edge overall but it’s not to where he’s one-shotting. THAT however, can change when we cover their highest ends overall: The RED’s Big Bomb explosion and Courier’s warhead feats.


Let’s cover the Courier’s feat real quick. Yes, the explosions Courier has ARE worth 9 megatons if you compare the bombs to their real life counterparts, and they can survive the blast point blank. This would be able to beat out the Big Bomb by a significant amount. The issue however is this: it is an insane outlier not just through stats but also narrative purposes as well.


As we covered in the BtV, out of all the various nuke feats in Fallout, only 2 of them are valid, and one we already covered only gets to city block. The fact that in game, the explosion isn’t NEARLY as big as well as every other showcasing with nukes being a complete narrative threat makes the 9 megaton value extremely wonky to put in for Frank’s stats. Nukes in Fallout are constantly meant to be unsurvivable by the narrative-it’s why the entire premise of the series is characters needing to get into the vaults, after all. Giving Courier the full yield and scaling it to Frank is incredibly disingenuous and goes against the entire narrative of Fallout as a series.


But what about the RED explosion for Adam? Well, for starters, there’s no way Adam shouldn’t scale to the blast itself. He has a direct scaling chain to defense tech in RED that allows people to survive the blast by destroying the Cyberskeleton and V destroying upgraded linear frames from certain Cyberpsychos. Cyberpunk as a series constantly evolves its technology as time goes on, so there’s no reason why 2077’s tech wouldn’t be comparable, if outright superior to RED, which takes place in 2045.


RED’s players are able to survive the Big Bomb, whose radius can destroy an entire neighborhood, calcing around 857 tons. Obviously, much higher than Frank CAN ever get. And this isn’t comparable to the Courier’s feat in terms of debatable high ends. Courier’s warhead feat goes completely against the entire premise of Fallout, while this is a normal thing that can happen in Cyberpunk RED’s gameplay, and Cyberpunk as a series doesn’t have a huge narrative issue with this being valid.


The best argument you can make for it being a narrative issue is how Adam got injured after the Night City Holocaust but that WAS several decades before RED, where technology has advanced significantly. The blast during that feat was around . 1 kilotons of TNT anyways-around Multi City Block same as the RED blast, so it can be argued that the weaponry has evolved since then, as well as the people. 


All in all, most of us in Team Adam Smasher don’t have much issues with Adam scaling to the blast, which would put his strength significantly above Frank overall. This is very debatable though, and Adam still can win without it. But what about speed? What good is power if you can’t land hits with it, after all?


This is where things get interesting. Both Adam and Frank can scale to regular NC mercs/wastelanders in their own series that can dodge lasers and microwave beams. Both calced around 3.9C to Adam and 4C to Frank, putting them around even speed…at first.


See, despite the numbers being so similar to each other, Adam has a MUCH greater upscaling chain to speed than Frank does. His FTL feats came all the way in 2020- FAR more primitive and weaker than 2077, with Adam basically being top dog there. While Frank is also upscaling his feat, his is notably less impressive overall. To put it simply.


Adam = V > David with the Cyberskeleton >>>> David >>>> 2045’s Mercs >>>>>>>> 2020 Mercs who dodged the beams


Frank > Super Mutants >>> Death Claws >>>> Regular Wastelanders.


It’s just not even close to an equivalent upscaling chain overall, but even if you don’t buy this, Adam has one more way to guarantee speed: The Sandevistan.


The Sandevistan has consistently blitzed people with relative speed to those who use it, and Adam has it always Active overall. The fact he still can attack while it’s open means he can always pester Frank with attacks while Frank would have little success to land a shot on Adam.


All in all, while both have pretty even strength on low ends, Adam has an easier higher end to take the AP edge, while also upscaling higher in speed than Frank, if not outright taking it with the Sandevistan. 


Arsenal & Abilities 


With such hulking characters, you’d better believe they have packed a lot of firepower as a whole. However, comparing their gear, it’s sorta clear who has the edge overall.


First off, Adam obviously has an enormous edge in terms of quantity. With several machine guns, pistols, shotguns, and explosive weapons against one person with only a plasma rifle and knife, Adam has a lot more stuff to toss against Frank overall. This is also extremely important for a war of attrition if the fight lasts too long. Eventually, Frank would run out of shots to use in the rifle where Adam would still have plenty more weapons to deal damage at a distance.


If Adam somehow loses all his ranged options, he still has his Slamdance Hammer to deal damage to Frank, which given it’s ability to use it’s rocket thruster, would definitely be more of a hindrance than Frank’s knife. It also lowering armor durability would also mean a close up fight would weaken Frank long term and allow Adam to cause more havoc to the Enclave soldier. Speaking of armor…


A major advantage Adam has IS his armor piercing weapons. His pop up shotguns and chaingun having rounds designed to get through armor is a huge issue for Frank. We seen Power Armor struggle with armor piercing weapons before, and since Frank can’t live without his armor, any damage that bypasses his armor would be way more devastating than anything Frank could do to Adam. While the Power Armor can help resist some of Adam’s weaponry, it still would deal damage, and Frank would eventually be overwhelmed.


While it can be argued for the plasma rifle to disintegrate Adam, that usually has to kill first, which to his credit, would be a focus for Frank given it’s his only ranged option. However, it does mean Adam won’t die in a single hit with how it functions, and as we covered, Adam’s Sandevistan means Frank landing a lucky shot would be really tricky due to the speed blitz it offers. Adam’s heat resistance also can help deal with some of the effects of the plasma. It could be used to erase Adam’s weaponry, but Adam can also do the same thing and target Frank’s rifle, which screws Frank over way harder than it does for Adam.


Comparing their skills and other tools they got in the Table Top RPGs as well, none of them really change the tide of combat, say for Adam having ways to heal back some armor, although it’s not as important in the long run. Still, Frank needs to put more effort into killing Adam more than what it takes for Adam to kill Frank, and again, it’s not like Frank can end the fight in a single shot and will run out of rifle ammo quicker.


Essentially, Frank has to cope with a massive arsenal gap with a much more limited weapon in terms of ammunition against someone who’d be very hard to hit thanks to the speed gap with the Sandevistan. He simply has no way to not get overwhelmed in the long run. Adam very handily takes this category.


Tertiary Factors


Obviously when it comes to these 2, both have had extensive history when it comes to combat and violence, but who has the final edges needed to secure this win?


In terms of experience, Adam Smasher actually has the edge overall. He’s twice as old as Frank is, and has gotten into far more missions that revolve around actual fighting than Frank has ever done. Even though both haven’t fought a lot of people against their own power levels before, Frank’s more reliant on intimidation to stop threats that can match his strength, which won’t work on Adam Smasher given the experience difference.


However, when it comes to who’s more skilled up close, both are pretty relative, reliant on brute force and have matched more skilled reliant characters before. Neither of them are going to be reliant on a close quarters fight to score a win because of this, and it only adds to the point that Adam is much older than Frank is, and has gotten into more scraps than Frank has ever done.


Pain tolerance is a tricky one, as both can tank huge hits and keep on going. Adam’s best form of pain tolerance is him losing an arm and heating up badly during his fight against V, yet still keeps on trying to kill him with no signs of slowing down. Frank however, would still keep fighting even if all his limbs are cut off and still will move even when he’s cut in half. Pretty significant difference overall, and WOULD give Frank that advantage, but it won’t be one that’ll change the tide of the fight instantly.


Frank still has to deal with an enemy who’s twice as old as he is, who’s much faster overall, and has ways around his power armor and can tear it apart. It’s also worth noting that being cut in half and losing all his limbs isn’t the most combat applicable anyways, as Frank was unable to do much under that state. Adam at least still can fight even when a limb is off after prolonged periods of fighting.


And as for intelligence, Super Mutants like Frank are explicitly a lot less impressive in this category. Frank’s already low intelligence allowed his mind to be conditioned to make him even more loyal and he only has an intelligence stat of 3. Adam however, has an intelligence stat of 6, yet has a 10 across all other intelligence skills, and has shown to be more than a simple brute in better cases than Frank has.


When it comes to tertiary factors overall, Adam Smasher has more going for him in this case. He’s been in more fights than Frank has ever had, is a lot smarter overall, matches Frank in close quarters combat, etc. Frank’s only advantage in this area is his pain tolerance, but it’s not something he’d be able to rely on to help carry the fight. Say for one segment, Adam takes this category.


 

Conclusion

“None leave the slaughterhouse! NOT ALIVE!”

Advantages:

  • Even in strength with more reasonable ends, but has an easier argument to his high end to AP stomp

  • Upscales higher in speed in base, and outright blitzes with the Sandevistan

  • Much bigger roster in terms of weaponry 

  • Slight armor healing helps with a war of attrition 

  • More experienced in actual combat 

  • More intelligent 

  • Can bypass Frank’s Power armor with armor piercing rounds

  • One of few Anime villains who prevailed over the power of friendship

  • Cyberpunk 2077 is a amazing game now pls play it 

Equal: 

  • Hand to hand combat skills

Disadvantages: 

  • Plasma Rifle could erase some of Adam’s weaponry

  • Pain tolerance isn’t as effective

  • Not as much resistances overall

  • 2077’s original release

  • Failed against the power of revenge after Edgerunners 


All in all, while looking at these 2 behemoths, there was a fair amount to talk about. In the end, however, Arasaka’s Boogeyman has just about everything he needed in order to take the win.


Ignoring dubious high ends, both Adam and Frank are relative in terms of stats, with both landing in the city block range. While speed is calculably similar, Adam would upscale higher than Frank, if not outright blitzing with the Sandevistan, which blitzes characters at relative speed. Frank would struggle to land any meaningful damage once it’s active, and Adam ALWAYS has his active.


Weaponry isn’t exactly close, as Frank only has one gun vs Adam’s several devastating tools, and it would run out much quicker. Adam having multiple ways to weaken and even break Frank’s armor and weaponry would be excruciating for the Enclave soldier, and the fact he’s reliant on his armor to survive means that stuff like the Hammer and Armor piercing rounds would quickly put him down, and only Adam has any way to undo damage with his armor healing cybernetics.


Adam is twice as old as Frank, and has gotten into far more fights and missions than Frank ever has. Frank mainly relies on his intimidation to secure victories, which won’t work on Adam Smasher given his more combat-thirsty attitude. Nothing Frank has can really surprise Adam before being quickly shut down.


And while Frank’s pain tolerance can help him last long in the fight, it still doesn’t help the fact that he’s running on a time limit to kill Adam with his limited tools and his vulnerability to Adam’s armor-damaging weapons. You really have to bend backwards a bit to avoid the fact that things just favor Adam way more than Frank in the long run, and what advantages Frank has do not help him enough to save him.


This may seem extremely shocking to a lot of people, as most people prior to the blog believed Frank would take this. However, looking at the bigger picture, Adam Smasher has basically everything he needed to take down Enclave’s strongest soldier. Maybe you didn’t Ara-See this coming, but to be Frank, any chances of Horrigan taking this will Fall-out of his reach.


The winner is Adam Smasher.

Team Frank Horrigan 


Stats


Let’s not beat around the bush, we’ve been here long enough. Let’s go over the stats for both characters.


Starting with more reasonable ends, both Adam and Frank would scale to around 60 to 70 tons of TNT, with the Courier’s basic laser pistol being able to disintegrate the giant Robo Scorpion, and the Cyberskeleton feat. Both of these get similar ranges, and Adam and Frank should upscale these to similar degrees, with Frank being able to one-shot Deathclaws who are far above a basic laser pistol, and Adam defeating the Cyberskeleton with ease.


Anyways, let’s talk about higher ends. Both the Big Bomb and the Courier Warhead feat are pretty ridiculous feats to use, and we think they’re both equally ridiculous to use - however, if you were to argue one, the Courier feat has more ground to stand on. At least with it, we have a distance for the character who tanked it from the bomb to begin with, and narratively within Lonesome Road this isn’t even the only nuke characters survive of this variety - the Courier’s Mile and you nuking the NCR and Legion, while we have no distance, have confirmed survivors of the locations you nuked, we fight them after all. Meanwhile, the Big Bomb is inconsistent with not only earlier showings in Cyberpunk, but feats later on being so much less powerful with the likes of the Cyberskeleton. Both are narrative outliers that make little sense with either series’ depiction of power, and using one over the other is unfair. As a result, if you use AP high ends for both, Frank should be massively stronger; realistically, however, they’re relative in AP, and that’s the take we’ll use for the rest of this verdict.


As for speed, both of them should scale to laser dodging feats which get similar ranges - however, we’d like to point out that Adam’s feat, due to being from the TTRPG, could be aim-dodging and we don’t really have a way to prove it’s not, one way or the other. The Fallout 3 feat would be from basic wastelanders and is probably not aim-dodging, meaning Frank is more solidly in the FTL range. In addition, basic wastelanders Frank pretty obviously upscales to a serious degree, same as Adam - as the most basic of people can do it. 


From there, your upscaling chain would go:


Frank > The Chosen One > Deathclaws > Enclave Soldiers Raiders> Regular Wastelanders, which matches Adam’s similar upscaling arguments.


If you argued the Sandevistan, however, you could make a case for Adam being much faster, but due to the issues with Adam’s similar FTL feat, we’ll say that Frank is reliably a bit faster overall.


So, for stats, AP should be relative, and Frank should be slightly faster with equal leeway to both.

Arsenal and Abilities

At first glance, this category may seem like an easy sweep for Adam - he has a much bigger arsenal, after all! However, quantity does not equal quality, and this is very much so a case of that.


First of all, most of Adam’s guns would be largely dead weight. Due to the way Frank’s power armor works, Adam’s guns would be blocked by the power armor, due to it heavily resisting damage from normal guns in-game - that is its purpose after all, to tank bullets and make them deal minimal damage to the person in the suit. This is pretty consistent across all Fallout media, and there’s no reason to think Adam’s guns would be so much better as to be able to do anything to it, especially since Frank’s armor is outright upgraded from the best Enclave armor, which is upgraded from the suits of armor we see casually tank bullets repeatedly. As well, Adam’s other primary weapons, explosives, are also things power armor is designed to tank and is shown in gameplay to heavily resist, meaning that for the most part, Adam’s guns would be not very effective on Frank - they’re all things power armor is designed to deal with, and as such would be rendered moot factors.


That’s a lot of Adam’s arsenal rendered at the very least less effective on Frank in comparison to him, due to the fact he resists most of it. Admittedly, Adam’s hammer would work on Frank if given the chance, but Adam’s strategy is usually to fight at a distance, and the fact that the majority of his weapons are going to be dealing less damage to Frank then Frank’s plasma rifle is to him, this renders said weapon much more useful in the long run. 


In addition, plasma rifles in Fallout are shown to be able to disintegrate enemies and objects, effects that Adam has never actually resisted before. As a result of this, you could argue that Frank’s rifle, an upgraded plasma rifle, would be able to disintegrate Adam on contact.  In addition, none of the weapons in Cyberpunk Adam has dealt with would be anywhere near as hot as plasma, and he has no proof he’d be able to tank this disintegration. Even if you argued that it needs to do lethal damage to disintegrate you - there’s no real evidence of this, mind you - Adam would take serious damage from any of these shots, and his weapons would likely be destroyed should said blasts ever touch any of them.


Now, what about armor piercing rounds? These should work on Frank, right? Well, we actually disagree with this assessment. In Fallout 2 itself, there’s a specific way to bypass enemy armor - critical shots. However, Frank’s armor is entirely immune to critical shots, unlike every single other enemy in the game. This also adds up due to his power armor being specially designed to accommodate his needs in comparison to every single other variant we’ve seen in the series - applying the weaknesses of lesser power armor to his is not really fair, especially when an in-game method of piercing through armor outright does not work on him. 


You may be asking about this in relation to other versions of power armor being non-resistant to armor piercing rounds, but Frank’s armor is specially designed for him and is the apex of Enclave science, so there’s no real reason to not give him this, as it's consistent for his armor to be better than other power armor.


So, what’s left? Well, Adam does have one option that would be more useful on Frank - his gravity hammer. This can reduce the effectiveness of armor - however, while this option may seem nice to have, it has a critical flaw. It can be only used two times before needing to be refilled, meaning that Adam can only really use it twice before having to reload, while Frank’s melee option, being a …big knife, doesn’t have this issue. In addition, said knife, due to it being able to inflict piercing damage due to being a… knife, would allow for Frank to deal more damage in close range, such as cutting limbs and the like. If the fight ever goes to close quarters, while Adam’s options aren’t terrible, Frank’s lack of limitations on his options would ensure an edge in the long term.


Overall, while Adam may have a much wider arsenal, Frank’s defenses ensure that most of it is rendered ineffective, and his plasma rifles’ disintegration properties as well as his superior options in close quarters give him an edge in any fight, either from up close or afar. As a result, Frank should have a definitive lead in arsenal and abilities.

Tertiary Factors

Tertiary factors matter in a debate like this more than you’d think, so let’s get into them.


To get the obvious out of the way, Adam is pretty obviously a lot more experienced and a fair bit more intelligent than Frank. Frank’s been noted to be not very intelligent, which is what made him such an easy enforcer to make for the Enclave in the first place, and Adam is twice his age. In addition to that, Adam has a lot more experience in fights to begin with, having lived for so much longer and fought many more opponents than Frank.


However, in terms of pain tolerance, it should be no surprise that Frank should take it by a control mile. Sure, Adam can fight with one limb cut off, but Frank’s able to keep fighting with his arms, legs, chest, and head all crippled, and still keep on going. In addition, he’s even still able to move and talk with his body split in half. In a fight like this, where both are fairly tanky and able to deal with a lot of damage, Frank being able to fight on for longer is a key advantage that would be notable.


Both are also pretty relative in terms of skill in close quarters, relying primarily on brute force and their weapons - albeit, Frank having a weapon that isn’t reliant on finite resources would give him an edge here, though not much of one.


Overall, Adam should be smarter, more experienced, and just as skilled, giving him an edge in tertiary factors. However, Frank’s superior pain tolerance is incredibly important to the fight overall, and would give him a significant edge despite these downsides.

Conclusion

“Your ride’s over, mutie. Time to die.” 

Advantages:

  • Much stronger with high ends for both

  • Minor speed advantage 

  • Resistances render much of Adam’s arsenal far less damaging then it otherwise would be

  • Power armor could be argued to counter armor piercing rounds via immunity to critical shots, which bypass armor 

  • Plasma could disintegrate Adam or his weapons

  • Melee weapons aren’t reliant on fuel to use long-term, giving him an edge in any close quarters battle

  • Superior showings of pain tolerance

  • Fallout 2 is a masterpiece, play it

Equal:

  • Strength with reasonable ends for both

  • CQC skill

Disadvantages:

  • Less experienced in direct combat

  • Less intelligent

  • Less overall equipment in his arsenal 

Overall, while Adam certainly had many things going for him, Frank carried all the edges he needed to obtain victory.


In terms of stats, both should be relative in strength, and while both have similar speed arguments, Frank’s are more easily provable to be legitimate, giving him a slight edge in that area as well. Due to this, the fight will more likely come down to their arsenal and abilities, and in that regard, Frank has a pretty big advantage.


While Adam may have a very large arsenal, almost every single weapon he has are the things that power armor is designed to tank - bullet fire, rockets, explosives, these are what normal suits of power armor are able to deal with on a daily basis, and Frank’s is the best of the best. In addition, while armor piercing rounds may seem useful at a first glance, Frank’s own immunity to critical shots shows that his armor should be strong enough to tank even those, rendering the majority of Adam’s guns moot.


Meanwhile, Frank may only have a single gun, but said gun is something Adam has never dealt with before, and with plasma rifles being able to disintegrate people and objects entirely, something Adam wouldn’t be prepared to face at first glance, giving Frank ways around both Adam’s durability and his bigger arsenal.


But what if Adam brings the fight to close quarters? Well, then he has to deal with his hammer having fuel to deal with after being used twice, while Frank’s knife doesn’t have the same restrictions, meaning that while the hammer being able to weaken armor is a notable trait, it’s not one Adam could necessarily capitalize on.


It doesn’t help that Frank’s superior pain tolerance would give Adam a hard time in terms of shutting him down for good in close quarters, and his knife would give him ample time to cut Adam apart if he tried to bring the fight to close quarters.


While Adam may be smarter and more experienced, he’s also never faced an opponent quite like Frank to begin with, which means that while these advantages are notable, they’re not concrete, and Frank’s pain tolerance would give him the endurance he needs to defeat Adam for good.


Overall, Adam’s intelligence, large arsenal, and experience would certainly pose a threat to most opponents, but Frank’s relative stats, resistances, plasma rifle, and endurance would make sure that in the Fallout of this battle, it’d be Adam to be smashed.


The winner is Frank Horrigan.

Final Vote

Team Adam Smasher: [3] (Toppat Torchwick, Fenic, CapeJedi)

Team Frank Horrigan: [2] (Saul, Door) 

Please Read 


I’ve tried to write this multiple times, sorry if it comes out rambly. If you know me, this is the norm. Hi guys, Saul here. Firstly, thank you guys for reading the blog. Big thank you to everyone who worked on this blog, including people who had to drop out; they worked so hard to bring you the blog you see today. 


As for me? Well, as some of you might have heard, things haven’t been great. To not beat around the bush, I neglected my mental health for the sake of this blog series. Without getting super into it, neglecting my mental health has led me to hurt some good friends of mine. And while things have been better recently (by, like, 1%) it’s clear that something needs to change. I still like being in this community, but I need an overhaul on my mental health and outlook on life.


 My original plan for the summer was to do a big blog that covered a particularly big matchup (again, not getting into specifics), but that fell through. So, for the rest of May and half of June (basically a month from now), all Saul VS Blog productions will cease entirely. This includes the main wave, bonus, and any other projects. While some might be sad that they won’t get anything from me, I promise that when I do come back, we’ll be hitting things hard. I’ll be doing bigger matchups, duo projects, and some third thing I can’t think of. 


But thank you guys for still supporting me. At the end of the day, I am just one guy, so the fact that people like my content and even look up to me is insane. But again, I’ve neglected my mental health and lost alot due to these blogs, and that isn’t great. Again, even if things are getting better for me, they’re still awful. So I’m going to take time for myself to improve how I feel.

I love you guys and see you next time, thanks for reading.

“I survived because the fire inside me burnt brighter than the fire around me.” -Joshua Graham 
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