Does the damage of a melee weapon, displayed in the pipboy reflect the damage of a regular attack or power attack?

In the pipboy a melee weapon's damage is shown, but i'm not sure whether that damage is from a regular or power attack.

On a similar note, does holding down the attack button for melee weapons the equivalent of doing a power attack by simply pressing ALT? (going by default controls)

1 Answer

The displayed damage is the regular damage. Power attacks do extra.

The Nukapedia page on Melee Damage states that

• Melee and Unarmed attacks in V.A.T.S. do twice as much normal damage, but this doubling is done before Strength is added.
• Power attacks in real-time combat also double normal damage.

The damage was doubled in previous Fallout games, but the Damage Resistance page says that, for close combat damage in Fallout 4,

PowerAttackMulti = 1.5

So it's possible the multiplier may have changed. Regardless of the multiplier, power attacks do more damage, rather than normal attacks doing less.