However, some unique variants have both mods and better base stats.

While unique guns usually have better base stats, Obsidian Entertainment introduced this inherent drawback of unique weapons to balance out unique and normal weapons and make the choice less of an obvious decision and more of a preference. Unique weapons cannot be equipped with weapon mods, with the exception of the weathered 10mm pistol, the Mercenary's grenade rifle and the holorifle. While in Fallout 3 this was limited to the creation of custom weapons, New Vegas takes this a step further by allowing the creation of weapon variants based on basic weapons by adding weapon mods.

One of the features added to New Vegas is the ability to custom modify certain base weapons. “ Weapon mods can increase ammunition capacity and damage, reduce spread and weight, or add special equipment like scopes.