Unarmed vs/or Melee weapons in fallout 2

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Perkyguy

First time out of the vault
Having played all fallouts so many times, i stopped trying to keep count, i realized that i should play a melee goon for the heck of it. Naturally in FoT this idea cannot be employed for the sheer impossibility of actually beating a Behemoth silly with fists, as well as the super mutants with various burst weapons presenting a problem. ( i never played fot in anything else than CTB) But fallout 2 may prove a different matter. Although i know i will largely be annoyed by having to run towards the opponents who keep sliding gazilion hexes away after a blow, i suppose being a barbarian will have its merits in some way.

So now cant decide between super sledge or mega power fist styles. The latter is enforced by the convenience of one hander trait becoming quite useful and the bonus HtH Evade perk being a nice bonus. Melee weapons are superior at start, but no self respecting player thinks short-term. Also you look nice with a super sledge - i imagine staring at your character without him holding something imposingly intimidating gets quite boring.

Anyway i just wanna hear your opinions on the matter and which of the 2 skills you prefer for a melee-er.
As a sidequestion, i never understood what the heavy handed trait's negative side does. The description doesnt say it modifies the chance to crit so im guessing it penalizes your rolls on the critical hit table, which makes it absolutely worthless.
 
I'd suggest Unarmed in the unmodded version.
Super Sledge has Knockback, which is a pain for a pure meleer as you have to run back in to range. It's good for a combined char though.

On the other hand, the Mega Power Fist doesn't and it also has an intrinsic armour piercing effect. it also costs fewer AP to use. Unarmed also gives you access to a bunch of special "bare fists only" attacks. Some have serious armour piercing levels and huge bonuses to crit chance but cost a lot of AP. I like them :) Unarmed also has the very slight advantage of your character not fiddling about putting his weapon away then taking it out again every time you use an object. :)

The Bonus HtH Attacks Perk counts all Hand-to-Hand attacks. That's Unarmed AND Melee. Either will cost 1AP less per use.

Heavy Handed penalises your rolls on the crit severity table, reducing your chances of good crits like KO, blindness, knock down and insta-kill. Not my favourite trait :P.
On the other side of things, Finesse reduces all your damage by 30% but gives a 10% greater chance of causing a critical. It has no effect on the severity though.
 
Edited the original post to indicate i was talking about the HtH evade perk.

Why do you say in the unmodded game? Im playing megamod 2.33 but i cant see a reason why that should be a factor to tip teh scales to the melee weapons favor. About the finesse trait - i think its a hugely overrated thing - you score criticals more often, big whoop. You do however end up with alot less damage on hits that do not crit and hits that DO crit cause less damage than they should, because the trait lowers the general damage you cause. Which means that in the event of a critical your damage modifiers are lowered by finesse.
 
HtH evade only works with 2 enpty items slots, so it's unusable with the Power Fist.
For Finesse, it's worth it for a sniper or precision char. Always going for the eyes or head, that incrased crit chance leads to more knockouts, blinds, armor ignoring hits and instakills. Against the tougher foes that's more valuable than +30% dmg IMO. Blinded and KOed foes can't hit you.

I say unmodded because I use the Restoration pack and the Fallout Weapons Redone mod. Weapons Redone buffs melee weapons quite a bit, as well as fixing Lasers and Throwing to be useful.
 
Heavy Handed does the opposite of the Better Criticals perk, which makes it Bad.

The Finesse damage penalty seems to be implemented as a +30 DR mod in the damage calculation procedure. Armor-bypassing criticals ignore this, so they are not affected by the trait.

HtH Evade works with all unarmed-class weapons, including power fists, not just bare-handed.
 
The way i understand it, finesse reduces damage by 30% regardless if its a crit or not. This may help in the earlier stages where it is hard to get a good aimed shot to use the extra % for an armor pierce hit, but in the end-game stages you have enough skill and crit chance, either by perks or slayer/sniper that every hit ignores armor anyway. And if every hit ignores armor, finesse just becoems a burden, since it reduces damage anyway.
 
The trick is to change Finesse for another perk in the end game using the perk Mutate!. The better change is when you get sniper, so you switch Finesse to Fast Shot and voila, you now shoot faster and critical all-around!

But, in the early game, Finesse sucks until you get your first Hunting Rifle, then people should fear for the safety of their eyes...

Well, the choice between Melee and Unarmed is pretty dificult. I think Melee is better for the early game, but Unarmed is better in the end game. You can chose Melee and make it your primary combat skill until San Francisco, then get some training from Lo Pan or The Dragon, box in New Reno, hit the punchbags in the SAD, after you get it above 100%, spend some skill points in Unarmed and if possible, use the perk TAG!, which will give you LOTS of free skillpoints and a fourth tag!
 
As someone said above, super sledge has too much knockback to make it a viable primary weapon. It's fun when Sulik knocks someone half-way across the screen, but you have to waste your valuable AP chasing them.


Why not ditch Heavy handed for small frame? The extra point can get put into strength and boost melee damage anyways.
 
JesusC said:
As someone said above, super sledge has too much knockback to make it a viable primary weapon. It's fun when Sulik knocks someone half-way across the screen, but you have to waste your valuable AP chasing them.
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Not a primary weapon, but quite useful against melee critters. Sit back and make them waste APs trying to reach you. Or make some room to use rockets or grenades, or in case you have trigger-happy NPCs with burst weapons.
 
IMO unarmed wins each and every time. You hit harder and more often with the upgraded power fists than with any melee weapon, and you don't have the knockback. That makes it an easy decision in my eyes.

You can find a good guide to an unarmed/melee char here.
 
shikton said:
IMO unarmed wins each and every time. You hit harder and more often with the upgraded power fists than with any melee weapon, and you don't have the knockback. That makes it an easy decision in my eyes.

You can find a good guide to an unarmed/melee char here.
Click to expand...

A truly horrible guide, that gives out the stench of being written by someone who has played fallout once and thinks everyone else has too. The remarks of the type "since we make a melee character the most obvious traits to pick would be bruiser and heavy handed, right? wrong!" make me curve my lips. His recommended stats allocation is laughable and he tries to make us create a slayer with 5 luck. Dubbing this a "good guide" is a joke.
 
10 endurance is a waste; it mostly just gives you more hit points. 8 strength is also higher than necessary, as it can be increased by 6 points in-game. Stat points are better used on intelligence, and charisma if you want to have party members. Keeping luck at 6 will let you get Better criticals.
 
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