Hey Buckeroos love exploring the wastes with your trusty sixgun, love nailing a mutated womprat at 400 yards right in the eyes, hate messing up your first character.....well then look no further.

My first character I took to level 20 before realizing it was pretty messed up. Wanted to share my thoughts on character building I've learned so far.

Biggest first character mistakes:

- Didnt balance SPECIALS which limited perks greatly
- Bad trait picks notably Small Frame Trait + hardcoe = more broken limbs than I could deal with.
- Ignoring skills like speech. Taking some skills like science too high. Basically didnt understand which skills were important.


Here is my second try which is a much much more successful design. Going for a cowboy style with high guns, high damage, good VATS, and well rounded skills. Able to kill enemies before they get in melee range backed up with skills that open up quest options. Character is tested in hardcoe and has come out shining.

Introducing the.......

Cowboy

SPECIALS

Strenght - 6
Perception - 6
Endurance - 6
Charisma - 1
Intelligence - 9
Agility - 6
Luck - 6


This spread opens a huge amount of perks especially when you take into account implants.

Charisma is a dump stat. First character I went with charisma of 7. I can detect no difference in how NPCs react to me or companion strenght or "nerve" with it now dumped to 1.

Regarding weapon strenght requirements you can use any weapon regardless of strenght. For instance currently I am using the anti material rifle (req 8) with a strenght of 7. I get about a 20% decrease in damage which ive confirmed by taking buffout. It does not seem to effect weapon spread. Strenght of 6 with implants and power armor easily gets you to 8 for the anti material rifle.

Traits

Good Natured - Trades -5 in all the weapon skills for +5 in barter, science, medicine, speech, repair. Since I'm only using guns and melee (for the cowboy perk), this basically nets me 15 skill points. This game is tight on skill points so 15 extra points is not trivial.

Kamikaze - +10 AP for -2 DT. Helps get off another shot in some VATS situations. To me a worthly trade off.


Skills

Tagged Skills -

Guns - Need a way to kill stuff. Take this all the way to 100
Lockpick - It svcks being locked out of places. You don't want that. Lockpick opens up far more areas than science. Take this to 95 (with uniform +5) or 100. Too many Very Hard locks to trust getting magazines for.
Speech - Solves many many quest problems. In new vegas speech checks come up alot. However very few are above 60. 60 Therefore is a good stopping point. Should be able to use magazines for the few tougher checks (highest ive seen so far is 70).


Other important skills

Repair - Slowly increase this to keep up with whatever ammunition your reloading. Currently im using 45-70 gov which is rare (65 repair to make). If you want hand loader perk later on go as high as 70.
Science - Not as important when you have a high lockpick. Still handy though. Taking it to 55 will allow breaking very hard terminals with magazines (comprehension perk +20 mags).
Melee - Need to get this to 45 before level 8 so you can get the cowboy perk. +25% damage for cowboy weapons is huge.

Helpful skills

Medicine - Very few medicine checks. Also this build typically kills things before I get hit leaving me swimming in stims. Nice leftover place to put points especially as it helps with radaway. Seems im always getting radiated. So far having this in the 40-50 range seems more than enough.
Sneak - The few places you really need to sneak in can be bypassed with stealth boys. Helpful combat skill though. For ranged builds like this you dont need a super high sneak. 30-50 sneak with silenced weapons and decent distance keeps alot of baddies pretty confused.


Dump skills

Energy Weapon / Explosives / Unarmed - Uneccessary, guns will take care of all baddies.
Barter - Suprising amount of checks during conversation. Im take this as a dump though. Hey only have so many skill points.
Survival - Even while playing hardcoe I find plenty of food and water. Most of the recipes seem underwhelming to me and not worth the time or wieght to collect. I have heard though that it may be required for advanced reloading recipes which I have not found. If so then it may move up in my list.


Cowboy Up your Perks

Lvl 2 - Black Widow or Confirmed Bachelor (+10% damage to Males)
Lvl 4 - Educated (+2 skill per level is huge)
Lvl 6 - Comprehension (+20 skill for magazines is amazing it allows the passing of many conversation checks without having to max skills especially speech and science)
Lvl 8 - Cowboy (The basis of this build, making repeaters, trail guns and brush guns deadly)
Lvl 10 - Commando (VATS)
Lvl 12 - Sniper (VATS head shooting)
Lvl 14 - Finesse (More crits)
Lvl 16 - Better Criticals
Lvl 18 - Action Boy
Lvl 20 - Grim Reaper (Ultimate VATS perk)
Lvl 22 - Action Boy
Lvl 24 - Adamantium Skeleton
Lvl 26 - Tag
Lvl 28 - The Professional
Lvl 30 - Hand Loader


Weapons

You will only really need two weapons through the course of the game a scoped rifle for sniping and a cowboy style lever action for VATS and close fighting. Pistols are not necessary.

Progression for sniping rifle will generally be:

Varmint --> Hunting --> Sniper Rifle --> Anti Material Rifle

Progression for cowboy rifle will be:

Cowboy Repeater --> Trail Carbine --> Brush gun


Combat Tactics

In open range attack from max distance with your scoped rifle while crouched in sneak mode. If rushed pull out cowboy lever action and go to VATS when you believe the enemy is within 95% headshot distance. All headshots. Will finish almost all enemies.

For close in or building simply use the cowboy rifle you have progressed with and VATS. After you obtain Grim Reaper you will be able to stay in VATS and absolutely slaughter large groups of enemies.

Defense should not be a issue as the build is designed to kill before they reach you.

Pre-sniper rifle and or anti material rifle be careful with Cazadors. I would try to avoid them until 18th level. Once you have grim reaper and either of the affore mentioned rifles they become much easier to deal with.


Other Tips

Wieght can become a big issue especially in hardcoe. Try to avoid having too many weapons and thus too many calibers of ammo.

Get a early house like a hotel room in Novak and pile all the extra stuff there. Keeping your normal wieght down below 120 or so makes it much easier to bring loot back for sale.

Dont sell ammo you dont use. Instead break it down at the repair bench. Ammo breakdown products dont have wieght and can be used later to make your calibers.

Also regarding ammo reloading, buy all the cases, jars of powder etc when you find them at vendors. If the powder or whatever stays in case form then drop it on the ground and pick it up again. Works for me.

- I'd start with PER and STR at 5, add extra END and LCK instead and rely on implants to boost those two to perk levels. Extra luck + some card skills (very wild west btw to win a fortune cheating in cards) and you can have all the implants you need. 7 END allows to implant all the skills except CHA and also add DT implant. All I need really. CHA 3-4, AGI 5 too is sane. Don't be too crazy about VATS, it's weaker than it used to be.
- Good Natured is a good pick, Kamikaze isn't, you don't need all the APs and you should rather take Trigger Discipline here allowing to headshot from shotgun at mid-range and headshot from revolvers even farther. It decreases gun spread which is huge on cowboy-ish weapons so the bonus is substantial as well.
- I wouldn't go low on CHA, I also wouldn't go too crazy with INT (only 0.5 skill point per level per each INT, very low gain...). Starting with 7 INT and implanting to 8 with Educated will still allow you to train everything you need. 1 point a level, it's not that much. You will roll with Cass and the dog most likely (most cowboy-ish team, dog crits like crazy and Cass can blow quite lot brains out, both will be a bit more useful than typical Tajeda and ED-E non-cowboy-ish setup).
- I'd take Shotgun Surgeon here, -10dt for EVERY shotgun weapon is always helpful. Being a Cowboy without a shotgun and this perk kind of svcks and there's a lot of good shotguns out there in this game you will want to use.
- The Professional perk, +20% revolver critical damage, exactly what Lucky or later a .44 needs to kill a Deathclaw in one VATS session.
- There's a crowd of perks you'd take for role-playing reasons like Run n' Gun (very often you just backtrack and unload one 20ga after another into the crowd of deathclaws chasing you) or Quick Draw (purely for role-playing). Too cowboy-ish to pass on those. Sniper and Commando aren't useful all that much, maybe a bit at mid range but that's it. Not with Trigger Discipline. Maybe leave Sniper and Commando for after lvl 20?
- I wouldn't neglect Jury Rigging, Finesse and Better Criticals for any character. I'd also grab Hand Loader.
- VATS isn't as useful as you might think, all the action points will be superfluous, you'll see. If you really must, Nerves of Steel and Slayer rather than Sniper and Commando. What sane person would snipe in VATS in this game anyway. You need VATS for close quarters to stop a crowd of enemies charging at you and blow their brains out with a revolver or a shotgun which typically is 1-2 shots a person. Then you cna withdraw andd reload while APs recover.
- Cowboy weapons include not just revolvers and shotguns but also knives and explosives so I'd train those to mid-50s area. I'd make a point at always carrying and using in combat on regular basis something from all those categories.

Shotgun Surgeon is actually pretty meh. Since damage is calculate with each pallets, against anything with DT 17+ it is useless; namely DeathClaw, Giant Radscorpion, Super Mutants....any tough opponent.

Professional require sneak 70, unless you hold out ALOT on combat skills, lockpick and repair, you can't get it before Lv20. And it only give bonus to sneak attack criticals.

Hand Loader is golden, no doubt.

Low charisma and high inteligence?

If anything, for cowboys it would be the other way round i'd thought

I was thinking of something like this:

S 5 -> 6
P 5 -> 6
E 6 -> 7
C 4
I 7 -> 8
A 5 -> 6
L 7 -> 8

Traits: Trigger Discipline, Good Natured
Tag: Guns, Lockpick, Speech (three things you need early...)

Perks
2 – Confirmed Bachelor (or Intense Training Luck if you must, but Bachelor seems cooler these days)
4 – Educated (+2 skill points a level is equal to 4 points of INT)
6 – Comprehension (can stop training most skills at 55, 28 extra skill points from books)
8 – Shotgun Surgeon (+10 damage on every shotgun against armored enemy pretty much)
10 – Finesse (+5% crit chance, why not)
12 – Cowboy (extra damage with cowboy weapons, how can we not take it)
14 – Jury Rigging ( to be able to repair everything with everything)
16 – Better Criticals (like it or not, most attacks will be crits…)
18 - Hand Loader (this is the part of the game when expensive toys will start requiring expensive and rare ammo)
20-30 – Other Cowboy-ish perks which are less useful but add to the feel like The Proffesional, Quick Draw, Run n’ Gun, Gunslinger, maybe Toughness or something in Explosives or Melee branches – like Ninja for example. Or Weapon Handling to remove penalties. Terrifying Presence seems cowboy-ish too. 5 out of those basically.

In general you want to snipe with revolvers and switch to shotgun in close combat for quick VATS-based head busting. You also want to blackjack the crap out of Vegas as soon as you can to implant all the stuff you need for perks.

i'd pick fast shot over trigger discipline. if you're sniping, you'd do it out of VATS, where fast shot barely causes an issue at high skill. if you're picking commando or gunslinger, you basically negated the only negatives of fast shot in VATS. there's real power in how much you can shot with fast shot especially for a cowboy. trigger discipline is more or less a lame perk with a cool name.

But Trigger Discipline allows you to shotgun guys who aren't right in your face but rather medium range... It's a real torment to play this game with decreased accuracy - not just in VATS (as frustrating as it is to waste APs for a missed mid-range headshot) even with normal rifles but mainly because spread increase fast shot gives will have your shotguns fire everywhere rather than where you want them to fire. Spread on rifles is nothing, but on shotguns it's often 4 or 6. Adding to that 20 extra per cent will be really painful while 20% decrease will make them many times more accurate...

Odd thing is crit chance, many shotguns have 0x multiplier like sawed-off for example. Many pistols have 1x with three exceptions, Ranger Sequoia, That Gun and Lucky (guess that's cowboy sniping choice, maybe Hunting Revolver on top of those). Among "cowboy" rifles only Cowboy Repeater crits decently (and La Longue Carbine even better). So maybe "Better Criticals" isn't that great an idea after all? Unless you give up and get snipers with their stupid overpowered x5 crit chance (they'd do with x2 if you ask me) you won't see all that much crit hits throughout the game.

Your right about going higher luck and end if you know how to get to the med center with the caps to implant.

I disagree with int though. I think its the most important stat .5 per level equals 15 skill points which is not insignificant.

Charisma I've moved from 7 all the way to 1 and noticed no difference in companion strenght. Maybe some day someone will figure out the effect but I personally dont see any.

None of the stats have overwhelming effects. Especially when compared with previous games. Biggest reason to put them up or down is pre-reqs for perks.

I've tried many of the pistols and shotguns including Lucky and That Gun. In both cases the spread makes them so situational. I liked Lucky but the reload speed actually killed me several times. Except for some RP reasons I was hard pressed to find times where either were better than using a appropriate level lever action rifle. Maybe its just me.

VATS though still rocks. With kamikaze, commando, action boy and grim reaper I can get ALOT of 95% headshots out to decent mid range. Almost nothing survives a 5 VAT headshot sequence with a trail gun or brush gun. And you can go straight back into VATS when they die. Only the robot swarm during the "sacrifice" caused me to run out of initial AP without everything being dead. You could argue that maybe its too effective.

This is all effectiveness discussion though. I agree with you whole heartedly for RP'ing a cowboy using thrown weapons, gambling, pistols and shotguns all work well stylistically and add significant flavor.

I wonder if anyone could pull the full and exact list of items affected by Cowboy trait. For example Trail Carbine I'm pretty sure is affected by this one but I'd rather be certain.

Confirmed Bachelor .... a broke back mountain cowboy....

really i think picking Intense training or heave ho would be better... +10% isn't much damage only against males..
rapid reload could save your butt against some stuff like nightkin

From GECK, the list of 22 weapons affected by +25% damage of Cowboy perk (PerkCowboyWeapons list), along with their base attack values:

Explosives:
- Time Bomb
- Dynamite
- Long Fuse Dynamite

Melee:
- Knife (8)
- Throwing Knife (15)
- Combat Knife (15)
- Unique Combat Knife (Chance's Knife) (22)
- Hatchet (16)
- Throwing Hatchet (20)

Pistols:
- .357 Revolver (26)
- Unique .357 Revolver (Lucky) (30)
- Hunting Revolver (58)
- Unique Hunting Revolver (Ranger Sequoia) (62)
- .44 Revolver (36)
- Unique .44 Revolver (Mysterious Magnum) (42)

Rifles:
- BB Gun (4)
- Unique BB Gun (Abilene Kid LE BB Gun) (4)
- Cowboy Repeater (32)
- Unique Cowboy Repeater (La Longue Carbine) (35)
- Trail Carbine (45)
- Lever-action Shotgun (48)
- Brush Gun (75)

Some weapons you'd assume would be here on this list AREN'T on it seriously lowering the usefulness of this perk. Notable examples of things I expected to be boosted:
- Unique Axe Knock Knock with +25% bonus would be equal to Super Sledge in damage.
- Hunting Shotgun (especially Dinner Bell!) would be far more fun if it was here on the list. Neither is Caravan Shotgun and Sawed-Off.
- That Gun isn't here. Why oh why? With 5.56 AP it'd be a bit easier early on.

Conclusions:
* In melee best you get is Chance's Knife with around 27 damage after you weight in the bonus, comparable with Machete Gladius or Humble Cudgel (Lead Pipe) which is very low on dmg among melee weapons. No point going melee with a Cowboy.
* In thrown category you can throw a hatchet but it's nowhere near throwing spear effectiveness which svcks hard on its own. No need for much melee here either, only throw for fun once in a while and that's it.
* In explosives only very hard to use dynamites (enemies side-step from them automatically) are in play, going explosives with a Cowboy seems a bad idea for handful of weapons he can use.
* In pistols Sequoia at 80 dmg after the boost is better than any other "normal" pistol. But you can get quite far with criticals from Lucky or pure power of Mysterious Magnum as well. This won't be bad.
* In shotguns it's extremely disappointing, only lifts Lever-Action shotgun to damage levels of other better shotguns in the game like Riot.
* In rifles it's not bad - but not awesome either. Both Cowboy Repeaters get old very fast because you can easily steal a Trail Carbine early in the game in Novac. Then it's all about getting Brush Gun which with Cowboy perk won't become Gauss yet, but it will get quite close.

In ammo it'll be tricky. First of course .357s for revolvers and cowboy repeaters are the best acquisition. .44 is used by two good revolvers and Trail Carbine mid-game but I think you will be switching back to .357-based weapons quite often due to lack of .44 at that stage. Then your end game is .45-70 for Ranger Sequoia and Hunting Revolver as well as the Brush Gun. And same story here, it's quite hard to get those in good amounts. Lever-Action uses good old 20ga, this should be plenty. AP will be a problem if you stick only to those guns.

With this kind of selection this Perk is meant more as a boost for mid-game guns while late in the game you'll still be forced to move the cool stuff. No Cowboy gun can replace Gobi, Multiplas or Anti-Materiel Rifle even if some come quite close.

This also means for example Shotgun Surgeon perk suddenly becomes svcky for a Cowboy boosting only ONE gun in the whole game out of all the Cowboy weapons. It boosts all shotguns, including Sawed-Off with that -10 DT bonus so it'd be twice as cool to have it with Dinner Bell. But well, you can't.

i don't know, the fact that fast shot shoots a lot faster than trigger discipline, with penalties that are easy to compensate, is much more attractive than better accuracy but no means ever to fire any faster. those extra shots become really powerful in the late game.

Yeah, I guess with very weak selection of guns affected by Cowboy I guess there's no other choice but to accept Cowboy is like Energy build and has to spam to live.