As topic, wondering if you can do a character as a bombmaker and user without gimping yourself?

Ive noticed there is a few explosives themed weapons like the Grenade Machinegun/Riffle. Can you rely on those as your main weapons, beside setting up mines and plastering foes with grenades? Im particular concerned about ammo scarcity, since the grenade machinegun/riffle munnitions isnt covered by workbench and reloading bench recipes.

There's lots of dynamite to get in the beginning. But thanks to the iron sights system, you don't need a lot of points in guns to use guns. As long as you don't rely on VATS and have enough to meet the requirements, you can still use guns effectively.

It's feasible, but you'll be relying on regular guns for the beginning areas while you acquire explosive weapons/ammo

Much like melee builds and energy weapons in that regard.

You can probably get a Grenade Rifle decently early on with a little luck. You'll have no trouble finding sticks of dynamite and frag mines and such to use, though, since your first enemy faction are the Powder Gangers. Assuming you can kill them before they toss all their dynamite at you, that is.

Yup. I ran across boomables within 30 minutes of leaving Doc's house.

I do suggest you pair it with one of the gun skills, though, just so you have a fall back if you run out of boomey things.

Ah, thats what i was concerned about. How is the supply of grenade weapon ammo at higher levels?

I don't really think explosives by itself would pan out too well; ammo is fairly scarce, and you tend to rely on more spray and pray tactics and splash damage, which is not ammo saving friendly.

I would think that an explosives and unarmed/melee/energy weapons backup would work really well though, and it's definitely something I'm considering building up next.

Kind of like shoot/throw some grenades and then mop up the remaining with an axe/knife/spiked knuckles/Energy weapon on choice.

I think you can do it, but there's that starter perk during creation that I think is something about throwing shorter but faster...NO! BAD! DON'T TOUCH!

Then, you'd have to get Heave, Ho! at level 2 or 4. Explosives is the most perk-dependent thing in the game, by far.

Well as explosives cannot crit, you can safely skip on all the crit boosting perks, beside not having to worry about Luck.

but...then...the casinos will take your caps!

There is enough explosive ammo to go around once you get going, provided you don't run around exploding single enemies willy-nilly like.

To be frank, I don't see why you couldn't be pure explosives. I mean you *could* carry a sidearm or a melee weapon for emergencies, but a quick little jihad against the Powder Gangers and you'll have all the dynamite you'll need for the early game, they all have 5 sticks on them. Mid to late game the explosives class guns and grenades are moderately common as loot and at vendors.

You would want to get your skill up quickly and pick related perks, but after a certain and fairly early point you shouldn't need to use any other weapon skills.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas_weapons#Explosives

Killjoy

Dont really care about the casino gambling, and finding Caravan too confusing to understand.

Well your Luck score has nothing to do with Caravan....as for it being confusing............well, I'm sorry........

I'm actually doing it right now.

I have explosives and melee/unarmed on right now. It's not hard, but be ready to pay for the vast majority of your ammo. I've only found it lying around in a handful of places, and I have yet to encounter anyone other than the Boomers that spawn with 25mm or 40mm grenades.

I've been chucking dynamite while I close the distance for hand to hand and I have thump-thump for those things that I don't want to get close to(I have a grenade launcher and machine gun but my explosives isn't high enough to use them with any degree of skill at the moment).

So it sounds like Barter is recommended for a Explosives user?

You'd definitely be wanting barter to back up your expensive ammo use, but you'll only need that in the beginning of the game as in later stages of the game you'll be walking around with thousands of caps. And the best idea would be to put most point in explosive and your secundary skill like melee or unarmed. So I wouldn't recommend barter as much. Maybe as one to throw some points into every once in a while but I wouldn't get it higher than say 40 ot 50. Also keep in mind that in fallout it doesn't matter as much what you do, you can make just about any class work granted it's not something [censored] like barter + speech as main and nothing else.

mercenary pack helps but i assume you didn't get that

Charisma does majorly buff followers, 50 armor and damage at 10. I had considered it even, but with how unreliable followers are, it seems more hassle than worth it.

I'm sure it would work well. I'm currently playing a character focused on Speech, Barter and Science and I can still use guns fairly effectively. In fact, I'd say that, just like in F3, the guns feel far too effective despite having a low skill with them.

So yeah, just keep another weapon handy (you can find a lot of them around in the wasteland after all) and you'll be fine.

Barter is actually a fun skill to have this time around since there are quite a lot of uses for it in dialogues. Many times it occupies the same conversations as Speech though, but still a vast improvement over the previous Fallout's Barter skill.