Trying something new in my most recent playthrough. I didn't tag a combat skill at start, but instead grabbed Repair, Survival and Speech. Starting talents are Skilled and Small Frame.

S: 5
P: 6
E: 5
C: 5
I: 7
A: 8
L: 5

Perks thus far (level 6) are Swift Learner, Educated and Toughness. For two levels I put five ranks into my tagged skills, every third level I put five into Guns and Sneak, every fourth sees Barter, Science, Medicine and Lockpick go up.

Thus far, it's still more challenging, due to the lack of ahead of the curve combat ability, but far more fun.

NV is like FO1 and FO2 in that the going is a little rough for a non-combat oriented character until you get your first companion (Ian in Shady Sands, Sulik in Klamath, Boone in Novac) and then you can pretty much delegate all fighting to them.

My first playthrough in both FO3 and FNV was with a character based on speech, science and medicine + repair after tag! perk, and it was surprisingly fun to play. The second was on sneak, lockpick and speech + small guns, and it was also rather enjoyable. The third one, however, with its big guns, melee, unarmed and explosives was a killing machine let loose on the wastes. I enjoyed playing with the three of them.

Found it interesting to build characters based on the three classic archetypes of fantasy RPG (mage, thief, warrior), and I think it really added to RP value.

I actually had to stop playing my combat machine, Daveney. I want a level 50 character just to play around, but with Guns, EWeaps and Unarmed tagged it was just so absurdly and boringly easy that I actually started gimping myself just to try and add in some challenge. Didn't work all that well. Wearing Riot Gear and slinging a Sniper Rifle and 12.7mm SMG didn't help.

Now though, my Courier is more of a second-line combatant (probably going shotguns with ED-E and Cass around) and the game is already fun again. Popped into Hopeville to drop most of all my excess inventory on a set of US Army Combat Armor and a bunch of .223 ammo for my Scoped Varmint Rifle.

Strangely enough...the .223 seems to actually be outperforming standard 5.56mm. I'm certainly digging not having to CONSTANTLY repair my fragging rifle. Will upgrade to Ratslayer to continue the reliable trend.