I am wanting to try out a "Ninja" type character for my next run through the Mojave. How does melee work, in terms of weapons and unarmed?

Do the "power fist" weapons count as melee or unarmed? Brass knuckles and the like? Are melee considered more of the bat, knife, rebar things?

I eventually want to see what the "Paralyzing Palm" perk is like

Power fists, brass/spiked knuckles, gauntlets and such are considered unarmed weapons. As you note, melee weapons are the knives, swords, bats, rebar clubs, golf clubs, throwing hatchets and spears. Check the weapon skill requirement icon in your Pip Boy - an unarmed weapon has a fist icon, while a melee weapon has a hatchet icon.

I played around a fair amount with melee weapons on one of my characters, but it's been a while. One thing I do remember is that I relied on VATS a lot more than I do for a guns/energy weapons build. I also found myself using a lot more chems such as Psycho, Jet, Rushing Water, Battle Brew, etc. Oh, and lots of Fixer, too.

You'll definitely want to put points into Endurance when rolling your character, and you'll want to make sure you build either Medicine or Survival quickly. You'll be taking a lot of damage early on, but once you've leveled and gotten some of the more powerful unarmed/melee weapons and perks, you'll be doing crazy amounts of damage right back.

Melee would be the weapons you hold and swing/ throw - machete, baseball bat, throwing spear. Unarmed are weapons you wear on your hands - brass knuckles, power fists and so on. Some perks affect both but require a skill level in one or the other - like Ninja. I believe Paralysing Palm doesn't work with some Unarmed weapons but couldn't say which off hand (no pun intended) - the wiki should have more detail. Generally speaking, Unarmed weapons suit critical hits while Melee is more about damage so the Heavy Handed trait may be useful.

Don't forget Shishkebab! My personal favorite is Gehenna, if you have GRA.

I do this too. It sometimes seems as though there's some kind of problem with hit boxes or targeting. I feel like I have to position my character at a precise distance or the game won't compute my swings correctly. I finally gave up and started using VATS for melee.

Was this your experience too?

Pretty much - I'd flail away at an enemy and wouldn't much to him besides make him mad. It was also a lot easier for me to perform the weapons' special attacks in VATS.

I remember a thread here a few years back that touched on this, with some people concluding that melee combat hadn't really improved much since the Morrowind days, when you could appear to score a direct hit on your screen, but the attack would be registered as a miss by the game. It was a very interesting discussion and I'd like to find it, but the search function on this forum is so dodgy these days that it might not turn up anything.

Thanks for the info, all.

This brings up another question... Which SPECIALs are best for melee/hand-to-hand? I was thinking strength and endurance with some agility, but is this so?

I don't want to stint too much on my Intelligence, as it helps me learn skills with each level up, and there a few skills I want to keep up on.

Check the wiki for the strength requirements for the weapons that you want to use, some of the better melee and unarmed weapons have some high reqs.

Another suggestion is to check out J Sawyer mod, it fixes the perks so that you can take melee or unarmed in order to take the perk. With this you can take Ninja (which is fixed as well) with unarmed 80 or melee 80. It saves you from having to max out both skills in order to get the good perks.

For stats I like

7 Str - with implant you get 8 and then +2 from OWB

5 Per - with implant you get 6 to qualify for better criticals

7 End - with implant you get 8 to qualify for perks

1 Cha - no reason not to have as a dump stat

6 Int - gets good skill points, qualifies for educated perk. Also lets you take light touch perk at level 2 if you tag repair Could lower to 4 and still work if you take skilled as a perk

7 Agility - with implant you get 8 to qualify for perks

7 Luck - with implant you get 8, 9 with LR bonus, 10 with lucky shades. Crits are you friends, also with luck this high it is not gambling, it is guaranteed

A high crit sneaky light armor ninja has very nice synergy with energy weapon use, specifically lasers with laser commander. Throw in fast shot and built to destroy and you will be devastating with energy weapons as well as melee or unarmed.

With the above set up and JSawyer's fixed Ninja perk I get a 32% crit chance with melee or unarmed without taking into account any bonus from lucky shades, 1st recon beret, Joshua Grahams armor or the light touch perk. With those bonuses it goes to a 41% base rate. With a katana you get 82+5= 87% critical rate at almost 6 attacks per second. With unarmed I'd look for the fist of rawr or the embrace of the mantis king for an equally high crit rate.

Chainsaw type weapons also check for crits many times per second and are silly powerful with a high crit rate.

Some people suggest to go the low luck heavy handed with explosives path but I really like the super high crit way for melee coupled with energy weapons.

Thanks, KDubya! Good suggestions and some food for thought, or a banquet

Gehenna is king.

So is the fully-modded war club. That thing is faster than a Ferrari.

It is fast but I believe the fully modded katana is faster. And cooler.

Make sure to try out piercing strike and super slam to make your melee and unarmed even more deadly.

It's worth noting that using VATS doubles the base damage of unarmed and melee attacks.

OOO! Great tip! I did not know that

I wouldn't recommend doing a melee and unarmed build as one requires criticals. You'd be far better off pairing unarmed with guns or energy weapons focusing on criticals. And I just finished a melee/big guns build which was a bit too powerful for my tastes.

If you have the Jsawyer mod, you can get the ninja perk with either unarmed or melee at 90 or whatever, which im pretty sure they intended to do normally (as josh sawyer is one of the developers of the game).

Also, unarmed is extremely powerful in new vegas (it actually is in all of the fallout games. I beat frank horrigan's ass in fallout 2 with unarmed no problem).

some unarmed and melee are motorized. these will not benifit from the Heavy Handed trait.