I was a huge fan of melee weapons in FO3. I rolled up a high strength melee weapons guy and it has been painful. I can kill humanoids just fine, armored opponents are incredibly tough. There are some things that make me wonder if melee weapons were forgotten by Obsidian when they modified FO3:

• No Armor Piercing option, until a perk at level 12. I fight many many rad scorpions from 1-12, am I jsut supposed to skip them?
  
• No weapon mods - Really? They couldn't have given me spikes for my baseball bat (armor pierce) or and extra blade for my knife (good v.s. non-armor)?

I met up with a single Radscorpion at level 4 and could not kill him with a bat (high dmg, slow) or a baton (low dmg, fast). After beating away at it and going through 10 stimpacks (poison is fantastic) I ran away.

Should I just skip this build until someone creates a mod to make them viable?

Poisons decimate high DT targets. You can hit a radscorpion once and watch it die (assuming they can be poisoned - I try to save poison for Super Mutants and such but the idea is the same).

That said, I haven't tried melee. But I'm having no problems with unarmed. Spiked Knuckles + Cross (75 move) kills just about any low armored human in 1-3 hits, 2-5 for radscorpions. That's at level 7.

In the REPCONN test site, the Nightkins you kill drop Rebar Clubs (high damage) and their leader drops a Bumper Sword. With no points in melee, the Nightkin seem to die faster to their own clubs than guns at 80+ skill (seemed to take around 30-50 shots for a 9mm pistol in Very Hard). Have you tried those?

Yes its very viable, just like in FO3. Possibly OP if you get the craftable weapons like shihkebob and deathclaw gauntlet. (altho i have no idea were to find those)

So its a matter of running from things until I make poisons or find a specific weapon? Is there no armor piercing melee weapon at low levels?

Should you REALLY be able to kill everything with a baseball bat at LVL 4? The game is about adapting to a Wilderness / Survival senerio, not putting all your eggs in the melee baskeet and then complaining because you can't breeze thru the game in that manner.

Super Mutants have no damage threshold so use the weapon with the highest damage against them.

Early game melee and unarmed weapons aren't very good against armored enemies. However, there are some very powerful unarmed and melee weapons later in the game.

On that note, guns aren't that much better at that point in the game. Specialized ammunition for the stuff you get early on have some pretty bad DT modifiers, and if you've just started out, Radscorpions are virtually unkillable.

The only things that work well at level 4 against Radscorpions are explosives (you start with plenty of dynamites if you tag the skill, and powder gangers keep you supplied).

Judging from other similar titles (Oblivion, FO3) and the fact that the NPCs in the world scale with my level, I do expect to have the chance to kill with a chosen build. Provided of course that I choose to build around killing things. Sure, somethings may be more difficult than others and I may need to kite or stim or use landmines a bit - That is fine. That is the sort of thing you needed to do when you ran across a deathclaw or super mutant early in FO3. I didn't expect that the low level radscoprion would be niegh impossible to kill with melee. I have another save with a guns build and normal radscorpions aren't hard if I switch to armor piercing.

I expect that a weapon type ought be able to deal damage sufficient to allow me to progress through the quests that are set in my path. I wasn't going to a crazy scorpon lair, I was walking to Primm on my second quest.

I cannot adapt melee weapons to deal with armored opponents, unlike guns. I can "adapt" in other ways I guess. I can run away from armored NPCs or I can remake my character, focusing on survival and melee. Both of those solutions tell me that melee cannot support itself as a weapon type until later in the game. That is disappointing.

If Obsidian has changed the paradigm then ok. If melee now needs to be supplimented with guns or survival or whatever then ok. I don't care for the design decision at all.

Great, thank you.

Are you guys serious? I went heavy Melee build with spiked knuckles and it did just fine. Of course I had ED-E with me when I encountered them.
Don't attack these face to face. The trick is to hit them while circling them. You will need some Stimpacks and get some psycho on ya. You'll do just fine.
Melee kite the crap outta them. =) Keep killing these and you'll level up fast!

I was asking about melee weapons. You are talking about unarmed weapons. Yeah, that isn't a little confusing.

Not sure what the stats are on Spiked Knuckles, so maybe there are better againts armor. At my level I have access to a bat and a police baton along with knives and straight razors. I could very well be that unarmed weapons are better atthis sort of thing.

If you're talking about Giant Radscorps, yeah, stay away at level 4. It's a game that gives you the freedom to do dumb stuff like that, but you really shouldn't.

If you're talking about regular radscorps, I just beat 3 to death at once by circle strafing with a tire iron, strength 5, and melee skill of 10 due to good natured. Really shouldn't be a problem for a melee build.

Unarmed with a splash of melee for Super Slam is probably better than full melee, though - Piercing Strike, Paralyzing Palm, and Slayer are all unarmed-centric.

In the meantime, hang out with Boone. Sniper = high DAM.