Alright so I am close to finishing my first playthrough (about 300 freezes later) and I had an idea for the next one.

Has anybody given a no-guns character a go? I imagine 100 Unarmed, high agility, and knowing every 'move' could make a formidable courier.

I always had my doubts about an Unarmed Character. Until I watched Veronica and what she could do. I fell in love.

Now, I have an Unarmed Character on my list for future play throughs. I still think I will have them use a Sniper or Hunting Rifle for long range softening up in certain places, but I am still not sure on that.

Hmm, 9 STR, 9 AGI, 9 END, 100 Unarmed, 100 Melee, 100 Medicine (if on hardcoe Mode).
Get implants for the stats later.
Don't bother putting a single point in PER or CHA, put the rest on either intelligence or luck.
But I don't think Luck is necessary.
Unarmed attacks are so dangerous with all perks that you won't even need critical hits.
And I guess you could go get every unarmed move, I only got the Ranger Takedown though.

I played an Unarmed character and it was the second most fun character I've played in New Vegas, excluding my roleplay playthrough as Jimmy T.

That actually sounds like a solid unarmed build, I think I might give that a go. More often than not, I find that the Ballistic Fist, Bladed Gauntlet and such are alot better than some of the actual " guns " in the game. The one downside Ive had thus far trying to do a sole-ly unarmed character is I get dominated by some enemies from a distance. But that sounds like a good build to use Dan, I might try that

For long range enemies:
Make them notice you and hide behind cover, let them close the distance due to stupid enemy AI.
Maybe tag sneak and close the distance by sneaking.
About armor, do you want to close the distance fast? Then use light armor.
But light armor also means lower DT, which means more damage dealt to you. (Hence tagging Medicine skill.)
Or you could use heavy armor, you'll take less damage but take longer time to close the distance to enemies.

DT isn't a very big deal when dealing with truly dangerous enemies like Deathclaws and Cazadors. That's where Science comes into play.

Why science, you ask? One magical word: SLASHER.

It's not the fact that Slasher combines the effects of Psycho and Med-X that makes it significant, it's the fact that it stacks with Med-X to give you a 50% DR in a game where the highest DR you can get from armor alone is 3% from the Rebreather.

Slasher + Med-X + Purifier + Better Criticals + Piercing Strike + Ballistic Fist = Deathclaws? MORE LIKE DEAD-CLAWS HAWHAWHAW!

So Unarmed, Melee, Science, Medicine and Sneak, doesn't leave a lot of choices open for other skills.
I didn't use slasher and it worked out fine, so science isn't very necessary IMO.
Just make sure to have stimpacks and use the paralyzing moves efficiently.

Unarmed is actually one of the most powerful combat skills in this game. So yes its very doable. All you need is High endurance, and a 6 in strength for the stonewall perk.

Yeah, it's great. (Veronica :wub: shows the way! )

A whole different style of gameplay, too. You do a lot of hiding in cover listening to taunts, then jump out and *bangbangbang!*. Gun-using gangs are really vulnerable if you are in the middle of 'em: their rifles aim past you, and I think they wind up shooting each other a bit.

I kind of even like the knuckles better than the powerfists, just because they're small and lightweight. Love and Hate pwns for their ("its"?) size. Pushy can one-punch a Sentry-bot.

Usually play non-VATS, just using it for variety and to watch the fun animations.

I just finished an unarmed only hardcoe playthrough and loved it! Only took melee to 50 for perks reasons (ninja is broke on xbox so didnt bother) otherwise would have ignored it. Tagged unarmed sneak med. Once you get some perks and skills raised up a bit you become almost unstoppable especially indoors. I went back and forth between light (reinforced leather) and power armor. Def a fun and lethal character.

Edit: forgot to note, I went very crit heavy with 9 luck and built to destroy.

If you go melee or unarmed it's best to go for both, as the two skills each have very good perks that rely on one not the other skill.
For mine I stuck to strength 7, endurance 6, agility 7 and everything else at 5, and still one shot killing most npc's on normal hardcoe with spiked knuckles even late game.
So you don't need to be too drastic with your S.P.E.C.I.A.L unless for a specific role ( mine was a cast out raider leader hence no drop in stats ).
Criticals with some melee weapons are not high so built to destroy will help, but I found my weapon condition dropping rapidly with little to repair them with tbh.
However combined with Ninga, finesse better criticals built to destroy adds up to highly likely criticals add in boones hat and a bonus critical weapon you're set.

Knock down is very usefull, combined with the ranger take down perk you can disrupt a lot of attacks from enemies.

I took survival as a skill but on most builds I don't use chems too often, but really healing skills were not that important when I played my character, untill after the fights.

Oh position is key, allways place one enemy in front of another when you fight against guns, as they can't hit you, and then you finish the first one off leaving them open to get killed.