Your perk and weapon choices are all over the place. Some focus couldn't hurt.
Perks such as Travel Light, Adamantium Skeleton, Tunnel Runner etc. are mostly useless. I'd toss them out.
If you want to focus on Cowboy weapons, there is no point taking shotgun perks. Just stick with the Brush Gun or with Ranger Sequoia as your close range weapon of choice. Rapid Reload, on the other hand, could be quite useful for those one-bullet-at-a-time lever guns.
Conversely, you could focus on shotguns and use Riot Shotgun- a terrific weapon by any measure- for close range while sticking with a sniper rifle or AMR for long-range fighting.
Some perks that could he useful to you in any case:
Damage boosters: Bloody Mess, Confirmed Bachelor/Black Widow, Robotics Expert (helps a lot in OWB), Voracious Reader + Comprehension (you can mass-produce True Police Stories with it, for a +10% critical hit chance boost).
Carry weight boosters: Strong Back, Burden to Bear.
Chem exploit perks: Chem Resistant, Old World Gourmet ( reduced chance of addiction)
General Survival perks: Them's Good Eating, Rad Resistance, Fast Metabolism
Shotguns are part of the versatility aspect of the character - And Stay Back gives me more close range survivability which is fairly important on a character that doesn't use VATS. I like having strong close range and long range options.
Travel Light is hard for me not to take just due to kiting and convenience. There's a lot of running in the game.
Tunnel Runner I'm a bit more on the fence on - I will eventually use sneak a fair amount against more difficult enemies, and again the convenience of moving faster is nice. But I don't plan on carrying a
silenced gun that's worth a damn anyway, so perhaps I'll skip the sneaking route. I feel like I have plenty of perks to waste on convenience though.
Adamantium Skeleton I hear mixed opinions on, and it's unclear how beneficial it is in combat - but it seems like crippled parts take more actual damage. If someone can confirm/deny that it'd help me make up my mind. On hardcoe it's still just nice to have for reducing trips to doctors though, and until I can find something better in its place..
Rad Resistance seems negligible to me, I carry a space suit around and that + rad-X / rad-away seems enough for any situation. Maybe I've missed some higher radiation areas. I suppose you can't take the suit some places though.
Chem Resistant and Old World Gourmet are considerations, especially with chemist buffing stim duration.
Fast Metabolism I've always overlooked but the healing boost does seem like a decent survivability perk.
My character doesn't have enough strength to pick of burden to bear(unless I use the Lonesome Road +1 to any of special on it), but I could take strong back.
Rapid Reload is supposedly bugged according to wiki, and is also less valuable the higher your agility - and mine will be at least 8 if not 9 w/lonesome road special if I don't use it on str.
No, he's saying he already used that and now he's trying a Level 50 character.
And I recommend not making your character as charismatic as a brick. At least have it at 3 unless you're just going to shoot your way out of everything.
Speech skill matters way more than charisma for dialogue it seems like - plus party time mentats are easy to make if I really need to boost charisma directly instead of speech. I don't use companions so charisma seems a waste w/no benefit from nerve.
Thanks for the responses.
» Thu May 31, 2012 8:06 am 
