so I've hit a wall, RP-wise, on my Legion Courier but first a little backstory: She was a hunter, not quite tribal but def from the middle of nowhere with her family surviving on the farmplot with what they could grow catch or kill until her family was murdered by raiders while she was out trapping blah blah grew up alone caring for herself yadda yadda decided to get paid to wander and signed up with Mojave Express as a courier and the rest is history (herstory?) Bottom line is she's a hunter, she can move quietly, a good shot, and most importantly used to using rugged weapons

Heavy skill investments (though not necessarily tags): Guns, Sneak, Survival

Major perks: Hunter, Cowboy, Shotgun Surgeon (see weapons carried below)

Weapons carried (here's where the issue was): Early game, scoped silenced Varmint Rifle for sniping, Cowboy Repeater as bread and butter rifle, Lever-action shotgun (abbrev, LAS from here on) loaded with slugs for heavy armor, Hatchet for sneak attack melee and annoying rascals like Bloatflies, Barkscorps etc

late game weapons, Scoped Trail Carbine for both sniping and bread and butter, LAS and hatchet as above

I was having three problems: 1) I dont really have an in-your-face fight option since the LAS, Repeater, and Trail Carbine all have high AP costs and low magazine count meaning if a feral ghoul is pounding on me or cazadores are swarming I can neither VATS them down nor aim-and-shoot either with much success. 1b) As an extension of this, it feels like Im weak against low-DT-high-damage enemies (hey, like feral ghouls and cazadores!) 2) If I encountered a heavy armor target at range I was screwed. The LAS does not have the range, even with slugs, to kill a sentrybot or heavy NCR trooper (much less those damn Ranger Vets) from far away. Worse, if theyre close then problem one comes into play. 3) I ended up using the Varmint Rifle for much longer than I wanted to because it was suppressed. Sure the Trail Carbine does great damage, but I cant snipe with it in the hide-and-pick'em-off sense of the word. I reached a low point when trying to snipe a Deathclaw with a Varmint Rifle. I had to empty four or five magazines into its legs to cripple it so that I could save my last shred of patience and gun it down with my repeater

so for S and G's I ate a brahmin steak (to bring my S5 to S6) and equipped a Sniper Rifle and cleared out Camp Golf. It was a ton of fun but I could never have done it with either the Varmint Rifle (too weak) or the Trail Carbine (they wouldve charged me after first shot, AND karma loss).

SO before this post drags on too long I'll end by saying I have a few ideas but I want to hear some of your ideas first. I do want to keep Cowboy Perk if possible, but I really want to be able to stealthy-snipe, kill things with high armor from something more than point-blank range and I dont want to insta-reload once I get into fights with huge packs of feral ghouls of cazadores or mantises or Radscoprions who are both in your face AND armored

PS: I play only Vanilla so sorry, no uber DLC weapons