My current attempts to pay a pistol waving gun slinger. And thoughts all assuming VATS.

Three types of guns rifles (stock grip), pistols and automatics (automatic reciever); Pistols are half way between automatics and rifles, with more less accurate shots than a rifle and less more accurate shots than a automatic. The thing that makes pistols special is that they maximise the number of individually aimed shots; this allows excellent synergy with concentrated fire and Gnu Fu. So to use the gun-slinger perk you really want to max out Perception and Agility.

Also I decided that Intelligence was needed for Gun nut and science. If you are playing a general gun based character you can get away without this; just adapt to the best gun you have found so far. If you have committed perks to particular gun type you are more restricted, and will find being able to modify your weapons much more useful.

So Agility 9, Perception 9 and Intelligence 5 leaves two points left with the book. Your choice, I put one in Strength for armour mods but you could put them both in luck for criticals or whatever.

Again assume a gun-slinger, I decided I needed four types of pistols – heavy (sneak) short, heavy (sneak) long, light short and light long. Heavy guns to one shot ideally with a sneak bonus. Light guns to get as many shots off as possible while under attack. So building one gun for each ammo type this is how I set it up.

Heavy Long: .308 is the natural choice as they have the longest built in range. All even won't be as good as a sniper rifle but with gun-slinger bonuses that might well change. .308 has a slow firing rate, but that does not matter as your at range and can hop back into cover if you miss.

Light Long (Concentrated fire): .38 cheapest and (in my experience) the most common ammo does the least damage, so best used firing away when no immediate urgency. Taking out turrets from cover, or popping away at range with low chances for the initial bullets to hit.

Light Short (Gnu Fu): 10mm and .44 (Kellogs pistol!) Panic gun. Light but more powerful than .38. I use for getting as many shots off as possible at short range. You know that moment where your ambushed by a pack of ghouls and you have used up all your action points... well this is the answer. Just give each of them a few shots in the leg and save a few bullets for those still coming. The .44 is the best answer but has much more limited ammo availability so keep that for the super real emergencies (packs of super mutants rather than packs of ghouls!). In my current play-though I picked up a 10mm with crippling bonus power – perfect

Heavy Short: .45, fusion cell. I use this for short range sneak attacks. .45 more powerful than 38 and 10mm. Better rate of fire than .308 in case you miss!

As for armour, first priority Agility and Action points then stealth then perception. At least thats what I am going with. (e.g. Military Fatigues, Champion right arm and wastlanders chest piece),

I went with 8 agility for fast reload, 7 endurance, 4 perception for lock pick, 3 intelligence for gun nut, 3 charisma for lone wanderer, 4 luck for misterious stranger. Works pretty well with pistols and "spray and pray" the SMG with explosive rounds.

I am currently playing a Gunslinger, and I have one piece of advice for you.

Drop Agility to 4 (5 with bobblehead) for Action Boy. Put as much as you can in luck, and level it to 8, 9 with bobblehead. You don't need more AGI as much as you need Luck. Might be counter intuitive, but while more AGI is really good for more AP, and you should aim to get it via armor/clothes, PER and Luck perks are more important for the gunslinger.

Pistols are made to be the crit weapons. They get tones of shots in AP, and that works best with Luck building perks. You don't actually need the let AGI perks. Gun Fu, reload speeds etc are not that great for a rather inaccurate quick to reload weapon like pistols. However, critical banker, improved criticals etc? Amazing. You can get more AP with light armor mods, weapon mods, and clothes.

What's amazing with pistols is Concentrated Fire and Penetrator. Completely makes up for the pistol inaccuracy, capitalizes on the extra damage from headshots best, and you can get it from the start without wasting an attribute point, as you get the PER bobblehead 20 mins in. Range is an non issue with Gunslinger. Good times. You'll get enough VATS shots to hit anything you can see quite comfortably , and enough crits to not waste the early shots, if the target is worth it. Just remember to mod pistols with reflex sights, not sniper scopes, and smaller magazines, to minimize AP cost.

Sawed of shotgun with a pistol grip might be useful, I am thinking of making one for my character.

Dose not count as pistol for gunslinging. Only have stock grips. Apparently only the following have pistol grips

.44, 10mm, Alien Blaster, Assult Rifle, Gamma gun, Institue laser, laser gun, pipe bolt action, pipe gun, pipe revolver, plasma gun, deliverer.

Luck verses Agility?

Luck gives increases the damage every so often, while agility gives you extra shots. (Made up example: double damage every third shot verses a 33% increase in number of shots). I am not sure exactly how the damage maths works out, mainly because I am not sure the parameters the critical counter uses. However my guess is that the design team will have tired to, all things even, to make the numbers balance. So you can argue the toss over more shots or more damage per shot is better, e.g. control vrse punching though damage resistance. Personally I find extra shots more immersive than manipulating the critical meter, but that's just me.

Reload speed you can skip. Gun Fu is one of those perks that, even if you don't use it all the time, is useful when you need it. There are two times where you are actually likely to get killed = loose. When you are outnumbered and overrun and when you up against one really tough bastard with high damage and damage resistance. Gun Fu will help you in the former and luck and criticals in the latter. Abilities that help you win fights that you would have won anyway are downgraded here.

With the build I gave you need to use three perks to get better criticals. (S-1,P-9,E-1, C-1,I-5, A-9, L-3). You could swap two points of Int into Luck on the principle that you only need the high science mods later in the game.

Gunslinger is awesome. Get the VATS 10 mm legendary and the perks in P, A, and L and you don't need health. Everything in the room dies before they can unholster their weapons.

I would say with luck you need both better criticals, grim reaper sprint, critical banker and Four Leaf Clover. These synergise very well together, and are made for pistols. Otherwise you are better off going Luck 1 and rifles, to be honest.

The main argument for luck is that Crits really are that horrifyingly powerful. It's not double damage, it's 3.5 times with Better Criticals. And you can't miss a crit. If you are getting a crit every fifth shot, you are doing significantly more damage than if you got 7 shots. Only, ofcourse, you are also recovering your AP while doing it, particularly when you are fighting masses, due to Grim Reaper Sprit, or Lucky weapons like the two really good pistols you will get during the story. Thus you get the defense of constant VATS, and actually more shots in total. With one every three shots, the damage difference is much higher, and that's easily achievable with more luck perks.

Add to that the the versatility that comes with the fact that you control when criticals happen in FO4, with Critical Banker. This is a huge change. Now you control when to deliver that damage, and when to guarantee you will hit, so you can shoot the harmless enemies to build up crits, then hit the sniper in the distance with 3 crits in the head, or take out the legendary, etc. It's not really ever so often, it's very predictable. No RNG involved.

Obviously the ideal is to have both Agility,Luck and Per maxed, but unless you are going stealth, per and luck simply have more perks to offer. Remember that having 10 agi does not give you twice the AP as 5... it gives you about 25% more. And that is lessened further by the fact that you can get extra AP due to equipment and armor mods.

Gun Fu is actually amazing with luck, when it triggers, due to Better Criticals. Unfortunately, that's when you have 4 clear targets, and at level 50. Before that the extra damage does not justify not finishing off your first target. Tactically, concentrating fire is always better than distributed damage. And the Concetrated Fire perk does not play well with Gun Fu, so it's a good idea to go with one or the other, until really high levels.

This all changes if you are going for stealth or melee, where you'll be wanting to max your Agility anyways. Even in those situations, I'd actually drop the Perception to 5 before dropping luck. Yeah, you wont be as accurate, so a worse VATS shooter, but with max stealth you can take the time to position yourself for more gun fuing or to get closer, and you can always take long ranged shots manually with a scope. However if you drop the Luck, then the pistols are straight up worse weapons that rifles, that do far more damage and are far more accurate. Less shots, but the extra damage puts it almost always in favor of rifles, if you dont go for crits.

In the end, if you like more shots, more shots is what you go for. A good Gun Fu VATS session is a glorious thing. But Luck seems to be where the power comes from with pistols.

Ok so you are saying forget mods what you want is S:1 P:10 I:1 C:1 A:10 L9. Well your a point short after include heads and special book. Still using a perk improving a special its probably the best natural gunslinger. Downside is that this build relies on getting lucky in finding good pistol mods. Actually for early mods this works ok, but later mods requiring science perk good mods seem much more difficult to find.

I think the point here is that you just don't have the time to kill all the melee opponents that are closing in on you (Survival level say). So kill two and have the remaining three mob you, or cripple four and focus on the one still coming.

I don't understand this. As I understand critical bonus is multiplicative, so if rifles do more damage with low luck they will do more with high luck?

Where I see pistol gaining is for example with the concentrated fire perk where you use the extra aimed shots to increase your hit chance.

I have one that looks like it is a pistol still if it does not have gunslinging perk it is still quite effective.

The reason Pistols work

Yeah, you'd have to spend a perk if you want to go max AGI, PER and 9 Luck. I'd pick either going stealth or not, and go 5 AGI 10 PER 9 LUK if you go stealth, or 10 PER 5 AGI 9 LUK if you go full on gunslinger. Mostly because I like aiming for Int 6 for Science!, and 3 Str for armorer. The modding perks are totally worth it .

The reason pistols are better for criticals is simply that more hits means much faster filling up of the critical meter. Critical hits are not random, the critical bar fills every hit, regardless of damage. The amount depends only on your luck. So if you are doing say 50% total damage but are shooting 50% more, you are getting 50% more critical meter filled, and due to the way damage resistance works, those critical strikes would mean you are doing a lot more damage for those extra shots. This becomes even bigger with Four Leaf Clover, which is a chance to fill the meter every hit. So more hits, more chance you'll get an extra critical stored.

In practice, the difference is quite significant. You get combat rifles that shoot 6-7 shots where a 10mm pistol etc shoots for 10-12, for the same VATS. This means, with 9 luck, the 10mm expects to fill 2 critical bars, while the combat rifle 1, even without four leaf clover. Even if it's doing a half the damage of the combat rifle per hit, you'll still do more damage with that pistol. Though ofcourse the pistol will miss a lot at range, if you don't have concentrated fire. With four leaf clover, that difference becomes bigger.

You dont really need good Legendary mods to drop for using crits etc. Kellogg's Pistol is basically the most powerful guaranteed luck weapon, as it refills your AP for every crit....so you have infinate AP with it, and you can't miss it in the story. It has limited ammo though. Also the Deliverer is a guaranteed reward, and it's basically a 10mm that shoots faster in VATS, making it also ideal. Finally, the Righteous Authority is a laser rifle that does damage with crits, and refills the crit meter faster. You can convert this into a pistol, which makes it much better.