I've been playing survival up to level 16 so far and two things have been bothering me about doing a full unarmed play through.

1. My unarmed damage always seems really low compared guns even after several investments in melee perks and the best mods I can access.

2. How can damage resistance be balanced between those who want to use use power armor and those who don't when power armor is offering roughly 6x - 10x more potential damage resistance and rad resistance.

1. After playing for a few days I realize that I am not completely optomized. I thought this was like other Fall out games where dumping stats would make me horrible at other things. It appears with 1 charisma you are still fairly likeable, low int doesn't make you an idiot, and it is hard to detect enemies whether you have low perception or not. STR itself doesn't seem to do much for melee damage.

I went something like 10 LCK, 5 STR, 5 END, 3 AGIL, 3 Int, 2 Perception, 1 CHA. I can't remember exactly what the spread was since I've ran into some stat boosting items. Looking back I could have dumped INT and PER, and went straight LCK, STR,END, and AGIL. Regardless I've had enough levels to correct those mistakes yet my unarmed damage is still as at or worst than most guns with 0 investment.

I'm using bladed knuckles as the highest moded unarmed I can get. I tried the armor piercing but it apparently doesn't do anything as the bleed damage has been far more useful vs heavy armor or naked enemies. I have iron fist as high as I can get it. I have the critcal hit perks and critical hit damage perks. I have double unarmed mods on my armor and yet shotguns and rifles laugh at the damage I do with no investment. Damage is just extremely poor on anything that isn't a low level raider or Ghoul. Mirelurks may as well be melee immune as the unarmed attack can't hit their weak spot and bounces off the shell for max damage reduction 100% of the time. I just don't get it.

2. Right now I am using a full suit of painted/alloyed metal armor which is the highest damage resist mod avaible for metal armor. I haven't run into a tier of armor higher yet. I am missing about 5 DR from not using a hard hat + DR underclothes. I have 75 DR( 55+20 DR from END perk). When I put on power armor I have almost 700 DR and I haven't even upgraded a single piece. How can I hope damage will be balanced between power armor users and non power armor users when the gap is that huge? I don't want to use power armor. I can't even use the unarmed weapons I worked on getting when in power armor. I also don't want to hide all the armor and accessories I modded and worked hard to get. How do I get around this?

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These two factors have made it very hard to play strictly as melee and make me question why there are options to specialize in melee at all. The roleplaying fantasy of a post apocalyptic brawler seems to be just that, a fantasy. Of the 2 bosses I have fought so far both had to be put down with grenade spam and guns. I can't face the games greatest challenges using the playstyle I've built on and prefer. It feels terribly lopsided and unsatifying,

Power armor is superior to not having power armor in every single scenario except swimming (and sneaking in the early game, but later on it's better at that too).

As far as unarmed damage goes, you're basically required to use power armor.

It might make certain builds non-viable, but realistically brawling wouldn't be a good plan versus giant monsters and gun-toting psychopaths anyways.