If you browse the perk list you'll see that all the perks that help melee weapons builds have a high unarmed skill requisite. It's ridiculous, if i want to keep melee weapons useful, i'll have to gimp myself by putting a lot points in the unarmed skill that i don't plan on using. Why not make the requisite X Unarmed OR X Melee weapons since it benefits both and to have high skills in both would be the very definition of redundancy.

I smell a mod that needs to be cooked up. (and probably already has.)
Oh look http://newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34988

Too bad i'm playing it on the 360. Jeez what was obsidian thinking? I really hope they take the hint and include this little fix in their upcoming patches.

Honestly, I was sour about this as well, but went ahead and invested the points anyways. I have to say, Melee is great early on, but by the time you get to high level, you're gonna wanna switch to Displacer Gloves and the Ballistic Fist anyhow. I'm gonna tell you right now, with the right perks a Melee/Unarmed build is BEASTLY.

Yeah but the thing about that is, it's 67 points for a skill i won't use and 67 points other builds have got ahead of mine.

The cost is high because the reward is enormous. Seriously.

I'll take your word for it. I did the math, and with the skill books/educated perk unarmed won't make too much of a dent in my set-up.