I recently made a character with the intention of making him as powerful as possible. Dropped Charisma to 1, put 7s in every other Special basically (cept Perception), took Fast Shot and Built to Destroy (best traits imo) and planned on taking the most powerful perks (Better Criticals, Implant GRX, And Stay Back!, Grunt etc).

Well, at first the results were....disappointing. I somehow ended up with a character that has 340 carrying weight (plus pack rat), 48 DT and high critical damage and good DPS weaponry....but not a SINGLE weapon to my name that hit hard. (and yeah, I dunno how I ended up with the DT and the carrying weight, maybe because the overpowered perks I aimed for took longer to get to?) By comparison my Courier can hit a devistating 122 damage per hit with the Medicine Stick, all with decent firing rate (stockpiles of Rushing Water and Turbo + Fast Shot) and ~20% base crit. This character? This character could use the Survivalist's Rifle and the Q-35 Matter Modulator, which while they were good as DPS weapons, I quickly noticed a severe issue with Deathclaws.

What was frustrating was that I knew that on a crit, the Q-35 Matter Modulator hit for a ton (~134 damage), but the problem was that if it didn't crit, it was a modest 41 damage and on Very Hard mode, I NEED a headshot or else it becomes 20 damage. With 15% base crit (30% for the Q-35 Matter Modulator), while it's nice and consistent, it's still not enough for the high DT enemies, but I didn't it was the best gun to exploit Better Criticals off of. I ended up building myself around the damn gun, trying to find a way to make it useful, so I started taking VATS perks since I wasn't too impressed with it's ironsights. VATS perks were great and all, letting me fire 5 rounds of it in VATS with good accuracy, and staying in VATS was beneficial since it gave an additional 5% crit (so up to 40% crit for the Q-35) but it still felt like something was missing.

Then I thought back to the Courier again. This new character was very well rounded with perks in every category, just like my Courier. Except unlike the Courier, this character svcked ass, lolz. A high damage per hit weapon was missing, and I had no idea how to achieve that without taking Hand Loader and Cowboy, which just would've been copying the Courier (and obviously I was wanting to try something new). I realized though that part of the Courier's strength was consumables. Rushing Water and Turbo turned him into a beast, so much so that I had cleared the Courier's Mile by basically just standing in the middle, alerting everything and letting them all run at me as I shot them down before they hit me. This character unfortunately shot down the Great Khans for roleplaying reasons, so no turbo, and even WITH turbo and rushing water, this character lacked a high DPH weapon to exploit with them. The Courier also had stockpiles of Med-X, Slasher and Battle Brew. Again though, this character already had 48 DT and good health, so those were rarely needed. The only consumable that helped me was Psycho, to help beef up the lackluster DPH I had.

Then it hit me.

I was looking at what perks to get with my last 4 perk slots, and I thought "if only True Police Stories could be stockpiled." I noticed the Voracious Reader perk. This was something my Courier couldn't get because his INT wasn't high enough, and I had generally scoffed at the perk because it was released with Lonesome Road; by the time you could get it, all your skills would already be knocking on 100, so you wouldn't need magazines.
The thing is though, combined with Comprehension, True Police Stories awards 10% crit. 10% crit on a x2 crit weapon like the Q-35 Matter Modulator is already 20% additional crit, bringing me up to 60%. More importantly, 60% crit with a 48 DT character that has Better Criticals and plenty of VATS use. I COULD use the 1st Recon Beret and the Elite Riot gear to beef it up to 90% crit, but didn't for RP purposes. This meant that the majority of my shots were now hitting 134 damage. And Voracious Reader was the key that allowed me to farm True Police Stories, cause otherwise, I only had two copies.

And just like that, I realized that Voracious Reader + Comprehension are absolutely KEY in utilizing energy weapons. With those combined, you can make them crit the majority of the time, and they crit far more often and/or far harder than most guns, meaning they benefit the most from it.

Now the character feels reminiscent of the Lone Wanderer in FO3 after you get Grim Reaper's Sprint, where you hit that point where you never leave VATS. Furthermore, I feel like I've FINALLY developed a character that isn't using Energy Weapons just because I choose to, but because they're truly better for him. Carrying weight is a non-issue (340 carrying capacity), he crits like mad and his income is high enough that I can bring plenty of Weapon Repair kits. I'm very impressed with this.



Anyone else got any killer SPECIAL combos that they find completely OP?

I don't have anything specific, but there are certain combos I use that become devastating in my hands. Welcome to my mind:

SPECIAL in order of preference:

Skills in order of preference:

Perks not in order of preference:

Traits not in order of preference:

Weapon Combos(Lucky is included with all of these):

I usually RP when I make my special stats but I think it's still a decent build:
SPECIAL:

Perks:


Tag Skills:

Traits:

It might sound like a bad build but I completed the game on hard with hardcoe mode on with this build (and no fast traveling) so it works fine for me.

I honestly dont think nearly as much as some of you guys on most of my character builds so ill just post some of my favs:
SPECIAL

SKILLS

TRAITS

PERKS

I'm about to move into Dead Money, so my current planning is about mitigating its uniquely annoying survival lssues. My current Courier is Explosives-specialized, with Guns as a secondary combat skill of choice. Explosives are rare in Dead Money, yet they could be extremely effective as they cripple limbs every time.

Three perks that caught my attention are Mad Bomber, Them's Good Eating and Nuka Chemist. Nuka Chemist has two uses- increasing the action points with Nuka Cola Victory and providing the material for Nuka Grenades. Mad Bomber can provide an additional source of Explosives in the form of aforementioned Nuka Grenades and Tin Can grenades, while Them's Good Eating should be great for reducing the amount ot chips spent on Stimpaks.