I am making a assassin or spy character and need some help. I think I have it all thought out but skill points are tight and I would just like someone else's opinion.
So Here it is.

The overall concept is an assassin or a Spy type character that focuses on revolvers and a sniper rifle but has some training in melee and unarmed. He will lack in charisma because he isn't used to talking to people he just kills them if he is an assassin, If I go with a spy character though I think I will make him charismatic. The only reason I am debating this is because I typically take Black widow for the amusing speech options, does lady killer have the same amount of options? Sneak, Guns, and lock pick will be my tag skills. Repair will be another skill I focus on. Explosives, melee, and unarmed will have some points with melee at least getting 45. I may work up speech but not past 50. Survival will go to 45 for a perk. Barter, Energy weapons, medicine and Science will just stay at there base score. I'm not sure how I should divide up the points per level, any ideas?

Special

S: 6
P:6
E:5
C:1
I:9 (I'm unsure if I should bump it up to ten or just buy the implant but at level 30 10 only gives 15 extra skill points.)
A:4 (+1 from small frame 5)
L: 9

Implants: Luck, agility, Sub-dermal armor, strength, and Intelligence or endurance

Traits
Small Frame
Unsure about the second one, I thought about good natured but I want to be decent in all weapons except energy.

Perks

2:Rapid reload or Lady Killer
4:educated
6:travel light
8:The Professional
10:finesse
12:silent running
14:Jury Rigging
16:Better Criticals
18:Tag
20: Ninja If I have the points in melee otherwise cowboy
22:Super Slam
24: Toughness
26: Toughness
28:handloader
30:weapon handling

Thanks, if you took the time to look it over, what's your overall opinion on the build, any changes you would make, ect. What do you think the special, tag and traits should be?

Thanks for any help.

I have a similar character

Special - I don't min/max, but what you have is fine

Traits - I would suggest build to destroy, as the focus will be on critical hits

Perks - Intense training endurance (most L2 perks svck), educated or comprehension, hand loader as soon as you can, the professional, maybe cowboy, finesse, silent running, better criticals

The key is obviously to max luck, chance of critical, and critical damage.

Really the only thing I am doing differently is using hand loader - the ammo you can make is better


I'm not a fan of jury rigging; at 50 repair you can make weapon repair kits and a sniper doesn't really need much armor. I'd rather not raise repair above 70.

Get the anti-material rifle
Crouch as far away as possible
Shoot

Thats your build.
It so easy, being a sneak melee/unarmed is no where near as effective as this, even if you are in buildings...

#1: Put 10 into INT. It's ok to put 9 if you have more than enough END for implants, but you don't, so a 10 INT lets you use an implant on something else as well as get bonus skill points from the start.

#2: Focus your perks on one style of fighting. Don't plan around perks like Ninja if you're only going to have a limited melee skill. If you decide to pick up another weapon type as backup, that's precisely what it is- backup. Any weapon type can be effective without perks.

#3: I didn't take Hand Loader, so I can't say for sure, but I imagine you'd want that before the melee perks if guns will be your primary weapon skill.

#4: If guns are your focus, put more into AGI. Take one out of STR- 5 STR + implant is 6, then Weapon Handling makes 8, which is the requirement on the AMR. If you want to use a melee weapon that takes 9, having 8 isn't going to affect much. You also don't need so much luck, especially if you're going to take Finesse, unless there's a very specific reason for it. I didn't see anything that required more than a 7 luck.

I always play a stealth/sniper type character. I prefer to go for more well rounded specials myself, I don't like the whole dump-stat approach. But I would go with decent agility (6) so that you can get the Silent Running perk (running doesn't factor into NPCs detecting you in sneak mode) which with my style of play has saved my skin a few times, but that's really a matter of choice.

The most important thing for snipers really is getting critical chance and critical damage up as much as possible (and getting a suppressor if using a sniper rifle) so that you can do as much damage as possible on the first shot and remain undetected if facing a mob (hence the suppressor). It is possible to get a critical hit on almost every shot with the right combination of perks. Personally if you have a steady hand I would ignore all perks that rely on use of VATS and go for ones that increase your chance of getting a critical, and Better Criticals, because as long as you can aim straight on the screen you are better off not using VATS for long distance shots. In my opinion.

Ignore skills and perks that favour anything other than using a rifle (as a sniper your choices will be sniper rifle or anti-material rifle which are normal guns, or very rare gauss rifle which is an energy weapon)- you will be weak in melee, but as a sniper your aim should be to never let your enemy see you are coming, let alone get close enough to go toe to toe.

Or if you want to get up close and personal rather than being a sniper, focus on melee skills and stealth (in which case the Silent Running perk will be even more valuable to you, if you want to get close without being detected then get out of dodge....). But pick one or the other and focus on whichever skillset you need. In this game you can't be good at everything.

you list Travel Light as the level 6 perk, but I think it requires 45 Survival, which you don't mention as a skill you want. And The Professional requires 70 Sneak I think, which is quite a lot of points by lev 8.

Thanks for the help guys.

Travel light at level 6 and professional at level 8 will be difficult I might have to push them back because your right that is a lot of points, I did mention I was going to bump survival up to 45 to use the perk, I just hid it in a paragraph. Is that perk worth it? I haven't used it before and just thought it would work well with the concept of an assassin.

@ Epona222 and Spiffy McBang

I was going to get agility up to 6 with a base of 4 and small frame and an implant. I hardly ever use vats just cause I like to shoot myself. If I'm doing that do I need to put more points into agility?
Also, I bumped luck up to 9 cause I just didn't no where else would be a good place to dump them, if I was to lower it to 7 where would you put the 2 points?

This isn't in my mind, I could be wrong lol probably wrong, a min-max build I did drop charisma down to 1 because after playing with it at 7 and at 1 I haven't seen that big of difference, Boone still kills everything. Since this guy is going to be a loner most of the time I don't think I'll need it. With ninja you're right it is to much points in melee by level 20 but I think I could still get it later on just for flavor. I'm still thinking of kinda balancing the melee and guns skill, I know a jack of all trades is a master of none but I like it more for rp reasons than effectiveness.

I play on normal hardcoe if that matters at all.

Thanks for the help again, and any other advice would be appreciated.

I've always been fascinated by the Killer With No Personality character. Charisma 1, huh?

You don't need to min/max for this kind of character. I *always* play a stealthy assassin and I've never had a 9 nor a 1 in any SPECIAL attribute. Unless you plan on using VATS for all your combat, you only *need* one perk: Better Criticals.

Stick to the shadows in crouch mode.

Guns + Sneak. That's it for skills. Will other skills help? Yup. Will Speech help you a lot more? Yup. Talk your way out of or into certain situations. Oh, you wanted to kill that guy? Speech challenge first, crit from the shadows after. More XP that way.

Will Finesse help you? Sure, I guess. But if you are a stealthy assassin, your initial hit will always be a Sneak Attack Critical (important word: "critical"). Sneak Attack Critical *always* happens from [HIDDEN] status. You don't need to max *any* SPECIAL attribute. You don't need Boone's beret. You don't need anything but a [HIDDEN] status and a good weapon (Silenced, Scoped Varmint rifle will suit you fine for most of the game).

I would go Int 8 (miss 30 skill points) unless you are not trying to find skill books; I have playthoughs with int 8(~lv10),9 and 10: the only difference is I get a third combat skill to 100.......

I would swap professional with Toughness given 70 Stealth is pretty meaningless at lv8; I would also push Jury Rigging back a bit consider you are a Gun user, weapon is still easy to repair at teens.

I wouldn't get the 4th Tag, get Ninja at lv 30 instead.

I just don't know any assassin weapon that needs Weapon Handling at Str 6.....

I'm trying a stealthy sniper-type character, early in the game (I'd previously finished on hardcoe mode, though, so I'm familiar with dealing with weighty etc. issues!).

I wanted to play and finish the game first to get the hardcoe achievement and enjoy the game without too much metagaming (I had some idea of decent character design from FO3). Then for my 2nd playthrough, very hard hardcoe, I did more advance planning to look at perk and weapon minimum characteristics.

FWIW, I went with SPECIAL of something like 8,5,4,1,10,6,5 (I'm probably off by a point somewhere, this is from memory) and for level 2 took a stat increase perk (luck) - with 4 implants to S, P, A, L planned my character will have all the minimums for the perks I want and will be able to use all weapons without penalty (assuming skills are high enough) with strength (and for one or two weapons requiring 10 strength, power armor).

As a stealthy assassin, why are you using perks to increase DT (toughness x2) and effective carry weight (travel light)? Why are you adding an additional tag skill - start with I 10 instead? Makes no sense to me given the "stealthy assassin" description. Similarly rapid reload, is a stealthy assassin, not to mention one with melee skills, going to be reloading a lot during combat? Or sniping or killing closeup?

Do you use VATS? If so, take Built to destroy and Kamikaze and a later 20+ perk should include Grim reaper. If not, built to destroy + (whatever - small frame, wild wasteland, or maybe for roleplaying reasons trigger discipline if you're a sniper type, though your build seems more melee-focused).

I understand you want both guns and melee, but which is more important to you? If melee, having a higher strength and lower perception seems to make sense. Since stealthy assassin, DT not so much an issue (don't bother with toughness, armor implant, etc.). That was my own choice, I figured focusing on a stealthy sniper, lower E and not planning for toughness perks or DT implant fit with the character theme and freed up other perk choices.

Those are just a few thoughts, as noted overall I think you have some poor perk and trait choices, should think carefully about SPECIAL scores, and plan for either a sniping or close-up melee focus (with the other option being the secondary focus). I welcome any criticism of my own character description above, of course!

A sneaky assassin that focuses on revolvers. That just won't do. You need to focus on the 10mm.

Stick them in AGI. There are some situations where VATS is immensely useful; even if you really do use it as little as possible, AGI impacts your guns and sneak skill, which lets you max them a little faster. At least then they'll be a little useful. Those two extra in luck give you one more skill point across the board (half which go to skills you won't use) and maybe you win faster at blackjack.

Also, you may want to rethink Travel Light unless you're comfortable with a perk that may be useless halfway through the game. Recon armor is excellent for a stealth sniper, but it's medium and will nullify Travel Light. If you stick with leather, things will become difficult. (I know.)

You can BIND armor to a hotkey meaning you can switch your Reinforced Leather (or Parkstroller Outfit) in a blink of an eye once combat starts. Almost entire game is running somewhere. Being able to do it 10% faster means you save 1 full hour of real time per every 10 hours of New Vegas. 2 hours if you chose to run in Combat Armor, 3 hours if you picked Power Armor. Just do the math.

Also, being faster means you can get away from dyna, your back-tracking and shooting at the same time yields better results - and you are even able to bail some fights if there's a need for it. I learned to like extra speed when dancing around enemies with Riot.