I decided to do a replay with a melee-oriented character, armed with Chance's Knife.

At level 8 he started out towards Novac, past that wreck the Vipers use as an ambush point.

As he runs uphill, Caesar's assassins approach my character, gave him the "you're marked by Caesar and now you must die" -spiel, and started to attack.

Pre-patch, the assassin squad consisted of 1 decanus and 2 other semi-tough regulars. Not a huge problem to kill.

My character ran into a group consisting of 1 easily forgettable soldier, 1 decanus, 1 vexillarius, and 2 centurions! The centurions in particular made me start hating life. Between them they had as standard issue 1 44. magnum, 1 hunting rifle, hand grenades and a super sledge. Four reloads, 3 land mines, 3 40mm grenades, numerous cowboy rifle rounds and some knife hack'n'slash later, I finally managed to kill the assassin squad.

I get the impression the developers thought the old assassin squad was too underpowered, thus the fine-tuning.

However, if you're following the basic storyline and heading up to Novac with a level 8-10 character, I think it's a bit much for any character build.

Ok, sure you could snipe them from a distance, but then you don't get the enjoying of hearing about your death sentence.

A quick and dirty way to fix this issue would involve dropping one centurion. The fight would still be difficult (1-2 reloads vs. 4-5 reloads), but not impossible to survive.

Disagree its a hit squad your meant to die or have an epic battle to save yourselve.
I've never came across a Legion hit squad though just the NCR 3 Rangers one and thats too easy

Either you're talking about a pre-patch hit squad or the developers forgot to give the NCR some lovin'.

I agree the that the fight should be a challenge. But not a 4-5 reload kind of challenge.

Like I suggested, if they dropped a centurion from the squad, it would be a reasonable challenge.

Maybe it's because most people will be vilified by the Legion at that point (seeing as most people here hate the Legion) so the devs wanted incentives to not piss them off before a proper point. Eat it haters :toughninja:

level 8 and already Vilified? Did you already clear out Cottonwood Cove? Or did you just kill those Legion ambushes meant for the NCR patrols and caravans?