We haven't heard much about unarmed combat in NV and it's beginning to disappoint me. One of my favorite skills in fallout 1 and 2 was Unarmed, followed by Small Guns and Energy Weapons. All of you who have played the originals please tell me that you also miss how awesome unarmed combat was in the classics. I demand news from the devs!! Have you guys even done any changes to how unarmed combat was handled in fallout 3?? I give you this thread so that the devs realize how many people want to know what has been done to change/improve the most unused combat skill in fallout 3.

Ehhh, I've always found unarmed useless, but only because Me: Unarmed vs Foe: Minigun = Those are not my kind of odds xD

never payed attention to the Unarmed skill in any of my playthroughs . why waste points on it when i know i'll be using guns all the time . same thing with Melee Weapons skill .

i know they've added special Melee attacks to V.A.T.S. in F:NV but i'm still not wasting points on them .

Unarmed always intrigued me but I never really found a practical use for it. Why fight with your fists when you have a gun? I wish they had a system of proportional response, I.E. I svcker punch a guy and we duke it out like men (well myself less of a man because I svcker punched him) instead of him and everyone else around him trying to blow my head off. If they had that I would be interested out of more than just curiosity.

I wish there was an ability to knock your enemy out with unarmed attacks or attacks made with blunt melee weapons, rather than simply kill them. Like for example, when unarmed or wielding a blunt melee/unarmed weapon, you could have the option by pressing a specific key that instead of attacking the enemy normally you would attempt to knock them out. Your unarmed or melee skills respectively, would dictate how successful you are. If you fail the knockout attempt you simply do damage as if you had attacked normally. If you succeed in the attempt, the enemy falls, unconscious for a few minutes but alive. The enemy's overall health would determine how easily they could be knocked out. If they are at 100% health they will be considerably more difficult to knock unconscious than if they were at 20%. You would get a bonus to your chance to knock an enemy out if you were undetected.

In fallout 3 you could never knock down your enemies even by shooting them with a .44 magnum in the face. Unless you had special/unique weapons of course. But in the NV trailers you can clearly see that most weapons can knock down your enemies, maybe it's the same for Unarmed and melee combat. All we have on unarmed is that we're getting boxing gloves to knock our enemies out without killing them. Is that all that we unarmed fighters are getting for this new game?? Don't disappoint me Obsidian..

EDIT: oh and i my self never used unarmed that much in fallout 3, it svcked really bad. Bethesda didn't even bother to make it as good as the other combat skills.

I did a few playthroughs on FO1 and 2 using unarmed, but for some reason it just didn't feel as appealing in FO3. That might have to do with the perspective and combat changes. What I would personally like to see return in the new Fallout games is the tiered arena-style fights like they had in the originals (I think there was some bare-knuckle boxing in the first one, more boxing in the second one in New Reno, and the karate match in Chinatown). I thought those were fun.

I used it as a good backup, but I don′t see why it needs it′s improvement, melee/unarmed is a good backup when the ammo runs low (something more likely if you use the new hardcoe mode) but as your main form of attack....like the old saying goes

"don′t bring a knife to a gunfight"

Sneak + sneak attack + chain of VATS attacks = annihilation.

Sneak+Sneak Attack+ Hunting rifle = annihilation...at range.

I like unarmed because i like to see the enemies to be slapped silly to death.
In Point Lookout, i fought with a swampfolk bare handed. Man, they're tough, even without weapons....

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We're talking about fists not knives, and i'm not suggesting that unarmed should be more powerful. When i say improvement i mean that i want for it to have more variety of attacks, the fallout 3 animations didn't help at all. The higher your skill the more knockdowns/damage you should be able to do, but not too overpowered like it got in fallout 3. Unless you have powerfists or something, you should also be able to unlock better moves even some that could pierce armor like in fallout 2. Plus we need more kicking action!! :toughninja:

Would be nice with some bonuses when unarmed reaches a certain level, like with each 12 in unarmed there is a chance to knock down the enemy, with each 25 there is a chance to paralyze them, with 100 you have a chance to instakill them.
=
100 unarmed skill:
8% knockdown chance.
4% chance paralyze.
1% chance instakill.
Then with perks you can add on to these, like a perk for knockdown can increase it's chance by 1% for 3 ranks.
A perk for paralyze, 3 ranks, each rank adds 1% chance.
A perk for instakill, one rank, adds 1% chance.
A perk for increase critical chance, (10 luck = 10% critical chance) 3 ranks, each add 2%

With all these perks (10 perks, since it's one perk each 2 levels it means you have 5 other perks to spend on), 10 luck and full unarmed skill you get:
11% knockdown
7% paralyze
2% instakill (If you think "Well how does he instakill", then just imagine that your character did a neck-twist on the enemy or something)
16% critical
(64% of your attacks will still be normal attacks)

Might seem like it's too powerful but remember that unarmed has shorter range than Melee, it has the worst weapons out of all weapons classes, you have to get up close and personal with enemies wielding plasma rifles and miniguns and if the game is more balanced so that we can die more easily then I think it's a fair trade-off.
Sure, you can kill people rather easily, but first you have to actually get close to them, then you need to kill that person while others keep shooting at you.
It's only a quick draft and it's not perfect but still, unarmed should get something.
Also, in order to make this character really powerful you have to spend 10 perks on it.
But if you want to be an unarmed character that is combat oriented then you'll have to sacrifice a couple of perks for it.

Actually, you could knock out an enemy with a couple punches to the head (without Paralyzing Palm too). Unarmed can be very fun when you create a Melee/Unarmed brute. I'm definitely going to try it again in New Vegas with all of the improvements and new weapons.

It doesn't seem to overpowered to me, and good job, that's a really good example. Everything looks great except the knockdown chance, a master of unarmed could easily take down enemies with one or two strikes. Also you could technically insta kill people with a well placed "lucky" strike..

Myeah but remember how fast one can punch in fallout 3.
Each punch has a 36% chance of doing a special effect.
Basically, every third punch has a special effect.

How about an eleventh perk that increases punching speed by 20%?

True dat. Hmm but in my head i was imagining the character doing slow but strong attacks to knockdown the enemy. Maybe by holding down the attack button, or during vats? 11 unarmed perks?? It would be awesome but why not make it 15. :laugh: Might as well make the player get an unarmed perk every two levels.

Hmm, okay, if you hold the fire button so you do a strong attack then the chance for a special effect doubles.

And 4 more perks then.
Erm.
A perk that while in vats you have a 5% chance to confuse an enemy.
The enemy will shoot randomly and walk in random directions.

A perk that while in combat, each punch you do increases DT by 1 for 10 seconds each.
Explanation:
1 1st punch, 10 seconds left
2 2nd punch, 10 seconds left
3 3rd punch 10 seconds left, #1&2 now have 9 seconds left
4 4th punch 10 seconds left, #1&2 now have 9 seconds left
5 5th punch 10 seconds left, #1&2 now have 8 seconds left #3&4 now have 9 seconds left
6 6th punch 10 seconds left, #1&2 now have 8 seconds left #3&4 now have 9 seconds left
7 7th punch 10 seconds left. #1&2 now have 7 seconds left #3&4 now have 8 seconds left, #5&6 now have 9 seconds left.

You can as a maximum stack 10+ in DT.

A perk that when you use VATS you have a 5% chance to splatter someone's entire body, which makes some enemies around you run in fear.

Considering that melee weapons have special VATS attacks, perhaps this will apply to unarmed as well. Other than that, though, I doubt that we'll see much improvement to unarmed, after all, I think there would be at least a mention of this. Though honestly, I never bothered much with unarmed, and I probably won't in New Vegas either, it just seems to make no sense to me for someone to choose to fight without weapons in Fallout's setting, I mean, why would you use punches and kicks when you're enemies have guns? I could buy someone fighting primarily with melee weapons as realistically, guns and their ammunition would not be easy to come by in Fallout's setting, and even people who had them might choose not to use them if they can avoid it in order to conserve ammunition. But it seems to me that unless you're some kind of superhero or something, going up against someone armed with a gun, or for that matter, even a dangerous mutated animal like a deathclaw, using only your fists is pretty much like shooting yourself in the head while jumping out of a flying plane without a parachute and taking a slow acting but deadly poison before that for good measure. Okay, maybe that's a slightly over the top metaphor, but the point is it's suicide, and the only way I can see unarmed being really worth using except as a last resort in the game would be to ignore logic in order to allow it to still fight effectively with well armed enemies.

So yeah, I don't expect unarmed to be much of a more viable choice in New Vegas than it was in Fallout 3, though maybe Obsidian will somehow prove me wrong.

I tried a couple times to make a character with a heavy emphasis on the unarmed skill but found it difficult to make it useful. It was also rather boring to repeat the same exact type of attack a million times over. Atleast with guns you can switch which gun your are using.

i always loved in the orginals with bloody mess you could punch a hole right thru a guy funny stuff

I use unarmed as my close range weapon...
Main weapon? GUNS AND LASERS OF COURSE! :gun: :flamethrower:

While it's true that Unarmed is at a disadvantage versus all the other weapon skills (especially guns), it was and still is a really fun skill if you build your character solely around being a martial-arts master who could make people explode with their fists. Combat was still challenging, yes, because you had to figure out a way to close the distance and punch people - but that's what made it so fun. It's kind of like how some people will try to beat the game without killing a single person - you don't have to, and it's tough to do, but the added challenge is FUN!

In Fallout 1 & 2, most of my characters wound up being Unarmed specialists (of around 150%). In Fallout 3.. Well only my first session was serious. I've never had a PC above 7th level and Unarmed was not as good as FO2. :shrug:

I would really like to see the Unarmed & Melee skills be made practical again.

I'm primarily a gun guy through and through and most of my characters will reflect that, but since I'm planning on making a Caesar's Legion character that is going to tag Unarmed/Melee weapons so I chose to see some improvement in those areas if possible. :tops: