I agree, but to be honest, instead of starting a new thread, we can just PM each-other. But I think I have enough to get me started anyway :D

The original Fallout has Brass Knuckles, Spiked Knuckles and the Power Fist. So if you just want to run around punching everyone, it's got you covered.

Okay, the first thing you want to do is to flesh out a archetype for your character, are you building a simple meat head who just likes hitting things or a stealthy guerrilla warrior who destroys enemies with bare hands. Is you character the leader of a group, a loaner, a smooth talker or maybe a technical genius who can learn to do anything. Not only will this help you in how you role play the character but it will also help guide character creation and development. Some traits and perks may be more obvious with one character type over another. I'm not going to give you exact numbers and stats I think you should be using, that would take away half the fun in playing the game. I would like to share a few things I have learned over my many playthroughs with unarmed characters.

First a quick rundown of the SPECIAL attributes. There is a way to permanently raise each attribute by one point during the course of the game, so if there is a stat that you really want to be at 10, you might consider raising it to 9 at creation and waiting to see if you can raise it later in the game. There are also drugs and other items that can raise attributes temporarily, this can be useful if you are trying to get a perk but don't have one of the minimum requirements.

Strength - A melee fighter might want this as each point of strength above 5 will increase melee and unarmed damage by 1 point. Keep in mind that increases to damage only raise the max damage numbers, so if a weapon states that it will do 10-20 damage that means you will do an average of 15 points of damage per attack. If you get a +2 attack modifier then the range becomes 10-22 for an average attack of 16. So more strength does help but not by a lot, which is something to keep in mind when your rationing attribute points. If you do want to max it out a 10 you should start it out at 6 since you can get +3 from power armor and +1 from other means.

Perception - Not too important for melee as it's biggest use is long range accuracy. It is useful in general combat, however, as perception also determines the combat sequence, which is basically how the game determines who's turn is next. I wouldn't recommend dropping it below 3 or 4. Of course you may want to raise perception above that as it is also a requirement for some perks that I happen to find very useful.

Endurance - This controls how many hit points you gain at level up. The formula is half your endurance, rounded down, plus 2. This means Endurance works best when it is at an even number. A popular tactic is to set it at an odd number to start with so that when you get the free +1 it actually makes a tangible difference. For my ranged characters I drop this to 4, but since you are going to be bringing fists to a lot of gun fights it would not be a bad idea to raise this. Starting it at 9 and waiting for the extra point is not a bad idea at all, but it's not strictly necessary. A starting number of 7 is perfectly acceptable for a unarmed fighter.

Charisma - Has no purpose in combat and very little use outside of it. This is my favorite dump stat so I always drop it to 1.If you do want to role play a more charismatic character it would be better to pump up your Speech skill than Charisma.

Intelligence - If you want a lot of skill points you should raise this to 9 or 10 right at the beginning. If for some reason you don't ever want to use more than 2-3 skills then you can set it to something lower. Be aware that taking your intelligence below 4 means your character won't have the brain power to engage in most conversations.

Agility - This stat determines the number of action points you get. The higher this stat is, the easier combat will be. Even though it can be raised it by 1 point during the course of gameplay, I like to start it out as 10 on all my combat focused character builds.

Luck - Useful for critical hits, and since you won't have the raw fire power to do a lot of damage most of your fights will depend on getting in some critical hits.

Traits
You get two and they stay with you for the whole game. I'm not going to cover them all, just the few I feel are focused on an unarmed character.

Gifted - I pretty much use this trait in all my builds. It gives you a +1 for each SPECIAL attribute but lowers all your skills and gives you less skill points on level up. Having higher starting attributes is an incredible advantage, having fewer skill points hurts a bit, but can be offset by pumping up Intelligence. Lower starting skills aren't too big a deal as there are only a few you will really be using anyway.

Bruiser - Gives you +2 to Strength but -2 Action Points. It sounds good on paper, but Action Points are much more important than Strength for this character. Heavy Handed - Higher melee damage but lower critical hit damage. More damage is okay, but if you are counting on getting lots of critical hits, this trait will hurt more than help.

Finesse - Lower normal damage but better critical hit chance. This is actually pretty great in the early game but if you get the Slayer perk this becomes pretty useless.

One Hander - Gives you a boost with one handed weapons but penalizes you with two handed weapons. Brass Knuckles and Power Fists are considered one handed weapons, which means there is no down side for an unarmed character.

Small Frame - a +1 to Agility but lowers your carrying weight. Since you won't need to lug around heavy weapons and ammo this is not a bad choice at all.

Good Natured - Lowers all your combat skills but raises some of Speach, Barter First Aid and Doctor skills. You were only going to use one combat skill anyways so the downside is not that bad, and the skill that get raised are actually fairly useful throughout the game.

Part 2

Skills
There is a lot of debate about which skills are best and which are worse. In my opinion there is no best/worst skill, it is all dependent on playstyle. Some might be more useful than others but each one has it's specific uses. You will find many books in the wasteland that can raise some of your skills, specifically Small Guns, First Aid, Science, Repair and Outdoors. Unless you want to specialize your character in one of these skills it is safe to ignore them and rely on the books. Plus there is actually an unlimited supply of these books by design, no need to cheat or exploit the game to try and get more. For an unarmed character there are a few traits that I find very helpful.

Unarmed - Obviously!

First Aid/Doctor - There are a lot of players who consider these to be largely useless skills, however I end up using them a lot. Trying to fight heavily armed thugs with nothing but your fists is going to leave you wounded a lot and there are a few ways to heal yourself. One is using stimpaks, these heal you instantly but are of a limited supply. I like to save stimpaks for use while I'm in combat. You also heal over time, either by travelling or resting. You can rest by setting an alarm on your pipboy, but depending on how beat up you are it can take a few days to fully heal. If you are hurt during a random encounter it is possible to continue traveling as you will heal during this time, the danger is if you get into another encounter too soon as you will still be hurt. Or you can use the First Aid and Doctor skills. Using these skills on yourself will heal HP and give you XP. In the early game it is kind of a pain as you will have to use the skill 10-12 time to get one successful use, but as the skills increase this gets a lot better. The in game time passes when you use these skills but the amount of healing you get is more than if you had rested for that same amount of time. There is a limit to the number of times each skill can be used, which is 3 successful uses in 24 hours. After that the game will tell you that you're too tired to perform the action. What I like to do is, after a fight I use First Aid on my self until I get 3 successes then I switch to Doctor. If I hit the success limit I rest for about 12-18 hours, because by that time my first successful use of First aid was more than 24 hours before so I can use it again. When my character is fully healed it has only taken a fraction of the in game time it would have required to heal by resting, plus I would have earned about 200-500 XP in the process. A few extra XP for every fight can really add up over time.

Sneak - The biggest danger when fighting unarmed is that you need to run directly towards opponents who are shooting at you. The sooner you can close this distance the better. With a high enough Sneak skill you can walk up right behind someone and punch them in the back of the head before they know you are there. At even higher levels it's possible to sneak away and end combat in the middle of a fight.

Lockpick/Speech - These skills are useful to just about any character, but for an unarmed fighter you can sometimes use them to find alternate paths that save you from some tough fights.

Perks
The level cap in Fallout 1 is 21, since you only get a perk every three levels this means you will only get to pick 7 perks total. It's best to read all the perks in the manual and try to decide ahead of time which you will definitely be wanting, this way you can plan your character stats around meeting the minimum requirements. It's awfully deflating when you finally reach level 18 and find that the Slayer perk you wanted requires 2 or 3 more points of Perception that you won't be able to get this late in the game.

Action Boy - Gives you 1 extra Action Point, can be taken 3 times. With an Agility of 10 you will have 10 AP. With this perk you can get up to 13 AP but that would take have your perk limit.

Awareness - Allows you to see your enemies hit points and what weapon they are weilding. This is immensly helpful for making tactical decisions. Knowing which targets are closest to dying or which have ranged weapons can make the fights much easier.

Better Criticals - Increases damage done by critical hits. Very useful.

Bonus Hand to Hand Attacks - makes your unarmed attacks cost less AP. A must for unarmed fighters.

Bonus Hand to Hand Damage - a +2 to all unarmed attacks, can be taken 3 times for a total of +6. Again the +2 only effects the max range of damage, may not be worth using 3 perks to fully develop.

Lifegiver - adds an additional 4 points of health to the HP gain you get from your Endurance whenever you level up, can be taken 3 times. One rank, taken early, is not a bad idea at all. Getting the second or third rank is situational, it definitely helps but there may be better choices for your character.

Silent Running - Lets you Sneak and run at the same time. When I play a sneaky type fighter I like to take this and just stay in Sneak mode all the time. It's not strictly necessary, it's more for convenience than anything.

Silent Death - Double damage when hitting someone in the back while sneaking. If you plan to Sneak trough battles this can give you a good edge.

Slayer - Greatly increases your ctitical hit range for melee and unarmed attacks. It basically makes your critical hit chance Luck x 10. So a Luck of 4 would give you 40% critical chance and a luck of 8 would give you 80%. The only exception is a Luck of 10 which makes your critical hit chance 95%. Having this and a Luck of 8, 9 or 10 by the end of the game makes you a human wrecking machine.

Battle Tactics
In the early game you will be doing a lot of Hit & Run, that is you will spend 3 action points on an attack then use your remaining 6 or 7 on running away. Whatever you are fighting will then have to waste a bunch of action points just getting to you, hopefully it won't have enough AP left to attack you and it will simply end it's turn. Keep in mind that you don't need to actually run anywhere, just make sure your away from your target. One technique I like is to attack then run in a straight line, lets say to the left. The enemy will come to me then end it's turn and I will attack and run in a straight line to the right. This puts me back in the same spot were I was for the last attack. By running back and forth like this you can not only keep out of range from this specific enemy but you reduce the chances of getting too close and alerting another enemy of your presence. If you happen to pick up a companion with a ranged weapon try keeping your two safe spots on either side of them and they will simply stand still and shoot whatever is attacking you.

When you get to tougher enemies, such as radscorpions or great mole rats, they may be able to still get in one attack after closing the distance on you. This does not mean the hit & run strategy has failed, giving them one attack per round is still better than trying to go toe to toe with these creatures and giving them 3 attacks per round. One possible change you can make is to make targeted attacks to the legs. Legs are big targets so the penalty for aiming at them is not too bad and crippled limbs make movement much slower. If you cripple the enemys' leg they won't be able to move more than 4-5 hexes each turn.

There are certain places in the game where combat takes place across several areas, for example Vault 15. This allows you to travel from one area to another in a way that won't allow your enemies to follow. If you find yourself low on health and overwhelmed by enemies then run to the exit, this will allow you to heal up and rest before going back into combat. This does not work in all areas, leaving a random encounter for instance will end combat and not allow you to go back. However with a high enough Sneak skill you can try running as far away with out leaving the area and then simply end combat. This is not as effective since the game may not let you rest but it may be worth trying.

There will be a lot of fights where your enemies have guns, with just hand to hand weapons some of these can be really tough. The standard hit & run tactics won't cut it in these situations. The best thing you can do is using cover. If you are in or around buildings take advantage of walls and doorways. running around a corner means your opponents will have to come to you, which is the range you want them in anyway. If you are fighting someone who is standing in a doorway they are effectivley blocking the way and no one else will be able to get in or out of that room. This will at least allow you to fight just one person at a time. As a last resort, always attack those on the outside of the group and try to position yourself so that anyone shooting at you needs to aim past their ally. The penalty for having to aim around another person means they will end up missing more often than if you were just standing in the open. With luck they may even end up shooting their friend by mistake.

No, it's not possible! (looking at starwars episode 7), NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

me too

But that Fallout 4 though.

FWIW you can change the difficulty any time you want. It's perfectly acceptable to play on normal most of the time, but switch it to easy for a tough battle, then switch it back to normal again.

You know, it doesn't matter what fandom.

-Fallout
-Doctor Who
-The Sims
-Pokemon

Any changes, no matter how severe or minor (Or just the fact there are changes period) people will complain about "destroying the purity" of the franchises, and rant and rave as much as they can about it.

As a fan of "all" the Fallout games, this really ticks me off. And I have to endure these types of people on every forum I go to that has to do with virtually anything that exists.

I can't stop the complaining, but the complainers can't stop the progress. But please, just play whatever games you enjoy :D and if you don't like how Bethesda "Destroyed everything Fallout stood for" don't play those games. Stick to the games you knew the series for, and why you loved them <3

Personally, I am heavily looking forward to Fallout 4 as it looks awesome. If you don't agree with me, I am sorry for having an opinion. You are allowed your own opinions of course, but when it destroys the pleasant mood and makes people feel miserable, what good comes from that? Your hatred seeps into those that read it and become angry themselves, even if they don't agree with you, it's still a rather miserable feeling to see people bash something you like.

This is why, unless someone has something pleasant to say, I will no longer return to these forums as the negativity is overwhelming that it pains me.

That's up to you of course, but franklly Bethesda has earned the negativity they inspire. If you understand the history of Interplay and Van Buren, and the history of Bethesda's treatment of Fallout, it becomes very clear why a lot of people dislike them. To me they're a profoundly negative force in the world of gaming today. I mean look at what's happened recently: they gained legal control of the original Fallouts and now you can't buy the original games here on GOG.com anymore.

Still, I remain willing to try to answer any honest question anyone has about the original Fallouts. I won't even make you sign an anti-Bethesda pledge.

Except most of the Black Isle Studios team moved to Obsidian Software, in which Bethesda allowed them to make Fallout: New Vegas, which has many of the characters and plotlines that were originally meant for Van Buren. So in other words, Van Buren lives on, through New Vegas. In fact many fans of the original games call New Vegas "The True Fallout 3" so, I give Bethesda credit for allowing them that.

when i try to post on a fallout thread on a certain videogame forum... nobody talks about fallout 1/2/tactics. i seriously doubt most of the players of the Fallout: The Brofisting Shooter games care about the older games or ever played them. vaguely disgusted.

^ Yep!

I would say there are more Fallout 3 + NV "fanbois" who won't hear a differing view on the franchise ("it's the best/most coolest series EVAR! how dare you not think so!" - even when they've only played 3+NV) than there are Fallout 1+2 devotees who tout the same sort of arrogant elitism. "Progress" I see no progress, just because they made them 3D worlds and turned them into FPS with RPG elements and overall mediocre games doesn't mean they "progressed" to me, it means they "bastardized, manipulated, blasphemed" every single wonderful thing that Fallout1+2 was in order to make money. Utterly disgusting.
Fallout 1+2 are SUPERB games, still among the tops of my all time greatest games ever played (3 and NV don't come close), I'm very glad you're taking the time and patience it takes to learn and enjoy the games, they are SOOO worth it, I hope the feedback here has been helpful. Here are few things from me:

It was mentioned, but I will reiterate. Increase the combat speed! This will make animations and subsequently turns go MUCH faster and pretty much removes the entirety of tedium that is combat in Fallout 1+2.

Conserve ammo early. New players will be (I think) tempted to use the gun right from the beginning, shooting little rats with it. Instead, use the knife, deal with the whiffs, and just stick to it until you obviously need to whip out bigger guns. Unarmed is a different game.

Headshots. Even as unarmed, this doesn't discount the disproportionate death-giving vs. "I'm STILL attacking this guy" efforts that aiming for the head allows in the game.

Hover your cursor. The game is FULL of information about everything around you, just hover over with your cursor and read the text printout in the little window, it's a huge (and to me, necessary) part of the game that more modern gamers might just skip over because "eh words." It adds a lot to the game.

Multiple saves. New save slot when you first enter a new area. New save slot before initiating dialogue. New save before starting combat.

If you need more input, please don't hesitate to ask!

P.S. - NV is NOTHING like VB would have been. The team is practically irrelevant when the publisher is there going "NO, you MUST make the game LIKE THIS (pointing to call of doodie)" and the developers are going "uhhh, okay, I like having a job, I guess I will do that.) I can see it pretty plainly, really. The ideas from VB are there, implemented completely horribly with no passion and just a concern for selling product.

You seem to ignore, that 3 and New Vegas are far from "Hurrdurr! shoot everything in sight!" almost all quests can be solved with the S.P.E.C.I.A.L skills. In fact I always make a character in 3/New Vegas with very high charisma, and I solved most quests simply through persuasion and diplomacy. Of course there are areas you go through where you are more or less forced to fight baddies, (Or simply sneak/run past them) but then again those situations were in 1 and 2 as well.

I know they aren't straight FPS, I didn't mean to sound as if I thought they were/was criticizing them for being so. My comparison is more of the mentality of the game overall. Ease of digestion, made to cater to the modern gamer who doesn't think outside the box or want to have to figure much of anything out and just wants to swallow content, mediocre writing passed off as profound or original, bland characters, no personality to the main character ***SPOILER (there is SO much potential with it starting at your birth and growing up and going through reuniting with your father, but it is all fluff and good ideas executed horribly with no real essence. I never feel like I know who I am or what I feel, it's all exceedingly contrived, IMO.)***

With 3+NV: There were ALL of the elements of 1+2, with ZERO of the essence. The setting is the same, but atmosphere is completely different, they don't "feel" like Fallout to me, and not because they changed how they play or because they move east coast in 3, but because the passion, execution, writing, and overall immersion into the world just isn't there. My brain recognizes everything in the world as Fallout, and the novelty of that when I played 3 was fun for a little (and had me fooled for a little), but ultimately disappointing and upsetting (because of the degree of blaspheme I see them to be) but it doesn't register the same in my emotion or heart, and I believe that is because it was done to make money from having one of the best established worlds a video game had to offer, not because they cared about Fallout or wanted to make another Fallout game for any other reason than "hey, this will make a huge splash and lots of bucks." In NV there was no novelty of having wanted a new Fallout game for a decade and it quickly revealed itself to me to be just an okay game, although better than 3, but because it was using the Fallout world, it was less than okay to me. I actually never finished NV. I got probably 3/4 of the way through and just got done with it. Every single quest (and their varying options on how to complete them) was painfully obvious and unoriginal and, as I've come to recognize Bethesda to do, a complete joke of an RPG experience for the experienced RPGer. If anyone has any prompting for me to finish NV, I'd be glad to receive it.