I decided to go back to one of my saves and give this char a try again. Im an unarmed specialist in fallout 1 and I was wondering about the punches and kicks and the difference. I can choose kicks for 4 ap and punches for 3, but it shows them both as the same damage. What is the difference between them, do kicks do more damage or have higher chance of knocking people down. I need to know as the game is hard unless i strategize beforehand.

I am level 3 and following a no weapons/monk path and going through the game with 3 tags-unarmed, sneak, and steal. I am essentially making a rogue character. The difference is that unlike using the powerfist or w/e they call it, I am using my fists and kicks for everything. It's challenging but it works pretty well. I read a faq on this build from gamefaqs and it sounded like a good idea. I can figure the perks out myself as i am looking forward to silent death for nice backstabbing (or kicking) goodness.

Any info on the damage or critical increase for kicks?

No answers, but was it a fallout 1 guide you picked this from? Because FO2 has a bunch of neat skills and special unarmed attacks once you're at higher levels, but I thought FO1 doesn't. Basically I don't think you can go through the game that way in FO1, with power fists and the like, sure, but barefisted.. not so sure.

I'd assume kicks have higher knockdown chance, but that's guessing.

Actually i just checked the fallout 1 and 2 sites on gamebanshee and it looks like it would actually be harder to play fallout 2 unarmed because you dont get bonus hth attacks at lvl 6. In fallout 1, you get it at lvl 6, in fallout 2 you get it at 12 or 15. Other than that, the perks are the same. Im sure with stealth high i can play through it. Thanks for the info nonetheless.

Still if anyone does know what the difference is with kicks and punches, be nice to find out.

I don't know about kicks and punches, but I have heard that unarmed characters will likely want to use things like brass knuckles or the power fist, which might qualify as weapons. Going truly barefisted might not be viable.

But maybe it is... anyone know?

I guess in FO1 the AP requirement is the only difference between punch and kick attacks, just like in FO2 with low skill.

In FO2 your unarmed damage improves with skill, with 100 skill you get +7 bonus to damage and +15 percent to critical chance with your punches for example.

You can see how it works in FO2 at http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Unarmed

In spite of the less damaging attacks playing really unarmed is still easier in FO1 since combat is easier here.

For your unarmed build I recommend taking the "better criticals" perk, when you do hardly any damage per hit it's very useful to be able to kill enemies with a single blow to speed up combat.

Well if you go for the perks that give you more chance of doing crits, have a high luck and have the Finesse trait, you'll still do be doing quite a lot of damage. 10 Luck plus Finesse plus 3 levels of the "More Crits" perk (I forget the actual name) will give you a 35% chance to do a critical hit. You can do some pretty crazy damage with critical hits. Add in 3 levels of bonus HtH and your base damage (with no weapons, not even knuckles or power fists) will be about 10+ (not great but a nice starting point when you consider all the crits you'll be doing).

All that said, I don't remember there being punches and kicks in F1. I always thought that was a F2 thing and that in F1 the animation just randomly changes between kicking and punching. I'm probably wrong, since I only played F1 the other day and completed it very quickly by just sticking to brass knuckles and then the power fist. I can at least say that in F2 that kicks definitely do more damage more often than punches. Punches will often only do around 2-4 damage whereas kicks will commonly do upwards of 6 or 7 damage.

Wow.........i just read that wikia and that just made the game way cooler. Im going to play through the 1st game and when i get to the 2nd, it'll be much cooler. Do they have different animations for each kick and punch? If they do then thats sick. No wonder that faq said that plain unarmed is king in the 2nd game. Thanks alot everyone for the info.

The "slayer" perk grants 100 percent criticals independent of luck (making "more criticals" useless), you only need 6 luck so you can take "better criticals".

+ this

All too many build guides focus on getting that perfect character for the very last level, that final 45 minutes of engame. Nevermind playing the previous 50+ hours with a cripple, anticipating everything to click gloriously in place in the end.

True but misleading.
Both in FO and FO2 you don't cripple this kind of character by not taking "more criticals" or 10 luck. Perks like toughness,bonus move, better criticals, bonus hth attacks and action boy actually help more during the game and the benefits of having 10 instead of 6 luck are minimal (not even a perk).
And the fact that they might become useless during the game (it's possible to get slayer in FO and normal in FO2 long before the end) is a reason not to take them unless they offer a noteworthy benefit compared to other options before.

It's just the idea that you actually have to go out of your way massively to get to level 18 in Fallout. Even if you manage it, all you'll have to do left is one or both of the final areas - if that. Only the other hand, you can easily get it so over 1 in 3 hits are criticals, starting out with a 20% chance at level 1 (10 Luck plus Finesse). I'd rather have a 20% chance at the very start and then add to it by 5% every so many levels till I have 35% than have a 6% chance for the whole game and then right at the very end have a 100% chance.

By all means, this kind of game is all about playing it how you like, and I don't like to say "this is the right way, that is the wrong way" but from my point of view, it doesn't make sense to have a pitiful chance of crits for 98% of the game just to have a guaranteed chance at the very end. If this was an MMO, you'd definitely want to ignore the crit-based perks earlier and just wait for Slayer, but since you're going to stop playing almost as soon as you get it in this offline RPG, it's simply down to the coolness factor rather than practicality.

With 6 luck and no perks you will already get a 66 percent critical chance (76 with finesse) just by aiming at the eyes. At each level up there are better perks to take than "more criticals" in Fallout1. At level 3 you can't take it, at level 6 you'll want "bonus HtH attacks", at level 9 "better criticals" and at level 12 and 15 "bonus move" or "action boy". In order to score a critical you have to attack and those perks do provide more attacks and therefore more criticals per round than taking "more criticals" perks.

There's no reason to have a character weaker than he could be during the the mid game by taking "more criticals" instead of more useful perks just to make sure that he's even weaker if he reaches higher levels.
"Weak during the game and weak at the end" isn't better than "strong during the game and strong at the end" unless you want an additional challenge (FO is easy enough with any build).

I honestly think you're thinking about it way too much. The game was incredibly easy with my character and at relatively low levels I could melee with several Deathclaws at once without power armour on and it was pretty damn easy. I did also have Better Criticals and Bonus HtH Attacks (I could do 5 non-aimed attacks a turn) but the other AP-related moves wouldn't have helped that much since (a) I killed most things in one hit (b) I'd tend to start combat close enough to people that Bonus Move wouldn't really have helped, especially because I had a high Sneak skill so I could get right up to them if I wanted.

Unless the build you're suggesting kills enemies in less than one hit, it's not actually better in practice. I think the one place I had difficulty was against the Nightkin in the cathedral when there'd be 3 attacking me at once, some with Gatling guns - though I did have pretty crap armour at that point since I got to the cathedral sooner than I should have (I hadn't even got the water chip or heard about the Master or FEV).

Thinking and discussing about builds is a fun part of rpgs. No need to stop thinking about what's optimal just because any build can beat the game.

We're talking about 4 different situations here, with weapons using the unarmed skill or really unarmed (like the topic starter) in FO1 and FO2.
While FO1 with power fists is easy no matter what you choose, the other three situations require more thinking and some optimization.

A build with 3 "more critical" perks isn't very powerful, if you also want "bonus HtH attacks" and "better criticals" you have to take the third rank at level 18 instead of slayer in FO1, in FO2 there are even more useful perks you'll want to take (like lifegiver at level 12 or living anatomy) and you'll most likely continue playing for a long time after taking slayer.

I've played a melee character (1 int, no mentats and fast shot) in FO1 myself and bonus move did make a difference. Enemies don't stand tight on one spot, my character had to walk several steps almost every combat round in order to get to the next target after killing the previous.