So yeah I made a endurance fighter who had a high health and gave him the heavy handed trait. I got all the way to the lieutenant and he is unkillable. I restarted 30 times just me fighting him one on one after I lured his guards away and killed them.

This is the worst character I have made. I learned that if you don't have a critical chance of at least 11 or 12 and take heavy handed it makes your game impossible to complete for a warrior. Its not that you don't deal enough damage but that your criticals suffer from 20% decrease when they do hit. Thats a load of damage thats not getting in. Strength is useless for fighters as critical damage is much more important. Even perception getting raised in beginning is more useful for a warrior as the lieutenant wont get 2 rounds when he first fights you or initiates combat.
Does anyone else have any observations with this? My 1st character specialized in luck and better criticals and he killed the lieutenant easily. The 2nd character focused on strength and took 1 perk in more criticals and even he could kill lieutenant.
I fucked up so bad taking toughness to 3rd level, what a waste of time.

I assume you mean a melee character, in which case you need to consider if you're going for Unarmed (eg Power Fist) or Melee Weapons (eg Super Sledge).

Endurance is not that important, 6 or so is fine - I don't think spending perk slots on Toughness is that good. Pump Agility, it determines action points and you need as many as possible. Gifted is so overpowered its a mandatory trait. Fast Shot as a second trait is very useful if you use high Luck instead of aiming for the eyes to get critical multipliers. You'll need Luck for Better Criticals anyway. Alternately consider Small Frame and boost Strength a little. Bonus H2H attacks is obviously a good perk for this build. Bonus Move is a solid pick. Awareness is good for any character (needs Perception at 5 or above).

I've never tried a melee fighter with Heavy Handed, but off the top of my head I'd say what you need is the Slayer perk. It makes every hit a critical. It doesn't even require a luck roll the way Sniper does.

Alas the Slayer perk is pretty hard to get in Fallout 1, if you don't grind for ages. I don't remember ever getting it, aside from some abuse with the Vault comp and its XP bonus after completing the game.

You can gain levels pretty quickly from random encounters northwest of the Brotherhood of Steel. Mutants, Floaters, and Centaurs are all high-yield kills.

Oh well, I worded my post quite badly. What I wanted to say was, this perk wasn't implemented as fluently in the flow of the game as it was in FO2. In FO2 you get Sniper and Slayer naturally, if you just play along the quest lines without proactively killing enemies to gain levels.

So I never felt the need to actively pursue the perks (in FO that is), because I already finished the game. Strangely though, even after completing the game half a dozen times or so, I still don't want to disrupt the questing to obtain the high level perks. Personal preference, I guess.^^

Thanks for the heads up, nonetheless. I'll definitely try it on my next playthrough to become even more broken and overpowered.^^

Come to think of it, I don't think I got the highest available perks in FO1 either - for pretty much the same reasons as you (in that I never go out of my way for experience). Actually I think that's pretty normal for a FO1 playthrough, unless you're actually going for one of the top perks.

While grinding is never necessary -- you don't have to kill the Lieutenant personally to win -- I've done it on several occasions simply as a side-effect of wandering through the wasteland. I find wandering around one of the most fun parts of both Fallout games. The experience is just a bonus.

Very true - and what I personally also like about the Fallout games. I hate grinding, but I like the occasional aimless wander...

Come to think of it, I still haven't even encountered many of the encounters in Fallout 2 yet. Got to remember to create a character with high luck for once to make this a bit easier. I've played through Fallout 2 about 3-4 times now and haven't even found Dogmeat yet - not even once! Though I did find that "other" not-so-useful mutt...

How much HP does the Lieutenant have anyways?

There are so many random encounters in Fallout 2 you can wander around for a long time without finding them all. Fallout 1 has far fewer. One of the best things about both games, actually, is that many encounters are not combat encounters, but flavor.

Heh...a lot. That might be the toughest fight in the game, depending on how you end up there (there are more ways than one).

Now I don't remember exactly where but all you had to do was wear the black leather jacket and walk by him in a town ans he'll join you. One of the npc would comment about how you look like the dogs last owner:)

Since this was necro-ed anyway...

Lieutenant has 10 DT / 60% DR to the physical damage. Meaning that when you hit him in melee, first, 10 points get subtracted from that attack, second, it gets multiplied by the 0.4. Super sledge deals 18-36 basic damage, your heavy handed + power armor melee damage should add another 8, so 18-44 (yeah, that gets added only to the max dmg). So you'll deal 3.2-13.6 dmg to him per non-critical attack, 8 on the average. Yeah, that sucks.

First solution which came to my head is to go ripper - it deals 15-32 dmg, less than the sledge and costs 1 ap more, but it ignores 80% of the vicrim's DT, meaning that only 2 points get reduced from each attack. So, modified by our damage bonus, it's 15-40 basic - 5.2-15.2. 10 on the average - yeah, not that much better. Unarmed's power fist (which also has penetrating option) deals 12-24 basic damage (but costs as much AP as the super-sledge) - 12-32 modified, that's 4-12 damage range - as much as the sledge on average (but at least there is no stupid knocking). Hmm, no good options.

I guess you go for the heavy handed only if you have fast shot perk - with it, your sledge/fist attack begins to cost 1 ap, so with 10 ap you'll still be doing 80 damage per round to the lieutenant (and he has 250 hp - 4 rounds and he's toast).

You can find him in a random encounter called broken dream cafe or whatever and must be wearing a vault 13 suit

That's the first Fallout - I found him there no problems. It's in Fallout 2 I've yet to find him.
Well I've peeked on the Fallout wiki so I know how to get him when I do find him - just that I've never had that broken dream cafe encounter, ever. I suspect it's the luck, though I might as well stock up on those perks that increase your odds of getting encounters as well. When I next get to play it that is.