Need Help: Bruiser / Heavy Handed / Mega Power Fist

[HighElderStark]

Please provide commentary.  I'm considering making a character that has Bruiser and Heavy Handed Traits and using a Mega Power Fist.  From my understanding Bruiser grants 4 Str and additional melee damage... heavy handed grants more melee damage and unarmed attacks always knock down opponents... throw those together and use a mega power fist that has penetrate... is this a decent combo or was I reading it wrong.  Please help.

[Henry]

I have had a lot of fun with HtH in this game. I can tell you my personal preference is to totally avoid Bruiser. The ST boost is very tempting but i have found that speed is more important that damage in the world of HtH. Assuming you start with AG 10, Bruiser slows you down by 20%. Does it give back +20% damage? Even if it did, do you want to be slow enough that a fast enemy gets the first hit? Not me.

So i go with ST 7 and PE 1, and plan to use Buffout/Cola and Psycho/beer to fight with ST 10 with no penalties at all. ST 10 combined with Heavy Handed is how you get those Knockdowns, and yes you do a lot of Knockdowns. In a 1v1 fight, who cares about damage if the enemy can't ever seem to hit you because...he is spending his AP standing back up? Endurance 10 of course.

Low IN, like 1 or 2, means you level more to completion, but it also means you can have high Luck which i assume combats some potential incoming crit damage (Luck roll vs roll).

And now is the worthy subtopic: do you go with straight damage and extra toughness (DR perks) and speed (Action Boys), or do you go with more fragility but high crits? That part is totally up to you. I can tell you if you go with both Action Boys (12 base AP) and straight damage and you're extra tough, on drugs, and practice, you can beat a well-planned crit puncher, but he will beat you too sometimes - it's a close fight, 1v1. Crit punching is very powerful - i salute. Your preference. If your HtH Knockdown puncher is good, he can beat 2 PvP gunners, solo. Of course, you have to keep knocking them down

Bottom line is...HtH is strong. We did the GR mutie cave quest with an HtH-only team, and beat them with no losses, relying mainly on those Knockdowns (and Mega Power Fists). Welcome to the world of HtH! If you do well, you might get a call from Pugilism Illustrated lol.

Build Recommendations
Bonehead + Man of Steel for max crit resistances. Small Frame to recover your lost point. If you want a crit puncher, you should know that the standard More Critical/Even More Critical perks are believed by many to work with any attack including HtH. Combined with More HtH Criticals gives a very high unaimed crit chance. However, people have recently told me Better Criticals does not work with HtH. Instead, HtH has it's own version of Better Criticals, called Better HtH Criticals which works.

Also, while i love the Mega Power Fist, you should consider the bare-handed punching (and kicking) options, documented on wiki. For a standard tough/fast puncher though, i get A-Rush, Toughness, Even Tougher, 2x Action Boys, MoS, Bonus HtH Attacks (for speed), MoS, and ______.

So which one appeals to you most? Being tougher and punching faster with thus fast repetitive Knockdowns? Or being more fragile, punching slower but doing a crazy amount of criticals?

[Sperber]

I wouldn't recommend critical perks for a heavy handed build as heavy handed lowers critical roll.
Critical perks leave you too weak in terms of damage resistance. Rather I'd get More HtH Damage and tank perks.

Investing into sneak and taking Silent Running is also worth considering.

As Henry said Bruiser probably isn't worth taking. Hitting faster is vastly more useful for this build than hitting harder.