Vault11
Banned
I played Fallout 2 as an unarmed character with the power fist, and I was ahead of the curve enough on damage where I could experiment a bit. I didn't want to do what I had done a thousad times in Fallout and go for eyes, eyes, eyes. I mean, I had more control of each engagement by targeting other parts of the body (raider has a powerful assault rifle or sniper? bust his arm to disarm. Go for the legs to stop them from running to the exit grid out of your range, etc.) and I played this way for most of the game, until I got to Mariposa. From there, I was forced to revert to hitting the eyes and sure enough, I would take down mutants in 2/3 hits with high criticals, ending the battles far sooner and easier than I had previously done. By the time I reached the end game I was either fighting things that were so weak they died before I could cripple them, or fighting things so strong I needed to kill them as quick as possible (eyes) before they took me down. It seemed really hard to cripple things throughout, and an interesting contrast was that my character was Jinxed - enemies were crippled more often by the mishandling of weapons than by deliberate attempts to cripple them. So why would anyone try to control the battle by targeting specific limbs when eyes can just end it in two turns? Is there a build that can greatly increase the chance of a crit/crippling effect the first time, in which it would be useful?