Obsidian may never make *a story* as good as FNV. As a game Pillars of Eternity attracts me as a replayable adventure much more. I haven't used some classes, I imagine some interesting builds and party compositions, I'm thinking about taking out all the dragons and bounties in a special way.
Nothing like that in New Vegas. All I can think of is maybe getting explosives skill because I never used explosives because they're inconvenient and slow (unless maybe you use mines. I dunno). There are no challenges to look forward to, even with mods. I've recently tried FNV again and all the early gameplay is a drag. Even with JSawyer mod you oneshot everything with starting equipment. There are no interesting alternatives in early start - going straight to Vegas is possible but the pacing breaks. It's a drag even though the world is great and DLCs are nice.
We probably won't agree on Vegas ("one-shot everything early on?" Up the difficulty, man!), but anyway, here are some builds I 've had fun with:
- Sneaky Guns Critical build. Shotgun for up close, scopeless rifle for medium range, scoped rifle for long range. Light armor-based, with all the related perks. This is my go-to build. AMR and its ammo are very heavy, so I only use it for Deathclaws and strong robots.
- Heavy trooper. Non-critical, medium/heavy armor, automatic and heavy guns based. "I am going to inspire everyone by marching blindly on". DPS is the name of the game here.
- Energy weapons build. You are going to need a fix for the nasty headshot achievement bug for this one. People complain that energy weapons are too similar to guns, and they have a point, but still there are some differences. In particular, energy weapons are much better against robots or in Dead Money, and they also give additional tactical opportunities through the use of stunning weapons. Still, I slightly prefer guns, because they are much more diverse strategically.
- Rad Child build. Check the relative perk to see what this is about. It's fun building around it and has distinct gameplay. Combine it with "Eye for an eye" perk for double the fun. Do not use the radless water implant.
- Chem-based build utilizing Logan's Loophole trait. This can be combined with the above, but it also has a distinct personality. You can get rid of Logan's Loophole (to avoid its level cap) in OWB.
Other builds that exist, but I don't like them myself:
- Explosives. Don't like it as a main course, but I usually use explosives in a support role for my Guns/EW builds. Mines are great when you know where the enemies are going to come from, and grenades can be useful when the enemies are close but you have no direct line of sight. Pulse grenades/mines are excellent against robots, but be careful if you have ED-E with you.
- Unarmed.
- Melee.
Other roleplaying opportunities:
- Cowboy build. Use strictly weapons that are affected by the Cowboy perk. Suddenly the "Rapid Reload" perk becomes useful.
- Grunt build. Strictly grunt-perk weapons.
- Lasers build.
- Plasma build.
- Charisma build. You focus on non-combat skills, take the perks that make your companions stronger and let them do all the fighting. You probably won't enjoy this, though.
- Handyman build. You 'll focus on Repair and will be making money through refurbishing and selling junk weapons. This makes more sense if you use a mod that fixes the economy (I do).
- Barter instead of Speech. This plays very differently in some quests, but again you 'll need a mod that fixes the economy, otherwise investing in Barter does not make much sense.
