While rilfeman and pistol builds tend to be more popular in Fallout 4 thanks to their versatility, there’s nothing quite like the raw power and fun factor of automatic weapons. This Fallout 4 build isn’t just about brawn though. You’re also going to be smart and charming to help persuade people when you don’t want to resort to violence and take advantage of all the chem buffs you can get your hands on without getting addicted.
Build Summary
- Charming: Decent Charisma level and Black Widow perk for persuasion buff, Chemist and Chem Resistant perks so you can spam Charisma buffing chems like Grape Mentats with longer durations and no addiction risk.
- Commando: Proficient in all automatic weapons thanks to Commando perk + rifles/ shotguns thanks to Rifleman perk. Has perks to improve both weapons and armour. Has perk to increase damage of radiation weapons. Has ammo and caps scrounging perks. This will come in handy for automatic weapons which use more ammo.
- Chemist: Has immunity to chem addiction and high radiation resistance. Chems last twice as long. Uses chems to boost charisma (charming) and damage/damage resistance (commando). Has as much carrying capacity as possible to be able to collect and carry around every plant, drink, food ingredient etc for making chems.
S.P.E.C.I.A.L + Perk Choice for Commando / Charisma / Chemist Build
Strength: 5
Get one point from the Strength Bobblehead to make it 6 in total.
- Strength Perks:
- Strong Back: Carry around all your junk, chem ingredients and other precious loot.
- Armorer: You have plenty of carry weight so you’ll end up collecting lots of of junk. Put that junk to good use improving your armor.
Perception: 3
Get one point from the Perception Bobblehead to make it 4 in total.
- Perception Perks:
Endurance: 3
Get one point from the Endurance Bobblehead to make it 4 in total.
- Endurance Perks:
- Chem Resistant: Becoming immune to chem addiction as you’re going to be using them a lot.
- Toughness: Not mandatory but if you want to take less damage you could put some points into this perk.
Charisma: 5
Get one point from the Charisma Bobblehead to make it 6 in total.
- Charisma Perks:
- Cap Collector: for better prices at vendors. You’re going to be doing lots of scrounging and will have a huge carry capacity. You’ll be buying and selling a lot to get ingredients for weapon and armor upgrades and also chem ingredients. So you may as well get good prices while you’re doing it.
- Black Widow: My play through of this build is as a woman, as there’s a lot of male quest givers who I can benefit from the persuasion buff with. Either way you’re going to get better persuasion and damage with half the gendered population. The main reason for taking this is the buff to persuasion (fitting in with the ‘charming’ part of the build)
- Lone Wanderer: For the extra carry weight mostly. The extra damage reduction doesn’t hurt (pun intended).
- Local Leader: establish supply lines so you can work on your weapons, armor and chems in other settlements other than Sanctuary. This is especially useful for when you travel to other overworld areas like Far Harbor for the DLCs.
Intelligence: 5
Get one point from the Intelligence Bobblehead and one from the SPECIAL Book to make it 7 in total. Click here for a guide on getting the Intelligence Bobblehead really quickly in the early game.
- Intelligence Perks:
- Medic: Because you’re a chemist you’ve also picked up a bit of medical knowledge along the way. May as well get the best use from stimpacks and radaway.
- Gun Nut: You wouldn’t be a commando if you couldn’t get hold of the best weapons possible. The best way to do that is with weapon enhancements.
- Hacker: To scavenge all your weapons, armor and chem supplies you’ll want access to every area possible. You don’t want to be held back by a pesky terminal.
- Science!: You’ll need at least some Science! levels to make the best weapon and armor mods.
- Chemist: Goes without saying as a chemist that you need this perk. Makes all those chems you’ll be mixing last way longer.
Agility: 5
Get one point from the Agility Bobblehead to make it 6 in total.
- Agility Perks:
- Commando: Get full firepower from your automatic weapons.
- Moving Target: We want this mainly for the extended duration sprinting. It adds to your commando prowess and just makes the game funner to play. This is also useful early in the game when doing speed runs to get bobbleheads and other items in otherwise too-high level areas.
Luck: 2
Get one point from the Luck Bobblehead to make it 3 in total.
- Luck Perks:
- Fortune Finder: Find more caps.
- Scrounger: Find more ammo. This will be especially useful with automatic weapons.
- Bloody Mess: A bit more damage and make things explode. Commando style.
Gameplay
- Do the first main quest to get the Perception Bobblehead for learning lockpicking early.
- Make sure you’ve got at least one Grape Mentats (which you can make at a chem station by combining 2 Hubflowers, 1 Whiskey and 1 Mentats), before you come across the Drumlin Diner. Eat the Grape Mentats before talking to Wolfgang so you have 10 Charisma and can pass all the Charisma checks. Tell him you’ll resolve his issue with Trudy. Go and resolve it peacefully with Trudy. Then you’ll have Wolfgang as a chems dealer at the diner as well as Trudy as a general merchant.
- You’ll want to make Grape Mentats as often as possible to give yourself a charisma boost for passing persuasion checks when needed. Take every bottle of whiskey that you find and keep all your mentats, then you just need to gather hubflowers as you roam around the commonwealth. A good place to get a bunch near the start of the game is at Wildwood Cemetery.
- As well as the weapon and armor workbenches which are immediately available in Sanctuary, there is also a camp fire for cooking on your way out in the direction of the bridge and a chemistry station hidden behind a house. You can go into settlement building mode and move these closer to your other crafting stations. This is especially useful for the chemistry station as you’ll be doing a lot of chem mixing.
- Modify a 10mm pistol early on to an auto pistol as there are plenty of 10mm pistols and ammo around and they’re a versatile weapon, even in auto. So you can benefit from the commando perk early.
- More of a hands on type of guy/gal? You might like our Fallout 4 Melee Build.
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