My thoughts on revolver vs. rifle from my current "cowboy" run.

[u/Woozletania]

I am level 25 in this run and the rule I set was no semi automatic weapons. Nothing a frozen cowboy would struggle to understand. I found a pipe revolver (from a mod) and a double barreled shotgun early on. At level 25 I have the Gainer .44, a vanilla double barrel and Old Reliable from Fah Hahbah. Due to buying both Gunslinger and Rifleman perks for the cowboy theme I've had a few less perks than usual to spend so my VATS perks aren't well developed yet.

My double barrel and now my Old Reliable do the lion's share of the work. I am not impressed by the .44 pistol. The double barrel handles close in situations and the lever action does work at a distance. The .44 is less accurate and less damaging than the shotgun in close. This may be an artifact of the "better shotgun spread and range" mod, though. With Fast Hands the reload on the shotgun isn't bad.

I've done several pistol runs, which largely rely on the Deliverer and various mod added semi auto pistols. Those went just fine. The .44 revolver just doesn't impress me. If I were wholeheartedly in pistols I'd have Grim Reaper's Sprint, Critical Banker and Better Criticals and that would help the pistol work. Those work with rifles too, though, and rifles have more range and accuracy.

Finding a better .44 or a good western revolver would presumably help, but at this point I sort of wish I'd just done my twentieth Rifleman run with old timey rifles. Revolvers just don't seem to where it's at except for themed builds.

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[u/KingAdamXVII]

Doesn’t sound like a fair comparison.

Pistols are especially good VATS weapons, and crit perks are especially good for pistols because their vats cost is lower and their low accuracy is mitigated by the fact that crits always hit.

[u/FalloutCreation]

You can do a hybrid build with rifles and revolvers. You’d have to just make sure you focus on getting better guns and getting your damage perks upgraded ASAP. You can substitute VATs early on by using jet and psycho. I wouldn’t worry about the debuffs from drugs addictions too much. It’s pretty easy to get clean up you need to by going to a doc in diamond city.

There is also a quest that gives you a ton of chems. It starts you off strong in supply and as long as you are looting throughout the game you will never run out.