There are a plethora of close combat weapons in Fallout 2. Obviously you get the damage boost but you'll do the following things significantly more often: cripple limbs, knock opponents down, knock opponents unconscious (head shots), and blind them (eye shots). Also, before getting decent weapons eight strength helps tremendously as your hits tend to be much more devestating. To me though, starting a close combat character with low strength isn't really in the spirit of the build. Many consider more than five or six points in strength to be a waste.and on some level they’re right. If you want to save a perk lower strength to 7 and raise agility to 10. Most likely money will not be a problem though, as you'll be selling 99% of all weapons and ammo you find. This will make a huge difference in your selling prices. At some point you may want to consider spending a few points just to get it to 0 or even 10%. The low charisma means your barter will be in the negatives to start with. By the end of the game you'll have so many hit and action points this basically won't matter. This build has some obvious deficiencies.

Fallout 2 unarmed attacks