Well Bob was using almost all possible drugs to pump his character up as much as possible. Psycho, Jets, Buffouts, (Nuka Cola?) to make himself effective against his opponents. Now with changed drugs system it's almost impossible to make such a tank.
Anyway first step would be taking a look on unarmed chars and thinking if they are balanced with melee.
To be effective with melee you one of top tier weapons (Cattle Prod, Ripper, Super Sledge).
To be effectve with unarmed you need... Haymaker which doesn't cost anything. All you need to do is having enough skill points in unarmed and level 9 (
http://www.fo2238.fodev.net/wiki/Unarmed_(Skill)). It can be spamed quickly as attack with melee weapon and you get got bonus to criticals.
You can say that melee is better because of range 2 hex... problem is that Super Sledge is two-handed weapon. In-case you get crippled arm - you can't use it. All melee weapons can be dropped after being hit in arm. Also you need at least basic melee weapon to actually fight - in unarmed you fight with your bare hands, you don't need to spend money, time to get a weapon.
What I found out while playing melee is that without criticals you are not able to do win. And as we all know criticals are based on Luck. For me it's plain stupid that melee character needs a lot of Luck points instead of points in Strenght (completly against logic). In my opnion it would be good to change it so it's MUCH more profitable for melee characters to have lot of points in Strenght instead of Luck. Perhaps making roll on Strenght everytime you hit oponent to check if you knocked out, knocked down, etc him. And for sure boosting Strenght calculated damage bonus much more. Of course reworking perks like "Bonus Melee Damage" would be nice. This way even basic/low tier melee weapons could be somehow effective. At same time it would be good to think how powerful melee/unarmed weapons should be compared to ranged weapons...
I don't mean nerfing unarmed and I am for adding a new weapon perk "Undroppable" for Power Fist and Mega Power Fist.