Back in Fallout 3 and New Vegas there were plenty of unique and cool perks to chose from, some of which would augment your character in major ways while giving you a drawback to compensate. My favorite example of this is the four eyes trait that permanently reduces your perception but gives you a bonus if you wear glasses. Its flavorful, powerful and balanced as you can't wear head armor anymore.
Sadly Fallout 4 doesn't even have traits and the perks it does have are all straight forward and rather uninteresting. But, as it is common with Bethesda games, the modding community provides, today in the form of Cirosan's Traits and More Perks mod. Here's a few examples of the traits introduced by the mod:
Four Eyes
While wearing any type of eyewear, you gain a +1 bonus to your Perception. When not wearing any eyewear, you suffer a penalty of -2 to your Perception.Fear the Reaper
Live hard and fast, that's always been your plan. You gain experience at twice the normal rate, but take double damage from all weapons and recover less health from all healing sources.Trigger Discipline
Haste makes waste - and eats up ammo fast. You've learned to time your shots. Ranged weapons are 25% more accurate in V.A.T.S., but cost 25% more Action Points to fire.Small Frame
Being the shortest kid in class may not have done much for your self-esteem, but it sure does make you a smaller target. You gain +1 to your Agility score, but your limbs are 25% more easy to cripple.Good Natured
You spent your youth learning ways to help people, not hurt them. People are easier to persuade, vendor prices are better, and medicine is more effective, but your overall damage is reduced by 20%.
And here's a couple of the new perks:
Personal Space
(REQURES: Level 18, AGI 4)
Nothing like a round of buckshot to teach people that you like your space. While using ranged weapons, you have a chance of scoring a critical hit against enemies that are within spitting distance of you. This bonus does not apply to sneak attacks.Preemptive Strike
(REQURES: Level 20)
When in doubt, kill everything in sight. You can never be sure about who's going to hurt you, after all. Your critical chance and weapon damage are significantly increased when attacking someone who isn't actively hostile towards you.Monkey Wrench
(REQUIRES: Robotics Expert 1)
You're familiar enough with robots that taking them apart is a snap - doubly so if you don't care about putting them back together again. You deal 30% more damage against robots when using unarmed or melee weapons.Eye for an Eye
(REQUIRES: Level 20)
Can't beat the righteous indignation of retribution. You gain a bonus to the damage you deal in combat relative to your lost Health, up to a maximum of a 25% bonus when below 10% Health.
Since Fallout 4 has no support for the trait system the way you acquire them is a bit... strange. Rather than choosing them at character creation you will be able to use the Chemistry Station to craft a potion that gives you the trait you want. They are fairly cheap to make and you can have as many traits as you want which can result in some really interesting characters. And if you find yourself hating your choice, don't worry, you can remove them by once again chugging a mysterious liquid you concocted at the Chemistry Station.
The installation process is equally simple. Just download the Nexus Mod Manager (by far the best utility you can have if you like to mod Bethesda games), head over to the "Traits and More Perks" mod page, press install and voila.
Just keep one thing in mind, mods are by their nature unstable so even though "Traits and More Perks" doesn't seem to be causing issues and in general runs fine for me I'd suggest you err on the side of caution and back up your save, just in case. Have fun!