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JUN
JUN Best
Best Fallout
Fallout 2
2 Character
Character Build
Build
26 26

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THE BEST BUILD

The title of this post is a little misleading. As any avid fallout player will tell you there’s no such thing as a “perfect” or
“best” character build. One of the main draw cards of the fallout games is the agency they allow the player in making
their own choices and playing the game in their own way. That being said, not all character builds are equal. Some stats
tend to be more universally useful than others.

If you’re just starting out in Fallout 2 and you want some guidance creating your first character then you’ve come to the
right place. The following is my preferred character build for a high-speech, gun-toting all rounder. This build is strong in
combat, able to talk its way into or out of most situations and has a good critical hit chance. The stats that I put at 9 can
be increased during the game to a full 10 through the use of appropriate perks.

OPTIONAL TRAITS
Gifted
Finesse

GIFTED

The extra SPECIAL points given by this perk more than make up for the lost skill points. Especially given our characters
high intelligence – meaning we end up with a high number of skill points to distribute each level up regardless.

FINESSE

This trait significantly boosts your chance to do critical hits which I find very useful and a fair trade off for the small
damage reduction overall.

SPECIAL
The SPECIAL ruleset powers all fallout games and is probably the most important aspect of a character build. The
primary statistics that make up SPECIAL inform fundamental game mechanics like carry weight, hit points, action points
and critical hit probability. They also have an impact (less important) on the point allocation across the 18 character skills.

Strength: 5
Perception: 9
Endurance: 4
Charisma: 4
Intelligence: 9
Agility: 9
Luck: 7

STRENGTH: 5

The strength stat can easily by raised in game by collecting the power armour which will raise the stat to 8. Even the
initial setting of 5 will give you enough inventory space to be getting along with. The melee damage isn’t an issue except
for the very start of the game but even then is passable. Hit points aren’t as important as you might think. With good
armour and high Action Points you can get through most areas with ease with only mediocre hit points.

PERCEPTION: 9

You need perception of at least 8 to get the best perk in the game, sniper. On top of that perception determines how far
away you start from enemies in random encounters and is crucial for accuracy in ranged combat.

ENDURANCE: 4

Endurance isn't as crucial as you might think. With good armour and the superior combat skills in this build, having lots
of Hit Points isn’t such a big priority.

CHARISMA: 4

Charisma doesn’t seem to affect much in game aside from the number of companions you can bring along with you on
your adventures. This build will set you up to be an effective solo character which is how I usually play. If you do want
some company, a Charisma stat of 4 still gives you the ability to recruit two companions at once. The negative effects of
a low charisma stat on your characters NPC interactions can be easily fixed with boosts to the speech and barter skills.

INTELLIGENCE: 9

Intelligence is crucial, mainly for its determining factor on how many skill points you get to distribute on each level up.
Intelligence also has an impact on dialogue options and has a wide ranging influence on skill levels.

AGILITY: 9

Agility is probably the most important SPECIAL stat. This is because it determines the number of Action Points your
character has in combat. Action points determine how many times you can attack, how far you can move and related
actions such as checking your inventory.

LUCK: 7

Luck has a major effect on your chance to score critical hits in combat. It also affects the outcome of many chance
based mechanisms in the game.

TAG SKILLS

Small Guns
Lockpick
Speech

Tag skills are raised by two points for every one point that you spend on them. This means that it’s a smart idea to tag
the three skills that are most helpful.

Your choice in tag skills isn’t as important as your SPECIAL stats. Whereas your SPECIAL is pretty much finalized after
you make your initial choices a poor choice in tag skill can be overcome over time by investing skills points in other
areas.

That being said I think you’ll have a much easier time if you make a good tag skill selection from the start, an example of
which, in my opinion, is Small Guns, Lockpick and Speech.

SMALL GUNS

The small guns skill determines your character’s effectivenss with convential firearms: pistols, rifles, smgs etc. These
guns are the most common in the game and because of this a good choice for your main combat skill. You could always
invest in a second combat skill like big guns or energy weapons later on if you wanted to. Small guns is a good place to
start though.

LOCKPICK

There’s a lot of locked doors and containers in the game world. Raising this stat early on not only gives yous access to
the treasures that lie beyond these locks but is a nice little XP booster, as each successful lockpick use gives you some
bonus XP.

SPEECH

I’m not often a big fan of speech skills in rpg’s. I tend to prefer focusing on my combat skills. But fallout 2 is a hard game
and not only will a high speech skill make it a little easier, it’ll also allow you access to quests and dialogue options that
would otherwise be inaccessible.

Posted 26th June 2013 by Unknown

Labels: best character build, build, character, Character build, fallout, fallout 2, stats

14 View comments

APR How Not to Judge a Fish - Why the V.A.T.S. in Fallout 3 Isn't a Cop-out
20

V.A.T.S. in Fallout 3 (source: Wikipedia)

According to a quote popularly attributed to Albert Einstein: “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to
climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

Applied to video games this quote is an imperfect analogy. Whether or not people judge Fallout 3 on it’s ability to climb
trees, Bethesda probably won't feel stupid given the game received almost universal acclaim with a Metacritic score of 93
out of 100.

However, if you judge Fallout 3 (a fish) on it’s ability to emulate the First Person Shooter gameplay of titles like Call of
Duty (ability to climb a tree) you’re missing out on appreciating a truly great Role Playing Game experience.

My biggest gripe is with the widespread belief that the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System (V.A.T.S.) is a Band-Aid
solution for clumsy shooting gameplay. The reality is that V.A.T.S. is the mechanic through which Bethesda managed to
fuse first person shooting and turn based combat strategy in the same game - a revolutionary step in the history of action
RPG’s

<<>>

Fallout 3, as the name suggests, is not the first game in the Fallout series. Although a lot of younger gamers today were
probably introduced to the series first through Bethesda’s fallout, the series already had a large cult following and critical
acclaim under the control of original developers Black Isle Studios.

The first two Fallouts are third person games with an isometric perspective and turn based combat. Combat worked
differently in the earlier Fallout’s: Players had a total number of Action Points (AP) which they could spend to perform
actions such as moving, punching, firing weapons and reloading. Once the player’s action points were spent they would
need to end their turn and wait for their next turn to perform any more actions.

Combat in the original Fallout’s turn-based system was very strategic. The player would make choices based on factors
such as the AP cost of different weapons, the probability of an attack connecting with the enemy, the damage of the
weapons available and the weaknesses of the enemy.

In Fallout 3 your character’s profile is built around the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system, the rule set that powers all Fallout games. In
the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. rule set your character has seven attributes: Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence,
Agility and Luck.

The number of points you put into these attributes in the initial creation and subsequent leveling of your character
throughout the game determines everything from your accuracy, health, disposition of NPC’s, critical hit chance,
evasiveness and defense threshold and the number of points in the skill traits of your character such as lock picking,
speech, sneak and guns.

In Fallout One and Fallout Two the choices you made in leveling different S.P.E.C.I.A.L traits and character skills had a
direct impact on your character’s effectiveness in combat. The outcome of any fight in a turn-based game is partly luck
but for the most part down to the choices a player makes: Which S.P.E.C.I.A.L’s and skills are chosen upon leveling up,
which gear is equipped, which gun to use at any give in moment in battle, which part of the enemy to aim for or when to
use stimpacks (which give you health). The challenge then in games such as the original fallout and fallout 2 was a
mental one. It was fundamentally a question of strategy.

Whilst First Person Shooters like Call of Duty definitely have elements of strategy and player choice the pressure to
make these choices is compressed down to split second decisions. Even if the player makes the right choice - to aim for
one enemy instead of another first, to duck behind a burnt out car instead of underneath a satellite dish - when it comes
to the moment of enemy engagement the player still has to have the eye-hand co-ordination skills and nuanced physical
control of their character required to make the shot. In other words, the challenge in games like Call of Duty is
predominantly a physical one.

So the dilemma then is, how do you translate the turn based strategic combat system of Black Isle’s fallout into the Next
gen FPS world of Bethesda’s Fallout. The answer is choice. Give the player the choice of traditional real time FPS
combat or alternatively, the choice to freeze time and take as much space as you need to strategically plan out and
execute your battle plan.

The ability to freeze time and play out a combat system much closer to the earlier fallout’s turn based system is
implemented in fallout 3 with V.A.T.S. In this mode the game is effectively paused and the player has the ability to target
specific areas of an enemy. The player programs in a number of attacks, either shots of a gun or strikes of a melee
weapon which are then carried out automatically when the player finalizes their V.A.T.S. session. The accuracy of these
strikes and the number of attacks able to be programmed into a V.A.T.S. instance are dependent on the stat, gear and
perk choices of the player.

<<>>

So while Fallout 3 certainly doesn’t have the same smoothness of real-time combat as some other AAA shooters what it
does do is manage to merge the strategy and depth of turn based RPG combat with the immersive experience of the first
person open world shooter. Bethesda’s implementation of V.A.T.S. isn’t a cop out, it’s a revelation that allows for a deeper
level of strategy than is normally present in first person shooters and a synthesis of turn based and real time combat
which opens up a whole new world of possibilities for action RPG’s.

V.A.T.S. is also great for watching things explode in slow motion.

Fallout 3 VATS Montage

Posted 20th April 2013 by Unknown

Labels: fallout, fallout 2, fallout 3, fps, games, rpg, vats

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