Making a Character
A good character is one of the most important parts of succeeding in Fallout 2. It is a RPG therefore the character IS you. Quests are given by a character's skills and abilities. If you want a truly great persona I suggest the following: (Note: This is only one recomendation, I suggest playing several times with different styles of character)
| First of all are the natural traits your character will start out with. Here are the traits along with practical info about them. |
- Fast Metabolism- increases healing rate but lowers radiation & posion resistance. (a fair trade off but a fast healing rate is pretty useless, just rest the extra days.)
- Bruiser- increases ST +2 but lowers AP. (this is VERY bad! Action Points determine life and death in some combats and you want as many as possible, plus strength can be gotten with power & advanced armors which you will want anyway.)
- Small Frame- AG is +1, lowers carring weight. (if strength is 6 which I suggest for reasons below, your carry weight would be only 100 pounds, this means goodbye weapons and extra ammo.)
- One Hander- increases pistol accuracy, lowers rifle & big gun accuracy. (might not be that bad but there are plenty of better traits you could pick.)
- Finesse- +10 to critical chance, lowers damage amount for normal shots. (an OK trade off, if you go for the "better criticals" & "more criticals" perk you could easily cause some serious destruction; ie. tough baddies dead in one shot.)
- Kamikaze- minor increase in sequence, major lower in AC. (sequence can be a good thing but is impossible to get high enough to make a difference, a low AC will leave you dead in early combats.)
- Heavy Handed- +4 melee damage, criticals less powerful [including ranged weapons]. (I wouldn't pick this since with poor criticals it will take much longer to kill strong enemies, plus melee is fairly worthless when you have guns.)
- Fast Shot- lowers use of all weapons by 1 AP. (this is a truly great trait. if you also use "bonus rate of fire" & one "action boy" perk you will be able to shoot most guns 3 times per turn and some guns up to 5 times per turn. this incredable fire power can easily wipe out entire armies quickly. my philosophy is pump 5 rounds for their 1.)
- Bloody Mess- violent animations (only value is gory combats, i've found using large weapons works just as well)
- Jinxed- bad luck for everyone (has a HUGE impact on NPCs and party members: losing weapons, critical failures, shooting allies, losing ammo. a very bad choice in my opinion but if you can stand the frustration it might be funny.)
- Good Natured- -10% on all 6 combat skills, +15% to 4 people relations skills. (an even trade point wise, this is a decent trait allowing you to shift points to areas that you wouldn't be able to. thrown & melee are worthless anyway and energy weapons could be tagged to make up for the loss. the temple of trials will be much harder though.)
- Chem Reliant- decreases addiction rate (not very useful, just avoid chems since you don't need them with a good character)
- Chem Resistant- increases resistances (again not very useful)
- Sex Appeal- improves initial reaction in opposite sex, lowers initial reaction of same sex. (no real effect, good karma will help you out a lot more.)
- Skilled- +5 skill points per level, perk every 4 levels. (all I can say is, BAD. perks are what really affect you character and allow new abilities, they are much more important than regular skill points.)
- Gifted- increases starting character points by one each. (THE BEST TRAIT. these points can give your character a huge advantage, manipulate the points to get the best character possible.)
| Here are the settings I selected using the "Gifted" trait. Here's why: |
- Strength 6- able to use any ranged weapon, more strength does not increase damage with guns.
Any more would be wasteful since the max is 10 and Advanced Power Armor gives you +4 ST. Carry weight
limitations can be overcome with the car and other pack horses- I mean party members.
- Perception 7- modifies ranged abilities. you want as much as possible to really be able to shoot people. It
is good enough to get most perks except "sniper". (I used a memory module to increase 1 point and get the "sniper" perk. a "gain
perception" perk would also work.)
- Endurance 5- determines HP gain per level, and resistences. you can use "lifegiver" perk to get more hp and resistences aren't very
important. unfortunaly the "strong back" perk requires EN=6, but that's what car & friends are for. by the time you fill up those
you could easily get a "gain endurance".
- Charisma 6- allows 3 other people to join you, 4 with the "magnetic personality" perk. I got by just fine with 3 people and found
a fourth to be unnessecary.
- Intelligence 9- being smart is very important, intelligence changes skill points per level, and dialogue options [makes a bigger difference
than you might think]. More skill points and BS is extremely helpful.
- Agility 8- sets Armor Class, and # of action points per turn. 8 AG will give you 9 AP. To get 10 AP you need 10 AG which is insane. "action boy" perks
and "bonus rate of fire" make agility less of a problem.
- Luck 6- determines initial critical chance. LK=6 is needed for the "better criticals", "more criticals", and "bonus ranged damage" perks. very good ones in my opion.
| Last of all you have the skills. You can "tag" 3 skills which will then increase twice as fast for every point put in them. |
I tagged:
- Small Guns (used more than any other weapons, good early in game to increase quickly)
- Science (computers are everywhere and like I said being smart is helpful)
- Speech (BS and sweet talking can get you out of as many jams and into as much stuff as guns do combats).
Other good tags are-
- Unarmed (Makes the Temple much much easier, along with all early game areas)
- Big Guns (I used big guns like the bozar throughout the entire game/ good with any enemy.)
- Steal ("make others' things yours" it lowers karma and reputation but when you're poor...)
- Outdoorman (getting stopped twice every square is a major pain, i'd sink a lot of points into this early and pick your combats.)
- Lockpick (sometimes they don't want you going where you need to go.)
more info on Character Skills