I'll just let you soak up the atmosphere with the introduction and let you see what kind of character I'll be playing with the generation screen. We'll dig into the game proper in Part 1.
"The first rule of RPGs is to never use prefab characters because they're rubbish."
A quick rundown of stats, skills and traits I chose.
Stats
- 6 Strength - Strength is the least important stat to boost. You can boost it by a whopping four points in game, so there's no need to ever go above 6 when you start, even if you're playing a melee character. Dropping below 4 will give you a hard time wielding some weapons though, so I'd say set that as your minimum.
- 6 Perception - Determines your turn order and, to an extent, your accuracy with guns. 6 points is enough to give you initiative in most combat situations and you can boost it by another point in-game.
- 4 Endurance - This boosts your resistance to damage and poison (slightly) and the HP you start and gain (slightly). It honestly doesn't make too much of a difference in the long run though, so 4 is usually plenty regardless of your character type.
- 1 Charisma - Theoretically this helps with stuff like Speech checks and bartering, but in practice it's far less useful than just putting more points into those respective skills. It's better utilized in the second game where it determines (among other things) how many followers you can have, but in the first game it's virtually useless. Feel free to cannibalize it to boost your other stats.
- 9 Intelligence - Affects a large number of skills and gets you more skill points to spend per level; I'm sure you can see the value in that. Seven should be the bare minimum for this unless for some strange reason you want to play an idiot character...
- 9 Agility - Another useful stat, as it boosts weapon skills and every two points of it will get you another AP. Start with either seven or nine; you can earn another point in-game to push you up to 8 or 10.
- 6 Luck - Luck is helpful to a degree, gaining you more critical hits and a higher chance of finding special encounters and boosting certain useful perks (like Sniper). Keep it at 5 or 6 unless you're going for a Jinxed playthrough.
Traits
- Small Frame gives you another point of Agility at a significant hit to your Carry Weight. This isn't too much of a concern, though, since allies you recruit can carry an unlimited amount of weight...
- One Hander gives you a major accuracy boost with one-handed weapons, but a penalty with two-handed ones. Since we're going to be punching a lot and all Unarmed weapons are considered one-handed weapons, that suits us just fine.
Skills
- Energy Weapons are, quite frankly, the best artillery in the game. Lightweight, very powerful and even relatively common in the later stages. I don't bother tagging any of the other weapon skills since I decided to do a melee character, and both Melee and Unarmed skills start relatively high.
- Lockpick. If you've played any western RPG before, I'm sure you already know how handy being able to get into locked doors and chests and stealing the goodies within is. Fallout is no different. Just to add insult to injury, tagging this also starts you off with a set of lockpicks, which give a 25% boost to the skill, so you can unlock almost anything right from the outset of the game (not so much on Hard Mode, but still)...
- Speech is a very important skill as well, enabling you to resolve situations without a fight and weasel your way out of trouble in too many ways to even count. It's simply too handy to not be tagged and pushed up to at least 90% straight away...
