Forums » Fallout

A S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Plot Development?

    • 122 posts
    February 21, 2017 3:30 PM EST

    So while headbutting Team BenTenMerc's profile for the RP Profile Event, I got to wandering (because I have the attention span of a lemming and worked 70 hours this schedule week) whether or not a character's S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats could be utilized in a way that shows how a character develops over time.

     

    A reclusive mechanical wunderkind who practically lives in a scrapyard could, after some amount of time, find herself learning the ins and outs of leadership and eventually begin to enjoy time around others, reflected by added ranks/perks in Charisma.

     

    An angry former model, finding that a lifetime of keeping in perfect shape and fighting off addiction to chems hardly cuts it in the Wasteland, could end up having to learn survival skills and hard sciences the hard way in order to survive, which would show in ranks taken to crank intelligence and give perks like Science! and Chemist. Particularly Chemist in this case, I believe.

     

    A physically frail man could come out of cryo-sleep realizing that Vault 111's radiation shielding hadn't been as perfect as everyone thought, and find himself slowly mutating into a much more robust form, able to adapt to much of the Commonwealth's hazardous environs. Slowly ticking up cool Endurance and gaining weird perks like Solar Powered, Aqua Boy, and Ghoulish would actually make sense! 

     

    A former college baseball player, thick on muscle and physical endurance, could find himself learning stealthy movement and playing the odds while working with the Railroad, Raising Agility and Luck and gaining perks like Blitz, Stealth, and Better Criticals.

     

    What do you think? Is this something you've ever done when roleplaying or going through the game?

    • 215 posts
    February 21, 2017 3:54 PM EST

    The biggest problem with SPECIALS is that with the leveling system it appears that almost all characters end up in the same place, just with a few choices in armament (melee, pistols/rifles, auto/semi auto).  What I'm wondering, based on your thought process, is actually NOT using all the starting SPECIAL points to truly simulate a level 1 person and going that route. 

    • 773 posts
    February 21, 2017 4:29 PM EST

    I see a lot of 'general builds' by which I mean builds that put 4-5 into nearly every SPECIAL. I think that because many people want to try and get perks from all over the perk chart, so you then tend up to end with generic builds that are kinda good at everything.

    What I enjoyed with my Event Build, Shamrock, is that it really, really committed to one SPECIAL, in this instance it was Luck - every Luck perk was taken at the earliest possible opportunity and perks were only taken from other branches when there was a spare perk. It made for a more challenging, yet more interesting character.

    I'm now thinking about doing something similar with another SPECIAL. (I won't say which yet - wait for the build lol) I think that's what you mean Mercurias. It's certainly better for the RP, because you soon realise that whilst there certain things that you can do extremely well, there are other things that you can't do at all and probably shouldnt even try!

    • 248 posts
    February 22, 2017 7:58 PM EST

    I posed an alternative start and level modification once upon a time: http://tamrielvault.com/groups/topic/view/group_id/13/topic_id/8081
    And PCTY put together an intersting pilgrimage scenario in order to force leveling to feel more "real".  http://tamrielvault.com/groups/topic/view/group_id/13/topic_id/7658

    Take a look through those...is this what you mean? 

     

    • 122 posts
    February 22, 2017 9:26 PM EST

    Mottyskills said:

    I posed an alternative start and level modification once upon a time: http://tamrielvault.com/groups/topic/view/group_id/13/topic_id/8081
    And PCTY put together an intersting pilgrimage scenario in order to force leveling to feel more "real".  http://tamrielvault.com/groups/topic/view/group_id/13/topic_id/7658

    Take a look through those...is this what you mean? 

     

     

    I was more going for investing actual perk points over the course of leveling as a way of reflecting the way the character has grown through roleplay.

    • 248 posts
    February 22, 2017 9:30 PM EST

    yeah I hear you...it's an interesting thought process. The closest I came was the semi-autobiographical playthrough I talked about in that post above. But the character came out too...idk general. Like Paul's point. Too spread out. idk how you'd do it the way you are talking about to be honest. but it would make the game better if there were a way.

    • 215 posts
    February 25, 2017 12:55 PM EST

    You know, this has me thinking about introducing artificially capped characters.  Obviously you can level so far I know I've seen people mention Level 100.  By the sheer fact of leveling that high it's got to get to the point that you can basically take every perk there is eventually.  So, in Skyrim CB we tended to "cap" builds at Level 40 or 50.  I know we've said to ensure that you can "do" most of your core skills by level 20 or so which is a good idea but it still doesn't keep you from blowing a build up with inflated perk lists again due to the sheer leveling in FO4.  So what would you think of builds that "limited" you to say Level 40 or 50 at max for perk...you could keep playing and leveling but not taking any more perks.  Is 40-50 too high?

    I think this would also put a premium on farming for magazines, bobbleheads, etc for perk buffs and relationship building as well.  I honestly have no clue exactly how many magazines there are for say sneak buffs.  Going this route would force you to find that information out. 

    • 215 posts
    February 25, 2017 1:52 PM EST

    Well, I went to try this and you..well, you can't.  Not straight away at least.  But there is a workaround of sorts.  I think I'm going to work a new build up.

    Here's the idea.  The game will not allow you to SKIP any points in your SPECIAL setup but what you can do is put the points in places that you don't need them for the build itself.  For example...my Whisper build calls for the following:

    S: 1; P: 4; E: 1; C: 6; I: 6; A: 7; L: 3

    Here's my thinking for the workaround...

    S: 6; P: 3; E: 1; C: 6; I: 1; A: 3; L: 5 or some variation of this.

    What this does is the following:

    STR: We don't need STR particularly for the build as evidence by the "1" in the actual build.  So using this as a dump for extra points gets us to Strong Back which helps for junk hauling and settlement building but not for actual game play.  And taking SB actually adds ANOTHER perk to take further inhibiting a "min-max" build.

    PERC: I love Lockpicking as a first Perk so let's go ahead and set it up from the start, plus the Bobblehead, to get that and then we don't worry about this category again.

    END: Again, an unused stat and I dumped into STR instead of here. 

    CHAR: We could reduce this, forcing us to level it us in game but for Settlement building alone I don't want to waste a lot of time.  Again, this helps only in SB but not in the actual build.

    INT: Here's where we first see a major deviation from the build.  This forces us to use leveling points to boost this in order to gain the perks we want.

    AGIL: Same here, AGIL is a major stat for the build and we'll have to make a concerted effort to boost it in order to attain perks.

    LUCK: My build only needed 3 for Bloody Mess but since we are going to need to level to gain points for skills (not just perks) let's definitely take Idiot Savant to help from the onset.  IS will be the 1st or 2nd perk we take.

    So, we still use all 28 points (plus book and bobblehead) to get our character up and running BUT the varied setup puts points elsewhere and we will need to invest at least 9 levels into skills (not perks) and potentially as many as 14-15 levels which will suck up quite a few perks at later levels. 

     

    Another example would be to do 10/1/10/1/1/1/1 (25) plus the three remaining points elsewhere to get you started on your required skills.  This would really be a maximum cut example.


    This post was edited by Ragin Cajun at February 25, 2017 1:55 PM EST