Jinxed Build

[dwaynegand]

I suppose this applies to the first game too.

Has anyone ever taken the Jinxed trait? Is it possible to make a good build that can go through the game? What are your experiences? What tips can you give me? The reason I'm asking is because this is a character that I've never tried before and am considering making it.

[Mennan]

With jinxed your essentially making a dodge build. 50% of misses will be upgraded to a critical miss. This means enemies will drop their gun,loose ammo, snap their own limbs in melee combat, loose turns, etc.
It's a little bit rough early game where you don't have 95% hit chance because when you miss there's a 50% chance you'll also critically miss and something terrible will happen to you.

For a melee build you want to make a tough agile character, Luck has no bearing on the effect of the Critical fail table so you can set it to 1 and pump up your Endurance.
As usual pull every point out of Charisma. Companions are also effected so recruiting them is a risk.

Your secondary trait will largely be up to you. 1-hander is nice for that 20% early game accuracy boost so you have less of a chance to crit fail yourself. In F01 you could also take quick shot since it reduces Meele AP costs. Gifted is always a easy choice.

The only thing you should never take is Kamikaze as that reduces your natural AC to 0 which is counter productive to what your trying to do.

Stats:
Strength 5 With the stat surgery and PA you don't need any more.
Perception: 6: For a melee character its only real benefit is increasing sequence and better critical perk.
Endurance: More the better.
Charisma: Minimum
Agility: 9-10, 9 if you intend to get the surgery in F01 or gain +Agi perk, 10 if you want to save yourself some time.
Luck: Dependent on player preference. It will give a nice early game boost.

Slayer guarantees critical strikes no matter how much luck you have. So the only reason you would need luck is for the better critical perk which will give you a 1/5 chance to instant kill a opponent regardless of damage. so in Fallout 1 you would need 6 or 5+luck boost perk. F02 you would need 6 or 4+NCR hubologist neuro scan)

Perks: Most of them will be the typical melee run perks but you'll definitely want to snag Dodger(x2 if F01), Hth Evade, and Actionboy.

Dodger adds +5 to armor class (you can take it twice in F01) so you'll gain 5(10) AC.

HtH evade adds 2 AC for each unused action point as well as a flat 1/12 of your unarmed So if you have 120 in unarmed you'll receive a bonus 10 AC. The catch is you need to have your weapon slots empty of weapons that aren't unarmed weapons(Powefist, Brassknuckes etc)
So you'll essentially have a Powerfist in 1 hand and your other hand will be empty. This is is a very useful perk if you just want to wait out your opponents and let them crit fail themselves into oblivion.

Naturally action boy(x2) will give you 2 action points

Bonus Move:quickly move towards or away from your opponents. Very useful for getting the the edge of their firing range to reduce their accuracy.

Quick Pockets: reduces the AP cost to enter your inventory very useful if using HtH evade because that is essentially 4 AC.

Slayer: Natural pick to mop up melee enemies and save yourself some time.

If you want to maximize your opponents crit failure rate you essentially just stand at the edge of their weapon range until they crit fail themselves into oblivion. This strategy would maximize the effect of HtH evade. But it does get a bit boring because you'll essentially just be passing or healing every round. Other than that you can largely play a normal melee build just snag those defensive perks.

[dwaynegand]

Is Jinxed only viable with Hand To Hand or can you do so with a ranged build? There's a video playlist of a guy who played a Jinxed Evil Sniper in the first Fallout game.

If it is viable with ranged builds, Gifted wouldn't allow you to make a Jinxed Burst Fire character since you can't take Fast Shot too.

I think it would also be good for low intelligence characters since there doesn't seem to be any other trait that would be good for them to take, aside from either Fast Shot or Small Frame. Good Natured probably wouldn't be good for them because they don't use Speech.

[Mennan]

You can make a jinxed ranged character I'd suggest you focus all points into your ranged combat skills first however due to the accuracy loss from ranged combat.
I don't suggest a low int character for ranged especially in F01 since your going to need to at least have some small guns skill in the start of the game and shift over to either energy weapons or big guns by endgame.
With every miss being a chacne of turning your gun into scrap metal you will actually need those skill points in the early game.

[psychotron666420]

Jinxed is an awesome build. It makes everybody more likely to critically fail, and there's a lot more of everybody else than there is of you.

Best results if you go unarmed or melee, otherwise you'll waste lots of ammo losing it all the time.

But you can win every single boxing match without throwing a single blow by just standing there and letting the boxers break their own arms or knock themselves out.

[dwaynegand]

so I shouldn't make a Jinxed build that is ranged or Low Intelligence (except if being a Hand To Hand character)?

[Mennan]

I wouldn't suggest it but it wouldn't be impossible. If its your dream to make a jinxed low int character then
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXsQAXx_ao0

[dwaynegand]

A low intelligence Hand To Hand character with Intelligence of 3 would be better suited to put those leftover points into Luck than Charisma since their Endurance would be quite high.

[Mennan]

I mean you should never put any points into charisma, especially if your low int because almost no companion will travel with you.

[dwaynegand]

okay so I shouldn't bother making ranged Jinxed characters? It's best suited for Melee?

[Mennan]

Originally posted by dwaynegand:

okay so I shouldn't bother making ranged Jinxed characters? It's best suited for Melee?

You can still run one, its just more difficult. It would just be harder since now you have to deal with the accuracy loss from ranged combat putting you at risk against your own jinxed trait.

For a ranged jinxed character i'd suggest just dropping luck to minimum to place more into INT for the skill points so you can place into your ranged weapons. That way you can use the distance from your weapons to the maximum effect without putting yourself at as much risk.
With luck at minimum you won't deal as much late game damage through the sniper perk.

Your raised int will allow you to level skills so you don't have to worry about breaking your own gun. It would also allow you more flexibility in weapon choices since now you could raise multiple skills.

In FO2 you can actually get the jinxed trait on top of 2 other traits through the pariah dog encounter. So you could build your normal melee/sniper/burst character and snag jinxed later.
The only catch to it is that he also reduces your luck to its bare minimum.
So your crit chance goes out the window. Since sniper perk uses a luck roll you essentially lose that as well.
However you would make the early game easier and. still snag jinxed for the late game.

[dwaynegand]

but don't you need maxed Luck to ensure the lowest chance of critical failures for yourself? A ranged jinxed build clearly doesn't sound as effective as a melee one would.

[Mennan]

Originally posted by dwaynegand:

but don't you need maxed Luck to ensure the lowest chance of critical failures for yourself? A ranged jinxed build clearly doesn't sound as effective as a melee one would.

No, Luck has no effect on crit failure rate.

Jinxed gives everyone a flat 50% chance to turn regular misses into critical misses. The only way to prevent crit failures is to prevent missed attacks. So higher your skill level the lower your miss chance.

Luck only effects your critical strike chance, base gambling skill, and perks.

For a ranged character luck is useful because the sniper perk gives you 10% critical strike chance for each point of luck you have.
So you would make a normal critical strike roll and if you fail it then the Sniper perk will re-roll for a second chance at a critical strike.

For example if you aimed for the eyes you suffer a -40% accuracy penalty but a +40% crit chance. This would be added to your normal crit %. so at luck 10 you have 10% base crit for a total of 50% critical strike chance.

However when you pick the sniper perk you would gain another roll at critical chance with 10%x10 Luck =100% Crit. So at luck of 8 sniper would essentially give you 80% crit chance.

For a melee character the only thing Luck is for is Better Criticals perk. Since Slayer gives a flat 100% crit chance.
Better criticals ensures every critical strike penetrates armor and 1/5 critical strikes are a instant kill even if you do 0 damage.

[Mennan]

As for more effective depends on your perspective.

As a melee character you won't have to deal with the ranged modifier but neither do your opponents since your standing right next to them. HtH evade helps with this but to maximize it you would need to pool points into unarmed and skip turns.

As a ranged character you will have to deal with the ranged modifier but so do your opponents. So as long as you put a decent chunk of points into your weapon skills you will be able to shoot farther and more accurate. While they will suffer a far higher miss chance = more critical misses.

In Fallout 2 you can be a 1h sniper with the Gauss pistol.
You pick jinxed and 1h perk. There are plenty of decent early game pistols and when you reach late game you can pick up a Gauss pistol.
This would give you +20% accuracy from 1h trait, and +20% accuracy from Gauss pistol weapon. Couple this with your small guns skill and the extended range of the Gauss pistol to snipe targets as they critical fail to oblivion since their hit chance is so low.

[dwaynegand]

Strange, a lot of places I've read on the internet recommend having maxed Luck with a Jinxed build. For ranged characters, this would mean having to take points out of other stats to raise Luck that high, which could hamper your performance in combat, skill growth, carry weight, dialogue, health, or what weapons you could use. You wouldn't be able to make a Gifted Burst Shot character since you don't have a free trait space. So I would think that Hand To Hand, as many other sites recommend, is the only way to go.

[psychotron666420]

I have not made a ranged jinxed character, I've done melee and unarmed. I don't think it would be impossible, but for reasons you have clearly already understood, the melee jinxed character would obviously have a much easier time.
For ranged you would want to pump your weapon skill as fast as possible to get less misses and therefore less Crit fails.