Character builds

[CrossroadBlues42]

Is there a way to get all of the non-combat skills like Kiss-Ass, Barter, Lockpicking, Nerd Stuff, and all the rest that don't completely gimp my characters?

[Heau]

Yes. You'll have 6 characters pretty early in the game.

You'll be able to max 3 skills on each by the end game and have some points to spare (more spare points if you have DLCs). This includes most likely one weapon proficiency skill on each.

So on a normal playthrough you can max 12 our of the 16 non-combat skills in the game. If you build a dedicated medic character (no weapon proficiency) that's one more utility you can stack.

Pick the few ones that seem least interesting/mandatory and skip them. I usually don't max leadership and skip animal whisperer and survival.

You can also consider a mule 7th character for armor/weapon modding and barter with some caveats. Too high maintenance for my taste.

Any leftover spare points end game can go into weird science or explosives based on weapon mods used for top end scaling but you don't even need to stretch min/maxing that much to beat SJ blind.

[Radiac]

Without any DLC (which give added XP and thus make the problems less severe), you can generally get the team to about level 25-26 (depending on Charisma and other things) by the time you enter the Yuma County Speedway map and start the end game. At a rate of 3 skill points per character level, you'll get 78 skill points just from levels by then, plus if you max Intelligence (eventually) on all of your characters, then each character will have a total of 88 skill points to spend by the time they have hit level 26.

Leveling up a single skill with just skill points, no books or other buffs, costs 28 skill points. But then there is one skill book in the game for each skill, plus some trinkets that give a bonus to a skill when worn, plus a few armor pieces that do the same. As such, you can plan on using the books to get you from level 9 to level 10 in each skill, which means it will only cost you 22 skill points to get a skill to 10 that way. With 88 skill points per guy, each guy can therefore rank up 4 skills to 10 by level 26. Each guy needs a combat skill, in my opinion, and that leaves three slots for non-combat skills, on each of 6 guys. That's room for maxing out 18 non-combat skills. There are only 17 non-combat skills in the game, including Combat Shooting, which is a secret unlocked skill. And that's just the effect of the skill books. The trinkets and armor pieces that give passive +1 buffs to a skill when worn can save you some points here too, if you do things right. As such you have more than enough skill points to max out all of the skills, if you don't double anyone up. And you even have enough leeway to give two people the same combat skill, if you want. In fact, if you plan ahead, you can give two people the same combat skill, AND take Combat Shooting AND give two people full ranks in Weird Science (for added Fire, Cold, and Energy damage), and still have enough odd skill points left to give a few ranks in First Aid to most of the team, just to be able to use some medical items.