Character Creation Guide (Video Included)

This guide will show you how to create the best character for your playstyle, going over all the important points of the character sheet, including attributes, derived statistics, traits, skills, perks, and more!

01 FOREWORD & VIDEO VERSION

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For those unfamiliar with classic RPG's like Fallout, character creation may be a little daunting at first. In the hopes of making it a bit easier to digest, we'll be separating character creation into several categories: SPECIAL Attributes, Derived Stats, Traits, Skills, and also touching on the perks a little bit; while adding a few character creation suggestions on the way, so let's begin!

02 NAME/AGE/GENDER (1:18)

These are all straightforward right? Name your character, pick their age between 16 and 35 and choose male or female. Not much changes based on choices made here, except sometimes how your character is addressed whether they're male or female, and perhaps who they can seduce.

03 S.P.E.C.I.A.L. ATTRIBUTES (1:35)

Attributes are the starting point for your character's strengths and weaknesses, where nearly everything is derived. Each attribute can be raised by a permanent 1 or more during gameplay, so there's no reason to start with any of them at 10. Note: These attribute descriptions are crap, they're better explained in the video but you can tell by the length of this guide that I've gotten tired of transcribing something I already did!

• Strength (ST) - Melee Weapons (x0.5), Unarmed (x0.5), Carry Weight, Melee Damage, Base HP
  Weapons have a recommended strength value; if it's under, you get an approx. 20% accuracy penalty. Power Armor will give a 3 point bonus to strength, which means if you plan to max it out, you really won't need a strength that's any higher than 7 (or even 6 if you get a strength implant from the BOS doc).
  
  
• Perception (PE) - First-Aid (x0.5), Doctor (x0.5), Lockpick (x0.5), Traps (x0.5), Ranged Accuracy, Sequence
  Something namely for the sake of hitting things at range.
  
  
• Endurance (EN) - Outdoorsman (x0.5), Base HP, HP/Level, Heal Rate, Poison Resist, Rad Resist
  If you want to be a more durable survivor, this is the attribute you use for that.
  
  
• Charisma (CH) - Speech (x2), Barter (x2), Dialogue Checks
  This is all about the interaction and not much else. A decent Charisma will make the game easier for the pacifist approach.
  
  
• Intelligence (IN) - First Aid (x0.5), Doctor (x0.5), Science (x2), Repair (x2), Outdoorsman (x0.5), Skill Points/Level
  All around governs your skill growth, the higher intelligence, the higher skill points you gain per level.
  
  
• Agility (AG) - Small Guns (x1), Big Guns (x1), Energy Weapons (x1), Unarmed (x0.5), Melee Weapons (x0.5), Throwing (x1), Sneak (x1), Lockpick (x0.5), Steal (x1), Traps (x0.5), Armor Class, Action Points
  This will modify all your combat and stealth skills. The Armor Class bonus is also great. What players normally want when picking agility, are Action Points. Each point to agility goes to AP as well.
  
  
• Luck (LK) - Gambling (x3), Critical Chance, Special Encounter odds
  Self explanatory, you're more lucky!

04 DERIVED STATS (6:43)

Let's move on to Derived Statistics, being derived from your base attributes. All of them are displayed in the middle-ish column of the character sheet.

• Hit Points
  The amount of damage your character can withstand before being killed. Again, probably doesn’t need explaining. It’s derived from your base endurance and strength.
  
  
• Armor Class
  Armor class is a combat modifier that reduces your chance of being hit, in other words, evasion. The starting AC is equal to your Agility. Armor Class can be further increased with perks and armor acquired throughout the game.
  
  
• Action Points
  The points used for actions and movement during combat in Fallout. Base AP starts at 5, and the rest are determined by your character's Agility and future perks. If you want to take more actions each turn, you'll want more AP. Unspent Action Points go into your Armor Class at the end of that turn.
  
  
• Carry Weight
  Expectantly, your ability to carry stuff! This starts at 25, and is further modified by your character's strength and perks if you so choose.
  
  
• Melee Damage
  This's the bonus damage you get to melee and unarmed attacks. It remains at 1 until you have a strength of 7, at which point it will increase to up to 5 extra damage at a strength of 10. If you're a melee or unarmed user, you can plan for this later on with Power Armor and strength implant.
  
  
• Damage Resistance
  Instead of evasion, this is your damage reduction when struck, and is mainly modified by the armor that your character is wearing. Some damage resistance can be gained from perks also. When wearing armor, there are several damage types and numbers next to them displayed in your inventory. The damage types are fairly easy to grasp, but these numbers separated by a slash both resemble damage reduced from an incoming attack. So if your armor has a normal damage reduction of 10/50% and a deathclaw critical hits you for 200, it's reduced to 190, then further reduced down to 95.
  
  
• Poison Resistance
  Obviously your resistance to being poisoned. There are only a couple of enemies in the game that poison you, and it can only really be a lethal dose at early levels. This’s determined largely by your Endurance attribute. Antidotes can be gained early on, making poison easy to ignore.
  
  
• Radiation Resistance
  Just like poison resistance, but for rads! Another derived stat greatly determined by your character’s endurance, but additionally your armor and related perks. A low rad resistance can easily be offset by Rad-X and/or Rad Away. In fact, there’s only a couple areas in Fallout that are irradiated. The downside of rads is that they don’t go away like poison does, and do need tended to for removal.
  
  
• Sequence
  This is also known as initiative, it’s the turn priority your character gets. If you have higher sequence, you get more of a head start. This’s mainly determined by perception.
  
  
• Healing Rate
  It defines itself, the rate at which your character heals. 1HP for each healing rate point at the end of each day. If resting, this applies for every 6 hours. Endurance divided by 3 will determine your healing rate mainly, and it cannot go any lower than 1.
  
  
• Critical Chance
  The odds of scoring a critical hit in combat. Critical chance is luck derived, as well as particular aimed shots, like for the eyes or groin.

05 TRAITS (10:19)

You may take one, two, or no traits at all. These add extra...character to your character, giving a benefit with a tradeoff. Again, traits aren’t required at all, so instead of talking about each, I’ll talk about the ones regarded as most useful.

• Bloody Mess
  This will show the most gruesome death animations when killing enemies in combat. You can also simply choose this for the bonus cutscene when you complete the game.
  
  
• Small Frame
  The tradeoff for a free attribute point is mild to say the least. Even with the carry weight tradeoff, since this adds to agility, there’s plenty of incentive to take this trait.
  
  
• Fast Shot
  The downside to this trait is substantial, with a full removal of aimed shots. However, a 1 point reduction to AP costs, combined with Bonus Rate of Fire perk later will make numerous weapons in the game incredibly cheap to fire…upwards of 5 times per turn if you have 10 Action Points. Bonus HtH Attacks can make them even more ridiculous since melee/unarmed weapons already have lower AP costs than guns. If you’re trying to maximize damage output and go for the strongest weaponry, this’s a viable Trait.
  
  
• Good Natured
  A good natured character has less tradeoffs than you would think. Normally building a character only needs one or two preferred combat skills, whereas First Aid, Doctor, Speech, and Barter are all contextually useful during gameplay outside of combat. The non-combat skills noted get a 15 point bonus, while the combat skills get reduced by 10. You get more skill points here either way.
  
  
• Gifted
  This’s widely regarded as the best trait to take, the skill point loss is substantial, but the 1 point boost to all attributes is outstanding if you’re looking to make a wasteland legend. Most of the point losses can be regained by reading books anyway.

06 SKILLS (12:06)

Skills are your character's abilities that are used to actively or passively interact with the wasteland and its inhabitants. Each of your skill values affect your chance of success with that skill, and each of them can be raised to a maximum of 300%. Now that you know the particular S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attibutes that help them, we'll now get into what each skill can do for you. These will be seperated into three categories; Combat, Active, and Passive.

COMBAT (12:31)
Combat skills are your weapon proficiencies of all types. Increasing a weapon's skill will increase your accuracy with it.

• Small Guns - (Base 35 + AGI)
  Small to medium ballistic firearms. This includes Pistols, Submachine guns, and Rifles.
  
  
• Big Guns - (Base 10 + AGI)
  Large, bulky, hard hitting ranged weaponry falls into this category. It includes Miniguns, Rocket Launchers and Flamethrowers.
  
  
• Energy Weapons - (Base 10 + AGI)
  If bright beams or bolts are fired from it, it's likely an energy weapon. Included in the energy category are Laser rifles, and pistols, Plasma rifles and pistols, as well as gatling lasers and alien blasters.
  
  
• Unarmed - (Base 65 + (AGI + STR)/2)
  Unarmed affects your hit success with attackes with fists and feet, and affects the brass and spiked knuckle weapons, rocks, and power fists.
  
  
• Melee Weapons - (Base 55 + (AGI + STR)/2)
  Melee encompasses all weapons meant for swinging, smashing and stabbing. Among them include the cattle prod, clubs, knives of all types, sledgehammers, spears, and crowbars.
  
  
• Throwing - (Base 40 + AGI)
  The throwing skill is the oddball in these, as it includes things that are thrown, but do little damage or a whole lot of it. Those considered for throwing are flares, grenades, molotovs, rocks, spears, and throwing knives.

ACTIVE (13:41)
Each of these are your active skills used to interact with the objects and people in the wasteland. Your active skills can be easily accessed through the skilldex on your HUD, or activated through the number keys 1-8. After they’re selected, click the yellow cursor on the object or character you with to use the skill on to proceed with a check!

• First Aid - (Base 30 + (PER + INT)/2)
  This is your minor heal skill, and is useable three times until your character needs a 24 hour break. Each time healed this way takes a half an hour of ingame time. Expectantly, a first aid kit will temporarily improve this skill if used.
  
  
• Doctor - (Base 15 + (PER + INT)/2)
  This is your major heal skill, for larger amounts of hit points and crippled limbs. Like First Aid it can be used 3 times every 24 hours, and requires a half hour each use. Keeping the water chip timer in mind, Doctor is more efficient than waiting, and should be used first if you're going that route. A Doctor's Bag can be used temporarily to improve your skill, and is especially helpful if you have a crippled limb with low skill.
  
  
• Sneak - (Base 25 + AGI)
  This is your character's ability to go undetected by non-player characters. To be effective, your character must be walking while it's active, running will disable it. Coupled with steal and lockpick, this will assist you in trespassing and hopefully getting away with something valuable! Your sneak skill can be improved by an active stealth boy too if you find one.
  
  
• Lockpick - (Base 20 + (PER + AGI)/2)
  Easily the most used of the active skills, you're bound to run into locked doors or containers, so putting a few points into lockpick is sure to help you. A set of lockpicks can help by improving your breaking and entering, and have infinite uses, unlike a doctor's bag.
  
  
• Steal - (Base 20 + AGI)
  Your character's ability to relieve non-player characters of their things, hopefully leaving them unaware! The general skill amount will help tremendously, but keeping the NPC's facing, perception and the size of the object you're taking must all be considered as well. While there's no tool to help with stealing per se, getting your target drunk off of Rotgut or Booze will dull their perception, increasing the odds of a successful attempt!
  
  
• Traps - (Base 20 + (PER + AGI)/2)
  Traps as a skill is often glossed over as they play only a small part in Fallout, and only are a minor hindrance to the player, especially if they have decent armor. Traps doubles as a passive detection too, and affects your proficiency of arming explosives. If you do decide to invest in traps, go for 90% to 100%, as some require that level of skill to even be detected! This is not a required skill by any means, and the player can get along fine without a high Traps skill.
  
  
• Science - (Base 25 + (2 x INT))
  Science is mainly for use on pre-war computer technology, and in turn, will be rather rewarding to keep at a higher value when checking out pre-war locations that have working terminals.
  
  
• Repair - (Base 20 + IN)
  Repair is your general handyman (or handywoman) skill, used for repairing mechanical equipment and machinery. This is the alternative to science since there are occasions where either can be applied, so long as you have skill points in one of them!

PASSIVE (16:32)
These are the skills that get checked in certain contexts, and most of them simply make portions of the game easier on the player character. You know, kind of like how skills work in real life!

• Speech - (Base 25 + (2 x CHA))
  Your character's general prowess in conversation and interaction with others. If you want to get all you can out of the lore and dialogue of Fallout 1, a high speech score will reveal a good dose of both!
  
  
• Barter - (Base 20 + (2 x CHA))
  Your skill in the trade of trading! Fallout is a game about characters wanting or needing things, if you have a means to get a discount for said things, that's good right? In some respects yes! Barter isn't a required skill at all, but does make acquisition of equipment less violent for sure.
  
  
• Gambling - (20 + (3 x LCK))
  Gambling is seen as the easiest route for making money in Fallout, not to mention least risky. It's said that if you have a gambling skill of 40, you can bet low values at roulette tables with a major chance of walking out with a profit. If money is troublesome to find for you, pump Gambling up and let that cash flow in!
  
  
• Outdoorsman - (Base 5 + (END + INT)/2)
  Outdoorsman is your passive skill for surviving the wasteland in general. It's understandably low for a vault dweller, but can help when it comes to saving that valuable time when traveling. If you're overly concerned with the water chip timer, a fair Outdoorsman skill can help ease your mind.

07 PERKS (18:18)

Perks are special effects you gain every third level unless you took the Skilled trait. The extra detail that these can add to your vault dweller really let you specialize in the direction you want. As a rule of thumb, any perks that simply increase skill values are usually a wasted choice, since there's so many opportunities to increase skills already. For example, utilize the library in The Hub for skill books, which restocks every time you open dialogue. Like the traits section, instead of going over every single perk, I'll be going over the ones to look out for.

• Awareness - Lv 3, PER 5
  Awareness is a good first choice when hitting level 3, mainly for the sake of assessing your combat situation before jumping in. Instead of just telling you whether or not your enemy is injured on inspection, Awareness will tell you exact health values and weapons equipped to your target. In the strategy layer of ANY game, just having this knowledge can greatly increase your survival in a combat situation.
  
  
• Bonus HtH Attacks - Lv 6, AGI 6
  If you use melee or unarmed weapons AT ALL to solve your problems, getting this perk will reduce the cost of all actions with these attacks by 1 AP! This is a must-have perk for any melee user.
  
  
• Bonus Move - Lv 6, AGI 5
  Bonus Move gives your character 2 Action Points for the sake of movement. Movement is important in a fight, be it for positioning or simply to escape to the exit grid.
  
  
• Better Criticals - Lv 9, PER 6, LCK 6, AGI 4
  Better criticals almost promises doing bonus damage when you cause a critical hit in combat. Who doesn't want to blind enemies 'more' effectively?
  
  
• Bonus Rate of Fire - Lv 9, AGI 7, INT 6, PER 4
  Bonus Rate of Fire works the same as Bonus HtH attacks, reducing the cost of all gun actions by 1 AP. This's darn near required for anyone using ranged weapons.
  
  
• Action Boy - Lv 12, AGI 5
  Action Boy gives you an extra action point. Since there is two ranks to this, you could top out at 12 action points if you go to maximize your character. That's a lot of actions in a combat turn!
  
  
• Slayer - Lv 18, AGI 8, STR 8, Unarmed 80%
  Slayer is for melee and unarmed weapons, and will make each point of your character's luck equal 10% critical chance. If you're running around with 10 luck, surprise! Every one of your melee hits will be criticals.
  
  
• Sniper - Lv 18, AGI 8, PER 8, Small Guns 80%
  Sniper works in the same way as slayer, except for firearms. 10 luck is 100% chance to critical hit with any gun when you take this perk. No wonder this perk unlocks so close to max level huh?

08 BUILDS (20:56)

If you're looking for specialized builds, I've put together three simple ones for melee, ranged, and social builds as shown here!

• Stabber / Puncher

Attributes: 7-4-7-2-9-9-9
Traits: Fast Shot & Gifted
TAG Skills: Melee Weapons (or Unarmed), Steal, Repair

• Shooter

Attributes: 4-9-4-4-9-9-9
Traits: Small Frame & Gifted
TAG Skills: Sm Guns, Lockpick and Science

• Speaker

Attributes: 3-5-3-9-9-9-9
Traits: Good Natured & Gifted
TAG Skills: Sneak, Speech, and Gambling

09 FIN

Now that we've gone over the entire character sheet, plus a bit more, keep in mind that all of the information here has been compiled with the intent to help you; and isn't the be-all-end-all guide for character creation in Fallout 1. If you have some advice you wish to add, or found missing, please add it in the comments to help out your fellow wastelanders!

As per the usual, if you found this excessive guide useful, entertaining or both, please do what you see fit to show that.

Thanks for reading/watching!

[Rando]

Nice

[Rad-Dude 63 & 1/3rd]

Yo, I think I own one of your business cards you dropped off at Game Trader my guy.

[King Hagfish]

Rahul, it's not possible.

[RAHUL516]

What should I do to get max all S.P.E.C.I.A.L. and max all skills in one playthrough? guide please. I don't care about the rest but do tell me if possible.

[emmet]

Thanks for the guide. I'll be sure to use this on my 2nd playthrough. :) Unarmed run

[ZoeyTheSobble]

Love your videos, Caedo.

[B3RyL]

@Movie Guy - He took the Gifted trait. It raises all your SPECIAL by 1 at the cost of 5% Skill points per level. It's a no-brainer, really, because you can raise you Skills with books, quests and so on, but there's very little opportunity to raise your SPECIAL stats, and it usually ain't cheap.

[B3RyL]

Great guide. Very concise and a great reference point for anyone, be it on their first adventure, or a veteran. One thing I find lacking are the example builds. I especially don't agree with is taking Steal as a TAG skill at all (in your Melee build section). I'll explain: Stealing is one of those skills where if you can pull it off, it can make you OP very quickly with very little effort, but the downside is that if you get caught, you end up with no choice but to kill the entire town. Now, usually people get around that problem by save scumming. BUT you don't really need to have a high Steal to do that. You can just as well save scum when you have 30-40 Steal and just try over and over until you succeed. So, I personally think taking it as a TAG skill is a complete waste. Much better to go with Speech, Lockpick or Barter, depending on your playstyle, because the quicker you raise those the better off you'll be from the very start of the game.

[Moive Guy]

how do you have so many special points?

[Pokes]

Saved me from having to sit through the video and actually compile the info - i appreciate it dude. Good work!!