Arwen, since your mod focuses on making stats actually matter, what are your plans for making Charisma a little more useful?

As it stands, it's still a dump stat (it really only helps with companions and not much else). I do remember reading somewhere that a character with a high charisma would have a much easier time getting on the good side of factions and a much harder time getting on a faction's bad side, but I haven't noticed this AT ALL with the vanilla game.

I think it would add quite a bit to the role-playing aspect if a high charisma character had more wiggle room with factions. Do you plan on integrating such a feature in the future?

Charisma affects barter right? Maybe use the Charisma as well to calculate buy/sell prices....?

Despite my reservations with some of the changes, I will give this mod a try. My only major pet peeve with this mod on paper is the fact that the PC actually gets weaker relative to everyone as he levels up, because everyone else ends up having more HP than him in the end. Most players I know max out their weapon skill first; as a result, they get weaker relative to the rest of the monsters in the game by the end of it.

I will also be running a single mod on top of this: I'm killing the dependancy on weapon skill for aim/sway. Otherwise, there is absolutely no reason not to immediate shoot up your guns or energy weapons skill 100 ASAP. I'll report back with my findings.

I maxed science and lockpick before guns... and it didn't seem that different (well the game is more challenging but I like that, it never felt annoying for me). I'm level 23 or so now and still kicking ass.

i was under the impression skill didnt affect aim/sway in ART. what mod are you referring to?

I'm hoping you might consider this addition to your realism mod. I don't know if it is possible, and I plan to try it if no one is interested in it. I've always felt that S.P.E.C.I.A.L. didn't have enough bearing on your character. It is certainly improved in FNV over FO3, but I still feel like my choices in special don't really affect the kind of character I can become. For example, I can choose 1 charisma, but other than some minor things in game, I can overcome everything by maxing out barter/speech.

Here is my suggestion

Your special directly affects your skills by imposing a maximum cap. If you have 10 of a special, then your max skill possible is 100 of course. Anything less and you will have any skills associated with that SPECIAL reduced. The penalty will be calculated based on your intelligence, with the end result modified slightly by your luck. It doesn't make sense that I can max out a skill, if my base attributes don't support that skill. A lower agility should mean I can't ever max out guns.

• At 10 intelligence, you will take a 2.5% penalty for every point below 10 for any given SPECIAL.
  
  
• For every point less than 10 in intelligence, you take an additional .5% penalty. i.e. 5 intelligence would equal a 5% penalty. The penalty would be rounded up (i.e. 7.5% * 100 = 7.5 rounding to 8 for the penalty)
  
  e.g. if you have 5 intelligence, and 6 agility, your max Guns skill will be 80 (10 - 6 = 4, 4 * 5% = 20%, 20% * 100 = 80)
  
  
• That final number will be modified up by your luck (ideally randomly for each skill so we don't get all skills getting the exact same cap). My thought is to take a random number between 1 and half of your luck. That will be come your minimum bonus for each skill. We would then take a second random number between the previous number, plus half of your luck.
  
  e.g. if you have 10 luck, we take a random number between 1 and 5. Lets say you get 3. We then apply to each special a random number between 3 and 8.
  
  Of course, the randomness hinges on being able to calculate this value once, and then have that # persist through the game. If we can't do that, then I would say just add half your luck to the max for each skill
  
  
• Finally, I think the tag skills should also play a role. The tag skills, to me at least, suggest that you are innately better at that skill, even though your base attributes wouldn't ordinarily support it. I could see tag doing one of three things.
  
  
  • It removes the cap from that skill altogether.
    
  • It increases the cap by 15 points.
    
  • Tag could change completely so it doesn't grant you a bonus at the beginning, it simply raises your cap so that through training, you can get better.

What does everyone think?

I love the idea! With the exception of the effect of intelligence on skill cap (which i didnt quite understand ), i like how it makes SPECIALs more special.

However, it may not be in line with Arwen's vision of how the game should be. If so, id like an ART compatible version of this should you decide to make it.

Well, we could just have a one size fits all value, of 5% (or some other number). I figured though that the more intelligent you are, the more likely you are to become skilled in just about any area because even if you have physical limitations like low strength, your intelligence allows you to find other ways to become skilled at things that typically require strength. e.g. if you need to move a large object, you could muscle it, or you could use intelligence by using some kind of lever. I felt that intelligence has too little a role in NV because you don't gain much skill points with it anymore. I see many posts here about how there is no point in getting intelligence anymore. Ifigured using intelligence in this way, that would give the user incentive to pump points into it. It may be that the numbers I threw out there are too high. Perhaps we start with a 5% penalty at 5 intelligence (average), and adjust it by .25 for each point instead of .5. (so a range of 4 - 6.25% instead of 3 - 7.5%)

Also, I'm new to modding (I'm a programmer, so I'm interested in modding but have been out of PC gaming for a while and am just not discovering how awesome modding is), what do you mean by ART compatible?

i like the basic idea but it shouldnt be 10, it should be based off the average intelligence - like say 5-7 anything after that is a bonus.

Considering how in the hardcoe Module the SPECIALs are going to be reduced to 35 spendable points.. I don't know. I think it such a system could be too limiting.

You could always reduce the penalty, perhaps at 8 of a special, you have 100% and go down from there.or even 9 considering you are only losing 5 points of special

yes the value could probably do with a little balancing but the basic idea is sound. though im beggining to see some issues. for example unarmed is limited by what trait? because i can imagine a monk who might not be strong but with perfect martial arts skill or a clumsy brawler also with perfect unarmed skills. so maybe 1 skill can be limited by whichever is greater than 2 traits.

The initial value of each skill:
This is Default: 2 + (Stat * 2) + (Luck/2) ? Hard-Core: 0 + (Stat *2). Example: A starting Endurance of 5 and a starting Luck of 5 will give you an initial Unarmed skill of 15: 2 + (5 * 2) + (5/2) = 14.5 = 15 points ?
This is my Hard-Core module: 0 + (5*2) = 10 points

At level up :
Default: the character will distribute 10 (12 with the perk Educated) skill points plus a number equal to half their Intelligence. With an IN of 10, you can distribute up to 15 (17 with the perk Educated) skill points when leveling up.
Hard-Core: You will only receive 7 skill points to distribute at level up. But your Tag Skills will now increase by 2 points (default was 1) for every skill point you spend on them.

Plus, as Povuholo has pointed out, you only initially receive 35 SPECIAL points (an average of 5 per stat), instead of the default 40.

I like your ideas, marlock, but I'm not sure that they would be needed with my Hard-Core changes. With lower stats and skill points, and the way my mod increases the way stats and skill points are factored into game play, the way you distribute your points becomes much more critical. Personally I don't care if someone puts all their skill points into Guns, and ignore all their other skills. I don't recommend doing this, as your game play would be pretty difficult in everything but combat (and in many ways combat would be more difficult). If a player had 2 AGL and 100 Guns, they would not be any more effective than a player with 5 AGL and 50 Guns, since their low AGL would impose a number of penalties.

Yah, we can definitely tweak it. However, in this situation, that would be where the tag skill comes in since it would remove the restriction (or inflate it at least depending on what route we wanted to take)

Thanks for the input. I wasn't sure if it would be a fit for your realism mod but before i developed it on my own, I wanted to throw the idea out there for you. Since I'm new to modding, would it be possible for you to tell me if if imposing caps on the skill level is even doable?

I've never tried to alter leveling caps, so I'm not sure how doable it would be. I'm guessing that it would require a script that would prevent you from adding skill points when the connected stat was not high enough (by looking at the stat, and adding a condition). You may want to see how other mods that alter skill caps do this.

I made the modifications myself. In the default game, your weapon skill affects how accurate you are and it is quite drastic.

Here's fair warning. I intend to extend sunsets and sunrises in Fellout NV 1.0 (0.9 at the moment) since the game shoots by them. The idea is that I make them start earlier and end later. This should not affect your mod, but I'm open for discussion if you think it will.

There are 2 "triage wounded" quests, or maybe more. atm im with Argyll from the boomers, he gave me his OK to check on them, but their all dead - I can loot them but nothing else.

Is this because of the health component of ART? Is there a way to solve this quest anyway?

Thanks Hattix, the only thing that this will impact for me is my Dynamic Stealth. What I need to know is how will your changes alter the actually length of nights (the hours of darkness)?


This is a bug of v.1.2, due the the extreme low stats (1/stat) that were given to the injured in quest, who often only have an HP of 1. The combination of 1 HP and 1 END results in a very low calculated heath for these NPCs. I have fixed this in v.1.3.

I havent seen this in my game, but I'll keep an eye out for it to confirm. Arwen already replied.

Still relevant: In the meantime, try using a resurrect on them?

Nevermind.

Have people been playing enough to recommend what leveling adjustment to make to slow things down? 25%, 50%, 75%, etc.? I definitely think the default is too fast but I'm not sure how much to slow it down. Any suggestions out there? Thanks.

I personally feel like if you slow down the XP there is not enough content to hit level cap. In GOTY Fo3 even you can only hit the low 20's.

i assume you're referring to VATS? i havent seen much sway/spread outside VATS myself. but then i barely used guns before switching to melee. which settings did you change btw?

I'm using ARTs default xp rates but i havent progressed enough into the game to tell whether its too slow. i like just "living" in the game world anyway so slow levelling doesnt bother me much.