This is the skill list I would like to see for Fallout 4.
01. Blade
02. Blunt
03. Hand to Hand
04. Guns
05. Chemical Weapons
06. Explosives
07. Energy Weapons
08. Persuasion
09. Deception
10. Barter
11. Gambling (Only if gambling minigames are removed)
12. Chemistry (Primarily crafting but has other uses too.)
13. Mechanics (cosmetic change from Repair (Includes some aspect of Science as well))
14. Pilot (Only if Vehicles are present.)
15. Electronics
16. Medicine
17. Survival
18. Outdoorsman (Only if a map node system is in place with world travel)
19. Hacking
20. Lockpicking
21. Steal
22. Sneak
23. Traps (Only if there is a good amount of traps and we can craft and use our own.)
24. Armorer
Now let me explain them.
1. While swords (fencing) and knifes are different combat styles I'd rather not make a long list too long, but bladed weapons and blunt weapons function differently.
Blunt weapons use brute force to crush the enemy, while bladed weapons, which are mostly knifes, aren't really a strong suit for someone to charge a deathclaw with.
So Blade is mostly the stealth skill, an assassin skill, but there "are" weapons that are of more impact that you can use like swords, machetes and fire axes but they are harder to find. Spears go in this skill too, they function completely different but again, the skill list is already long, better to just throw them in here. Thrown spears on the other hand are governed by the Throwing skill.
Bladed weapons have faster attack rate, has more frequent criticals, do more sneak critical damage and can cause bleed effects which drain the life of the enemy.
Bladed weapons are powered by Agility, along with Sneak, the higher the Agility is the better you sneak, the better you sneak the more common the sneak attacks will be.
It also affects attack speed directly, so if push comes to shove having high agility can make up for the lack of damage if you have to fight an enemy toe to toe.
Again, blades are primarily meant to be used as stealthy weapons, it "can" be used as brute force too (fireaxe for example.) but they are meant to be exploited for their criticals.
2. Blunt, the omega to it's alpha, the straight forward brute skill, heavier, louder, stronger, while Blade weapons have a greater critical chance, critical damage and a bleed effect the Blunt skill's weapons are high DAM but slower and not very suitable for sneaky kills.
Blunt weapons are slower but does more damage, they don't have a lot of criticals or especially high critical damage but they make up for it by being able to knock back enemies, knock them unconscious, break through defensive stance (well, not if you have a tire iron but a super sledge is gonna break through just about anything.) and cause much higher limb damage. Blunt weapons also cause severe damage towards equipment, each hit causes 30% of your dealt damage towards the equipment attacked. (This means that if the enemy's armor has 200 item hp, and your weapon does 20 damage, then 6damage is caused to the item hp. If you used a weapond that dealt 60 damage then 18 item hp would be gone. Remember that most armors and weapons are pretty deteriorated so hitting the enemy three times with a 60 damage weapon means 54 item hp will be gone.)
((This is meant so that the Blunt class don't became too OP, cause while it can cause knockdowns, knockbacks, cripples and break through enemy defense and has great damage, it also trashes just about anything you attack, so if you accidentally hit the enemy's Trail Carbine then it's gonna be pretty broken.)
Blunt weapons are powered purely by Strength, the more strength you have the greater the damage is and the more likely the benefits are to happen.
3. Basically Unarmed with a name change, think it freshens it up a little. It's core design is the same but it would be nice with more combat moves and to be able to kick like in the old games. (And kick down doors as well. )
4. Like in New Vegas.
5. Chemical Weapons, this weapon skill includes all fire based weapons chemical weapons, fire included, Flame Gun, Flame Rifle, Flamer, Incinerator, Incendiary Grenade et cetera.
It should be it's own skill because fire based weapons does not fit in any other skill (Except incendiary grenade).
If you build in this skill you will have it easier and have it harder, the damage of the weapons is quite large but the problem is their ammo consumption.
They're also "rare'ish". You can get the Flame Gun easily of course but the rest is a lot harder to come by.
6. Like in New Vegas?
7. Like in New Vegas.
8/9. Why the split of Speech? Because they're both different. Persuasion means you know how to persuade people it has a lot more dialogue options than deception does, but deception governs the success rate of disguising yourself, the game should of course need more infiltration missions in order for disguises to be more of use.
Anyway, just cause you're a smooth talker don't mean you have a poker face, they're both different, and should be split so.
Deception also means you know where to hide stuff on yourself and not making them "stand out" and can smuggle items.
10. Should be expanded upon, allow us to barter more deals through dialogue, some speech options in New Vegas could honestly have been used as Barter options.
11. I think that Gambling should be reinstated and that the minigames should be removed, I hate the minigames, if I want to play black jack I'll go online and find a game to play. Gambling should be based on character skill, not player skill, so yes, back with Gambling.
12. Chemistry is a crafting skill primarily, with this one you know how to craft various drugs, poisons, acids and other items.
Chemistry should also have it's quest and event sequences, maybe there's some mold on a beam supporting a house and your character figures out that he can use chemical component #42 and apply it to the mold which creates acid and therefor eats away at the beam, collapsing the house. (Dunno how this would work or if it even could work but yknow, have certain moments where a high Chemistry skill can come in handy.)
13. Mechanics is a renamed Repair, functions basically the same way, it has a bit of Science in it as well, but mostly it's a cosmetic change.
Well, that is IF we have vehicles. If we do have vehicles in FO4 then this skill will come in handy for repairing vehicles and sabotaging others.
14. Pilot, well... Vehicles, if they're in the game then the Pilot skill determines how good your character is at steering the vehicle and how far he can jump with it and other things. (I'm not very interested in cars so I don't know what a good driver can do with a car really.)
15. Electronics can be used for crafting various electronic items like shock batons, cattle prods, electronic lockpicks and mashing down certain items into scrap electronics. It can also be used to recharge drained cells. You can cut the power of places with this and turn off any lights, terminals, alarms, forcefields and turrets that were connected to it (Not every place will become blacked out, some places have back up generators for alarms and turrets.) And of course a lot of quests can be solved by using it, like sabotaging any electricity powered things.
You can also, depending on how high your skill is, turn off any robots and turrets and then with Hacking convert them to fight for you. Though converted robots don't get any +damage or +health from the conversion. They can be repaired with Mechanics and scrap metal/electronics.
16. Medicine... I'd rather have First Aid and Doctor back but there are already so many skills on here.
17/18. If we have a map node system with random encounters then this skill will function just like in the old games, I don't know if these two should be merged or not though, merging them could make Survival too useful but leaving them as separate could make Outdoorsman feel hollow.
19. Hacking, what it sounds like, you can hack any computer interface with a deep coded lock.
20. Lockpicking needs a new minigame system and an option to make it dicerolled, otherwise it's basically the same as before.
21. Steal, I think that Steal should be brought back, but if brought back then there should be a lot more moments where can steal something of value.
Not necessarily of $ value but rather quest value, say someone has a key on himself, you could either disguise yourself with Deception and say you're a new high ranking officer, you could use Electronics to turn off the lights by cutting some wires and have him lured to the wires trying to fix it and shocking himself unconseaus(???) you could smooth talk him with Persuasion or you could use the Steal skill to take it from him.
If you are sent to jail for a little while at some place you could steal the guards key when he's making his rounds, or you could steal back any confiscated stolen items by stealing the key from another guard and steal back the confiscated goods.
You could pay a hefty sum of money to get in at some place and then steal back the money, or you could steal the ammo from the guard and engage a fight with him causing him to either retreat or fight with his bare hands.
It could be a very very valuable skill.
22. Sneak only means you're great at keeping yourself undetected, it does NOT mean you're a great thief and it does NOT you know how to conceal items better.
Just means your footsteps are that of a mouse and you blend in with the darkness, mainly for getting around undetected and to silently kill things.
This means you can still be successful with the Steal skill even if you are detected by someone, as long as you're not completely detected by the one you're stealing from.
23. And finally, Traps, first off, traps should be more deadly, secondly, there should be more of them, ranging from a huge log chained to the ceiling to an alarmed door.
So for the skill to be worth it let there be more traps, hell, let there be moments (not a lot) were you can't even continue further in a building until you've disarmed the trap.
You can also create traps of your own, and yes, they are very deadly.
24. Armorer, used for crafting new armors and for reinforcing old ones and generally maintaining armors, this means that Mechanics/Repair does NOT repair armors, it's all decided on this skill. So if you have a low Armorer but high Mechanics/Repair then you'll be crap at repairing armors but great at repairing weapons.
The better armor you have the easier to repair armors it is, and you can also choose to further upgrade your own gear a lot of times and even craft new combat armor from cheap materials to sell for a high price.
Skill cap should be 200. (I'd rather have it at 300 though.)
Note:
Take a locked door, you want to open it:
With Strength you can bash it down, though the sound of the door breaking will make any NPC in the nearest 30 meters come looking for what it was. (Can only be done to wooden doors)
With Lockpick you can pick the door or container with no NPC awareness penalty.
With Explosives you can blow up the door though any container you blow the lock off has the chance of the item becoming destroyed. This will alert any NPC's in 70 meters. (You can only use C4 and Time-Bombs to blow open a lock, C4 is expensive and Time-Bombs are timerequireing to craft.)
With Chemistry you can craft different acids, all with different strengths, some able to chewing through Very Hard and some only being able to handle measly Very Easy locks, this will cause a smell that make any NPC's in 20 meters come looking for the source of the smell. (There is a delay to it.) ((Acids have to be crafted and the better ones are harder to get the materials for.))
Lockpick remains the best solution, Explosives is expensive and can damage the items inside container and draw everyone's attention, Strength cannot be relied on for every kind of door, only wooden ones and Acid is very hard to craft the better acids with, so a lot of time has to be spent hunting for materials.
So while other things can be used to pick locks it still remains as the alpha solution.
Options!
Extra note:
By removing Gambling Pilot, Outdoorsman and Traps it would end up being:
01. Blade
02. Blunt
03. Hand to Hand
04. Guns
05. Chemical Weapons
06. Explosives
07. Energy Weapons
08. Persuasion
09. Deception
10. Barter
11. Chemistry (Primarily crafting but has other uses too.)
12. Mechanics (cosmetic change from Repair (Includes some aspect of Science as well))
13. Electronics
14. Armorer
15. Medicine
16. Survival
17. Hacking
18. Lockpicking
19. Steal
20. Sneak
Pilot, Gambling, Outdoorsman and Traps only works if the game is designed a specific way, so they are less likely to happen.
» Thu May 03, 2012 12:01 pm 
