Ha, well it'll make the experience more interesting, so good luck .

These mean that your character is of typical strength, (and will not be strong enough to use a minigun without accuracy penalties ~for instance; though there are ways that you can find to improve one's strength in the game; eventually your PC will be strong enough). They are very aware and will get extra accuracy and range; act earlier in the combat rounds, and see their attackers sooner in an ambush (which means they won't be on top of you when the combat begins).

They are of average health and resistance to ill effects from injury, poison, and radiation. There are places that will kill you outright from radiation, but in my experience that's regardless of whatever the endurance score may be; it has an effect, but it seems marginal to me. It does determine your hit points though.

They have a sharper intellect than most; this will help you. In agility they basically are this guy:>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm91hh9SqXs
They represent the utmost of human ability in that category. Able to dance around their opponents. There are perks in Fallout that add action points, but also perks that add dedicated movement points [which are limited APs that can only be used to move with].

Luck: Everything that can go either way is influenced by the Luck stat. Every time you pick a lock, you will get penalized a bit for being unlucky; every attack less likely to hit, less likely to score critical damage, and less likely to score higher damage when you do. When traveling, you will be less likely to find any special encounters that rely on chance to stumble across them in the open wasteland. You will be more likely to drop (or even break) your guns.

Note: You will be more likely to succeed than a PC with less than 4 in Luck.

To be fair, an imperfect character makes a role-play more fun. I remember a D&D session where I rolled a three or a four for Charisma. Basically, whenever I spoke to someone, they immediately hated me. Haha.

I was about to say. A 4 in luck is labelled as "Fair", which should be just below average.

Haha, it does indeed. Imperfect characters are far more fun .

Taking Gifted comes at a cost; though 7 extra Stat points seems more than worth it. The Gifted trait reduces your skills by 10%, and you get five less skill points per level.

The Skilled trait offsets this (with +10%), but reduces the frequency of gaining perks. Normally Fallout allows one perk every three levels, but with the Skilled trait that drops to one every four levels.

I opted for Gifted and Small Frame.

It isn't hard to keep up with the time limit if you put your mind to it. I'd say no need to specifically rush, but don't loiter too much; time passes quickly when you travel on the map.

And, remembering that, now I want to play some D&D again. Hm. Didn't they actually realise some Fallout pen and paper games?

D&D was fun, though 4E kind of svcked. I remember hearing about the guy who created a character with narcolepsy, who would fall asleep at every battle whilst his friends got ate by dragons or whatever the foe may be.

In other words, don't randomly head off in a direction across the map and always remember to pause the game.

Also ~as a rule of thumb~ head toward places that have been mentioned in conversation.
Heed any advice given about a place; and run if looks to hot to handle. There are some really tough fights in some unlikely places.

Also: It's possible to review a conversation with an NPC; so long as you are still in that conversation. (It's a button on the dialog interface in the lower left).

Cool.

It's also neat to use the 'Tell-me-about' dialog option. Most principle NPCs (with a face) have a limited selection of topics they will respond to. Often it's names or terms they use ~but not always; some of the things they say cannot be heard any other way than to ask them about it ~though none of those are game-critical, some are neat, and most are informative.

At a glance, your character seems perfectly serviceable. Like any "good" RPG, it comes down to playing to your strengths. It's feasible to play as a character with fewer AP and more of a focus in STR and END (though maybe a bit advanced for a first run-through.) Your character isn't going to stand up to too much continual punishment, so just make sure you're taking advantage of the increased mobility.

Kind of already touched on, but the advantage to turn-based is in being able to plan ahead. So if you're up against a bunch of melee enemies (molerats, radscorpions, etc) you can figure out how far they're going to be able to move in a turn and keep out of range of that. You can even calculate how many AP they need to keep in reserve to be able to attack once they reach you - so that you can allow them to get right next you but still not have enough to perform an attack on that round.

The timeframe really isn't all that limiting. It's something to keep in the back of your mind while you're playing but it's not worth rushing through just because of it. Once you start getting closer to the deadline you're going to get warnings about it so it's not going to take you by surprise, and if you keep your eyes open it's possible to extend that time limit by a little bit.

Not going to get into any spoilers, but as I recall that limit only extends to the first of the major plot points. The 150 days are essentially the limit to the first act of the game; it'll open up later on. You have much more time to actually play the entire game overall.

Like was said above, time always progresses no matter what you're doing. Leave the computer running for 24 hours and you'll see time will have passed (can't remember if game-time is truncated at all or not, though. I don't think it is.)

A note on the "always run" option: That only affects the animation used and the speed that your character moves across the map during free roam. When in combat, the distance you move is still determined by AP. It costs 1 AP to move one hex regardless of if you're running or walking. It's not usually a terribly important distinction, but some enemies are able to cover a lot more distance than it would appear.

Ghouls, for instance, only have the one sort of shambling animation - but they actually have a fair amount of AP. It may look like they'd take forever to get to you, but in game terms they can actually get around the map pretty well.

As far as how punishing the game is later on? It's been my experience in all of the Fallout games (including the newer ones) that it can be pretty tough when you're starting out, but you do eventually achieve a kind of critical mass at a certain point where you're going to have more caps than you need, a plethora of ammo and weapon options, etc. It does get easier towards the end of the game when you've got a levelled-up character with good gear. Some enemies are still going to be a problem but it is generally satisfying to be able to wade through swarms of enemies that used to send you running for the edge of the map.

Just comes down to different tastes, really.

Fallout is no X-Com when it come to it's turn-based combat, but neither does Fallout 3's combat mechanics play as well as Gears of War.

Besides, "less than perfect" doesn't necessarily mean terrible, either. I'd have liked to have seen Fallout 1's combat with bullet trajectory, better AI, and a good cover mechanic - but it doesn't mean I didn't have fun with it nonetheless.

Personally, the combat portions of both the new and older Fallout titles are what I'd consider serviceable enough but not necessarily stellar. To my tastes, however, I'd rather play a serviceable turn-based combat than a decent real-time combat.

X-COM is great...

I just finished clearing out the radscorpions for Shady Sands.

How're you finding it so far, now that you've made a better character?

Enjoyable. My only confusion now is that trading seems a little weird and ammo seems weird. I drag the bullets over to the gun to reload, add three, but then can shoot a bunch. Is that number next to the bullets the number of bullets, or the number of clips?

You can reload without going into the inventory, I think you just left or right click on the gun icon until you see "reload."

Number next to bullets? Like in the inventory? That's bullets, not clips.

Oh. Okay. Thanks for the information. That's concerning, because I've probably got less than 50 bullets left. How can I get more?

I wouldn't worry too much about ammo yet. You're still in the "simply surviving" stage of the game . Just go along with Sandy Shores quests and, without venturing into spoiler territory, eventually you'll find a place where you'll be able to buy all the stuff you need.

Ah. Okay. I'm just heading off into Vault 15 and, afterwards, there's that merchants town: The Hub. I need to earn some caps though. I did the radscorpion quest, but the exploiters didn't pay me.

Did you get some Radscorpion tails?

Yeah. I traded them for some food (I assume it was food, the icon looked like that.