After recently finished Fallout: New Vegas I'm in the mood to go back to the roots.

I bought the White Label Box on Amazon (including Fallout 1, 2 and Tactics) and want to start Fallout 1 again.
It's been a while since I played Fallout 1. Must have been 1998.

Despite having a lot of Fallout Lore, the Wiki lacks game mechanics considering Fallout 1 and 2. In particular how speech is handled in these games. When you type in Speech you got all the fancy stuff from Fallout 3 and New Vegas including how much Speech you need to finish the challenges. But there is little to no descreption how it works in the original Fallouts.

I'm planning to make a kind of sneaky Vault Dweller. His tag skills would be:

1. Small Guns
2. Steal
3. Speech ?

I read that Steal is almost imba in Fallout 1 due to EXP you gain and money. But I've no idea how speech works, and if it is worthy to make it a tag skill.

A useful answer would be a example of a Fallout scene and how a speech success will work in it. Don't be afraid to spoiler me, cause I've finished Fallout 1, and I know off all possible endings and many quest solutions.

THX in advance and Happy New Year =).

I believe the system is a bit random, the higher the skill, the better chance you have of succeding, ALTHOUGH that alot of Speech options have a skill req. above 50+.

I think that with a high speech you'll see better dialogue options that you otherwise wouldn't see.
Meaning that with a low speech those dialogue options wouldn't even be there or would be the "fail check".
But there is no indicator like in FO3 or NV that shows that "This line is a speech dialogue line".
You won't notice what dialogue options are there cause of your speech skill but I think it's a viable skill anyway.

That sounds good. When I was fourteen this was my first RPG and because I had no experience in RPGs I took the given character Max Stone which has a intelligence of 4 or so and wasn't the talky guy.

This time I'll take speech as a tag skill and am intrigued which new dialogue options will appear.

More dialogues I think,


Happy New Year

High INT, CHA, PER, and Speech will give you a ton more dialogue options.

In Fallout 1&2, you had to pass speech checks in order to take quest shortcuts/save money/get help. In that regard, it's no different from Fallout 3/NV. There are two differences though. The first is that by increasing your speech skill you only improve your chance to pass a speech check, much like how increasing your small guns skill increases your chance to hit. In Fallout 3/NV, all you need to pass a speech check is get your skill to a certain point, so in Fallout 1, having a speech skill of 50% will affect your chance to pass a speech check based on your charisma and the stats of the person you're talking to, which after a bit of number crunching would probably give you a pretty low chance to pass the check. In Fallout 3/NV, 50 Speech is just that. Some speech checks require you to have at least a certain level of skill or else you will never pass them. In Fallout 1&2, you can continue to try something until it succeeds if you think your skill is high enough. That's true of a number of skills in that game such as Lockpick, Repair, Science, First Aid, Doctor, and Traps.

Fallout 1 & 2 also had critical failures that resulted in nasty things... which the newer games do not include in any skill.

I think after some hours of playing I'm getting it now.

For the first time I could solve the hostage situation in Junktown peacefully. The hoker even did it for free afterwards.
Everyone is believing what I say and they don't catch me lying. It is much more subtle than shooting them into pieces.. and a lot more funny.

It's good to note that there really aren't that many speech checks they're mostly skill based dialogue options that just pop up.

I forgot that in the first 2 fallouts there is a "disposition score" for each NPC which means "how likely they are to believe or agree with you." The base disposition is modified by your Charisma and the difference between your kharmic alignment and theirs. This is modified further by perks and the dialogue options you choose. You can start a conversation with a disgruntled person and after choosing the right things to say they will be bright and cheery with you. At this point you should try to persuade them, but if you tried to persuade before improving disposition the speech check is much higher..