Okay, since some FO fans feel cheated by the FO 3's special system, lets stop complaining and let Beth know how we feel it could be improved upon. Here are a few ideas I had, which focus on some new cons associated with low stats. Please feel free to add your own ideas and cross your own fingers that the powers to be will read our posts.


Strength= The PC is unable to move rubble which blocks certain paths (very high str required
to bypass rubble which leads to unique item locations.. 'certain paths require strength even beyond what a maxed str PC can achieve'). If the PC has low strength, they may seek assistance from a NPC or for large loads of garbage/rubble a crew of NPC's. Hiring these temporary helpers requires payment to the NPC/s by an hourly wage, additionally, the higher the NPC's strength
the higher his demand for hourly wage.

Perception= The lower your perception the more your gun target cursor moves around the screen. A very low perception of say, 1-3 will basically bounce around like a ball. A new perk will be introduced to slightly balance a character with low perception but at a cost. The perks name will be Addiction (basically the PC is able to concentrate better after using Jet but suffers from withdraws). A character with this perk will receive plus 2 perception for 5 mins upon using Jet but after the 5 min duration will receive severe withdraws and will now have -1 perception for 5 mins. Alcohol intoxication will temporarily lower all PC's perception (for sake of role playing).

Endurance= A player with low endurance will not satisfy women in bed (word will spread like wildfire) and the PC will also not be able to run long distances. Implementation of a breath bar, used to measure running distances, will drain faster for a player with low endurance. Drinks such as Nuka Cola and other liquids will now not only replenish some health but in addition the breath bar.

Charisma= Bring back and please even expand meaningful dialogue choices, ones that can completely alter our gaming experiences. For instance, if your charisma is low enough a PC will miss the opportunity to gain a unique NPC follower. Maybe even through in a fluff side quest for PC's with maxed CHA which would reward some sort of unique item.


Intelligence= Once again dialogue choices, please refer to FO2 for a great example... and please expand on what was achieved over 10 years ago...


I'll be back for agi and lck later.

these are nice but the dont fit the design of these new games, why would strength allow you to move rubble when explosives would make more sense...and thats kinda asking alot for the system. And the Rubble is there for a reason so players wont be overwhelmed from a hugely complicated worldspace...It would work in a game like Fable or other less graphically and interactive games but Fallout it would cause many huge glitches and bugs.

The perception idea is the same thing that goes with an associated weapon skill. a skill of 25 in small arms gives the same result as what you suggest, Perception fits better in how Bethesda made it that it helps find enemies, and if anything they should expand soley on how they made them and then simply improve upon there concepts such as make them more important and effect gameplay wise.

The endurance is nice but six should probabely be left out of the game, I mean all the video games that implement it do it very poorly (Mass effect, Fable II) and its ussually is more detrimential to immersion then actualy amusemant.

Charism is also a good idea as I always thought Magnetic Personality should have been one of the perks brought back, which is what your asking for.

Do we really need another SPECIAL thread?

There's already an active thread on the subject http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=992172.

I still maintain that the best way to approach the ruleset if we're going with a FO3-style game for further iterations of the series would be to get back to basics. Determine what you want the system to do and then build up from there, as opposed to trying to cram an existing ruleset into a game it wasn't designed for. I mean, I wouldn't take the Mass Effect system and then try to apply that to an in-depth turn-based roleplaying. I don't see how trying the converse with regards to Fallout 3 was ever going to lead to anything but a fundamentally flawed system.

For the original Fallout games, they worked out a rules system- the various ways it was going to differentiate the characters you made, the stats that were going to allow that, and the impact that was going to have on the gameplay and various playstyles that were going to be incorporated - and then built the game around that. With Fallout 3, they took the game they wanted to make and then tried to get an existing system to fit it.

So: we need to decide what ways the game is going to define your character, and then decide what stats would be applicable to that. Honestly, the "best" thing I can think of is to completely get rid of this attachment to the SPECIAL system and come up with something entirely different that actually fits the type of game they're trying to make. So long as you call it "SPECIAL" you're going to invite comparisons between the two systems even though they don't even work in the same manner or do the same things any more. Bethesda doesn't seem interested in trying to live up to the quality and elegance of the original system (and I say that without applying a value judgement - it just seems to be the case, for better or worse.) So they'd be better off just coming up with an entirely new system built from the ground up to be relevant to the game they're making.

Also, decide how hard you want it to be to reach the level cap, and then make sure the experience gain represents that. Most RPGs, if you have a level cap, it's either very hard to reach or something you don't hit until towards the very end of the game. This really should have been a no-brainer, I'd think. For all the complaints of the level 20 in the game, and the Broken Steel DLC that "fixed" that problem - the underlying issue wasn't that you hit a cap in your levelling, but in how quickly you got there.

I still think a better "solution" would have been a higher skill level cap. There's nothing but an arbitrary reason why 100 has to represent the maximum attainable by a human being. If 821 was the limit, that would represent the same value as 100 in FO3. Going back to 200 or 300 (or whatever numbering system we'd end up using under a new system - could be 20 or 30 for all it really matters,) with raising above a certain level having increasing point costs, would have meant that there would have been virtually no need for a level cap in the first place. The only reason you have a level cap in a videogame is to artificially halt character advancement. If there's no need to do that, you don't need to have a level cap, and you don't run into the same issues we saw in Fallout 3.

Anyway, that's just my two cents. I just think we'd better off with something entirely new that actually fits the gameplay rather than trying to get a square peg into a round hole.

well, for starters, Beth could just finish Van Buren by following the script and dont make it like Fallout3 but in its original engine and all will be fine.

Now that's a pipedream. You'd be better off to hope that Bethesda lets Obisidian make Van Buren lol.

I thought it was really strange that Bethesda tried to maintain some of their conventions from the TES series (skill level cap at 100 and each skill being connected to one attribute)...it's not like TES players are unable to learn a new ruleset and it just didn't fit the FO world (it doesn't really make a lot of sense in TES either sometimes). Like I said in the other thread, I personally feel that the ruleset from the originals would have translated really well and in some ways better given Bethesda's signature game play (first person perspective, open world exploration, etc.)

I have to agree with you, although as a whole I am very, very happy with F3, SPECIAL is one of the things I would change.

Please use http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=992172&st=0&start=0 about S.P.E.C.I.A.L, thanks.