Yes, they do. The difference were some 12 or so points which came from including the implants, but other than that it's fine. Roughly 75% if you absolutely try to max.

so how easy will it be to:

max one combat skill, repair, science (early), and lockpick (very early).

have medicine, speech and barter at 50 or 75

and not give a crap about sneak, survival, or the other combat skills

with an IN of no more than 7, educated, and not taking into account skill books?

Depends on what you think of as "early". 7 IN grants you 13.5 points per level, so 13 on the even and 14 on the odd levels. Add Educated at 4 and you can max a skill roughly every six levels. If you only put points into that one skill, that is.

Damn, so I can't make my Chick Norris character?
Maybe DLC will raise the level cap or add more skill books?
Either way this will make the game easier since you can focus on certain skills.

Noted. And I remember there were several NPCs that would train skills up several points apiece. Still, most players couldn't max too many skills in a single playthrough of FO1 or FO2, even if you count "max" as 100-120. Though some skills required 200 points to pass certain skill checks in the game . . . .


Well, I recently stepped through a character leveling up using my math using a spreadsheet, not taking into account skill books.

I started with INT 8, and took Intense Training (INT) for my first perk at Level 2. I also took the Educated perk next at Level 4.

Focusing on only raising 2 skills, it took until level 10 to max them both out. That is with putting 20 skill points or so in a third skill along the way, so theoretically you could max out two skills by level 8 or 9, keeping in mind that this is an INT 9 character. You would have 3 less skill points to work with every level, so just focusing on 2 skills, it could very well take you until level 10 or 11 to max them both if you didn't put points in anything else.

In my build, to max all the "core" skills I wanted that fit my vision for the character - Guns, Sneak, Lockpick, Speech, and Survival - took me until Level 24. By level 30 I was able to max one extra skill I hadn't planned on or put any points in, dumping all my skill points for the last 6 levels into it. Keep in mind you will be getting 87 less points by level 30 than my build, so you will only be able to max 5 skills.

Of those skills you listed that you wanted, you can max one combat skill, repair, science, lockpick, and put 50 points each in medicine and speech by the time you hit level 30. You will not have the points (without skill books) to get another skill like barter to 50 or 75.

As for how early you can max a skill, level 10 or 11 for 2 skills (like Science and Lockpick) or level 6 or so if you pour all your skill points into one skill. I tried to rush to max skill in Sneak and Lockpick as early as possible, and as you can see from this post, it wasn't necessarily "early", and not "very early", even though I had an INT of 9 and the Educated perk.


Nope, no Chuck Norris I'm afraid. My best advice to everyone is not to try and spread out your skill points. That tactic will come back to bite you by keeping your character weak for most of the game and ensuring they are never truly good at anything.

They won't be raising the level cap with DLC. Sawyer and Pete Hines have already stated in response to this question in interviews that level 30 is already a very high level cap, and the difference in power between a character at level 28 and how powerful that character would be at level 31 is negligible. (Hines) In their opinion things already start to get too easy for you at level 30, and the focus of the game with its definitive ending, multiple critical paths, and limited skill points is to encourage multiple replays, not to continue slogging along forever at level 30 hoping for an increase in the level cap.

Wat.

Energy Weapons was the best offensive skill in FO1 endgame (Turbo Plasma Rifle with Fast Shot = death to everything), and awesome in FO2 too. It just suffered from there not being any energy weapons in early to midgame in both games. Even so it was still better than Big Guns, Explosives, Unarmed or melee.

Just for an example - a character with all prereqs noted.

Lucky Luke
S 6 P 6 E 5 C 3 I 4 A 7 L 9
Tag: Guns, Melee, Repair

2: Rapid Reload – Guns 30 A 5
4: Educated – I 4
6: Shotgun Surgeon – Guns 45
8: Cowboy – Guns 45 Melee 45
10: Mysterious Stranger – L 6
12: Miss Fortune – L 6
14: Hand Loader – Repair 70
16: Silent Running - Sneak 50 A 6
18: Jury Rig – Repair 90
20: Better Criticals – P 6 L 6
22: GRS - none
24: Finesse - none
26: Nerves of Steel - A7
28: Sniper – P 6 A 6
30: Action Boy – A 6

Final requirements
I 4 P 6 A 7 L 6
Guns 45
Repair 90
Sneak 50
Melee 45

I'm just not feeling particularly oppressed by these prereqs. He's pretty shooty, especially with a lever-action shotgun (at level 8 no less), lets me experience gambling through a high luck character, has two chances to summon assistance in VATS and GRS and Nerves of Steel to trigger VATS more often, and has some decent repair perks. In character creation his stats are flexible enough that I could pull a point from agility or charisma (or both) if I were concerned about his strength being too low to use heavy Guns in endgame. All of that, to me, means he's better at more than one thing.

I for one can't really understand whats the point of calculating stuff like max skillpoints at level 30... by then the game is just about over.

I did the math at the start of this thread just to see if it was possible to max out all skills by level 30 if you made that your goal. I never try to max all my skills anyway, but there has been a lot of speculation among players and questions asked in interviews where the developers said they weren't sure, but didn't think it was possible.

After we got quite a bit more information from the guide, I decided to crunch the numbers see what the truth of the matter is.

Having a rough idea of how many skill points you will have at level 30 depending on your build lets you know how much you can spread out skill points as you level. If you go in expecting it to be like FO3 and having an easy time of maxing most of the skills, you're going to be screwed by the time you reach level 30, because you will have only a couple of maxed skills and the rest in the middling to low to useless range because you raised more than a select handful of chosen skills.

I don't think everyone should meticulously plan their character. I know a lot of the fun is building up a character as you go along in the game, and seeing what challenges you are facing. I just want everyone to be aware they will only be able to max out an average of 4 or 5 skills so they don't fly into a rage at level 30 when they discover their build is mediocre at most things and good at nothing.

Fair enough, thats a good reason

I plan my characters ahead mainly to make sure they can be done and to make sure how much flex I have in a character plan for doing something else as I play it.

As an example my 1 int character THUD has a fairly narrow gap at level 20 simply because of ninja;/ Without my rough plan I could have gone too far off track with it and say gotten 30 repair at the wrong time and blamo.

Exactly. Now with so many perks having high skill requirements, if your heart is set on a perk, you'll need to plan ahead to make sure you can get it when it first appears, or at all.

Are you sure it was them who [censored] your ass or did you just accidentally sit on a baseball bat?



I almost never plan ahead. I like things a bit more unpredictable and the brainwork the adaptation to the situation requires when/if I need to stray from the path I've been going. Just going with the flow (sure, with a vague initial plan, but not a long term one).

You do get points for having better stats in special.. Does anyone remember what that increase is?.. If there are things in the games that can boost stats your skill points will go up from those boosts as well. Too many unknowns for me to worry about calculating a character to it's final incarnation. I also still don't know how important lockpicking and science will be to getting into things... It'd be nice if they've added such things back in as the electronic lock picks. It'll be a real bummer if there are safes or computers that need a perfect 100 to get into and you have no way to actually get those skills that high without totally depriving yourself of other skills you actually feel you need.
Hopefully though it'll be very hard to even get to level 30. It's just no fun running around the wastes with only half the game completed with a character that can no longer level.

On the other hand, if you do have 100 science or lockpick, given what a pain that is, it would be a bummer if you weren't rewarded for your dedication.

You get 2 skill points in the associated skills for each 1 point in a primary SPECIAL stat. Note that this is for SPECIAL increases AFTER character creation. The formula is different when you are first making the character. So if you want the maximum skill bonus from having a high SPECIAL, that SPECIAL stat needs to be high at character creation, otherwise the gains are kind of piddly.


A maxed "unlock container" skill like Science and Lockpick definitely pay off in rewards, as Very Hard terminals and Locks cannot be accessed without maxing those skills. Other skills, like Speech or Sneak, can probably grant most of their benefits at 90 or so.

So a level 8 Int would give you 14 correct?

Yes.

From a helpful posting on the Gamespot forums from someone with the guide:

it's .5 per intelligence

So in other words, this is how many you get per level with each Int.
1 - 10.5
2 - 11
3 - 11.5
4 - 12
5 - 12.5
6 - 13
7 - 13.5
8 - 14
9 - 14.5
10 - 15

EDIT:
By the way, the game engine, at least in all previous versions of Fallout, rounds up from half points.

Do we know yet that our starting skills will be the same amount as in F3? or that tagged skills will still only provide one point per point given? Just looking back to F1/F2/Tactics where skills started much higher for a generic all 5 special character. Most skills started in the 40's and 50's in F1, 30's and 40's in F2 .. tactics had the lowest of those with most skills starting in the 15 - 25 range..... tagged skills added 2 points per point given. I like that those games started you at higher skill stats for things you probably already knew about.. and then for things like BG and EW the stats started piddly low.. Kind of makes sense since your an advlt and have learned some stuff while growing up. In F3 I grew up and never learned a thing I guess.. and in F:NV I seem to have a case of amnesia. So it kind of works that my skill set would start so low.... sort of.

No, we don't know if New Vegas uses the same formula to derive skills from stats. You'll note that in my first post, I mentioned that part was pure speculation on my part. It could very well be different, but I doubt it will produce more skill points starting out than those I used as an example.

The formula in Fallout 3 for deriving a skill from a SPECIAL stat is (STAT * 2) + 2 + (LK/2). With any half points being rounded up.

Tag skills still only increase by 1 for every 1 point spent, just like in FO3, since the skills are still capped at 100.

And FO3 didn't really give you high starting skills. That formula gives you somewhere from 5 - 27 points to start with in a skill. Tagging a skill adds 15 to it.

If you want an excuse to go with your background story for your character in New Vegas as to why they suddenly have low skills, just use the whole shot in the head and brain excuse. Think of the time spent building up skills as "recovery" and healing back to 100% of their former self, i.e. the brain re-wiring around damaged areas to reform connections and bring old skills back.

since the total number of very hard locks or terminals will be pretty limited, i'll stick to magazines (and possibly clothing) when needed.
so, 90 (or 85 with comprehension) in lockpick should be enough to pick every lock, and that's not factoring in bonuses from gear.

I reached the same conclusion with my build, leaving Lockpick at 90 and carrying skill magazines for Very Hard locks until I max the other skills I want to focus on. Of course, there will only be 15-16 Lockpick magazines in New Vegas, so if I don't find any, I might run into trouble.

So raising INT from 9 to 10 would only net you some crappy increase in the related skills. That can't be right.

F3 rounded down, i think?

I know, it seems weird. But this is Obsidian and Chris Avellone writing. There will probably be a lot of skill and SPECIAL checks where the extra point will pay off. :shrug:


Not according to the Vault wiki, but it could be wrong.