There are 13 skills in the game.

With a 10 INT nets you 15 skill points per level up. That is 435 skill points gained by the time you reach level 30. (You don't get 15 skill points at level 1.)

There are 51 books in the game that can permanently increase a certain skill by +3. +4 if you have the Comprehension perk. So either 153 possible skills points or 204.

If the initial skill value formulas remain the same in New Vegas as they were in FO3: (This part is pure speculation, if someone knows more definitive formulas for New Vegas, feel free to chime in)

Assuming 40 points to distribute in SPECIAL at character creation and assuming the player tried to balance all stats equally at 6 points except for the last two (Agility and Luck) at 5 points, we derive these starting skill values: (Where a formula produced a half point I have rounded up. All formulas taken from the Vault wiki.)

Barter 17
Energy Weapons 17
Explosions 17
Lockpicking 17
Sneak 15
Melee 17
Unarmed 17
Guns 15
Science 17
Repair 17
Medicine 17
Speech 17
Survival 17

That gives us a total of 217 initial skill points, plus 45 additional skill points for 3 tagged skills for a total of 262.

If you take the Educated perk at level 4, you will gain an additional 52 skills points by level 30.

If you select the Tag! perk at level 16, you will gain an additional 15 skill points immediately.

That means that if you take Comprehension and Educated and Tag! and start with a 10 INT score, you will have 971 skill points at level 30 to be divided between 13 skills. So you will only be able to max 9 skills, even if you collect all possible skill points in the game.

There are no apparent perks this time that increase a skill, or if there are, they haven't been announced yet.

There are 213 skill magazines that can give you temporary skill points totaling 2130 or 3195 if you take the Comprehension perk. These will fade away however and are not permanent.

So, start planning ahead now! You will only be able to max 9 skills and put 71 skill points in 1 other skill, and that is if you min/max the game.

Discuss/Double check my figures etc. I for one am happy at this news. More unique and individualized character builds are going to be the norm in New Vegas.

I'm glad about this. Even with thoroughly looking for every single book, you only end up with ~75% of the total possibly distributable points if you pick a total genius character. No more demi-godly characters. ^_^

I saw you doing some math on this earlier that looked pretty sound. I take it my logic and assumptions hold up pretty well to your double-checking?

And yeah, I'm very happy. It means that most characters will only be able to get maybe 50% of the total possible distributable points in a play through, so most people should plan on only maxing 4 or 5 skills.

The weakening of intelligence, while lowering the max, also means you don't lose all the much for stepping back on Int and investing in other things. I suspect most of my characters that aren't specifically going for high Int as a means to unlock perks will use Int 4 and Educated, as in comparison to the absolute maxed character you could still get 815, or about 84% of the skill points the absolute max character could grab, while saving 6 stat points and 2 perks.

Just to comment - your figures look good overall, but it's Comprehension that increases the skill bonus from mags. Retention just makes it last x3 as long.

Good catch. The original post has been edited to list the correct perk now.

ive spent the last few weeks doin the math on this as well. perhaps not in the same detail, as seen i didnt know what they have changed the skills points to per level. i got few 4 skills to 100 and barter to 70 if i had fifteen points per level.

when did they comfirmed that books are going to permeantly increase skills points? i though they scraqed that idea.

anyway this new info will help alot. :cookie:

I got this information about books and magazines from a posting someone made from the guide at NMA.

Books give permanent skill increases, but are very rare (only 51 in the entire game) presumably only 3 or 4 books for each skill.

Magazines are common enough (213 in the entire game) but only give a temporary boost of 10 skill points to a particular skill that then fades away to nothing over a period of time. Assuming an even distribution of magazines between skills, that is about 16 magazines for each skill in the entire game, so they are still a valuable find.

And I am glad to be of help. I hope this helps everyone that likes to pre-plan their characters so they can see what is possible by end game.

I was trying to figure out if 70 barter at level 12 and 90 repair at level 14 was a viable option with my skills points. apparenlty it is. i doubt that i'll stick to this plan any way, but it was something to keep me entertained until vegas comes out on friday. might do a few more with different skills tag'd and S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats. still thanks for the the help.

The guide gets some things wrong so I used a more general purpose method of calcing how good a char im gona have...

Based off the idea that my tagged skills generaly link to stats im pushing high... and that few of my maxed skills will be from stats I tanked..


150ish points needed to max tagged skills

150ish more to max two more skills.

150 more to max 1 more skill and boost several other useful skills to useful levels.

Nets around 6 maxed skills and 2-3 midranged skills.
\
Each intel I lop off drops me by 14-15 skill.


BUT I have to assume there are a whole mess of perks we havnt seen yet and that the guide guy never saw either. While I highly doubt any of those perks would raise total skill.. they might swap skill from one area to anouther..... say a mutate perk...

Not a bad way of hedging your bets, and I certainly won't claim my calculations are perfect, but I'm willing to bet that the guide did indeed list all the perks. Check this http://www.gamebanshee.com/falloutnewvegas/perks/level2.php if you wish to see all the perks by the level they become available, courtesy of GameBanshee site.

Even if I am off by 70-100 skills points, we can't count on being able to max more than 5 or so skills with a normal character, or 8 or 9 with a min/maxed genius character.

The way it breaks down in my calculations with 5 INT you can max 5 skills if you track down every single book and get one up around 60, just short of being able to get the good perks for whatever skill you chose. All other skills will remain below 40 and thusly be completely meaningless at level 30.

Yup Ive been to that site and it adds up to 86 perks but there are no 30th level perks yet on that list and there are no high level perc str luck intel or charisma perks. Plus I cant see them having levels with only 1 new perk.

Oh and only 1 speech perk.

I just got down planning out a character using my math, and starting with an INT of 8, and taking Intense Training at Level 2 to increase it to 9, I ended up with:

6 maxed out skills
1 skill at 47
The rest so low as to be meaningless.

That assumes finding no skill books, but still, I don't imagine I will find more than a dozen or so on my first play through anyway. Oh, and I took the Educated Perk at level 4.

I'm liking what I am discovering more and more. Each character build should largely remain unique and different from others, making for more memorable characters and roleplaying opportunities. There will be no Jacks or Jills of All Trades in New Vegas.

EDIT:

I guess there could still be more perks not announced, but I just figured the levels with only 1 new perk unlocked and level 30 with no new perks available meant you were just supposed to go back and pick up another perk from the lower perk levels. :shrug:

What about bobble heads/memory modules that can permanently increase your SPECIAL?

There's also Small Frame and Four Eyes traits.

Don't forget the Power Armors.

I'm sure that there will also be quest related perks that increase your skills and SPECIAL stats.

In FO3, you can get +1 SPECIAL and +22 skill points from quests.

With the Anchorage, you can gain an additional +9 skill points.

I am not sure anything is wrong with your math but if you put 10 in int to start should not all stats be 5 well cept for said intelligence.

Unless you are thinking ahead.. Still i guess not a bad try at being well rounded

The SPECIAL stats I gave don't mean anything. The available starting skill points remain the same as a whole pool, regardless of where you put your points in SPECIAL. I just made them averaged in my example to better illustrate the baseline for all skills.

My math was done under the assumption that a player put 10 points in INT at character creation, so all the skill point totals and math are correct.

All valid points, but for skill points, only INT really matters after initial character creation. Each additional INT point gives you an extra 1.5 skill points per level. An increase in any other SPECIAL stat only increases the effected skills one time with 2 skill points for each new point in the related SPECIAL stat. Even if you add 5 extra points to something like END, it is only going to net you 20 extra skill points - 10 in Unarmed and 10 in Survival.

Any increase from power armor would be temporary and not count. And I am pretty sure clothing that increases skills or stats have not made a return in New Vegas.

And though we have no way of knowing how many skill points may be obtained in quests, I seriously doubt it is +400 or more, which is what players would need to max out all skills if they had min/maxed with a genius character.

Other factors like you bring up may sway the total number of available points one way or the other, but the main purpose of my post was just to show people that maxing skills is now impossible and get them to plan accordingly if they were of the mind to do so.

EDIT: And there are no bobbleheads this time around. Memory modules/implants can be purchased to increase SPECIAL stats, but only one upgrade is available for each stat, and they supposedly cost a fortune.

Knowing what stats can be gained from quests allows for better optimization. You can invest fewer points in stats that you can gain through quests and put them elsewhere. Plus there could be a quest that increases intelligence.

In previous Fallout games, once you get the Power Armor, you'll almost never take it off. In fact, the Power Armor bonus in FO1 and 2 were pretty much considered permanent bonuses.

Although we don't know how many skill points we can gain from quests, it should probably be at least as many as in FO3. Considering how there were a ton of opportunities to gain bonus skill points in FO1 and 2, there may be just as many opportunities as in New Vegas.

Also, if memory modules have replaced bobble heads then there could be memory modules that increase skills. Remember, there were 20 bobble heads in FO3, 7 gave +1 SPECIAL each and 13 gave +10 skill each.

True. But no matter what you do you won't be able to max out your skills.

And the implants are only for SPECIAL stats, not skills. They aren't a replacement for bobbleheads, they are an updating of the idea from FO2 where you could find memory modules or circuits in the world and bring them to the BOS base in San Francisco and get an upgrade to the associated SPECIAL stat. Only in New Vegas, apparently we have to pay a fortune for each one to be implanted in our character.

Yeah but they actually wanted you to be able to have enough skill points to do more than one thing well in Fallout 3.

Do we know how much implants improve skills?

And, of course, unless you're willing to have insanely low stats, you're not going to be able to control where your points are as effectively as 971 points implies. A significant portion of your points from your stats are likely to be spread into skills you're not going to invest in any further.

An additional tool for shuttling around skill points is Good Natured. While the net effect on your total skill points is 0, in practical terms the actual effect is + 5 total skill points for each of (Barter, Medicine, Repair, Science, and Speech) that you would be investing points in (as you can invest 5 less now), and -5 for each weapon skill you would be investing points in (as you would have to invest 5 more now). Therefore, even if you were only going to invest in Repair, Science, and Speech of the Good Natured skills, and two weapon skills (say, Melee and Energy Weapons), you would in effect come out with 5 additional points in the skills you're actually going to be using... and you'd probably still net small benefits in healing and caps for the +5 to Barter and Medicine.

Assuming they're not absolutely [censored] us in the ass on this like they are everything else: 2 points of skill per 1 point of governing SPECIAL attribute with .5 skill points to all skills for each point of Luck

Update: They are absolutely [censored] us in the ass on this like everything else.

There's plenty of skill points to do more than one thing well. You probably want the skill or two that unlocks your core perk line to be 90 or so, but that's 90-180 points. Other skills can give good effects at less than 100%.

What, exactly, were you hoping to do that has made you so unhappy with Obsidian? Is it just that you are only happy with 100% in everything?

Have you ever played FO1 or FO2? They are giving us plenty of points to work with, we just have to specialize our character builds. As it stands, you can count on being able to max at least 4 skills, probably five unless you are playing a low INT character. That means 2 weapon skills and 2 or 3 other skills, or 1 weapon skill and 3 or 4 other skills. It just discourages the ability to make Jack of All Trades characters. If you try that in New Vegas, you are going to be screwed pretty badly, I agree. But with forewarning, you can plan a very effective character to roleplay.



I don't think they do. There are only implants for primary SPECIAL stats, you know STR, INT, CHR, etc. not skills. The only way they would increase skill points is like Azula said - each increase of 1 point in a primary stat gives you a one time gain of 2 points in the associated skills.


Very true. Roughly 120 points out of that 971 is going to be tied up in starting skill points for skills you will never increase.

And yes, you can use the Good Natured trait to gain a small net profit in skill points at the cost of reduced combat efficiency for the first couple of levels.

Considering how the maximum skill percentage in FO1 and 2 was 300%. You couldn't actually max anything. However, you didn't really need more than 120% to 130% in a skill. Also, FO1 and 2 had a few skills that had very limited use like Energy Weapons, Throwing, First Aid, Traps, and Gambling.

And it was possible to really optimize your character in FO2. You had the Gifted trait, 4 memory modules, +2 stats from the Hubologist Zeta Scan, and the Advanced Power Armor. With either Small Frame or Bruiser, you end up with 18 or 19 extra SPECIAL points, and that's not counting the gain SPECIAL perks. There were also ton of opportunities to gain extra skills. You can gain up to 91% to Small Guns, First Aid, Repair, Science, and Outdoorsman with skill books, more if you change the difficulty and use drugs to lower your stats before reading. With a very optimized build, you can easily get more than 100% on 10 or 11 skills by around level 24.