Oh My guy character is a Stealthy Sniper already I was thinking that this girl is kinda a psycho who just runs up to them and knocks them out with her fist or a melee weapon. Her alternatives would be explosives.

Wow I do not know which perk to take though. I'm still on my first run through with my male Sniper. Sorry about it

Don't worry about it

Thank you for your help though! Appreciate it!

Oh, I assumed you were more experienced usually players aren't ready to take on the world with their fists on a second playthrough!

Even though I will play Unarmed and Melee and back that up with a ranged weapon (gun) I don't usually put points into all three right from the beginning because it's hard to have a very strong character right from the beginning spreading points over three skills. I would recommend choosing one of those skills and your backup skill. You can add points to the other later on after you've established the first one.

So then you would build you character differently at the beginning depending on whether you were going to be mainly a Melee or Unarmed character with Explosives for backup. Does that make sense? The reason that is true is because they require different things. Although if you want to just wade into the battle to beat people up they might not turn out to be all that different, but you will need to take different perks for Unarmed.

So I would recommend, if you are not going to be sneaky,

EN - 7 or 8
ST - If Unarmed at least 4 because you need it for Iron Fist and you need to take all three levels of that for an Unarmed character. If Melee it could be anything and higher could be better as ST increases damage.
Luck - If you are going to be playing Unarmed or Melee you want this to be at least 5, maybe even higher but you can go get the Lucky Shades in the game to wear, the thing is, I don't know how you feel about VATS, but I don't use it for Unarmed and Melee, so crits are how I get my advantage so Luck increases critical chance which translates to more crit hits. I usually put mine higher than 5 and try to get it even higher in game with Intense Training and wearing the Lucky Shades, getting the Bobblehead, taking Finesse (perk at Level 10), etc.

Perception, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, These are all up to you. Intelligence controls how many points you will get at level up. So you can do whatever you feel you need, and Agility controls VATS. I imagine you will be using it for grenades, yes? I don't know what that means in terms of how much you will need. Here are the links to the wiki Agility page and the Weapons page so you can figure out how much AG you might want based on how much AP grenades use. I threw in the Intelligence page as well so you can see what your choice would mean. Be sure to scroll down the to the FO3 information on the AG or Intelligence pages if they have FO or FO2 information on them.


http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Agility
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_3_weapons
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Intelligence


I hope this helps you more. I wasn't trying to be unhelpful earlier. Here's the perks page as well if you are interested. I'd be happy to help out more if you have any questions.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_3_perks

Very helpful post there

Really appreciate your help. Will update on the character build for the psycho female

Thank you very much

You're welcome!

:) llama

well i don't know much about unarmed or melee skills and perks really, i use rifles and energy weapons, but i do use a lot of mines and grenades, i always take a couple levels of demolition expert perk and if i were you i would raise your luck.

Hmmm I have question for my sniper (stealth):

Perks wise I need some help I'm thinking of resetting the perks for my sniper as I think that I have placed them wrongly how should I reset them? My current stats are:
S: 5
P: 7 (8 with 1 intense training)
E: 3
C: 1
I: 9
A:8
L:7

I'm level 6 now. Its a female sniper.

My perks are as followed:(in sequence)

Black Widow
Intense Training (P)
Educated
Comprehension
Bloody Mess
Fortune Finder.

Please help

Thank you all for your time

My snipers tend to end up with something like:

STR - 3
PER - 7
END - 3
CHA - 5
INT - 6
AGI - 8
LUC - 8

L02: Black Widow
L03: Intense Training (boost STR)
L04: Child at Heart
L05: Entomologist (reqs Science of 40)
L06: Gunslinger
L07: Demolition Expert (reqs Explosives 50)
L08: Commando
L09: Scrounger
L10: Finesse
L11: Intense Training (boost END)
L12: Silent Running
L13: Sniper

Hard part is making sure that you hit the minimums in Science/Explosives for the level 5 and 7 perks.

After Entomologist, I go looking for Ant Sight (quest reward) for +1 PER. I generally do that by level 5 or so, which gives me 8 PER fairly quickly. Add the +1 PER hat, easily obtained from vendors in Megaton, and I'm at 9. Grab the bobblehead to get to 10 (9 once I stop using the hat).

Going to Op:Anchorage for the perk reward at level 3-5 is useful. Going to Pitt for the perk rewards at 5-7 is useful as well.

After level 10-13, I go get Ghoul Ecology and Superior Defender from Point Lookout.

Play wise, you need to remember that it's better to run away and live to fight another day then to charge in if the odds are stacked against you. Up until level 8 or so, you're fragile, can't hit the broadside of a barn, and you really need to avoid super mutants. Things will start to fall into place at around level 12-14. That's the point where I use the Choose_XP mod to change XP gain to only 33% or 50% of normal, because the teen levels are the most interesting. Enemies are tough, but not crazy tough, and you can tackle almost any location on the map with a bit of luck and tactics. I do a *lot* of exploration in the mid-late teens as a result of having to scrounge for XP. If I didn't dial back the XP gains, I'd be level 30 by now and everything would be super tough and I'd be already at max level (boring).

(Currently running a sniper/light combat character around the wastes at level 18. Not a true sneaky, but attacks from stealth 99% of the time.)

Oh haha I see. I have one question, I heard that having high intel is good as it increase your skill points per level, why put it at 6 then? Thank a lots for the breakdown on your guide appreciate it dude

Because ultimately... there are too many skill points and it's too easy to get to 100 by level 20 in your key skills. Not to mention the whole mess with the level cap being raised to 30 with BS (making it even easier). It's why I don't take Educated as a perk. It's also why I use the http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=6395 mod that moves all the bobbleheads around to random locations at the start of each game. (Each bobblehead has 1 of 5 possible locations.) And once http://fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=9022 is done, I'll probably look at that (as it makes it a percentage-chance that you'll find a skill book in it's usual location.

I find that INT in the 5-7 range is about right. I get enough points each level that I can hit my targets, but not so many points that I'm level 100 in 7 different skills by level 20. The difference between INT of 4 and INT of 5 is only 1 additional point each level (14 instead of 15, for instance). I prefer having higher agility and luck scores for better accuracy, VATS and criticals, as well as all the other odds and ends that luck affects.

(TL:DR - I found that taking Educated + High INT was too easy for my tastes. Especially if I started hunting skill books and bobbleheads.)

Ahh I see.

Hmm which skills should be my main 3? And how should I distribute my skill points per level for them?

Sorry for so many questions here

Sneak and Science - then either Small Guns, Explosives or Lockpick or Speech for some early successes

If you don't tag Science, then you need to remember to boost it to 40 in time to take Entomologist at level 4 or 5. That generally means dedicating a full 8-10 points to it each level instead of only needing 4-5 points each level. Same thing goes for Explosives, tagging it means early success in Megaton and Minefield. Not tagging the explosives skill means you need to remember to dedicate points to it before level 6 or 7.

The big 4 for sneaky types are:

Sneak - get around unnoticed
Small Guns - damage, accuracy
Science - use turrets to your advantage, get into places that you shouldn't be
Lockpick - get into places that you shouldn't be, open loot boxes

But don't forget about Barter, Repair, Medicine and Speech. For a sneaky/sniper type, speech comes in handy because it can get out past a difficult quest bit without needing to wade through tons of enemies. Or it can get you some early caps. And if you role-play a Child at Heart perk, a high speech comes in handy - being able to charm your way through situations. If you can afford to invest in the caravan merchants, Repair can lag a bit behind the others - you'll just have to come back to town once a day to get everything fixed up. Medicine is needed at 40/50/60 in order to get past certain quest steps without a speech check (or to complete the quest at all and get the reward). And a barter of 40-50 is nice because it gets you pretty decent prices when you sell, making it easier to buy other things.

I took Mentats for the Megaton Minefield thing. I made sure to finish all quest there and bought the schematics for rock it laucher before detonating the town :mohawk:

So far I spend all of my points on lockpick sneak and small guns. Haven't touched the rest yet.