Hi, I just bought Fallout 1, Fallout 2, and Fallout Tactics on Steam. Anyway, I just finished downloading Fallout 1 and I'm starting a new character. Can you tell me if this is a good setup?

Strength 5 Perception 7 Endurance 5 Charisma 5 Intelligence 9 Agility 9 Luck 5
Small Guns, Steal, Science.
Skilled & Gifted

What kind of play style are you aiming for?

That looks ok, but you dont need as many points in charisma, it has almost no effect on the game (unfortunately) drop a few points in charisma and place a couple into perception. Also as a newbie to the original fallout games i can recommend going with small guns, lockpick, and speech. It does wonders.

However Not that charisma in FO2 effects followers, mainly how many you can have in your party.

Yep small guns/lockpick/speech is great for first time player in FO1 - avoid the Skilled trait tho, you'll have more than enough skill points from your high INT (good call there) so in the long run Skilled would just lower your amount of available perks. And Charisma sadly is pretty useless in FO1, you could take it to minimum (put the points into Luck) and not notice any difference.

I'd swap out science for something else. You don't use it that much. Speech is a better choice

I always find that to be a loaded question. Nothing's ever so perfect, but the idea of a good ruleset like this (at least tries to be,) is that there is no "good" or "bad" character build. It's more about what you want to do with the character. I've played through those games a number of times with very different stats and skillsets, and they'll all get you through the game. You're usually best off coming up with an idea of what you want your character to be like, and then pick stats that would best describe that sort of character.

Or, failing that, you'd always be well-advised to pick one of the pre-made characters; or at least start with that as a base and change things from there. Especially on your first time out, because all of those characters have been made with the first-time player in mind; and all three correspond to an archetypal playthrough.

If you're aiming for a long-range combatant that's good with standard rifles, dump one point from INT (8 is enough, trust me), another from CHA and put both into PER. Also take Bloody Mess instead of Skilled, FO is just not the same without Bloody Mess.

Later on in the game, you may want to take Heavy Guns or Energy Weapons, whichever you prefer more.

Actually, Charisma has wide ranging effects in the original games. Fallout 3's SPECIAL is not the same as Fallout 1 and 2's. Having low charisma means you're not going to be able to be a speech oriented character, a lot of the options just won't be there, and some characters won't even give you the time of day.

Bloody Mess is entirely unneccessary. All it does is make the critical death animations play on normal kills.

Indeed, it's much better looking at the text box when you get those death and seeing how much damage you managed to do. Not only that you get to see the halarious remark your character has for the hit.

Not only does it hurt my eyes, it hurts my inner 12-yr old. Heresy.

Do a review of every other perk at the beginning: they all give you some value for a certain cost. With Bloody Mess you get unforgettable comedy moments for the price of... nothing. You don't lose any STR or AGI or 10% of anything. And you gain the ability to make huge gaping holes trough people, cattle, mutants and ghouls with your shotgun.

But you can do that too occasionally without taking the Bloody Mess trait. It's purely cosmetic and makes the critical death sequences pretty boring over time. Depending on what kind of character you wish to play, there is pretty much always a better trait to choose, because the advantage from a certain trait will always improve an important aspect for your particular character, while the disadvantage is partly ruled out if you're roleplaying.

I agree. I remembered Charisma being pretty important in the original Fallout games, so when 3 came out, I gave my first character high charisma, only to later find out it was pretty useless now.

I've never picked Bloody Mess because it feels that much better to get a good death sequence.