That sounds pretty perfect to me as well. I'd like that system.


Fallout worked like that ~though jams were not guaranteed on the first failure. Fallout 2 let you blow up the door sometimes if you jammed the lock.

I did prefer the original FO's lockpick and Morrowinds version.
Having it solely based on character skill and in game effects than mini games.

IRL I can pick the lock on hand cuffs given an object I can work with, and have done so on pad locks.
However it depends on many things, age of lock, how rusted, what tool you use, a fair bit of knowledge about the lock type itself, and of course luck if you're an amatuer.

The minigame does not show this, at first I used to reload ( especially in fo3 ).
Now it just ruins imersion, if I can't open it it gets left, if I can't hack it it gets left as well.
If I fail I fail, however I would prefer not wasting time doing so with my own skills and fail by roll of my superior / weaker character skills instead.

So because the big gun skill is removed, even though there are actually more big guns, NV has less to offer? Elaborate please.

Merging melee and unarmed, no they are a bit to distinct and I'd say we'd need a skill or two more rather than less.


That actually makes sense.


You are right. I'd kind of forgotten, but I wondered why they didn't do that in Fallout 3.

Responding to the OP.

I like having STR as a modifier for weapon use. Always seemed strange that you could have 1 STR and wield a mini gun in FO3. Gives the STR stat a little more meaning.

Not enough, though. Penalties are a bit too light.

It would have been better that with a strength more than 1 point below the requirement would mean you can't wield it.
And having weapon skill below the requirement should mean a chance of jamming and critical failure (damages the weapons condition).
hmmm... TO THE MODS CAVE SECTION!

First of all... I am -always- against the loss of skills.


No matter what you say, when you take away a skill from a game in which it established... and arbitrarily begin stuffing everything that fell under that skill into other skills that 'sort of' fit... you have now not only fallen into a trap commonly encountered by poor game design, but you have also now diluted what were well-organized skills with stupidity. There is no excuse for the removal of Big Guns other than to pander to the crowd of idiots who can't figure out what weapon is governed by what skill, despite it often TELLING you outright which it is.

I have heard a lot of excuses for it... but I've not heard anything which remotely made sense.

Big guns is the ability of the player to wield guns... BIG guns... and any kind of a decent game designer worth his salt would know that when you have a skill like that, you use it. Optimally, the level of one's ability to wield a weapon such as the Gatling laser would fall upon Big Guns and Energy Weapons. The flamer would be Big Guns and Energy Weapons, as well, most likely... although I suppose I could see why some folks would say perhaps explosives would be a better mate.

Either way, the DIFFERENTIATION of skills is not something that WEAKENS the formula! It strengthens it!


And so I come to my next point...


I read somewhere in the wall of posts I was passing up... that someone thinks that adding new skills, or separating certain skills, would somehow damage the formula of the game. This is simply not the case. You see, in Fallout, the skills are not -meant- to cap at 100. They're meant to cap quite a bit higher than that. They're not -levels-... they're a PERCENTAGE... and that percentage used to MEAN something.

So since we're talking about the way to design this stuff here... here's my suggestion: Go BACK!

Skill points should be much more plentiful... but get spent much more easily. The cost of raising a skill after a certain percent should double (95 or so, I believe it was, in Fallout 1)... and increase once more as you get closer to 200 percent or so. Skills such as electronics and robotics and other such things should really find their way into the formula as well, because robots and machinery are both a very large part of the Fallout universe... especially now that the games are in first person.

Upon gaining a level, award the player anywhere from 18 to 25 skill points... based on intelligence and perks and whatever else...


For the most part? Just go back to the way stats were handled in the original games. I'm not saying take it STAT for STAT or anything... I'm saying use the same general system, and avoid all the headache of 'reducing' the already pathetic number of skills further.

It's lame... and I don't really care whether the players like it or not... there are some thing you just shouldn't compromise in an RPG of any sort... and the stats would have to be that one thing, for me. Without skills and abilities and interesting reasons to keep trying to get that next level... there's nothing fun left to the game.



That's all for me for now...

I'm tired, and this somehow became a rant about stats... ugh...

I'll try to re-read this thing once I'm actually awake... maybe I'll even edit it so that it makes a little sense.

-Blargh...

Which is exactly why I would go back to using it, since I enjoyed being able to try any lock or computer (aside from the few meant to open only at certain points) I came across even though odds were good I would fail.

I implemented the guaranteed failure as an additional check on player skill, since otherwise you get the common scenario where a player is jiggling the bobby pin around in various locations while torquing the screwdriver to try the lock.

At the same time I would also have it set up such that there would often be another way in, such as using [Speech] to get the key from someone or using C-4 to blow the door down. Of course, the latter approach used on containers would have a chance to destroy the contents proportional to the force of the blast (i.e. DAM rating), with tougher items (such as Combat or Power Armor) having a greater chance of surviving, albeit likely heavily damaged. It would also disable the container itself, since you just blew it to bits.

When I was about six years old I was wandering around our apartment complex' swimming pool area, and discovered the Pool supply locker. It had a locked combination padlock on it. I stretched my arm up and could just reach the nob (but could not see the lock while doing so). Bored, I twisted the nob for about a minute, and opened the lock. ~this was a fluke.

I much prefer RPG's with skill based percentages that actively reflect an aspect of luck with one's skill. Fallout 1 would actually add your Luck stat bonus (or penalty) to a lock pick attempt (or any virtual die roll in the game). This was established series mechanics, and IMO should never have been fiddled with.

In Fallout 1 & 2, Characters with low luck failed more often, and characters with high luck succeeded more often ~this was an expected consequence of choosing bad luck or good (or average) for one's character. :shrug:

Very true.
Charisma also had an effect.
Even if you tagged speech and raised it with a high intelligence, not all the best lines were available.
I've yet to see an impact on that stat, ED-E killed just as many with my Charisma at 1 than he did with it at 9.
I'm fed up of a stat being a dump one, one where within 3+ levels with a high intelligence you make up for 80% of the penalty you incured for droping it.

Agility is at least a choice, do I drop it early on and try to build around the weakness much later.
Or do I boost it early and focus on it, the same for every other stat apart from charisma in this and FO3 (where at least some dialogue was based on this stat ) imo.

Every low charisma build I've made puts no points in speech or barter, just so I can roleplay and suffer the penalties.