I'm nearing level 45, which is the maximum I can reach until I purchase Lonesome Road. I took the Skilled trait AND the Educated perk, and at the moment I have all skills at 100 except Unarmed. And I haven't even found all of the skill books in the Mojave and Dead Money, and found none in Honest Hearts and I'm yet to go into OWB. I'm becoming concerned that if I purchase Lonesome Road I could hit a dead end when I can't progress through the game because there's nowhere to distribute the skill points upon levelling up.

Now, obviously, one can choose to forfeit either Skilled or Educated. But It isn't an easy choice. For example, I want my next Courier, designed for my first all-DLCs playthrough to be Explosives-oriented. If I don't take Skilled, what DO I take? Fast Shot, Trigger Discipline and Built to Destroy are useless; Small Frame is poorly suited for Explosives; Wild Wasteland's just a non-trait, etc. Going without Educated, on the other hand, may be an overkill, as it gives 94 skill points over 50 levels. The third option is... ignoring skill books? Would that be enough?

So... What's a good skill point-planning strategy these days?

Try a build with less skill points, (lower intelligence, no educated or skilled etc.) so that you can focus on only a few skills. It keeps playthroughs more interesting when you have less skills to work with, and if you RP it is a good idea to have a build that doesn't allow you to max out too many skills. As for which traits you should take, I would suggest hoarder, and maybe fast shot. If you don't like any of the traits, then just don't take any.

My current character is level 50 with an intellect of 1. I didn't take Comprehension or Educated. I took the Skilled trait but only once (you can do it three times).

After having read all skill books (i still have some left over that there's no point in reading as the associated skills are already maxed), I have 100 in all but five skills: Medicine, Science, Barter, Speech, and Sneak. My sneak is 85, and the other four skills are all at 53. When I want to, I can get my Science from 53 to 100 with Black Coffee, Dr. Mobius's clothing, Programming Digest, and hitting the Smart Lights in the Sink. I'm also able to get my speech and barter skills over 90 using aid/clothing.

Intelligence is a dump stat now, basically. My charisma is only 2 as well. Everything else I have at either 9 or 10 (with implants). The only thing I was unable to do as a consequence of having low Intelligence was pass the Intelligence check on Christine to get the Coin Operator perk. I could have, were I able to make black coffee in DM, but I wasn't able to rustle up one of the necessary ingredients.

EDIT: I should also note that I started this character back before OWB was released. Had I known then what I know now, I'd have allocated points differently as I have a good number of skill books left over worth around 80 points or so.

How? Traits can only be taken once, is there some kind of glitch/exploit that goes along with this?

Three times. At character creation, when you leave Goodsprings, and finally when you complete OWB you can re-trait through the Auto-Doc. If you select Skilled each time, you get +5 to every skill each time for a total of +15 to each skill.

Lower intelligence only takes away half a skill point her INT point per level.

Fast Shot doesn't benefit Explosives, but I think it does reduce accuracy for them.

Hoarder's penalty is far too harsh for the benefit it offers. Even with Remnants armor, Annabelle, Mercy and 25mm APW in a single loadout, it's not easy to maintain 160 lbs on non-hardcoe.

I'd suggest that the only thing you'd have to do is pick Wild Wasteland instead of Skilled. I have level 50 character and all of my skills are above 85, which added with my SPECIAL means that everything except Barter and Survival is at 100. I only suggest getting Wild Wasteland since it has the only disadvantage is not having the YCS which isn't a down side for an explosives character and it comes with the Holy Hand Grenades.

Your only option is to make a character with no intelligence and simply don't read skill books if you don't want to max everything out.

It's not so much the skill points as that you just plain level too fast.. They provide waaaay too much xp.. it's even worse in the DLC's. If you play nothing of the game but the DLC's you can reach level 50. I'm not sure how the game testers play games but they obviously don't play them like I do or else this would have been a bigger concern.

No matter what, your going to end up level 50 with most or all skills maxed way before you finish the game unless you just do some sort of extremely quick run through skipping most of the quests and areas.

Yeah, but you're going to level 49 times. With an INT of "1" you're going to accumulate 514 skill points over 49 levels. With an INT of "10" it'll be 735 points over 49 levels That's a difference of 221. So, it's worth taking INT into consideration if you're worried about over-skilling.

Lol i choose Wild Wasteland and(the one that gives you 10% less exp per kill ect)

Trigger Disciple and Built to Destroy are far from useless, in fact imo they are the two best traits after Skilled.

The +3% critical can be multiplied unlike other critical add on like laser commander and light touch that cannot be multiplied.

Trigger Discipline is for those who are using high spread weapons like shotguns, and useful for slowing down your shots with revolvers so you don't waste shots.

I'm talking about Explosives, my friend. Explosives do not benefit from criticals, and Trigger Discipline only works on Guns and Energy.

Lobotomite (can I call you Lobby or would it be political?)- That's why I call WW a wasted trait.

I think I may try to go with Skilled but without Educated. It would free up a perk slot, and I have a feeling that Explosives build will be perk-heavy.