I will play fresh and organically like you but from a rp point. I know what my girl felt before bombs fall. And in what she was great she was a lawyer so 8 charisma and 7 intel and she had hard life so endurance of 8. She married forced because get pregnant and if not she would lost his job and other stuff. she has been in gun clubs so she is good with pistols. And that's it, whatever happens will happen I have no idea of what she wants in the new world. She thinks androids are machines but no idea more.

From my experience, the first character I made in Skyrim was a train wreck. I had a perk in every tree, my attributes were placed poorly, I had collected thousands of Ancient Nord Arrows. I also had enchanted some Dragonbone Armor I found with a measly Fortify 20 Health. I tried to convince my cousin to at least plan something ahead of time. I partially convinced him to look at the perk chart so he doesn't set his special poorly...

Yeah I think it is especially important to at least give the perk chart a glance...

People keep saying "oh I'll just get what seems appropriate for my playstyle..." but you don't know what that is yet and you have no reference to go off of because most everything has changed from previous Fallouts...

I mean if you went really hard at New Vegas you might think you need high strength to equip the good weapons later in the game, but that isn't the case at all in Fallout 4, strength is 100% irrelevant to any type of gun in this game. But if you were going in blind, equipped only with your knowledge of the last Fallout game you played, you would be entirely ignorant of that.

Yep, I have the SPECIAL and first 20 perk selections, in order, nailed down.

Doesn't mean I won't adapt, it's just a plan.

I recall some older games where you really had to break out pen and paper to sort this stuff out.

Not planning. For later characters and play throughs I'll use what I learned from experience. Much more fun for me to figure it out on my own. I won't look at particular build, online guides, or anything like that for at least 6 months.

Considering you aren't limited to X amount of perk points in Fallout 4, because you never stop leveling, then "builds" don't really mean anything in the long run. If you want a head start, i'd say pump a lot of points into Intelligence in the beginning, since that's what determines how much Exp you get. The more INT you have, the faster you gain Exp, to gain Perk Points, to pump other SPECIALs or Perks.

I have a general idea of what my character is going to be focusing on, but I haven't planned out what order or which perks I'll be assigning as I level up or when or which attributes I'll be increasing past the starting allotment.

I'll probably start with everything close to 4, so an even distribution. In the final build I'll probably tinker a little bit to bring some down a point or two in order to advance another attribute. But mostly I'll be making that up once I'm actually in character creation.

With the new system I expect there's going to be plenty of room to experiment, and I think that's a good thing.

Planning my build isn't "fun". I realize I will probably play this game more than 400 hours. I think I played New Vegas 1,000 hours or more (I know that isn't that high for some folks). I'd rather try to plan a character I think I will enjoy then hitting my head against the wall over and over when I want to reroll my dude because I f'd up the build.

Here's what I got so far (builder, crafter, go most anywhere)

I aint planning beyond a basic idee of what i want to do, sneaking and sniping. But i aint setting no SPECIAL scores or picking perks, untill i get the game and play.

Welp, your friend is wrong. There's hardly a way to build a bad character.. Now that would take some planning. And there's no such thing as "wasting three or four hours" unless you believe the goal of the game is to get through it as fast as humanly possible. Like others have stated.. it's perfectly feasible to start a character with 4's in every stat and build as you go, taking perks and stats that you feel would be in your best interest at the time.

The issue with Bethesda games is that, if you're the type that enjoys making your character as powerful as possible, you can get screwed over. Specifically, in F3, there was a perk with Broken Steel that raised all your SPECIAL stats to 9, effectively rendering bobbleheads as wasted points unless you received them after getting the perk (which would let your go to 10 on all of them). We might see something similar, like being able to use bobbleheads to go over the SPECIAL cap.

However, I know I'm definitely going for high intelligence, charisma, and one other attribute first. With unlimited levels, intelligence is definitely the best starting attribute...at least for me.

I agree with you. I find that meta-gaming svcks the fun out of it. Maybe after my first couple of playthroughs.

I don't hardcoe min-max in single player games but I like trying to be efficient with character builds, resource usage (ammo, food etc.), quests (but without skipping stages).

I'd absolutely hate it if I bumped into a locked door or computer only to realize I'm 4-6 perk points off from unlocking it. So I usually plan out my character so I can unlock containers, doors and computers and talk my way into better situations ASAP. Not doing +100% damage with a rifle might not lock you out of loot and dialog options as much as not having nimble fingers and a silver tongue. I can compensate for lower damage by being efficient with my shots, I can't do the same with locks and computers.

When I first started gaming I would jump in with no planning at all and just enjoy the game. Then I started playing mmos and got obsessed with having "the best build". This obsession unfortunately followed me to single player games until I realized that I had much more fun just playing the old way. I'm not planning out my Fallout character at all. I haven't even looked at the perk charts. Blind eye forward and full steam ahead!

I usually like to just jump blindly into a new game. However, Fallout 4 is the first game, where I actually looked at the perk chart, so I can sort of plan where to put my SPECIAL points. There are some perks I really want right of the bat and since they are all connected to your stats now, it doesn't hurt if you just at least glance at the chart, to see what's out there, and what you would need in order to get say Sneak as your first perk or lockpicking etc.

So yea, I did jot down my build, because I know I want to play a high Charisma character in my first playthrough.

I plan to play using unarmed weapons primarily (because when you upgrade unarmed skill and take the perks it deals a lot of damage, especially if you use spiked knuckles which you can deal one punch with every second). Energy Weapons secondarily, for fights like deathclaw fights or when fighting more than a couple of enemies at once. I will probably use light armour until I unlock Power Fists/Sonic Fists etc then switch to Power Armour.

You should always allocate your SPECIAL skills to suit which playstyle you are going to play the game in. E.g. if you want to be sneaky increase agility. Look at what each SPECIAL skill helps your character with and choose carefully when you start the game. Different SPECIAL skills allow you to choose different perks, eg having high agility would allow you to pick better sneaking perks so it is important. High Intelligence would allow you to pick better science/hacking/medicineperks etc. High Strength allows you to pick better melee/unarmed and how much you can carry perks. High Endurance allows you to pick better health perks. Increasing Luck increases every skill you have by one (while all other SPECIA skills increase the related skillpoints by 2 each), and Luck increases critical hit chances and loot finding chances. Strength increases unarmed and melee damage + how much you can carry.

I plan to use high endurance so I can get in close without taking too much damage for unarmed weapons, high agility so I can run in faster and dodge their attacks with my fast movement while destroying them with unarmed. Probably choose between Intelligence/Strength for my 3rd strong Special skill. or Else I could completely put Agility and Endurance to 10, and possibly use the perk to increase my strength as I level up during playing the game.

When you allocate your skills at the start, pick one as your main method of combat so that early in the game you're skilled at using the weapons you want to. pick one as lockpick, so you don't miss locks when you explore early in the game. I would pick the other as sneak, but you could choose anything e.g. barter, or maybe if it was hardcoe mode survival skill etc. You can also choose science so you don't miss any early terminals to hack when you are a low level, because sometimes they open very hard locks with loot etc.

I've avoided the large majority of spoilers, save for sites that give no regard to not spoiling something by putting the spoiler right in the title of their article.

I like the thought of going in blind that first time, then growing on my own to where I'll eventually be as familiar with it as I am with FO3 and NV.

I only looked into the changes to SPECIAL stat effects so I would understand the changes to what I largely considered to be the most important in 3 and NV, intelligence. I'm thinking I'll make more of a perception, charisma, and luck based character to start. Just slightly higher.