» Fri Jan 22, 2016 12:15 am This is an attempt to make all the perks more interesting and balanced when it comes to providing a compelling choice. I welcome any and all feedback or suggestions. There’s a chance that I’ll pick up modding (I do programming and web development for a living), so it could be what’s laid out here becomes a mod. At the very least, I may try to work with someone with modding experience already.
I’m completely open to hearing thoughts and ideas. Most of the time, I’m just trying to be straightforward and concise which may come off as know-it-all-ey, but it’s not meant to. Also, numbers can always be adjusted and balanced, and while I welcome that feedback, I’m more interested in hearing about the effect itself.
And ya, I have a lot of free time.
General Design Philosophies/Approaches
When assessing each perk, I had some considerations:
Each perk should feel like it’s in the right spot mechanically and/or with regards to RP.
Each rank should feel like a game changer - at least in some minor way. In many cases, I try to avoid merely increasing something’s effect by x amount or at least provide an additional benefit.
Some mechanics get appropriate alternatives in other trees (like Local Leader for example). In general, overlap is fine so long as it feels appropriate and doesn’t fully negate the alternative.
The first perk in each tree should be a compelling perk that is useful to all playstyles. The last perk should be hard to pass up. Earlier perks should be more focused on general game play while latter perks should be a bit more specialized (some exceptions of course).
Each tree should have roughly the same amount of ranks.
General OPness of a given perk is ok, so long as it doesn’t become a mandatory perk in every build, excluding rank 1 perks (since everyone qualifies for it). Mods that increase difficulty can always be created.
If there is a similar effect already in the game, you should assume my intention is that the effects will stacks e.g. VANS and Gift of Gab.
Strength
Strength is in a weird spot right now. Outside of endurance, it should arguably be one of the least item-dependent trees, but it’s not. There are 3 weapon-related perks, 2 crafting perks, and you can argue that Steady Aim and Basher are weapon related too. Because of this, I want to move Armorer to the Endurance tree. I beg someone who plays melee in Fo4 to please contribute. I know a decent amount about most mechanics in Fo4 - melee combat is not one of them.
STR 1: Steady Aim
Steady aim is a perk that can be useful to everyone. However, it just doesn’t provide a whole lot of return on investment and setting it at STR 7 seems just silly. It easily gets bumped to 1 and its effectiveness improved. Let me know if you have any suggestions to turn this into a 3 rank perk.
Rank 1: Hip firing accuracy is greatly reduced when firing any gun.
Rank 2: Sway from using scoped weapons is greatly reduced.
STR 2: Basher
Gun bash damage is pitiful right now. Increasing its damage and even giving it some unique effects still wouldn’t make it a very desirable perk. This revamp turns Basher into more of a “jack of all trades” when it comes to hitting stuff.
Rank 1: Gun bashing does 25% more damage. You perform bashing, melee, and unarmed attacks 30% faster.
Rank 2: Gun bashing does 50% more damage. Bashing, melee, and unarmed attacks have a chance to stagger your opponent.
Rank 3: Gun bashing does 75% more damage. Increases the duration and distance any enemy is staggered with any weapon.
Rank 4: Gun bashing does 100% more damage. Enemies take 50% more damage from blocking your attacks and can no longer block your power attacks.
STR 3: Iron Fist
Iron Fist got bumped down due to its specialized play style as well as the silliness of wanting to do unarmed attacks if you have a STR of 1 (in terms of both RP and game play). Its fantasy has always followed this exploding palm monk style, so I’m going to roll with that a bit.
Rank 1: Punching attacks do 20% more damage and increases their chance to be a critical strike outside of VATS.
Rank 2: Punching attacks do 40% more damage and you gain a chance to land two hits in one attack both in and out of VATS (keep in mind each hit will still be reduced by the enemy’s resistance).
Rank 3: Punching attacks do 60% more damage and ignore 30% of your enemy’s resistances.
Rank 4: Punching attacks do 80% more damage. Increases the damage from critical strikes by 50% for melee and unarmed weapons.
Rank 5: Punching attacks do 100% more damage. Criticals in VATS will paralyze your opponent.
STR 4: Blacksmith
This stays in the same spot mostly due to other perks needing to be shifted around. It’s not a bad spot for it anyways. I’ve made a big change to Scrapper and will explain the changes there.
Rank 1: You gain access to rank 1 melee mods. Additionally, you can get uncommon components that are frequently used in melee mods from scrapping melee weapons.
Rank 2: You gain access to rank 2 melee mods. Additionally, you can get rare components that are frequently used in melee mods from scrapping melee weapons.
Rank 3: You gain access to rank 3 melee mods. Additionally, equipped melee or unarmed weapons weigh nothing.
STR 5: Big Leagues
IMO, it takes a bit of strength to successfully wield a melee weapon. That, combined with the specialized style of the perk is why it was bumped down. If unarmed is about fast hits with a chance for them to do big damage, melee should be about timing and unleashing brutal power attacks.
Rank 1: Melee weapon attacks do 20% more damage. Your power attacks with melee weapons execute 50% faster.
Rank 2: Melee weapon attacks do 40% more damage. Your power attacks with melee weapons deal 50% damage.
Rank 3: Melee weapon attacks do 60% more damage. Critical attacks both in and out of VATS disarm your opponent.
Rank 4: Melee weapon attacks do 80% more damage and hit all targets in front of you.
Rank 5: Melee weapon attacks do 100% more damage, and gain a chance to cripple your opponent or knock their head clean off.
STR 6: Strong Back
Strong Back needs to greatly reduce the amount of times you’re returning home to unload your stuff. If even doesn’t do that successfully, it fails as a perk. Also, I want there to be options to supply lines in other trees that help balance that feature in their own way. These changes reflect that.
Rank 1: You gain an extra 25 pounds of carry weight. You can now fast travel while over encumbered.
Rank 2: You gain an extra 50 pounds of carry weight. You can use action points to run while over encumbered.
Rank 3: You gain an extra 75 pounds of carry weight. Running, sprinting, VATS, and power attacks no longer additionally drain fusion cores and you move 100% faster when power armor runs out of fusion cores.
Rank 4: You gain an extra 100 pounds of carry weight. Junk that weighs less than a pound is now weightless.
STR 7: Heavy Gunner
Heavy guns are...well, heavy. While it gets bumped down to the highest SPECIAL weapons-related perk, I want it to make heavy weapons awesome to hopefully balance that out. The minigun is still pitiful IMO, but that’s better fixed by just adjusting it rather than trying to fix it here.
Rank 1: Heavy guns do 20% more damage and have greatly improved hip fire accuracy.
Rank 2: Heavy guns do 40% more damage and take 50% less time to charge up or reload.
Rank 2: Heavy guns do 60% more damage and the player suffer no movement penalty when using them.
Rank 2: Heavy guns do 80% more damage and have a chance to stagger enemies.
Rank 2: Heavy guns do 100% more damage and charge up your crit meter faster. Crits with heavy weapons have a good chance to be lethal.
STR 8: Rooted
It’s a pretty good perk already; my changes make it a little bit better. The damage boost is reduced but now applies to all weapons, and helps the perk turn you into a standing monolith.
Rank 1: You take 30% less damage when standing still.
Rank 2: You deal 30% more damage with all weapons when standing still.
Rank 3: While standing still, your melee attacks have a chance to disarm enemies and successful blocks cause you to take no damage.
STR 9: Fighter
Fighter is a new perk that I want to embrace the melee to and fro as well as help balance deep STR builds a bit more.
Rank 1: Melee, unarmed, and power attacks attacks have a chance to cost no action points.
Rank 2: Gain 30% more experience anytime you kill an enemy with a melee or unarmed attack.
Rank 3: Successfully blocking an attack has a chance to fill your crit meter.
STR 10: Pain Train
This perk has an awesome fantasy to it - it just provides too little ROI to make it a compelling choice until you’re in need of a filler perk. The changes here try to up the ante.
Rank 1: Sprinting into normal-sized enemies while wearing power armor causes severe damage and staggers them. Oversized enemies are immune.
Rank 2: Sprinting into normal-sized enemies while wearing power armor causes massive damage and knocks them down, opening them up for an instant kill. Oversized enemies will now take severe damage too and are staggered.
Rank 3: Sprinting into oversized enemies while wearing power armor causes massive damage and are staggered for even longer. Your power slam now causes massive damage and knocks down all nearby enemies, opening them up for instant kills.
Rank 4: While wearing power armor, you can bash any difficulty lock in, opening it, but awarding no XP. Also increases the damage of melee and unarmed attacks by 20% while wearing power armor.
Perception
Perception has always been a jack-of-all-trades stat; it ties into sniping, VATS accuracy, lockpicking, energy weapons, and explosives. While that makes sense, it leaves a lot of perks feeling like they just don’t do quite enough. I try to fix that and bring them all back to tie in with feeling perceptive.
PER 1: Awareness
Awareness is a basic stat with no specialized game play to it so moving it to 1 made sense. It’s also currently sort of ho-hum and only has one rank.
Rank 1: You can view an enemy’s level and specific resistances in VATS. Additionally, you deal 10% more damage with a weapon corresponding to the enemy’s lowest resistance (excluding poison).
Rank 2: You take advantage of moments of weakness! You deal 25% more damage to enemies that are staggered, disarmed, paralyzed, or pacified.
Rank 3: You gain 30% more XP from picking locks or pockets or disarming traps and mines.
PER 2: Pickpocket
Admittedly, I haven’t ever picked someone’s pocket; I’ve never had a need to. I’m open to hearing ideas on this one though - or even cutting it to replace it with something better.
Rank 1: Picking pockets is now 25% and you find twice as many caps.
Rank 2: Picking pockets is now 50% and you can steal equipped items.
Rank 2: Picking pockets is now 75% and you can steal equipped weapons.
Rank 2: Picking pockets is now 100% and you can place a live grenade in their inventory.
PER 3: Locksmith
I came to a cross-roads with perception perks, especially this one. I didn’t want to bump Locksmith or Rifleman too far down, even though I think they’re way better than the other perks and have more specific play styles/fantasies. My choice was either bump them way down, or just make the latter perks in perception much better; I went with the latter. Locksmith and hacker became too gutted for my taste and the last rank in both feels like useless bloat.
Rank 1: You gain access to advanced locks and your bobby pins are 50% stronger.
Rank 2: You gain access to expert locks and you start off close to the sweet spot of the lock. The higher your perception, the closer you are.
Rank 3: You gain access to master locks and can also pick any doors controlled by terminals too (while not entirely necessary, it would be nice to have a slightly different mini-game to reflect this).
PER 4: Rifleman
This is an amazing perk. My goal here isn’t to buff or nerf it, but rather reinforce a fantasy while making perks had specific benefits over incremental benefits. To be honest, it’s so good and it’s a specific play style that I bumped it down.
Rank 1: Attacks with non-automatic rifles do 20% more damage and have a chance to not expend ammo when shot. Gauss rifles and laser muskets will keep their charge when this happens.
Rank 2: Attacks with non-automatic rifles do 40% more damage and aiming takes 50% less time.
Rank 3: Attacks with non-automatic rifles do 60% more damage and you move 100% faster while aiming.
Rank 4: Attacks with non-automatic rifles do 80% more damage and have a chance to cripple enemies.
Rank 5: Attacks with non-automatic rifles do 100% more damage and ignore 30% of a target’s armor.
PER 5: Demolition Expert
This perk is a good example of one that just doesn’t do quite enough. Also, explosive are well...dangerous. This perk should definitely turn you into an expert at handling them.
Rank 1: Your explosives and explosive weapons deal 25% more damage, and you can craft explosives, missiles, and mininukes at a Chemistry Station.
Rank 2: Your explosives and explosive weapons deal 50% more damage, and grenades gain a throwing arc. When you toss a grenade, there is a chance you will toss two at no additional cost.
Rank 3: Your explosives and explosive weapons deal 75% more damage, and you and your allies are no longer take damage from explosions you cause.
Rank 4: Your explosives and explosive weapons deal 100% more damage, and affect a much larger area. Doubles the damage of any explosion you cause.
PER 6: Night Person
Does anyone take this perk? Hopefully a revamp will make it more useful.
Rank 1: You have night vision while sneaking and can sneak 50% better in shadows or outside at night.
Rank 2: Increases the effect of all chems taken between 6pm to 6am by 50%.
Rank 3: You gain 3 of every SPECIAL stat between the hours of 6pm to 6am.
PER 7: Refractor
Here’s my problem with Refractor: Toughness can provide some good help early on in the game when your armor is lacking and you’re facing enemies with guns or that want to hit you. You don’t need Refractor early on because not too many enemies have energy weapons and you don’t need it later on because you’ll find good armor. Simply put, it needs to do so much more than just provide energy resistance for it to be useful. Also, both Refractor and Toughness have the issue of not scaling well as you progress.
Rank 1: You now have 10% more Energy Resistance, and your Energy Resistance is increased by 20.
Rank 2: You now have 20% more Energy Resistance. When you take energy or radiation damage, you gain a static field for a short time that will damage enemies near you with the damage you took.
Rank 3: You now have 30% more Energy Resistance, and you gain 25 Radiation Resistance.
Rank 4: You now have 40% more Energy Resistance. Fire effects on you last half as long.
Rank 5: You now have 50% more Energy Resistance. When you take energy damage, the damage of your attacks with energy weapons is increased by 25%.
PER 8: Sniper
This is a good perk that is in a good position on the tree. It just doesn’t do quite enough to make it a compelling choice until you need a filler.
Rank 1: Scoped weapons no longer sway while aiming.
Rank 2: Non-automatic, scoped rifles knock down opponents during sneak attacks or criticals and have a chance to knock down opponents otherwise.
Rank 3: Non-automatic, scoped rifles gain 25% accuracy to head shots in VATS and your headshots deal 10% more damage with all weapons.
PER 9: Concentrated Fire
Concentrated Fire and Penetrator get switched simply because I have more/better ideas for Penetrator than Concentrated Fire. This perk still lacks some oomph for being so far down in the tree.
Rank 1: Every attack on the same body part gains 20% accuracy in VATS.
Rank 2: Every attack on the same body part costs 10% less AP in VATS.
Rank 3: Every attack on the same body part does 20% more damage.
PER 10: Penetrator
Do you want magic bullets? Are radscorpions and robots giving you trouble? Take this perk.
Rank 1: In VATS, you can target an enemy’s body parts that are blocked by cover, another body part, or another enemy with no penalty to accuracy.
Rank 2: Your attacks ignore 25% of the target’s resistances and you can target stealthed enemies in VATS without penalty to accuracy.
Rank 3: When using ballistic weaponry on a target, there is a chance the bullet will continue to fly to a nearby enemy. This can happen multiple times with the chance for a jump greatly decreasing each time.
Endurance
When I think of Fallout 4, I think of “all you need is kill”. Most situations seem best approached when you are not taking damage. At the other end, armor, doctors, and aid usually allow you to bypass needing a lot of raw toughness and recovery. In other words, Endurance can’t be all about not taking damage and recovery or it will never see use.
END 1: Lead Belly
Remember how I wanted to move Armorer to the Endurance tree? I needed to make room for it somehow and merging Chem Resistant and Lead Belly into one perk made the most sense in terms of their effects and themes. Toughness has a bit of a specialized fantasy to it and moving it down can allow me to build it out more. Lead Belly can be general play that anyone can like.
Rank 1: You no longer take radiation from eating or drinking.
Rank 2: Food and water heal 50% faster and is now weightless.
Rank 3: You can no longer get addicted to drugs.
END 2: Lifegiver
Lifegiver gets moved up due to its limited effects and general play style (everyone likes more health). Its last rank currently makes it a very useful perk already; the changes here are just to make sure it stays up to snuff with the new perks.
Rank 1: You gain +25 maximum health and you move 20% faster when at max health.
Rank 2: You and your companion gain +50 maximum health.
Rank 3: You gain +75 maximum health and can slowly regenerate lost health.
Rank 4: You gain +100 maximum health and 5% of the damage you do heals you.
END 3: Armorer
Moving this to Endurance gives the stat a bit more importance as well as opens up Strength for some melee improvements. As noted before, I’ve made a big change to Scrapper and will explain the changes there.
Rank 1: Gain access to rank 1 armor mods. Additionally, you can get uncommon components that are frequently used in armor mods from scrapping armor and clothing. Excludes power armor.
Rank 2: Gain access to rank 2 armor mods. Additionally, you can get rare components that are frequently used in armor mods from scrapping armor and clothing. Excludes power armor.
Rank 3: Gain access to rank 3 armor mods. Additionally, all armor and clothing weigh 10% less.
Rank 4: Gain access to rank 4 armor mods. Additionally, the armor and clothing you are wearing weigh nothing.
END 4: Toughness
Finally, I get to Toughness! Before you get too mad, let me explain: the one thing should feel like core game play to high Endurance is the ability to take damage and shrug it off. Moving it down allows me to make it more interesting and powerful. Also, while it provides decent protection early on in the game when you really need it unlike Refractor, it also doesn’t scale well as you progress.
Rank 1: You now have 10% more Damage Resistance, and your Damage Resistance is increased by 20.
Rank 2: You now have 20% more Damage Resistance. When you take melee or ballistic damage, you gain an additional 30 Damage Resistance for a short time.
Rank 3: You now have 30% more Damage Resistance, and you gain 25 Poison Resistance.
Rank 4: You now have 40% more Damage Resistance. Poison and bleed effects on you last half as long.
Rank 5: You now have 50% more Damage Resistance. When you take melee or ballistic damage, your melee and unarmed attacks gain a bleed effect for a short time.
END 5: Aquaboy/Aquagirl
This perk is in an interesting spot: It’s a rare case where I feel that rank 1 of it is too good. I’m slightly nerfing it by giving it another rank and moving things around. However, you now swim much faster too.
Rank 1: You swim 50% faster and can hold your breathe 100% longer.
Rank 2: You swim 100% faster and become totally undetectable while submerged.
Rank 3: You can now breathe underwater and take no radiation damage from swimming.
END 6: Rad Resistant
Radiation Resistance is something you either need a ton of or none of in my experience. So 10 Radiation Resistance per rank just doesn’t cut it.
Rank 1: You now have +20 Radiation Resistance. Rad-X is now 50% more effective.
Rank 2: You now have +40 Radiation Resistance. During radiation storms or in the Glowing Sea, you gain 10% Damage Resistance.
Rank 3: You now have +60 Radiation Resistance. When environmental radiation levels are 2 or below, you take no radiation poisoning.
END 7: Cannibalism
I swapped Cannibalism and Adamantium Skeleton for two reasons: 1) to me, it makes more sense that Adamantium Skeleton would require more END than Cannibalism, and 2) I think Adamantium Skeleton can be made better more easily than Cannibalism.
Rank 1: You can feast on human corpses to restore health.
Rank 2: You can now feast on human, ghoul, or mutant corpses to restore significant health.
Rank 3: Feasting on corpses may cause nearby enemies to flee for a short time. Additionally, so long as you remain hidden, sneaking will hide the act entirely.
END 8: Adamantium Skeleton
See note on Cannibalism. Also, this is a perk that just doesn’t do nearly enough, especially since limb damage is so easy to rectify in this game.
Rank 1: Your limbs suffer 50% less damage and you take significantly less damage from traps and mines.
Rank 2: You no longer suffer fall damage. Tesla coil traps and nearby generators slowly restore health.
Rank 3: Your limbs are immune to damage and you take significantly less damage from explosives.
END 9: Ghoulish
The changes here should make it more compelling and give high END, low CHA characters some options.
Rank 1: Radiation now regenerates lost health, and some ghouls will randomly become friendly and attack your enemies but not other ghouls.
Rank 2: Radiation now quickly regenerates even more health, and greatly increases the chance for ghouls to become friendly.
Rank 3: All feral ghouls become friendly and ghoul merchants will offer steep discounts on their wares.
END 10: Solar Powered
It’s a perk with a great fantasy but it just doesn’t do quite enough to be a compelling choice at most levels.
Rank 1: You gain 5 Strength and Endurance between the hours of 6am to 6pm.
Rank 2: Sunlight slowly regenerates lost health and heals radiation damage.
Rank 3: AP refreshes much faster between the hours of 6am to 6pm. Your presence cheers people up, making them easier to persuade.
Charisma
Charisma has several compelling perks that embrace a specific fantasy or play style. If you don’t mind occasional NPC derpy AI, a lot of these perks present very compelling choices. In fact, I’d probably say that improving companion/NPC AI, pathing, and speech checks would do more for this tree than any adjustments to the perk themselves ever could. I only suggest slightly improving most perks and reshuffling the first few.
CHA 1: Lone Wanderer
The move here is solely for the sake of RP. Beyond that, the perk itself is really good if you’re roaming the Wasteland alone. No changes made.
CHA 2: Attack Dog
Another move for RP purposes. Changes here help address dogmeats lack of ability to wear significant armor and weapons.
Rank 1: Dogmeat can hold down an enemy, increasing your chance to hit them in VATS. Also, Dogmeat moves much faster.
Rank 2: Dogmeat can hold down an enemy for longer with a chance of crippling the limb attacked. Also, Dogmeat takes less damage.
Rank 3: Dogmeat can hold down an enemy for even longer and causes minor bleed damage. Also, Dogmeat now deals more damage.
CHA 3: Caps Collector
By bumping this down, we can improve the perk, and things make a bit more sense RP-wise.
Rank 1: Improves buying and selling prices and vendors now carry more ammo, aid, and junk.
Rank 2: Improves buying and selling prices even more and vendors now have a higher buying capacity.
Rank 3: Greatly improves buying and selling prices and the player can now negotiate a price for legendary items sold by vendors, depending on their Charisma and initial offer (think TW3 negotiations).
CHA 4: Lady Killer/Black Widow
I think you could argue that Animal Friend and Party Girl/Boy could be moved up and this perk down, but I didn’t want to displace it too much. It’s also in a great spot when it comes to its effects - the only change I would propose would be making persuasion at the 3rd rank guaranteed.
CHA 5: Animal Friend
If you like companions, Animal Friend, Wasteland Whisper, and Intimidation are nice perks. My main issue with them though is that they are exactly the same, just affecting different enemies. What that feels like is in order for it to feel like a reliable strategy, you need to sink 9 points into all the perks. If you can make them feel more unique with one another, it helps avoid that some. The changes I suggest do increase their effectiveness a bit, but the true goal is to give each perk its own fantasy. Animal Friend should feel like a “one with nature” sort of thing and should...make animals your friend.
Rank 1: Aim your gun at any animal your level or lower for a chance to pacify it. Pacified animals have more health.
Rank 2: Greatly increases the chance you will pacify an animal, and when you successfully pacify an animal, you can incite it to attack.
Rank 3: When you successfully pacify an animal, you can give it specific commands and nearby animals will also become friendly.
CHA 6: Local Leader
There’s no doubt that the changes to Strong Back and Scrapper will water down the need for supply lines a bit. However, an additional 3rd rank still makes this the perk to have in you are all about settlements while giving you options for supply lines.
Rank 1: Allows the player to establish supply lines between settlements.
Rank 2: Allows the player to build workshops and stores (IMO, the workshops and lower level stores shouldn’t require this perk).
Rank 3: Get 30% more XP for anything you build in a settlement.
CHA 7: Party Boy/Party Girl
I feel the last four perks in Charisma suffer more from mechanics and Charisma past 6 not being that appealing rather than the perks themselves not being appealing. Other SPECIAL stats give you very tangible and helpful things: more XP, better sneaking, more AP, more health, more carry weight. With Charisma, you just increase your chance to pass speech tests (which you can always save before and reload) and make prices a bit better. That said, I’ll try to make these perks more compelling choices.
Rank 1: You are completely immune to alcohol addiction.
Rank 2: You get double the amount of XP from passing speech checks (stacking with Gift of Gab of course).
Rank 3: The effects of alcohol are doubled and you gain 3 Luck while under its influence.
CHA 8: Inspirational
Only slight changes here. I noted the core issues with Charisma for Party Boy/Girl, but if you are compelled to have a Charisma of 8 at least, you’re probably taking this perk. My changes help widen its appeal to all players.
Rank 1: Your companion does more damage and cannot harm you. Also, increases the amount of affinity gained when you do something a companion approves of.
Rank 2: Your companion resists more damage and does not take friendly fire. Also, increases the amount of affinity gained even more when you do something a companion approves of.
Rank 3: Significantly increases your companion’s carry weight, and they now ignore your actions they would normally disapprove of.
CHA 9: Intimidation
Intimidation gets bumped up because whatever I come up with (or you), there’s just nothing cooler than a Deathclaw following you around. Besides the BoS, humans are easily dispatched anyways. Intimidation should have the fantasy of intimidating people too - I know, it’s seems far fetched.
Rank 1: Aim your gun at any human your level or lower for a chance to pacify it. Pacified humans will deal significantly more damage.
Rank 2: When you successfully pacify a human, you can incite them to attack, and there is a chance that nearby humans will flee for a short time.
Rank 3: When you successfully pacify a human, you can give them specific commands, and there is a chance that nearby humans will disarm.
CHA 10: Wasteland Whisperer
I’ll say this again: there’s really nothing cooler than a Deathclaw following you around (side note, does this perk also work on Behemoths?). Changes suggested here are more about giving it a unique identity rather than improving it.
Rank 1: Aim your gun at any creature your level or lower for a chance to pacify it. Pacified creatures will yield double XP upon death.
Rank 2: When you successfully pacify a creature, you can incite them to attack. When a pacified creature becomes hostile again, it immediately dies.
Rank 3: When you successfully pacify a creature, you can give them specific commands, and there is a chance it will mutate into a legendary creature.
Intelligence
Intelligence has some good perks in it, although the core mechanic of granting more XP falls a bit flat in the current game due to how little XP it provides and Idiot Savant actually providing more XP. With my changes to perk in other trees, this would make matters even worse, but I try to address that with perk changes. The idea is that the Intelligence tree will still be the go to tree if you want to seriously increase the XP you gain.
INT 1: VANS
The little perk that could! Its current iteration is...lacking. However, I think that’s mostly from only having one rank and not the perk itself.
Rank 1: The path to your closest target is displayed in VATS.
Rank 2: All undiscovered locations are revealed and you get twice the XP from discovering a location.
Rank 3: You get 30% more XP when you complete a quest.
INT 2: Medic
With plentiful RadAways and Stimpaks, this perk really isn’t that useful beyond unlocking clinics. My changes here are about giving it utility and a medic feel.
Rank 1: Stimpaks heal 40% health and RadAway removes 40% radiation. Additionally, Rad-X and RadAway are now weightless.
Rank 2: Stimpaks heal 60% health and RadAway removes 60% radiation. Increases the healing from food and water by 50%.
Rank 3: Stimpaks heal 80% health and RadAway removes 80% radiation, and work much more quickly.
Rank 4: Stimpaks heal 100% health and RadAway removes 100% radiation. Companions can now use Stimpaks to heal themselves if they have them in their inventory.
INT 3: Gun Nut
As noted before, I’ve made a big change to Scrapper and will explain the changes there.
Rank 1: Gain access to rank 1 gun mods. Additionally, you can get uncommon components that are frequently used in gun mods from scrapping low-tech weaponry.
Rank 2: Gain access to rank 2 gun mods. Additionally, you can get rare components that are frequently used in gun mods from scrapping low-tech weaponry.
Rank 3: Gain access to rank 3 gun mods. Additionally, all guns weigh 10% less.
Rank 4: Gain access to rank 4 gun mods. Additionally, equipped guns, mines, and grenades weigh nothing.
INT 4: Hacker
Computer hacking got completely gutted in Fo4! Unless you have all the Total Hack magazines, you cannot do a whole lot by hacking terminals besides shutting down machines or unlocking doors. I want to bring the effects of the Total Hack magazines to this perk and change those magazines to simply reduce the “duds” when you attempt to hack a terminal. Intelligence already does this, but if you’re at max Hacker, INT, and Total Hack ranks, hacking should be a breeze.
Rank 1: Gain access to advanced terminals and gives the player an extra attempt to hack terminals.
Rank 2: Gain access to expert terminals and reduces the amount of duds when attempting to hack a terminal.
Rank 3: Gain access to master terminals, and gives the player control over robots, turrets, and lights.
INT 5: Scrapper
If I moved Scrapper’s effect to all the modding perks, just what the heck does this perk do now and why did I even change it? I have a big problem with the current Scrapper perk, and if you go by other posts in these forums, I’m not the only one. My issue with Scrapper is that in most cases, selling the weapon or armor is better than scrapping it which effectively renders this perk as useless. However, I understand that some people do want that functionality. Instead of getting rid of it, I moved it to perks that you’ll likely get anyways. It wasn’t about making those perks better since perks like Gun Nut are incredibly useful already. It opens up Scrapper to new and more useful effects.
The changes with Scrapper (and Strong Back) are also intended to provide alternatives to supply lines. Local Leader will still remain the perk to get if you are into settlements, but these other two perks can provide decent substitutes.
Rank 1: Doubles the materials extracted from scrapping anything.
Rank 2: All workbenches start off with more materials in their inventory (Enough to build all the basics: some food and water, a recruitment beacon and generator, a few beds, and a couple turrets/posts).
INT 6: Science!
Since Gun Nut and Armorer cover the weight changes for all armor and weaponry, the last two ranks in Science! are a little different, playing up the tinkerer/crafter fantasy.
Rank 1: Gain access to rank 1 hi-tech mods. Additionally, you can get uncommon components that are frequently used in hi-tech mods from scrapping hi-tech weaponry and power armor.
Rank 2: Gain access to rank 2 hi-tech mods. Additionally, you can get rare components that are frequently used in hi-tech mods from scrapping hi-tech weaponry and power armor.
Rank 3: Gain access to rank 3 hi-tech mods. Additionally, all mods are now weightless.
Rank 4: Gain access to rank 4 hi-tech mods. Additionally, you gain 30% more XP from crafting and modding.
INT 7: Chemist
Chemist isn’t a bad perk currently, but in the new set of perks, it would be lacking. Changes are meant to keep it up to pace. Reducing the ranks helps bump up its ROI.
Rank 1: Chems now last twice as long.
Rank 2: Chems now last an additional 150% longer, and plants yields double the ingredients.
Rank 3: Chems now last threes times as long and are now weightless.
INT 8: Robotics Expert
Having your own Sentry Bot or Assaultron follow you around is pretty cool and powerful. Just a few tweaks for slight improvement and flavor. The real issues with this perk and some of the Charisma perks lie in the mechanics behind it, not necessarily the perk itself. Hopefully, it’s something the BGS is on to improve. Also, because of how robot hacking works, the option to incite it to attack is completely useless IMO.
Rank 1: Hack a robot, allowing you to shut it down or initiate self-destruct, and you gain 30% more XP when you successfully hack a terminal.
Rank 2: When you hack a robot, you can give it specific commands, and you do 20% more damage against robots and turrets.
INT 9: Nuclear Physicist
Doubling the damage of radiation weapons and lifespan of fusion cores is fantastic, making this a great perk in theory. Its greatest shortfall is the lack of radiation weapons in general, but especially early on which I believe is the key to making this perk more compelling in general.
Think about it: The perk doesn’t offer up a big boost to fusion core lifespan in the first ranks when you really need it and instead boosts radiation weapon damage substantially when there aren’t that many radiation weapons available. Later on in the game, you usually have way more fusion cores than you could possibly use and finally can get your hands on the very few radiation weapons available. All I do here is shuffle the current ranks around to balance out the usefulness of the ranks as you progress in the game, but hopefully more radiation weapons will be added through patches or DLC.
Rank 1: Fusion cores last 50% longer.
Rank 2: Fusion cores last 100% longer, and radiation weapons deal 50% more damage.
Rank 3: Radiation weapons deal 100% more damage, and fusion cores can be ejected like grenades.
INT 10: Nerd Rage!
Opinion time folks: what do you think of this perk? 40% more damage and damage resistance sounds great but from my experience, if I’m at 20% health, I usually die pretty quickly from that. More importantly though, I’m rarely ever that low on health anyways. I would appreciate your thoughts here. I think it needs bigger numbers to make it more compelling, but maybe that’s just me.
Rank 1: When your health drops below 40%, time slows and you deal 25% more damage while taking 25% less damage.
Rank 2: Kills you make while enraged restore some health and grant twice the XP.
Rank 3: You now deal 50% more damage and take 50% less damage while enraged.
Agility
Agility works great as a core SPECIAL stat and has some nice perks in it already. I shift a few things around to place general gameplay perks at lower SPECIAL while specialized perks now require a higher Agility level.
AGI 1: Quick Hands
Basically everything that I said about Steady Aim applies to this perk. It seems silly placing it so high in the tree and it improves general gameplay, not a specific playstyle. Unlike Steady Aim, I do have an idea for a third rank.
Rank 1: You reload all guns faster.
Rank 2: Reloading in VATS is instantaneous and no longer costs AP.
Rank 3: All attacks have a small chance to cost no AP.
AGI 2: Gunslinger
While this perk does specialize pistol use, pistols are available very early in the game and are very abundant at any point. Also, from an RP perspective, I don’t think it would require a lot of Agility to effectively wield pistols. Changes are designed to embrace its namesake’s fantasy.
Rank 1: Non-automatic pistols deal 20% more damage and have greatly increased range.
Rank 2: Non-automatic pistols deal 40% more damage and have much better accuracy to limbs in VATS.
Rank 3: Non-automatic pistols deal 60% more damage and their ammo capacity is increased by 50%.
Rank 4: Non-automatic pistols deal 80% more damage and have a chance to disarm your target.
Rank 5: Non-automatic pistols deal 100% more damage and wearing any hat increases your Luck by 5 because you do feel lucky, punk.
AGI 3: Action Boy/Action Girl
This perk gets moved up due to its general gameplay effects and what I feel is a fairly low ceiling for awesomeness.
Rank 1: You instantly gain 25 AP.
Rank 2: Your AP regenerates 50% faster.
AGI 4: Commando
Commando gets bumps down because other perks moved up, and this perk offers specialized gameplay. A higher Agility required to wield automatics rifles successfully makes sense, even though this perk also affects automatic pistols. Still, by bumping it down, I can make sure it’s worth the perk points.
Rank 1: Automatic weapons do 20% more damage and have a chance to not expend ammo.
Rank 2: Automatic weapons do 40% more damage and have significantly better hip fire accuracy.
Rank 3: Automatic weapons do 60% more damage and have much less spread and recoil.
Rank 4: Automatic weapons do 80% more damage and have an even better chance to not expend ammo.
Rank 5: Automatic weapons do 100% more damage and have a chance to stagger opponents.
AGI 5: Sneak
A lot of people probably won’t like me bumping Sneak down in the tree - I don’t even care for it that much. However, the incredible utility it provides in general and for sneaking combined with somewhat specialized playstyle makes the choice an easy one. I do suggest reducing its ranks at least.
Rank 1: You are 20% harder to detect while sneaking and no longer set off floor-based traps.
Rank 2: You are 30% harder to detect while sneaking and no longer set off mines.
Rank 3: You are 40% harder to detect while sneaking and running no longer affects stealth.
Rank 4: You are 50% harder to detect while sneaking and entering stealth causes distant enemies to lose you.
AGI 6: Mister Sandman
By itself, Mister Sandman is only a decent perk, but when stack with other effects, it’s monstrous! My suggestions here are just to keep it in line with the rest of the perks after the revamp.
Rank 1: You can instantly kill a sleeping person, and silenced weapon do an additional 15% sneak attack damage.
Rank 2: Armor weight is no longer a factor in sneak detection, and silenced weapon do an additional 30% sneak attack damage.
Rank 3: You gain 30% more XP from sneak attack kills, and silenced weapon do an additional 50% sneak attack damage.
AGI 7: Blitz
By the time I consolidated the ranks of Moving Target and Blitz, it just didn’t make sense to not merge them into one perk. I changed the additional resistance you get from Moving Target to percentages so it scales as you progress. At about 150 resistance, the new change breaks even and anything after that, this is actually better. One thing I will note is that Blitz should absolutely apply the effect of Pain Train if it doesn’t already.
Rank 1: Gain an additional 30% Damage and Energy Resistance when you sprint.
Rank 2: VATS melee distance is greatly increased, and the further you are from your target, the more damage you inflict.
Rank 3: Sprinting costs 50% fewer AP.
AGI 8: Gun Fu
Gun Fu is cool. It’s just not 10 Agility cool. No changes suggested, but I would love to hear ideas on the perk. I’ve never taken it, but it seems like the situation it requires significantly limits its usefulness. From my experience, I haven’t ever really seen a situation that made me wish I had this perk.
AGI 9: Ninja
Combined with Blitz, Mister Sandman, and some perks from the Strength tree, this perk is nuts. No changes made, but it gets bumped down for being specialized and incredibly powerful.
AGI 10: Weapons Master
Merging Moving Target and Blitz into one perk opens up room for a new perk. While I’m open for ideas, I do have a suggestion. I thought about what was missing in terms of unique play style and what would feel awesome and appropriate as an Agility capstone perk. This is what I came up with.
Fo4 has many perks devoted to specializing you into using a specific weapon type. What if there was a perk that made you awesome at all the weapons so long as you played a certain way? Note: “guns” refers to all rifles, pistols, and automatic weapons; “melee” refers to both melee and unarmed.
Rank 1: Using explosives or heavy weapons increases your gun damage by 50% for a short time. Using guns increases your melee damage by 50% for a short time. Using melee weapons increases your explosive and heavy weapon damage by 50% for a short time.
Rank 2: Using explosives or heavy weapons increases your gun damage by 75% and gives them a chance to cripple a target for a short time. Using guns increases your melee damage by 75% and gives them a good chance to cause bleed damage for a short time. Using melee weapons increases your explosive and heavy weapon damage by 75% and gives them a good chance not to expend any ammo or grenades for a short time.
Rank 3: Using explosives or heavy weapons increases your gun damage by 100% and gives them a chance to disarm targets for a short time. Using guns increases your melee damage by 100% and causes them to ignore 30% of your target’s resistances for a short time. Using melee weapons increases your explosive and heavy weapon damage by 100% and gives them a good chance to stagger targets for a short time.
Luck
It’s a bit weird that Luck has so many perks related to VATS use, but there’s no denying that they are very cool and very effective perks. Luck got a major revamp in Fo4, and it’s a fantastic SPECIAL stat now: offers more XP than Intelligence, better ammo collecting than buying it, better VATS perks than Agility, and so on. My one gripe is that so many of the perks are just incrementally making one thing a bit better with each rank - granted, that one thing is usually awesome. My suggestions are to give perks a bit more utility without increasing their effectiveness necessarily.
LCK 1: Fortune Finder
This is the only Luck perk I have no intention of getting until I run out of perks to get elsewhere. I suggest reducing its ranks to increase the RoI and adding some utility to give it a bit more appeal. Two of its rank literally say the same exact thing (Scrounger does too, but that perk is also very useful).
Rank 1: You find more caps in containers, and there is a small chance the venders will carry a legendary item when their inventory refreshes.
Rank 2: You find even more caps in containers, and there is a chance enemies will explode with caps when you kill them.
Rank 3: You find significantly more caps in containers, and there is a small chance you will find a legendary item on non-legendary enemies.
LCK 2: Scrounger
This perk only does one thing, but it does that one thing really, really well and it’s something that’s very helpful to most builds. Still, having four ranks just to increase the effectiveness of one thing seems silly to me. I tried adding some additional effects that don’t necessarily make the perk better. I thought about combining Scrounger with Fortune Finder, but they’re two different fantasies and I think you can justify different effects on both.
Rank 1: Find more ammo and junk in containers.
Rank 2: Find even more ammo in containers, and there is a good chance scrapping will yield a random material.
Rank 3: Find significantly more ammo in containers, and there is an increased chance for enemies to be using modified armor and weapons.
LCK 3: Bloody Mess
The 15% damage buff from Bloody Mess is great! However, I remember putting off grabbing the last rank of this perk for a long time until I needed a filler. Just some adjustments suggested.
Rank 1: You do 5% more damage, and enemies sometimes explode into chunky bits.
Rank 2: You do 10% more damage and increases the chance of enemies exploding into chunky bits.
Rank 3: You do 15% more damage, and when an enemy explodes, nearby enemies may suffer the same fate.
LCK 4: Mysterious Stranger
No changes to the ranks themselves, but I think the trigger for Mysterious Stranger needs to be adjusted. I use VATS a lot, but I usually kill things in one hit - I can count the number of times I’ve seen this guy on one hand. I’m fairly certain he only appears when you fail to kill an enemy in VATS. IMO, he should appear any time in VATS when you would have made an attack otherwise.
LCK 5: Idiot Savant
Pro tip: Having an Intelligence of 1 and Idiot Savant rank 2 on average yields almost double the bonus XP you would get from having an Intelligence of 10. It’s in a great spot in the Luck tree for how powerful it is and the ranks all up the ante in a noticeable way. The only change I would suggest is increasing the effects of the second and third rank since I’ve suggested adding a bunch of ranks with XP bonuses to perks in other trees.
LCK 6: Better Criticals
I’m not against combining Better Criticals and Critical Banker into one perk, but I’m not going to suggest it either. They need some utility additions though to keep up pace.
Rank 1: Your criticals do 50% more damage and increases the chance of non-VATS criticals occurring.
Rank 2: Your criticals do 100% more damage and increases the chance of non-VATS criticals occurring even more.
Rank 3: Your criticals do 150% more damage, and all criticals have a small chance of being lethal.
LCK 7: Critical Banker
Where Better Criticals is about luck, Critical Banker is about control.
Rank 1: You can save 1 additional Critical Hit, and attacks in VATS build your Critical meter faster.
Rank 2: You can save 2 additional Critical Hits, and gaining XP builds your Critical meter as well.
Rank 3: You can save 3 additional Critical Hits. Banking a Critical hit has a chance to save another Critical hit.
LCK 8: Black Cat
I’m not that impressed with Four Leaf Clover, even with it maxed out. Rank 3 of Grim Reaper’s Sprint is awesome. Rank 1 and 2 aren’t that great. Additionally, they both have roughly the same fantasy of being able to chain attacks in VATS, whether it be a critical hit or otherwise. I’ve combined those two into one perk, which opened up room for Black Cat.
Black Cat is all about misfortune happening to those around you...and you profiting from it. There’s a lot that can be done with this type of perk, so I’m open to thoughts and suggestions.
Rank 1: Enemy grenades, mines, and traps have a chance to fail to go off.
Rank 2: Each item a vendor sells has a small chance to be drastically underpriced.
Rank 3: When an enemy attacks you, there is a small chance it will disarm itself instead, and as enemies begin to detect you when you sneak, there is a chance they will pick a fight with an ally instead.
LCK 9: Grim Reaper’s Sprint
See note on Black Cat. This perk was OP in Fo3 and perhaps over corrected in FNV. Fo4 found a good compromise, but I suggest making it a bit more reliable in how it functions. As Rusty would say, “it’s all cyclical.”
Rank 1: Each kill in VATS refills 25% of your AP.
Rank 2: Each hit in VATS has a chance to fill your Critical meter.
Rank 3: Each kill in VATS now has a 35% chance to fill your Critical meter.
Rank 4: All Critical hits have a chance to reduce all AP costs to 0 for a short time.
LCK 10: Ricochet
Ricochet has a very cool fantasy that fits great in the Luck tree. It’s a defensive and offensive perk that’s based around luck. I’m suggesting moving it away from the critical stuff since that’s already well covered with the rest of the Luck perks and making it a more reliable perk in general.
Rank 1: The closer you are to death, the higher the chance that an enemy’s ranged attacks will ricochet back and kill them.
Rank 2: Increases the chance of ricocheting occurring and now affects grenades.
Rank 3: Ricochet now affects melee attacks...somehow.
