I can't decide so I need other people to do it for me.

I'm not too creative in this respect. I usually add a couple to strength and intelligence and that's it.

Depends how you want to play, in the end it will not matter due to 'Almost Perfect'. Goodluck with your new character.

There is no Best SPECIAL configuration. It depends on what you want to do with your character. So, what kind of character do you want to play

If you plan to be sneaky and not get hammered on a lot you don't need as much EN as a player who is going to be using a lot of melee, for instance.

If you want a lot of skill points to distribute at level up then you will want to have a higher IN

If you use VATS you will probably want to have your AG at 6 so you can take Sniper (requires Perception at 6 as well) at Level 12 and so you can take Action Boy/Girl at 16

If you like to carry around a lot of stuff then you may want to put more points into ST than fewer points

Here's a link to the wiki page that gives you more info about the SPECIALs and how it relates to skills and other stuff.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_3_SPECIAL

I always try to have high Intelligence, Agility and Endurance.

But really, there's no best set up -- it's all down to the character. For instance, a Big Guns specialist wouldn't need high Agility as miniguns and the like seem to work better outside of VATS, for whatever reason.

I'd like to take this op to offer you a look at MY OWN signature, Presidente.

X3!

I tend to have really Int., Per., and Ag., but kinda low on everything else. -_-"

Focus on the perks you want to take when you pick your Special.

Strength and Endurance at mid field 5+ so you can grab Strong back perk.
Agility / Perception at 6+ so you can take Sniper, Better Criticals, Action Boy perk.

If you want to lift your skills quickly go for Intelligence and the Educated perk.

Intelligence, definitely. It boosts three of your abilities, and allows you to fill in the rest faster.
Endurance is a good one, since it makes you tougher.

The rest are useful, but less essential. I guess it depends on what perks you like.

If you don't plan on using melee or melee weapons, take strength to on, put intelligence to 9 so you get more skill points, put 9 in agility (small guns +AP+ sneak), the rest in endurance and perception. Endurance for health and perception for energy weapons and being able to see enemies on compass sooner.

I usually add extra points to INT, AGI and Luck
Intelligence for the extra skill point boost per level
Agility for the small guns and sneaking skills
And Luck... dunno why, just always used it.

Only help i can provide is choose depending on your character. Unless your making a barter/speech character for the start you can put ur charisma at 1. i usually put 9 to intelligence anyways so when i leave i run to rivet city and get the bobblehead.

S - 10
P - 9
E - 9
C - 9
I - 1
A - 1
L - 1

I like to be well rounded. Depending on my character, I'll have three attributes at 4, and the rest around 7.
I don't like to be complete fail at one thing, much less several.

S 3
P 4
E 8
C 6
I 6
A 8
L 5

S - 4
P - 6
E - 6
C - 6
I - 7
A - 6
L - 5

Assuming you get all of the bobble heads early on then this set up allows you to pick any perk you want (assuming you have the other requirements) So I guess technically this is one of the best possible builds.

I went for this on my latest playthrough:

S - 5
P - 6
E - 5
C - 6
I - 6
A - 6
L - 6

I of course picked Intense Training a couple of times to get the perks I wanted, but it worked very well. Not too overpowered, due to the low Intelligence, so it feels a lot more balanced. Of course, Overlords are still a pain in the butt...

EDIT: I'm not sure if I'm allowed to use another word for "butt", if you understand.

6 is low intelligence?

If you doon't like some perks, just RESET them. it'S a choiceyou can make with your attributes, and perks.

I was very dissapointed to see how little effect your SPECIAL stats acctually have on your character in the unmodded game. I gave my first character a 1 in Strength and Endurance because I wanted to challenge myself. But it turned out to be just a slight inconvenience and I was playing on "hard". So the SPECIAL stats are really only important as perk requirements.

You will need at most 5 Strength and that only if you want the Strong Back perk. If you don't care about Strong Back feel free to set it as low as 1. You'll still be able to carry 160 pounds of equipment which is enough to carry a bunch of different weapons and still have some spare room for loot. The exception here is if you want to use Big Guns, because these babies are much heavier than other weapons. A Big Guns user should go for 5 Strength and grab Strong Back. Melee characters might also want to put some points in here for the damage bonus, but there's no need to go overboard. And Unarmed characters will want 4 Stength so they can take the Iron Fist perk.

You need 6 Perception for Better Criticals. Better Criticals is awesome, you should take it.

You'll want 5 Endurance for Strong Back and Toughness. The other Endurance related perks aren't worth it. It's not that they're bad, they just aren't as good as the competition. As for Hit Points, a character with 5 END starts with 200 HP and then you get 10 more per level which is plenty. Just asign stimpaks to a hotkey and you'll be fine.

Charisma is worthless, set it to 1. Yes, it gives a bonus to Barter and Speech, but an extra point of Intelligence will do the same over the course of only 4 levels.

You'll need 4 points of Intelligence for Comprehension, but a few points more won't hurt. Between skill books and bobbleheads a character with 5 INT will be able to easily get half his or her skills to 100 by level 20. And you only really need one weapon skill, Repair, Science and/or Lockpicking (max one, bump the other to 50), Speech, Sneak, and some Medicine (but you don't really need to max it).

The AP bonus from Agility is pathetically low, but you will need 6 AGI for the Silent Running and Sniper perks and the Action Boy perk requires 7 AGI.

You need 6 Luck for Better Criticals.

So we have:
S: 5
P: 6
E: 5
C: 1
I: 5
A: 7
L: 6

That's 35 points altogether which leaves you with 5 points that you can put in whatever you want. If you don't want to bother too much with skill books and bobblehads it would be best to put those 5 points into Intelligence. Otherwise it would be best to split them between Luck, Endurance, and Intelligence. But even if you put them all into Charisma you'll still be fine.

One note: if you want to give the "tough" responses in the Wasteland Survival Guide quest (which give the best final reward), you'll need 7 Strength and 7 Endurance.


Edit:



If you're not allowed to use a word the forum will automatically censor it. So feel free to write any words you wish. Just be careful how you combine the words that aren't censored.

I like the following, if I'm not creating a character of any particular type:

S - 6. Strength Bobblehead is readily available in Megaton, which will get you to 7. Ant Might will get you to 8.
P - 5. If I'm specializing in energy weapons, I might divert Cha, Str, and/or Agi to this one.
E - 7. Might even go to 8 on this one, especially if I'm doing Big Guns and/or Unarmd.
C - 5. If you want to avoid fighting as much as possible, boost this one and keep your Speech as high as you can.
I - 7. Get the Bobblehead in Rivet City to take this one to 8 ASAP.
A - 5. Less useful, in my opinion.
L - 5. Luck should be an odd number.

Disclaimer: I'm playing GOTY and so I'm assuming Broken Steel in all the following text. If you don't have broken steel then pretend my post doesn't exist. It does not pertain to Broken Steel-free environments. Also, the opinion expressed in this post is exactly that, an opinion. It is to be considered a WIP to be debated rather than cut-in-stone suggestion of fact.

That being said, I'm really not an expert at this point, but after studying the mechanics and the perk list a bit, I end up with the following as largely optimal for a fairly sneaky small guns specialist.

S P E C I A L5 6 7 1 9 6 6

These values are largely based on the desired perk selection.

Perk SPECIAL requirements:


Essentially, a sneaking small gunner will probably invest in VATS and thus be interested in Sniper, Action B/G, Silent Running and possibly (though I personally wouldn't be) Mysterius Stranger. This means PE, AG and LK at 6. If you're really VATS-addicted, you might consider Nerves of Steel, but from the description it doesn't seem to do much at all. Strong Back is a must for anyone interested in carrying loot around, so that's 5 ST and EN minimum. Toughness is also fairly awesome so make that 6 EN minimum. CH perks are useless so all you need is 1. Despite hitting level 30, you'll probably still want Comprehension so 4 IN is minimum.

Essentially, there really aren't any good perks that require more than 5 strength, 6 perception, 6 endurance, 1 charisma, 4 intelligence, 6 agility (maybe 7 for Nerves of Steel), and 6 luck. That totals out to 34-35 points, leaving you at least a further 5 for specialization. If you skip NoS then 6 agility will do, and you've got 6 points to spare. +5 for intelligence + early bubblehead gives you maximum skill point freedom and that rocks. That leaves 1 point, which I'd throw into endurance. Not because any of the perks are really worth it, but because more hitpoints is nice and it makes it easier to complete the Wasteland Survival Guide with the damage resistance option. Only alternative is luck, which would mean +1 initial base of all skills and +1% chance to land a critical. That leaves us with...

S P E C I A L5 6 7 1 9 6 6

It may seem odd for build relying on sneaking and VATS to only go with 6 agility, but remember how important skills are. 9 base + early bubblehead means 20 skill points from levels 3 through 30. Combine that with Comprehension and you'll be able to easily max all skills and have plenty of room to spare for "inefficient" skill point distribution. Effectively, we're talking 28 *20 = 560 skill points from levels, 25 * 2 * 13 - 2 = 648 from books with comprehension, and a further 130 from bubbleheads. Add Almost Perfect to the mix (and thus potentially a perfect 10 in all attributes) and all skills will eventually baseline at 25, or 27 if you go for a perfect 10 in everything. That means you only really need 75 * 13 = 975 points, out of the 560 + 648 + 130 = 1338 you've got available. In other words, feel free to boost repair, speech, sneak, lockpick, science and small guns (and maybe even barter) to 60 before books and bubbleheads. "Wasting" 20 points on 7 skills really just means you've got about 1200 skill points out of 975 needed.

The above is specifically for a small guns user, however. What if you're into energy weapons? Well, that really shouldn't make any difference. More expensive approach in terms of caps investments required, but not heavier than small guns and very viable for sneak and VATS.

What if you're into heavy weapons? In that case you probably don't give a toss about VATS and really shouldn't worry much about agility anyway. Dropping agility to 1 gives you 5 points, which means you could put 3 more in ST (reaching 8, +1 from Those! and +1 from bubblehead) and 2 more in EN or LK (or 1 in both). Why do heavy gunners need more ST anyways? They don't except if they want to also move around. Heavy armor weighs a ton and the same applies to the weaponry. Thus, more ST = more room for loot = more caps to spend on the crazy amounts of ammo swallowed by your minigun, gatling, or whatever. How about EN? Well, if you're not sneaking around, there's a good chance you'll be hit more. More EN = bigger tolerance to being shot repeatedly. The compromise between LK and EN may be better, though. +1 LK gives +1% crit and +1% all skills. A further point merely gives another +1% crit whereas +1 EN would've given +20 health and +2 big guns skill.

Obviously, one might also decide to not give a toss about PE. It's only good for adding enemy markers to the compass, after all, and you'll probably get those anyway when something attacks you. If you decide to skip the Better Crits perk then there's no reason not to invest more heavily in luck. Heck, you could even drop PE to 3 and max out EN while you're at it.

S P E C I A L   OR   S P E C I A L   OR   S P E C I A L8 6 9 1 9 1 6        8 6 8 1 9 1 7        8 3 9 1 9 1 9

As for melee and unarmed, I will need to try those skills more extensively before making any serious comments, however I'd guess that it's largely the same as heavy weapons, max ST and EN and then to hell with AG and CH.

I agree with you about most things but this particular line seems inaccurate. I believe Action B / G requires 6 AG and that the only perk requiring more is Nerves of Steel. Also keep in mind that VATS is largely useless for heavy weapons users, since the AP cost is ridiculous and the accuracy is crap at any serious distance. Really, if you're going to use a machine cannon or laser equivalent then you probably don't want to wait until you're point blank. Seems odd to me, anyways.


Actually, all you need is a good deal of buffout and you'll get plenty of those responses. Having 7 endurance naturally is easier but going for 7 strength on that account seems excessive, unless you actually need the carrying capacity.



What the [censored] [censored] are you talking about, you bigass pile of [censored] [censored]? Yeah, just thought I'd demonstrate. No offense meant.

For anyone interested, that was two cases of [censored], one [censored], and one [censored], all blended together in a very boring and child-friendly package. The filter is a bit prejudist against English people, however. You can say ass just fine, but don't even think about saying [censored]!

I just checked in the GECK an d you are correct, Action Boy only requires 6 AGI. My bad.

You are probably also correct about Big Guns users not needing any. I haven't played such a character yet, so my advice applies best to Small Guns/Energy Weapon users.



I didn't think of that. Thanks for teh advice.



I'd reply, but I refuse to sink to your level.

After a lot of characters, I've discovered that I like the following:

S - 5. I like it at 7, but I can build it to 7 fast with the bobblehead (in Megaton) and the Ant Might perk.
P - 6. It contributes to some good perks later.
E - 7. Hit points are good, and the bobblehead can be problematic until you gain the ability to fight deathclaws.
C - 5. Most of the charisma-related perks only require 4 or 5.
I - 6 or 7. The bobblehead is easy to find, in Rivet City. I like INT as high as possible, since it allows me to boost stats faster
A - 5 or 6. Pretty useless by itself, but contributes to some nice perks.
L - 5. Get the bobblehead, 8-ball, and ranger armor and it's effectively 8.

If you want a character with major fire power that can take a real beating I would recommend a character using big guns and unarmed as a backup and use this stat build

Strength 8 + bobble head + ant might
Perception 6
Endurance 9 + bobble head eventually (it is in a rather scary place I hear
Charisma 1 (like many have said it is useless)
Intelligence 9 ( I usually take a long swim down river to rivet city for the bobble head at level 2 and use the rads gained for the quest from moira)
Agility 1 (you should never use VATS with a big gun, and not necessary for unarmed
Luck 6

Then the first couple levels I would personally recommend getting the intense training perk as the others are pretty useless except for black widow if you are a woman. I usually take 2 more luck as even though most big guns have low critical multipliers they usually are balanced out in some way (Gatling laser has low multiplier but you have to remember you have a high rate of fire to balance out) And also criticals are great for unarmed weapons. 2 in luck beats any in perception for this build.

Do operation anchorage for power armor training as early as you want and get the winterized T51B power armor.

My current level 10 character has a heck of a lot of health, 65% damage resistance with aforementioned armor and toughness perk , a little over 50% rad resistance and can carry 290 lbs thanks to the strong back perk. That way you can carry many big guns and lots of loot for lots of cap to pay for the loads of ammo your guns go through lol.

It is a great build if you prefer to run in guns blazing and not needing to worry about how much you get hit. I love standing in front of a super mutant brute shooting a mini gun at me while I do the same to him. I am always the last one standing with lots of health to boot lol.

The chief bonuses of Charisma are:
1. Speech. I've heard that Charisma, as well as Speech, influences speech checks.
2. Child at Heart. The primary use of this one is that you can get into Little Lamplight without either having to do "Rescue From Paradise". I like liberating the place, but I do it on my terms, not that snot Macready's.
3. Animal Friend. Stops those annoying Yao-gui attacks.

Oddly, Black Widow and Ladykiller have no Charisma requirement. One of many inconsistencies in F3, since seducing someone generally requires good people skills.