Am the only one who noticed there was significantly less special points available for distribution this time around? http://orcz.com/images/thumb/4/4f/Fallout4EnduranceStat.jpg/600px-Fallout4EnduranceStat.jpg
Am I missing something? I'm serious this has me kind of worried, and I can't seem to find any information on this.

We have and there is already other threads on the subject, personally Im not worried, honestly it was a bit to easy to have high special in the previous games, which left your character very shallow, with no real strength/weakness.

It's confirmed, we only have 21 SPECIAL points to distribute; 28 total counting the one point we start with for every stat. I'm almost positive the game's been balanced for this, so it won't be like going through the older games with only 28 SPECIAL points.

I also wouldn't be surprised if we could spend a level to raise a SPECIAL stat by one instead of taking a perk, sort of like the Intense Training perk in the older games. If there's no level cap, we could max out all our SPECIAL by level 43, if we didn't take any perks whatsoever. We'd have to go past level 100 to get all of the perks and max out our SPECIAL - but it's still unconfirmed if we can raise our SPECIAL or if there's a level cap, so this is all speculation.

Se no reason not to keep intense training then we have so few special points.

Yep, SPECIAL averages at 4 points, not 5.

I'm tempted to start at

S - 4
P - 2
E - 2
C - 5
I - 6
A - 4
L - 5

What are other folk planning on doing with this constraint?

Download mods.

No clue, honestly. I'll wait to see what some of the requirements for certain perks are. Animal Friend has been a mainstay of mine forevers.

Yeah I thought it looked like there were fewer points than usual.

I'll probably do something like -

S - 3
P - 4
E - 2
C - 3
I - 8
A - 3
L - 5

Might have to lower intelligence by a couple points for the sake of balance.

Even if there is less special points it will be adapted into the game so it works, it doesnt mean that it will be the same as Fnv or F3 all it means is you have a longer way to fully upgrading everything where as in Fnv you start off with five in everything and can add another five point at the start and every time you level up with a perk you could add another point, so i reckon in this game you start off with lower SPECIAL stats and you get perks more often when you level up and there will still be an 'intense training' perk fron early on


Sofajockey i was thinking

Strength:5
Perception:5
Endurance:3
Charisma:4
Inteligiance:3
Agility:3
Luck:5

First game will be a test, odds are I'll use console commands to change my specials and see what the perks are like. After I've got a feel for it I'll restart with my prefered build.

S - 2
P - 4
E - 6
C - 3
I - 4
A - 6
L - 3

At least for my first round, once I get a better grasp on perks I might redo.

Remember, strenght will be more important in this fallout than in previous ones because not only does it increase your effectiveness with melee, unarmed and big guns it also increases the amount of pounds you can carry and if you are planning on finding parts to upgrade all your guns and build houses then you will need to have a good strenght skill to carry all the parts.
Just letting yous know incase yous didnt think of this point before!

s - 4

p - 4

e - 4

c - 4

i - 4

a - 4

l - 4

As a sneaky gun user I see melee as a last resort and my PA can handle the big guns (plus we technically didn't see that guns had a str requirement), as for loot, well we only technically need to care about personal loot, we don't carry the house stuff and I'll have codsworth carry the rest ;3

Indeed - melee isn't to my liking either (why would I go in close when I have guns - including my favorites the energy weapons!)

so for me (if I don't use the console - which I will, someone above called it "shallow" if you have a character that can do it all but I disagree. I play for the story (and I want all approaches open to me - from using speech to [censored] my way out of danger to killing the baddies outright if they leave me no choice!), not to test out if my character would work -.- (or to jump through hoops to make it work!) - to give me solid tens everywhere!):

Well, I'd go for high intelligence (8 or so) and high charisma (8 as well)...the rest? - Well, I'd decide that on a whim probably!

greetings LAX

Probably go:

S: 2
P: 2
E: 3
C: 7
I: 2
A: 2
L: 10

I'm going for all the dialogue options and finding all the fun bits at first =)

I really wish they would 'tease' us with a more detailed explanation of what the SPECIAL do, and/or what the perks are (and requisite SPECIAL values)... just makes it so hard to design a build without enough info.

To wit, I do not melee and with companions to carry gear and a "favorite" weapon I am not too worried about STR and could settle for a 1... unless that would make my sniper rifle swing wildly from side to side because my str was too low (ala Fallout New Vegas) or something similar.

And if Intelligence only affected xp gain, I would not mind lowering it (although from a concept point I would never lower it TOO far, since I play characters that are smrt ;> ).

And if Charisma actually DOES offer a great many more conversation options and is not a "dump stat" then I would need to boost it.

While I can see the value in having limits such that no one character is the best at everything, it can be frustrating to be locked out from content because of your initial choice. In Fallout New Vegas (which I am replaying now to get my fix) I keep running up against dialog options that indicate if I had a 50 Barter skill, I could choose the option, but I only have a 23 Barter skill, so I cannot choose that option. Or I see an option that I could choose IF I had a Perception stat of 6 or higher, etc etc I almost wish they didn't tell us what we COULD have had, and just did not display options for which we did not qualify. Almost. Knowing that Perception stat would unlock another dialog choice, I could go back and pick that option if I augmented my Perception stat some way.

Unless the info we get is concrete and makes it easy to see the value of various stats, then I'll likely build three experimental characters with 10s in two stats and the other points spread as they fit (8 pts over 5 stats so mostly 1s and 2s). Then I will play through the early game and hopefully get a feel for how useful the various stats are. Like, if I find NO opportunities where a 10 STR and 10 END would be helpful, I will know I can downgrade them.... and if my 1 STR and 1 END playthrough finds me constantly destroying / leaving loot and dying left and right due to low hit points, I'll know I need to bump STR and END at least ~some~.

I just fear that ALL stats may have ~enough~ value that having 4s across the board will feel like the only way to not gimp ourselves. Sure, we won't be uber in one stat, but we won't suffer the crippling losses of lower-than-4 stats....

I guess I mean, if having a high stat provides benefits, then YAY we can decide if we WANT those benefits or not (don't melee? don't carry mini-guns? don't need high STR).... but if having a low stat provides a penalty or burden that's sufficient to warrant raising the stat, then BOO because I'll feel the need to augment stats to avoid the penalties. I'd rather choose the benefits than choose to avoid the penalties.

A really cool change to make different builds.

Yeah, it definitely makes you decide what type of character you want to play right from the get go. However, I think there will be opportunities to raise stats along the way, medically and through perks and of course from gear providing a bonus.

Definitely support this change to be honest.

S-3

P-2

E-2

C-4

I-4

A-6

L-7

Stray thought occurred while squeezing every iota of information out of these forums.... it may be that deficiencies in one stat can be countered by another stat. What brought this to mind was a conversation option in Fallout New Vegas where a sufficiently high ~perception~ would have let me make an observation about a character. That got me to thinking that if I wanted a "smart people person" character, I would need Charisma, Intelligence ~and~ Perception. But then I thought, what about my poor Agility stat? I won't have many Action Points if I have to keep AGI low.

But then, Perception rules VATS accuracy. So maybe I won't have as ~many~ action points, thanks to my lower AGI, but because of my higher PER I will be more accurate and potentially ~need~ less action points because I am not wasting them on missed shots? Sort of like the difference between raw damage and a critical-heavy, low-damage build. Both can be effective (usually) and are just different ways of doing the same thing.

Alternately, a high LUCK and AGI combination could potentially make up for a very low PER stat ---- you're not terribly accurate, but you have a boat-load of Action Points and you are so lucky that when you DO hit, you get criticals (or rather, you build critical meter up faster so you can execute criticals more often).

Of course some stats still seem to lead to pretty severe breaks. Like, STR and END, in particular. As a smooth-talking intelligent sneaky sniper, I rarely bother with STR or END.... so I am hoping that if I bottom them out at a value of 1, I can still play the way I want and not be too severely burdened (pun intended) by the low STR/END.

The showcase also revealed that, as in past games, you have ways of earning more SPECIAL points. How they've balanced it (more opportunities for SPECIAL points w/ no skills, or fewer opportunities w/ more powerful perks) is what really remains to be seen. As others have pointed out, though, a more limited number leads to a more tailored character, who will likely carry some weaknesses along with their strengths throughout the entire game.