Just as the title says. Had you known what Fallout 2 would play like, what skills would you have tagged?

I am a new player to Fallout 2, and have tagged Small Guns and Lockpicking for the first two.

As for the third I am stuck between Science, Repair, and Barter. Anyone?

well, i haven't finished the game yet, but i don't regret tagging Repair at all. saves me caps in repair and lets me keep my stuff nice out in the field and give me a convenient way of managing inventory weight. Repair seems to be extremely useful.


EDIT: oops, didn't realize you were asking about FO2 hehe. in FO2 i always liked melee and speech as tagged skills as well. I think the last time i played it i went energy weapons/melee/speech. super-sledge, plasma rifle and a silver tongue!

I would have been following the rule of "pick a wierd skillset and play "wrong" on purpose to find the odd nooks and crannies of the game", so my Tag skills would have been Doctor, Outdoorsman, and Gambling. Maximum Int and high Cha, flip a coin for either max or min luck. Str and Con 1 or 2 each. Ag and Per rest of points. Excess skill points to speech, science, repair, traps, and lockpick.

If traits were available probably skilled and chem reliant or chem ressistant.

I wish I could take Flower Child as a perk.

But I realized this was a Beth game so I'm going with combat build.
Just started so maybe I should start over and give my wacky guy a chance anyway.

oops I can't

Off Topic:
You should by all means do the wacky character. If you don't go out of your way to make the game harder then you may find the game too easy. It is absolutely possible to get by with only 15 in your weapon skills in FO3.

This is a thread about Fallout 2 in the Fallout series general discussion forum, so the topic is not really about Fallout 3. Just wanted to point that out.

Anyway, Small Guns and Lockpick are both good options for Tagskills. I would add Speech, it gives you some nice conversation options throughout the game. I usually go by Speech/Outdoorsman/Small Guns

There is actually an exploit of sorts when it comes to tagging. if you get a skill to 100+ without tagging, then use the Tag perk.. it doubles the amount of skill you have so you would have around 190 skill. But you can then bring that down to you ariginal level if you want and redistribute the skill points to any other skills. Skill points at a certain point are 5 points each, so you can see how you can get an enormous amout of skill points by doing this.

I typically tag Energy weapons, speech, and melee. But I don't put any points into melee, untill I have recieved all the free training, from the various trainers you can get. Then I use the tag perk for big weapons, after I get it to 100+ and then bring big weapons down to about 150, and put the remaining points in Energy so that energy becomes about 150 as well.

Speech is a great skill in Fallout 2 with 10 intelligence you can really do some amazing things....

How could you not take six Appeal? And for that matter how do you not become a porm Star. FO2 was much darker, grittier and felt more post-apocalyptic. FO3 was made for the masses(i.e. consoles). can't shoot kids? That Mayor McCreavy is daaaammnnn lucky.

i always played as a smart sniper so i went with small guns, speech and lockpicking

I usually tag Small guns, Speech and Science. Plenty to do with those. Sniper diplomat it's my usual choice, though from time to time I do play with a dumb character.

Skills I wouldn't waste a "tag" on in Fallout 2:

Barter
Outdoorsman
Gambling
First Aid
Throwing
Repair

Lockpick, Doctor, Science, Speech are all great tag skills, as is most of the combat skills. Personally I'd go with melee, or small guns and when I get access to a fourth tag skill make that one Energy Weapons or Big Guns-Preferably energy but that's a matter of taste I guess.

Between the choices you mention, you should definitely go for Science. Barter isn't necessary and you'll be able to hook up with an NPC that has the repair skill, which isn't used too often anyway. Also, there are tools in the game that will help you repair things so even if you don't pick up the NPC you can get a long way with just putting a couple of skill points in it now and then. Of course, that means you'll have to have skill points to "spare" so high intelligence is a must, I'd say for almost any character except of course if your plan is to play an idiot, which certainly has it's own particular charm

Wow, TY for all your responses!

My Intelligence is a 5 right now, and I have leveled twice. That means that I have 30 skill points just waiting to be spent. Will it be worth it to spend those points on Speech ( which will raise it to 105 ) if I only have a 5 in Intelligence? I can choose the Perk to raise Intelligence to 6, if that matters.

Speech is definitely useful, although of course it's more useful the higher your charisma/intelligence. Having high speech will compensate for your medium intelligence in plenty of situations.
Although, spending all your skill points on one skill is probably a bit overkill. You can talk your way out of many things, but not everything. Don't put all your eggs in one basket

Max out in doctor and science. That way you will eventually become a cyborg. And that rocks. Never tag a weapon skill.

I'm wondering whether you're thinking of the Cyborg perk from Fallout 3 which doesn't exist in Fallout 2... Of course, Science and Doctor has some interesting uses in Fallout 2 as well, if you find the right "stuff"

Put about 3/4 of your points into your main combat skill until 100 and the remainder into speech until 75. Afterward, you should continue to build your combat skill slowly (maybe 1/4 points) with the rest going into the non-combats you think you need.

Regarding perks, there is 1 that you absolutely need at level 9: Better Rate of Fire and 1 at 18 if you have good Luck stat: Sniper. Everything else is optional and depends on your character but some other good perks are Toughness, Action Boy (only if it'll get you an extra aimed shot), Better Criticals, and depending on your agility you might want to get +1 Agility.

my weapns never ever broken in fallout 2 i dont understand how you can break your weapons(i always specialize on small guns(over 150) )
and for the original post melee is good i finished the fallout with melee and speech when i first played it. but dont forget to read small guns books or get extra move perk if you want to with runners and you should have doctor %80 for life giver perk(the one gives bonus hp)

Your equipment doesn't break in Fallout 2, repair is used for repairing objects in the game world at several points. You can also use it to bypass force-fields in many cases, if you can access the emitter of course.

The fun thing about Fallout 2 is that there is A LOT of viable character builds, a lot more than Fallout 3 has for sure, and said builds will have a noticeable effect on your playthrough. You can really take any skills and succeed, some skills are just more useful than others.

I've found that my characters usually take on a life of their own, according to their abilities. My Small Guns, Lockpick, Speech character becomes a smooth scoundrel looking out for number one, himself, while my Unarmed, Doctor, Science guy became a brilliant man dedicated to the improvement of body, mind and the squalid lives of wastelanders

No, if you tweak your science and doctor skill up to 100+, then you will be able to be (much alike) a combat cyborg. Check out the vault in Vault City.

Hmm.

Speech, Unarmed, and either Energy Weapons or Small Guns. Unarmed is surprisingly useful in the game. You get advanced punches and kicks that make it useful, get a LOT of attacks per round, and can get two nice perks in San Francisco and New Reno. It's also very useful when you first start the game, before you get access to even a simple gun...and it's still useful late in the game; wear power armor and use a power fist and you're pretty much a god. Small Guns is great in the middle of the game, but at the beginning it's overshadowed by melee or unarmed and by the end was overshadowed by energy weapons. Really, as soon as I got my hands on a decent energy weapon I didn't look back! However, you have enough time until then that you could make it your fourth tag skill or simply put points into it long before you'll need to. Speech is an absolute must in any Fallout game...although to be fair, you probably don't need to get it higher than 100, so you could simply put points into it early and save the tag for something else.

I didn't find lockpicking or barter all that useful - I ended up with too much stuff to carry most of the time, and by the end of the game always had too much stuff and too much money. Doctor could be good, but again, stimpaks are easy to get and by the end of the game, the experience and healing you get from doctor, and the few times you can use it, just don't make it worthwhile.

Science might be good if you want to get the robodog, as you need a really high skill to get the best brain. But other than that one event, there's not much use for it. EDIT: Forgot about the doctor/science combination. Still, getting both to 100 isn't too hard without tagging either - it makes more sense to save it for combat skills, where you're going to want/need to get 150-200 by the end of the game!

Its a bit persnickety but adding ballistics material under your skin does not make you a cyborg.

A cyborg is usually defined as a living being + mechanical parts or mechanical parts + living tissues and is more commonly restricted to electronically controlled mechanical parts (otherwise your grandpa qualifies as a cyborg after his hip replacement surgery).

Ballistics material just doesn't hit the minimum criteria for cyborg unless briast implants also qualify :read:

Did you pick up the gauss pistol and gauss rifle?

You don't get them until lategame but it does put SG on par with energy weapons for SanFran and the Enclave IMHO. They're roughly as strong as the adv plasma rifle after you account for the -1 AP on the pistol, the -AC mods on the ammo, and the 3/2 damage mod on the ammo. The .233 pistol doesn't do bad up until you get the gauss pistol either. The one downside is that SG chars MUST have enough skill to make those aimed shots, SG cannot match the pulse rifle for raw power in body shots to heavy armor. SG also leaves searchable bodies instead of piles of ash and equipment when it crits.


I've found 90 Doctor and science good enough for everything but the Skynet NPC (121 Science). BTW: Skynet is well worth the points if you can tag science but otherwise it eats way too many points.

Speech, small arms, unarmed.

Yeah, adding what is basically a few kevlar plates below your skin certainly doesn't constitute a cyborg. Although combat implants are very nice