ooooh she just flew into town and she's chopen up all the womens meat.

For my first play through I plan to have Howard an ex Infantryman who used the GI bill to get a Computer Science degree.

Going for max survivability since I have no idea what to expect.

Good Charisma since that will determine how good I can persuade and barter.

Good Perception so I can spot the enemy coming and can use Vats on them.

At least a 4 Intelligence so I can take hacking.

Decent Agility for sneak.

Likely a 3 or so in Strength, Endurance, and Luck.

Second play through will be Nora, the female Sole Survivor who is an engineer on the Power Armor development team.

Intelligent and lucky with a low Strength and Charisma.

Based on your post, you need more INT.

That was a little rude.

Charisma 2

So far you will need at least:

P-1 to open locks

P-4 to open safes

I-4 to open computers

I-3 to mod projectile weapons (guns)

I-6 to mod energy weapons

C-3 to add Dog-meat and control him

C-4 to add animals (brahmin, mole rats, and vicious dogs) to your settlement

C-5 to add a extra named companion

C-10 to add a extra non-named human, non-feral ghoul, or super mutant

I-8 to add a robot

I-9 to add robot parts to your character

All of this can be found at:

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1534682-completed-perk-chart-speculation-thread-2/

For me I will start at:

S-1 (my 3 companions can help carry my things (600 lbs total))

P-4 (open safes)

E-1

C-10 (add non-named companions)

I-8 (add robot)

A-3 (sneak)

L-1

Wait, what? Is that how we can keep raising our SPECIAL? Where did you see that?

good choices

You will likely have to prioritize because you won't be able to do everything in the first 50-100 hours. I seriously hope that you don't need the Local Leader perk (Charisma 5), but it may be necessary to have a good settlement. I know you need it to create a work bench and to have merchants come to your settlement. I'm sure that your charisma will have an impact on how many people eventually come to your settlement and it might even give you the ability to have guards(s). The people might just come for other reasons and you can build a settlement around a pre-existing work bench so it's probably not a must to have it.

If you want a gun turret at your settlement you'll have to go up to 4 intelligence because you need both the Gun Nut perk and the "Hacker" perk for that. Then if you want explosive defenses then you will have to go up to Perception 5. If you want fire defenses I think it's actually 3 or 4 Strength despite what everyone else is saying. Laser turrets would require 6 in Science I think, but it might possible that you can buy all this stuff from the Merchant, I don't know.

There's a lot to think about.

I hope some vids come out that give us a better understanding. It would be good if they did 7 in total one for each special stat.

I'm pretty sure they will reveal all of them before the game releases.

Intelligence or GTFO! Ok, ok, just kidding.

But, seriously:

Fallout is ruled by perks and always has been (skill points are nice, but perks are where the meat is)! In FO4, levels get you perks. More levels mean more perks. More INT means more levels! Also, the INT perks that we know of so far looked killer! Sure, you're going to level up anyways, but faster leveling means faster perk acquisition, and if you're going to get them all eventually, why not get them all faster?

So...INT!

Pete Hines said it in an http://www.ausgamers.com/features/read/3526651 around the time of Quakecon.

“Every time you increase one of your specials, you are unlocking the ability to pick the perk,” explained Hines. “It’s a requirements thing. You can’t just jump to 10 in strength, if your strength is only 4. You have to say, ‘That’s something I really want to do, so when I make the choice in levelling up, I’m going to have to put more points into my strength because these are the things that I want to do.’”

“The kind of systems that you would have normally spent your time on with the skill are rolled into the perk,” Hines adds. “Because you’re boosting that particular attribute, your perception, your intelligence. And then, by picking those perks, you’re doing the same thing you would have done with skills. It’s clearer and easier as opposed to, ‘Wait, I’ve got this number over here and this number over here and this other thing over here; which one is actually making me better at shooting guns?’ Now it’s distilled in a way that makes sense.”

Well leaping horny toads. Now we all can spend that one level up point on a SPECIAL, or Perk or a Perk Rank. Hell I'll be 50th level before I will even be playing the character I wanted from the beginning.

The thing about C is that you don't know what you're missing out on if you don't have a high C. S is easy to identify a lack in as your carry weight is a direct result of your S, as is your melee damage. Same goes for P and spotting enemies, E and hit points, I and experience/skills, and L and criticals. C, however, typically allows for more dialogue options, but you don't notice that if they're simply not there. As such you can easily drop your C to 1 and think you're getting the whole experience, while in reality you're missing out on some of the real gems in Fallout.

I see. I doubt it will work that way. You just start talking to an enemy and they just decide to kill all their friends. It's too much of a leap in logic. Sort of like illusion in Skyrim. More likely it will just give you intimidation dialogue options for conversations.

Best I can tell at present. like the OP, I think I'll lean initially heavy on PER, CH, and IN for the character I'm thinking I want to play. If weapons still have ST requirements, I may have to start with some points there.

You know, this isn't a bad idea. I may just run my first character with 4 in every stat and see what I end up needing or wanting. Later characters I can actually tweak my stats for what I want, but for my first character, this sounds like a good start.

Well, bear in mind, though, you could easily put STR, END and maybe LUCK at 1 and what you're missing would be clear enough, I think. Whether what you're missing is ~worth~ missing is up to the individual. The effects of CHA, INT, AGI and PER are a little harder to pin down until you see them in action, I think.

Like, I read on the forums where someone actually did not ~want~ a high PER because the compass was showing hostiles in "range" of his perception, but because of high PER, that range was so extensive that the foes were actually ten minutes sneaking away! I had this problem with EDE in New Vegas ---- with EDE's enhanced perception, I was picking up foes so far away I could barely see them with a sniper scope! I seem to recall one gameplay vid that suggested that the compass now not only shows direction to foes but elevation, which is a little handy (esp in buildings).

INT has so many useful perks in it, it's hard to ~ignore~ it but since it no longer ties into how many skill points you get per level, it seems to be less important as a raw stat (who needs to level up ~faster~?). In previous games, you basically had to have a high INT so that you could get a lot of skill points so you could boost, say,your Small Guns, Lockpicking and Speechcraft skills. Now that that's no longer the case, I'm free to only get as much INT as I need to get the perks I want.

Just about all the perks under AGI seem awesome to me, so I have no doubt I'll start that stat very very high (8 or 9). Since it also affects Action Points and VATS use, that's another bonus.

Luck, being a nebulous thing, is hard to justify, for me. It's easy to see what more Strength does for you, less so to know what Luck does. And the Luck perks are so ~awful~ for the most part. I'd need some serious convincing to bother with this stat.

It's nice that CHA is no longer a dump-stat.... but I never really liked using companions (I understand there may be CHA perk that caters to that mindset, even!)... since it's tied to Local Leader / Settlement building, though, I'm likely to at ~least~ get a 4 CHA (so Bobblehead +1 will let me take Local Leader later on in the game).

Is it known whether or not the P-1 and P-4 are REQUIRED to actually open things or are they just for the Perks that help in that regard? I mean can someone with a P-3 not open safes ever? Can someone with a P-8 not open safes if they don't have the P-4 Perk also? Answers to questions like this are really going to matter when setting up the initial character.

The whole 'only 21' points thing is really throwing me off when trying to build a character. 5 has always been Mr. average but with only 21 points you don't get to even start off as Mr. average... Either that or 4 is the new average ~pushing the whole scale down and 10 is now more than heroic and there's no such thing as very bad anymore. In past games I never liked having a 1 in anything, I'd always put 3's as my low stat. If a 1 in Intelligence means you are extremely stoopid then a 1 in strength means you can barely walk.... but if they have the perk "brawler" equated to a 1 in strength, what does a 1 really stand for? With no reference to how bad a 1 is or how good a 10 is, there's absolutely no way I can figure out where to put my stats. Sure, I could throw a 1 into charisma but how unattractive does that make me? There will be ghouls that will be more charming than me. Just basing the character on perks and min/maxing (which I hate to do.) I would still need 11 levels dedicated just to stats to get the perks to build the character I want to build. ..(plus we still have no idea if guns will have a strength requirement to be able to use effectively.) If a sniper rifle still has a ST req. of 6 to wield then that throws a huge wrench into even a simple sniper build.

I prefer to think of Charisma more as a total value of "how well people get along with me".... so to my mind, having a 1 CHA could mean I am a super-hot chick.... but also a total [censored] to everyone I meet, scowling at smiling babies and grimacing at kindly old ladies.

For me 1 charisma means that the avatar is socially akward introvert who lacks skills to communicate with fellow people. Kinda like Sheldon Cooper. Altough i like Sorpaijens idea that 1 charisma fella is just a jerk.

It's almost like the SPECIAL scores are now for nothing more than getting perks and have no relevance to your characters actual attributes.