Check the polls and answer accordingly. I think this is a pretty well balanced game but I'm curious to see if there's any pattern to these.


I'm merely curious to see what people consider strong and weak and to see what we, as a collective and a community, would make if we voted on strongest and weakest stats, etc. The question regarding which faction is strongest/weakest is vague, yes, and you're free to interpret it whichever way you like and vote on their strength in whichever way you like. I only ask you refrain from arguing the faction you agree with morally is "strongest" solely on the grounds you agree with their morality.

I may take these results and make two characters out of them, just to see what pops out as a result of people voting and "designing" two characters this way.

You really do need a new Fallout game don't you! LOL

If you mean the comment about the characters at the end, the idea actually occured to me at the end of writing up the entire thread. I'm curious by nature and it'd be interesting to see how well the "strong" character stacks up against the "weak" one.

There's a flaw in your poll. I don't consider any of the starting stats stronger than the others but there's no option for that. I spread my points out evenly, excluding Charisma and Agility, then take the Small Frame trait to gain on the Agility. Then with my first perk, I'll take Intense Training and add a point to Strength.

I'll post my answers and the reasons for them I suppose.

1. Speech.

It's a very powerful tool in it's own right, up there with any combat skill in terms of usefulness.

2. Medicine.

Survival beats it when it comes to healing.

3. Endurance.

It's required for more implant, some decent perks and more health is useful to any character build.

4. Charisma.

It's not very strong compared to the others, unless you're planning to let companions to do all the fighting.

5. Fast shot.

Extra RoF is always nice and accuracy is easily compensated for.

6. Loose cannon.

Taking away range isn't worth it.

7. Indy.

Since Indy is only a faction if Courier 6 goes for it, it must be the strongest due to the Courier.

8. House.

Completely reliant on the courier and has very little influence outside the walls of the Strip.

9. Thought you died.

Immunity to critical hits and 10% extra damage is fantastic, but another 100 extra HP just shoots it out of the park.

10. Ain't like that now.

Besides the fact that Evil karma is much harder to bend towards then Good karma, an extra RoF increase isn't as good as the Extra crit damage of Lucky to be alive.

To sorta explain my choices, I think that it has to be taken into account that people are playing different styles with different mods that tend to change things. As a for instance, the work around given by Nicho where he takes his first perk to boost strength using Intense training. I don't have intense training as an option exactly until level 12, when I can increase one SPECIAL attribute one at a time.

Also, playing hard core, planning on letting companions do all the fighting is not very workable because companions die... unless you're playing an easy game with no mods that beef things up, they just aren't going to last. That means Charisma is less valuable in that sense.

I think my choices were pretty standard, except that I chose "Hot Blooded" as the weakest trait because I got it confused with a perk that gives extra perception during combat. My bad... If not for the error, I'd probably have chosen "Hoarder" as the weakest simply because having to keep the weight so high is a pain that really reduces the value of it.

Okay so I'll post what I personally think and voted for.

Strongest Skill: This was probably the hardest decision. I found that all of the skills in this game were very useful, whether through regular use or as skill checks in speech. I found Obsidian balanced the skills and skill checks in game almost perfectly for RPG games. So for strongest skill, I finally decided on Medicine, as i found basically all of my characters used medicine to some degree, and most of them i end up leveling it pretty high. So just because i found that this was so universal for all of my characters, i decided on it being the strongest skill in my opinion.

Weakest Skill: Again, very hard choice. I ended up choosing Barter, even though I think the skill is great and has many uses, I find that it seems to have some of the lowest amount of meaningful skill checks other then more money. There are some decent skill checks with it, but i find I just run into them less often than other non combat skills.

Strongest Special: This was a much easier to answer for Fallout 3, but again I find New vegas did great balancing on all of the special stats in this one. So again this was a harder choice for me, but ultimately I say Intelligence as my vote for strongest for the extra skill points at lower levels (i realize by level 50 most skills are maxed anyway, but im talking about the meat of the game, when you're lower to mid levels) and i find a lot of skill checks that require intelligence, as well as a lot of useful perks.

Weakest Special: For this one, I decided that Perception was the weakest. Whenever i was dumping a stat with new characters, i found most of them dumped either perception or charisma in favour of boosting other specials. I'd say perception is about on par with charisma for me, so it was just a flip of the coin between the two for me honestly.

Strongest Trait: I'm gonna go with built to destroy, the critical % chance is great and the negative isnt that bad, just repair weapons more often or shoot less.

Weakest Trait: Logan's Loophole. I've never seen the desire for this one. Level capped at 30 and all it does is make chems last twice as long and you cant get addicted? I mean that's nice and all, but not worth 20 levels sacrificed. I find more then enough chems to use in game and dont find it as a burden to use fixer or see a doctor every now and then (im usually going to the doctor regularly to get limbs fixed anyway cus im cheap with my doctors bags and dont like to carry too many).

Strongest Faction: I'm gonna go with House. He's got an army of robots, and can always build and fix more, much quicker then the other guys can replenish their armies.

Weakest Faction: Indy in my opinion. While it's essentially the same army as house, it's really not run by anyone except the courier (if hes even around), and more just self regulating police. There's no organization, at least with house he can connect to his entire army at any time and coordinate defenses and other such things.

Strongest level 50 perk: While ive never really made a good person and got that far, I'd say Thought You Died. Potentially 100 extra hp, 10% overall damage and immunity to criticals, great combo if you're committing to being good (which is ridiculously easy in this game).

Weakest level 50 perk: I guess im gonna go with Aint Like that now. The attack speed is definitely badass, but the ap regeneration and ap reduction on weapons never really appealed to me, i rarely use vats as it is, so i dont care too much about AP.