Best Fallout 2 Character Build

THE BEST BUILD

The title of this post is a little misleading. As any avid fallout player will tell you there’s no such thing as a “perfect” or “best” character build. One of the main draw cards of the fallout games is the agency they allow the player in making their own choices and playing the game in their own way. That being said, not all character builds are equal. Some stats tend to be more universally useful than others.

If you’re just starting out in Fallout 2 and you want some guidance creating your first character then you’ve come to the right place. The following is my preferred character build for a high-speech, gun-toting all rounder. This build is strong in combat, able to talk its way into or out of most situations and has a good critical hit chance. The stats that I put at 9 can be increased during the game to a full 10 through the use of appropriate perks.

OPTIONAL TRAITS

• Gifted
• Finesse

GIFTED

The extra SPECIAL points given by this perk more than make up for the lost skill points. Especially given our characters high intelligence – meaning we end up with a high number of skill points to distribute each level up regardless.

FINESSE

This trait significantly boosts your chance to do critical hits which I find very useful and a fair trade off for the small damage reduction overall.

SPECIAL 

 The SPECIAL ruleset powers all fallout games and is probably the most important aspect of a character build. The primary statistics that make up SPECIAL inform fundamental game mechanics like carry weight, hit points, action points and critical hit probability. They also have an impact (less important) on the point allocation across the 18 character skills.

Strength: 5
Perception: 9
Endurance: 4
Charisma: 4
Intelligence: 9
Agility: 9
Luck: 7

STRENGTH: 5

The strength stat can easily by raised in game by collecting the power armour which will raise the stat to 8. Even the initial setting of 5 will give you enough inventory space to be getting along with. The melee damage isn’t an issue except for the very start of the game but even then is passable. Hit points aren’t as important as you might think. With good armour and high Action Points you can get through most areas with ease with only mediocre hit points.

PERCEPTION: 9

You need perception of at least 8 to get the best perk in the game, sniper. On top of that perception determines how far away you start from enemies in random encounters and is crucial for accuracy in ranged combat.

ENDURANCE: 4

Endurance isn't as crucial as you might think. With good armour and the superior combat skills in this build, having lots of Hit Points isn’t such a big priority.

CHARISMA: 4

Charisma doesn’t seem to affect much in game aside from the number of companions you can bring along with you on your adventures. This build will set you up to be an effective solo character which is how I usually play. If you do want some company, a Charisma stat of 4 still gives you the ability to recruit two companions at once. The negative effects of a low charisma stat on your characters NPC interactions can be easily fixed with boosts to the speech and barter skills.

INTELLIGENCE: 9

Intelligence is crucial, mainly for its determining factor on how many skill points you get to distribute on each level up. Intelligence also has an impact on dialogue options and has a wide ranging influence on skill levels.

AGILITY: 9

Agility is probably the most important SPECIAL stat. This is because it determines the number of Action Points your character has in combat. Action points determine how many times you can attack, how far you can move and related actions such as checking your inventory.

LUCK: 7

Luck has a major effect on your chance to score critical hits in combat. It also affects the outcome of many chance based mechanisms in the game.

TAG SKILLS

• Small Guns
• Lockpick
• Speech

 Tag skills are raised by two points for every one point that you spend on them. This means that it’s a smart idea to tag the three skills that are most helpful.

Your choice in tag skills isn’t as important as your SPECIAL stats. Whereas your SPECIAL is pretty much finalized after you make your initial choices a poor choice in tag skill can be overcome over time by investing skills points in other areas. 

That being said I think you’ll have a much easier time if you make a good tag skill selection from the start, an example of which, in my opinion, is Small Guns, Lockpick and Speech.

SMALL GUNS

The small guns skill determines your character’s effectivenss with convential firearms: pistols, rifles, smgs etc. These guns are the most common in the game and because of this a good choice for your main combat skill. You could always invest in a second combat skill like big guns or energy weapons later on if you wanted to. Small guns is a good place to start though.

LOCKPICK

There’s a lot of locked doors and containers in the game world. Raising this stat early on not only gives yous access to the treasures that lie beyond these locks but is a nice little XP booster, as each successful lockpick use gives you some bonus XP.

SPEECH

I’m not often a big fan of speech skills in rpg’s. I tend to prefer focusing on my combat skills. But fallout 2 is a hard game and not only will a high speech skill make it a little easier, it’ll also allow you access to quests and dialogue options that would otherwise be inaccessible.