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Hello.

I'm not exactly JUST starting out, I've had Fallout 2 for a while and had played it for a bit, but not much. Anyway, I'd like to ask you for any tips or help and so on.

This is quite an old game and it's a little more unforgiving then the games of these days, so experienced input would be really appreciated. Probably the most help I need is with stat, because I'm not sure what's good and what's not in this game.

Sorry for that mess of a message.
This question / problem has been solved by MackieStingrayimage
A good Agility helps considerably. It's important to many skills, though you'll find that has limited mileage; it's central to a good many Perks, which are pretty much central to the character leveling system; and it defines most of your combat. It's also hard to raise by outside means.
Strength can be aided significantly by powered armor in the mid and late game, and further improved by fairly cheap and available means around the same time you get your first good set of powered armor. (Assuming you don't do any sequence breaking, which would push all of this to the early portion of the game.) Depending on how patient you are with a mediocre strength, the extent to which this stat can be raised might mean limiting it to a mere 5 at character creation so as to benefit the most from improvements via armor and augmentation.
Charisma is mysterious, in the sense that a low charisma can for the most part be fixed with a high Speech skill (an example of how stats contribute to but do not define their skills), but nevertheless you'll not know which doors are closed to you because it all takes place under the hood. The game plays a little different with a higher charisma. Certain gambits are more likely to pay off and such. Nevertheless, you'd not be the first to let Charisma fall a little in favor of, say, Agility or Intelligence.
Intelligence is to non-combat what Agility is to combat. A low intelligence is hilarious, but tragically limiting. A mediocre intelligence isn't sufficient for your character to follow every plot thread even when you can. A very high intelligence reveals a great deal about the world, allows creative solutions to be attempted, and benefits you in a number of other ways.

If you want to optimize your character, deciding your stats is something you should do after deciding what Perks you'll want later.

Oh yes, one other thing. I've tried very hard to make Throwing useful. It isn't. It has the worst of both worlds in terms of melee and ranged combat, it's a pain to recover thrown weapons, grenades are a bit spendy and a bit crap at times, and playing a Throwing character is, in general, just sort of unpleasant. If you wish to try it out later in the game, after you've crushed everything, feel free to throw hideous numbers of skill points at it, but just don't make it a TAG skill or bank on its usefulness. Pretty much any other skill in the game is more useful.
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MackieStingray: words
Thank you.

You didn't mention endurance, though. How important is it really? And how crazy would it be to make an unarmed character?
Endurance is quite important since it affects the hitpoints you get. Take an even value.

An unarmed character is playable but small guns do more damage and have a higher range. It won't hurt if you're also good at unarmed, you save ammo and there are even a few quests which benefit from it.

The NPCs you can have in your party is limited by charisma/2 (and can't be higher than 5) so keep it even, keep in mind that you can take the magnetic personality perk (not many perks are as useful as 2 stat points) at level 3 so even 2 cha will allow up to 2 NPCs.
If you are playing the game for the first time you might consider taking the Gifted perk in character creation. You will lose out on starting skills and skillpoints when leveling up making the beginning a bit harder. However you can raise intelligence to compensate for this. You'll be able to make a good all around character and experience most of the game since you can raise almost all of your abilities to a good number. On the other hand if you want to make the game more "realistic" you won't take Gifted and have to play with the fact not everyone is good in everything. :)
A few notes:
I've played many characters with low Endurance. Probably more viable in Fallout 1 than in Fallout 2 due to a difference in the availability of certain armors, but in general I find that having mediocre HP isn't as serious a problem in a game where enemy critical hits can (though usually don't) mean instant death. If you intend to use Endurance, experiment with it by watching your derived stats on your character sheet right and fall as you throw the points around.

Gifted might be interesting just to select while mucking about with the character sheet and then to deselect before finalizing, since having the ability to see how your stats look in the derived statistics box can be rewarding even if you eventually opt for lower stats. That said, I hate Gifted, and everybody else loves it. So your mileage may vary.

Unarmed does, despite its name as a skill, allow for the use of a few very nice weapons over the course of the game. The Brass Knuckles aren't too impressive, but the Spiked Knuckles are quite decent, and the Power Fist is quite powerful if you don't mind using your ammunition on it. You probably won't mind unless you do a lot of needless travel and rely heavily on this skill.
One problem endemic to Melee and Unarmed, though, is how difficult it can be to get into a position to attack an enemy, and how often a fleeing enemy will complicate gameplay for you. If you're savvy you'll eventually figure out how to pick up enough in-game books on gunplay to gain at least 90% proficiency with pistols and rifles, allowing you to snipe or finish off those obnoxious bastards who try to slip away in the fray, but that's a late-game strategy for when you've too much time and money. Mind you, totally worth it especially if you've been enjoying the heck out of your Unarmed skill's impressive and occasionally hilarious use and applications, but nevertheless it's not something to plan around per se.
A starting Agility of at least 6 is essential, since you'll have 8 skill points with that per combat round. This should at least allow you to shoot once a turn with a weapon and move several spaces, or make an aimed shot with a weapon and still have enough action points to reload. Every 2 points in Agility is one extra action point and a bit of a base armor class bonus for every 1 Agility. I'd either go with a 6 agility to spread points into other skills or a 10 agility which would allow you to make two shots in a round with most ranged weapons.

A high Intelligence will always be the most important statistic however, IMO it should always be a 10 unless you either plan on doing a pure melee build or a stupid character run. Extra skill points are really important and are the lifeblood of how you'll do in combat overall throughout the game.

Gifted is easily the best trait to pick up. Losing 10% on all skills at the start really hurts you in combat for the beginning portion of the game, however the extra points you can put into Intelligence will easily make up for the 5 skill points per level you would normally lose. And Intelligence skill checks are probably the most important cus they effect dialogue, and for doing a lot a quests and getting the most out of them you'll want a very high Intelligence stat, I'd say at least 8 or higher. Also having increased stats doesn't actually mean you're losing that full 10% on all skills at the start, since your starting stats also affect your starting skills.

The first 6th level perk I would get would be Educated, since those extra skill points will add up over time from that perk. 3rd level perks are just a matter of taste, though I sometimes would just get Kama Sutra Master for possible dialogue bonuses.
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thelovebat: The first 6th level perk I would get would be Educated, since those extra skill points will add up over time from that perk. 3rd level perks are just a matter of taste, though I sometimes would just get Kama Sutra Master for possible dialogue bonuses.
If you're a Melee or Unarmed character who must move to or pursue opponents, or are building a character who must seek cover to survive combat, I recommend Bonus Move over Educated. If your luck is better than median, More Criticals is also an excellent 6th level perk.
Silent Running also becomes available at this level, assuming decent Agility and Sneak. The benefits of this perk are fairly strong.

At 3rd Level, most try to take Awareness. Creating a character with a low Perception renders this impossible at that level, which also forces you to consider other options. In my experience its primary benefit is telling which opponent has the ammunition to take you down during a fight and how close s/he is to dead, which can be important for selecting a target to attempt to neutralize from a large mob.

Don't feel bound to Awareness. In fact, if you ever find yourself feeling obligated to take any feat or skill in particular, try playing through the game without it at least once. For this first playthrough, however, I do recommend balancing among the recommendations made so far in this thread.
Post edited November 27, 2011 by MackieStingray
These posts all offer some seriously solid advice, but I will add my formula for a truly excellent late-game character (and generally just really great all around). First off, this makes the whole game pretty easy to beat except for the beginning, but even the beginning isn't very hard with these stats.

Traits are 'Gifted', and 'Fast shot'.
Skills are small guns, lockpick, and speech.
ST 5, PE 6, EN 4, CH 6, IN 8, AG 10, LK 8.

Perks to choose as the game goes on:
lvl3 Awareness
lvl6 bonus move(1)
lvl9 better criticals
lvl12 lifegiver(1)
lvl15 Bonus Rate of Fire
lvl18 action boy(1)
lvl21 action boy(2)
lvl24 sniper (I think you need to use mentats if you started with PE 6)

per jorner's awesome guide (google search 'fallout 2 walkthrough') basically nails the various ideal starting stats. I have reached similar conclusions for the 'best' practical character, in any case. I came across the walkthrough site after having played FO2 for some time already, so it did not spoil the game for me, but you might want to think twice about reading up on the game a lot if you want to experience it for yourself.
Post edited December 03, 2011 by poweruniversal
I wonder if you could take Agility 9 and Endurance 5, then take Gain Agility at level 12.
I dunno, I just always feel weird about Lifegiver. Then again, I also feel weird about Gifted.
If you are willing to play a longer game and do xp runs before heading off to the enclave, then you can optionally begin 1 lower for each ST, AG, LK in favor of EN or PE, and end up with a max character without wasting too much time. I have done a couple AG 9 games, and it is worth it (basically an action boy 3 for 'Gain Agility' in practice). I'm not sure if one path is strictly better than the other, but I would rather have the 10 AP for the first 11 lvls.

Lifegiver adds up the max HP very well if taken as early as possible, and is a great use of a perk (and a fair reward for toughing it out with low HP early on). It took me awhile to end up adopting it as a rule, but it allows less points to be spent on EN at the beginning in favor of PE, IN, or LK, basically. My typical game will go to level 24, or maybe 27, and the effect of lifegiver is limited and only just makes up for the lost effects of a low starting EN. Playing to a really high level with the lifegiver perk would be like cheating. Gifted may as well be a cheat outright, since the beginning skill % doesn't matter much if you tagged the right skills.
Post edited December 03, 2011 by poweruniversal
I only use Gifted in Fallout 2 if I can't find another way to get a build I want. It's always a last resort for me.
I'm a little curious what are the effects of taking it with Mutate! Apparently in an unpatched Fallout 1 you could swap out Gifted and keep the character points using this at level 9, but I suspect we all patch this game to hell and back. GOG certainly does. Therefore I'm more curious about its effects when exchanged in rather than out. Is it worth it, given it's an across-the-board +1 to stats you can take at any Perk-bearing level at 9? By then you should have the points you need to make up for the skills you'll lose if you've been trying to beef up ahead of time.
I'm playing the gog.com version with no additional patches. I just tried swapping Finesse for Gifted at lvl 9, and everything seems to work reasonably well. The skill points only drop 5-10%. I don't think this would be worth it to do though, since you end up losing a perk that could probably go to something more useful. If you replace a trait that was mostly applicable early in the game, then it could be worth it.

A better use of mutate might be to swap heavy handed or bruiser for fast shot if you want to play a melee/unarmed character early on, and then switch to guns by the time they become readily available.
Post edited December 03, 2011 by poweruniversal