I'm just below level 6 in xp, completed the "bust the skulz" quest and game crashed (I was hitting level 6 at the time). Thought it was something to do with the quest being buggy so I reloaded previous save, made sure everything was done safely with Neal, again it crashed. So I reloaded again, tried several different ways of leveling up within Junktown, but every time the result is the same, black screen and game crash (I just catch a glimpse of the levelup text in the bottom left before).

Anyone else this has happened to? I have the first 5 mods of the sticky installed, as well as sfall.

Workaround was to split ways with Ian and Tycho first, then level up. There was no problem then. I was then able to ask them to join again. Seems Fallout doesn't like NPC companions.

Hello, I had been having the same problem with NPC companions (same thing happens when I ask them to change armor). Here's what solved the problem for me, the updated NPC mod: http://www.teamx.ru/site_arc/mods/f1npcmod.rar

Note that you might need your game patched to 1.3.5 before doing this (it's what I'm using, just to be on the safe side), for which you need to update it to 1.2 first. Here are the links for those:

http://atomicgamer.com/files/63134/fallout-1-v1-2-patch-by-teamx-semi-official#
http://atomicgamer.com/files/70110/fallup13-rar

Hope this helps!