Often RPGs furnish substantial parts of your party in add-ons who you meet along the way. And when you do character creation you try to cover all the most important skills (depending on how many characters you are allowed to start with). But often you soon run into a great character who makes some of your character creation points a waste. Classic case is where you make sure to have someone able to open doors and boxes only to find a fine and willing thief just around the corner from where you start.

Another problem in character creation is where some character-type choices lock you out of some content. (an example of this is TOEE where creating a paladin makes you choose between missing out on a lot of quests and dialog and loot or breaking your paladin.)

So the request is this: are there any skills I might skip in character creation since they will be covered pretty soon by add-on characters? Are there any backgrounds etc. that I should avoid to keep from locking myself out of significant content?

The thing is, I'm going to play it once. And maybe in 3 or 4 years I'll pick it up again. I'd like my playthrough to be one that doesn't make me lament "if only I'd done this or that differently *in character creation* I'd have had a much better experience".

In my opinion you should make sure the most important skills are covered by the four rangers that you create. It'll make your life a lot easier. I wouldn't depend on any npc's that join you, because: <spoiler> They suck.

<another spoiler> There's one character who's an exception to suckage and is really worth to have around, but this person won't be a member forever.

The joinable NPCs may have sucked in beta, I wouldn't know, but they definitely don't now, except the ones that are meant to suck for story reasons (i.e. the kid, maybe others).

The very first companion is really powerful (she's level 14 when you're level 1) and is meant to be a crutch in combat for those who want one, although there are very good story reasons for letting her join.
She covers the assault rifles, brute force, survival, and hard ass skills but she'll leave around the point when you catch up to her in levels.

After the first quest, you get a choice between doing 2 locations, each of which has a companion (they're mutually exclusive for reasons that should be imediately apparent).
1 is a utility NPC that's not very good a fighting, but has 10 int which allows her to cover lots of skills. At first she's specced into Surgeon and Computer Science, but you can add a few more skills to her repertoire with all the skill points she gets.
The other is a sniper who's really good in animal whisper and survival.

The other NPCs are a bit further into the game, and it'd probably be a bad idea to build up a party around them.


Wasteland 2 is a classless game with no backgrounds, so your PCs' builds don't really matter except for which skills they'll cover. AFAIK, only your choices in-game (and not in character creation) have the potential to open or lock out content.

Thanks, guys, for your helpful replies. I have avoided computers and surgery. I intended to go heavy on firepower, but there are an awful lot of skills that will be helpful and too few characters to stuff them into. Anyhow the game is great and I'm having fun. Thanks again.

*spoiler ahead*







Well the companion you want is in the Ag Center so make sure to go there first if you want to use her.

*spoiler*





I was looking for a decision to arrive. So when the radio messages showed up at the same time (and noting some characteristics of the ones doing the broadcasting, and noting the characteristics of the two places that the broadcasts came from) I (saved and) guessed right twice (and wrong once - I wondered if the one on the radio was the npc I was looking for). Anyhow I got the one I was shopping for on the first try.

I take back that every npc is useless.

I got Pizepi (or whatever her name is) with me and she's pretty decent.
Rose is a good medic I guess. But not really useful for anything else. Way too slow for combat. Same with Scotchmo.
I remember both of them to have better stats in the beta, but I guess I could be wrong.

The point of Rose is that she gets 5 skill points per level. She can pretty easily pick up any skills you've been doing without.

Yes exactly.

Unless you play on the hardest difficulty, you really don't need 7 combat-effective characters, and companions are less useful in fights anyway since they have a chance to do stupid stuff on their own unless you get a high leadership.
So I prefer NPCs who can cover skills, and Rose is the best at that I've found so far, with her 10 int.