Fallout 3 SPECIAL

This article describes the features of the Fallout 3 version of the SPECIAL character system, as well as its differences from SPECIAL's implementation in previous games.

Character creation
The player follows the character's childhood during character creation. After the gender, name, and appearance are chosen, the father removes his surgeon's mask to reveal a face similar to the one chosen by the player for the character. The character's mother then experiences complications from the birth and dies shortly after. As a child in the Vault, the character receives a book titled "You're SPECIAL," whereupon the player can set the character's seven primary aptitudes. The character receives training weapons and a PIP-Boy 3000 later on during childhood, and the player's performance in various tests determines the rest of the attributes. Additionally, several quests inside the Vault will be able to influence the player character's relationship with his or her father.

While the character's statistics and appearance are determined during the in-Vault tutorial, they can be changed just before leaving the vault.

You can download the Character Creator from: http://rapidshare.com/files/162423662/Fallout_3_Character_Creator_v07.rar edited 10th November 2008, created by Oggy1985 (version change: corrected few errors that slipped in v6)

Main statistics
The main statistics are the same from previous games: SPECIAL (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, Luck). 40 character points are available to distribute among your stats (all seven stats start at 5, and you have 5 more points to distribute). They cannot be lower than 1 nor higher than 10.

Note: Setting stats to 10 in the character creation is unnecessarily wasteful. None of your stats can be raised above 10 by any means, including chems, clothing, etc. There are bobbleheads to be found that raise each one of your SPECIAL stats by one, and either perception or strength may be raised an additional point upon completion of the Those! quest; however, it is important that if you are already at your max, these will be USELESS. One possible exception to this rule may be Intelligence. If increased from a starting score of 9 to 10, it will yield one additional skill point per level until the Intelligence bobblehead is found. This can provide a marginal benefit, but at the cost of lower overall stat scores.

The 40 standard character points are allocated during character creation early in the game. However, upon escaping from Vault 101, the player will have one last opportunity to reallocate character points.

Skills
As in the previous games, the player chooses three Tag Skills out of 13 to be the character's specialties. However, unlike previous games, tagging only rewards the player an extra 15 initial points to that skill. Five skills have been cut out from the game (Fallout and Fallout 2 had 18 skills).

Initial Values (Fallout 3): [(Stat + 1) * 2] + Luck Bonus. (ex. Starting STR of 5, starting LUCK of 5 will give you an unarmed skill of 15 base. [(5 + 1) * 2] + 3 = 15). Initial values also function as base value, meaning any later change to the SPECIAL stat would also have similar change to the respective skill.

The available skills are: Gambling and Outdoorsman skills were completely removed.
 * Barter
 * Big Guns
 * Energy Weapons
 * Explosives (replacing Traps and Throwing)
 * Lockpick
 * Medicine (replacing Doctor and First Aid)
 * Melee Weapons
 * Repair
 * Science
 * Small Guns
 * Sneak (incorporating the Steal skill of previous games)
 * Speech
 * Unarmed

Experience and Level
The maximum level the player can achieve is 20.

Perks
The Player Character gains a perk every level, as opposed to every three levels like in previous games.

Unlike previous games, traits that gave you both bonuses and penalties at the same time are no longer in the game. Instead, some of them were changed into perks.