Fallout: New Vegas skills

History
Fallout: New Vegas shares a similar skill set to its predecessor, Fallout 3, but with several differences. The primary weapons skills have been revamped, with Small Guns and Big Guns having been combined into the Guns skill, which now covers all conventional guns that fire bullets. Weapons using explosive ordinance (missile and grenade launchers, for instance) are covered by Explosives. New throwing weapons, such as the Throwing spear, have been added, and are categorized as Melee Weapons. The Survival skill has also been added to the roster. It allows for crafting of various items, such as food, stimpaks, and poisons to augment the effectiveness of weapons.

Another new feature is the effect of various skills on dialog choices. Instead of Speech being the primary means of affecting conversation paths, numerous additional skills can potentially influence dialog. For example, in order to convince Easy Pete to provide some dynamite to protect Goodsprings during the quest Ghost Town Gunfight, the player must have a minimum Explosives skill of 25. In the case where a player's associated skill level is too low, a dialogue option (highlighted in red) is presented that will fail the skill check, and will not grant a speech success. Unlike Fallout 3, where the same dialogue option is presented regardless of your success or failure, a check that will fail uses a humorously unconvincing response, while a passable check uses a well-thought out argument, thus reflecting the nature of the check. Unlike Fallout 3, there are not enough available points to max out every skill, even accounting for every perk and skill book (Fallout: New Vegas books and magazines). Without Dead Money installed, it is possible to achieve a functional maximum in roughly ten skills by using skill magazines and the Comprehension perk for a temporary boost to 100 from a base level of 80. With Dead Money, that number is raised to eleven.

To offset the necessity of a minimum value for a certain skill, New Vegas introduces skill magazines, which provide a large but temporary boost to their associated skill (+10 or 20 with Comprehension). By using one prior to conversation, a check can be passed that might otherwise be failed. They can also be used to boost skill with weapons temporarily or gain access to crafting recipes beyond the player's current skill. Like skill books, magazines are consumed once used, and more need to be collected to maintain the effect.

Formula
The initial value of each skill is a base value of two, plus an amount depending on a character's value in the relevant attribute, plus a bonus determined by their Luck attribute, rounded up.


 * $$2 + (\mbox{Stat} \times 2) + \left\lceil\frac{\mbox{Luck}}{2}\right\rceil$$

Example: A starting Endurance of five and a starting Luck of five will give you an initial Unarmed skill of 15.


 * $$2 + (5 \times 2) + \left\lceil\frac{5}{2}\right\rceil = 15$$

Later changes to the SPECIAL stat have a similar influence on the respective skill.

During character creation, the player will tag three skills, instantly adding 15 points to each one. When leveling up, the character will distribute ten skill points plus a number equal to half their Intelligence, totaling 15 at maximum IN. The Educated perk grants two additional skill points if chosen. Assuming the player has an Intelligence of ten from level 1 and takes the Educated perk at level 4, a maximum of 487 skill points can be distributed without any DLC. Each DLC raises the level cap by 5, thus adding 5 x 15 = 75 points (or 5 x 17 = 85 points with Educated) to the total available.

Skill Points available without / with Educated: Base game: 435 / 487 One DLC: 510 / 572 Two DLC: 585 / 657 Three DLC: 660 / 742 Four DLC: 735 / 827

It can be seen from the above figures that the Educated perk confers an advantage relative to the number of DLCs / levels, so that a player with three DLCs and Educated actually has more skill points to distribute than a player with four DLCs but without Educated.

Maxed skills
It is possible to have every skill at 100 with Dead Money and Honest Hearts, however this does require using 10 Intense Training, Tag! and a specific SPECIAL build / loadout so a player may want to use the perk doubling exploit or wait until the third DLC raises the level cap to 45, when it will be possible to have all skills at 100 without using perks or a specific character build. (Or just have all skills at 80 or 90, which is possible without using perks).

Note that actually achieving this build requires very careful planning and points assignments.

40 levels with the Educated perk gives player 657 skill points. (15 at levels 2, 3 and 4, 17 at levels 5 to 40 = (3 x 15) + (36 x 17) = 45 + 612 = 657).

65 books at four points each book (6 x Science, 4 x Survival, 5 x everything else) give 260 points.

4 workbench crates with average one book each gives 16 points.

Tagging four skills adds 60 skill points.

With the 2 points assigned automatically to each skill the right SPECIAL points assigment can yeild 305 points.

Starting SPECIAL: 7 5 5 4 10 5 4

After Intense Training (and Small Frame): 7 8 7 5 10 6 8

After implants (note with Endurance of 7 and Intelligence already maxxed out the player has a spare slot for either the DT implant or the regen one): 8 9 8 6 10 7 9

(Note that with such a high finishing SPECIAL it is fairly easy to (temporarily) have all SPECIAL at 10 and all skills at 100 by droppping the right combination of chems).

Wearing a +1 Perception hat adds 6 points (2 each to Energy Weapons, Explosives and Lockpick).

657 + 260 + 16 + 60 + 305 + 6 = 1304.

There are 13 skills in game and 1300 points need to be distributed to have them at 100. This allows the player to potentially max all skills without having to get the 'stuck' Duck and Cover under Dean Domino's bed in Dead Money - however it does require getting at least one skill book from each workbench crate in Honest Hearts, and as these are randomly assigned the player may want to level to about 20 or 30, complete Honest Hearts and then finish levelling, assigning their remaining skill points based on the books found so far.

The above build has been tested with 12 skills at 100 and Barter at 88 before Honest Hearts but after Dead Money.

The SPECIAL points distribution above could possibly be modified - the above build was designed as a lightweight / stealth / melee character however by using the SPECIAL points from power armor it might be possible to make a heavyweight / tank build that also maxed all skills.