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.

Maxxed skills
Since the release of the 2nd DLC Honest Hearts it is possible to create a character that has all skills permanently at 100, however this does require using lots of perks and a specific SPECIAL build, so a player may want to use the perk doubling exploit or wait until further DLCs raise the level cap, and thus the skill points available from levelling up.

Note that actually achieving fully maxxed skills with only Dead Money and Honest Hearts requires very careful planning and points assignments, and even using exploits can easily take 50+ hours.

Permanent skill points can come from four different sources:

Levelling: 657 40 levels with an INT of 10 and the Educated perk gives the 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

Skill Books: 260 - 292 The base game contains 53 books (5 x Science, 4 x everything else) at four points each book (with Comprehension) which gives 212 points. Dead Money includes 12 books (1 for each skill except Survival) that add 48 points (with Comprehension). Honest Hearts contains 4 Workbench crate with (realistically) between zero and two books each that add 0 - 32 points (with Comprehension). 212 + 48 + 32 = 292

Tagging: 60 Tagging four skills (using Tag!) adds 60 skill points.

Sub-Total 657 + 292 + 60 = 1009

1300 points are required to have all 13 skills at 100, so (1300 - 1009) = 291 points need to come from the player's SPECIAL if two skills books can be found in each Workbench crate.

SPECIAL: 291 - 321 In order to maximise the skill points derived from a player's SPECIAL the points should be allocated to those attributes that contribute to the most skills (e.g. Intelligence, Perception and Luck), however this may not create the character that the player wants, or may not have the correct points allocation to qualify for desired perks. The 40 points initially available can be assigned in 504,315 ways, and can yield between 175 and 253 skill points. With 10 Intense Training, 6 implants* and Small Frame a total of 57 points can be assigned to SPECIAL, yielding between 269 and 321 skill points. As only 291 points are required to max all skills (based on getting the above skill books etc) a player has the choice of how to allocate the 30 'spare' points; e.g. one skill book in Dead Money is effectively inaccessible, one in the base game requires completing a quest in a certain manner, and it can take multiple reloads to get even one skill book from each Workbench crate, or you could max all skills without using Tag! or so many Intense Training.

There are 65,561 combinations of SPECIAL using between 50 and 57 points that can yield 291 skill points or more, and 1,768 of these using 54 - 57 points have all SPECIAL at 7 or more, so there are a large number of ways to create a balanced maxxed character. Using less SPECIAL points to achieve the desired skill point total may seem like a good idea as it uses less Intense Training (thus saving perks) or less implants (thus saving caps), however it will also result in a less well balanced character (and a lower SPECIAL). Whether or not that is important will depend on each player.

The example given below uses 57 SPECIAL points and yields 305 skill points, which does require using Tag! or getting most / all of the skill books, however it is a fairly balanced build compared to most minmax builds, and is especially suited to a lightweight, stealth, melee oriented character with high critical chance - though with all skills at 100 the character is pretty capable in all areas.

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

657 + 292 + 60 + 305 = 1314.

'Ultimate' Build The best possible SPECIAL distribution to produce skill points (after Intense Training and implants) is: 7 10 7 7 10 7 9

This SPECIAL has a ratio of ~5.42 skill points per SPECIAL point generating 309 total skill points from 57 SPECIAL points. The best way to achieve this SPECIAL may be to work out in advance what apparel your character will be wearing, as certain equipment can boost SPECIAL stats e.g. if your character will always be wearing +1 PER headgear then one Intense Training could be saved while still generating the same skill point total.

Note on implants: *Although 7 SPECIAL implants are available, in order to get the maximum skill points from levelling up a player needs to have an INT of 10 before level 2. To get this while using all 7 implants would require the player to get to New Vegas Medical Clinic with 4000 caps while still at level 1 and with an INT of 9 so they could buy the Intelligence implant before levelling up, which is probably possible but also probably not how most players would want to play. It also rules out using the perk doubling exploit).