Fallout Tactics SPECIAL

This page describes the SPECIAL implementation in Fallout Tactics.

Primary statistics
For humans, primary statistics cannot go below 1 or above 10 during creation. For other races primary stats can go as high as 16. Each race or species has different minimum and maximum stat requirements. Bonuses from items can increase the statistics beyond their natural racial maximum. Each statistic directly modifies certain derived statistics. In addition, every skill is tied to a primary statistic. Some perks require certain minimum attribute values as well.

Each race has some points distributed already at character creation. It does not, however, really matter, as they can be subtracted and added to anyway. Generally, humans have 40 Character Points to distribute among their characteristics. The numbers for other races are 42 for ghouls, 40 for super mutants, 41 for deathclaws, 45 for humanoid robots, and only 35 for dogs. Races with more than 40 character points generally have slower Perk Rate.

Derived statistics
Derived statistics are attributes of a character that are based on (or derived from) the character's primary statistics or attributes that the player cannot influence directly.

Skills
There are 18 different skills in the game. They are ranked from 0% to 300%. The starting values for those skills at Level 1 are determined by the player's 7 basic attributes, but most of those skills would fall between 0% and 50%. Every time the player gains a level, he or she will be awarded skill points to be used to improve his skills, equal to 5 points + twice his Intelligence. The player may choose to "tag" 3 of the 18 skills. A tagged skill will improve at twice the normal rate and the tagged skill determine which items the character starts with.

How high a skill can be developed is affected by the character's Attributes - a character with a low Intelligence will not be able to boost their Science rating as high as a character with high Intelligence, for example. As skills grow higher in rating, they begin to cost more skill points to increase.

There are:
 * 6 combat skills: Small Guns, Big Guns, Energy Weapons, Unarmed, Melee Weapons, Throwing.
 * 8 active skills: First Aid, Doctor, Sneak, Lockpick, Steal, Traps, Science, Repair.
 * 4 passive skills: Pilot, Barter, Gambling, Outdoorsman.

The Speech skill was also to appear in Fallout Tactics, but was cut from the final game build.