Van Buren/SPECIAL

Black Isle's cancelled Fallout 3 project, codenamed Van Buren, was to feature a highly modified version of the SPECIAL character system, made by J.E. Sawyer. Some of the changes, especially to the skills system, were quite controversial among Fallout fans. Bethesda's version of SPECIAL in Fallout 3 is something of a combination of the original SPECIAL, the Van Buren SPECIAL, as well as their own changes.

Here are some known facts about the Van Buren SPECIAL:

Skills
In Van Buren, there were 13 skills:
 * 3 combat
 * Firearms
 * Melee
 * Unarmed
 * 3 diplomacy
 * Barter
 * Persuasion
 * Deception
 * 4 science
 * Mechanics
 * Medic
 * Outdoorsman
 * Science
 * 3 stealth (originally four).
 * Security
 * Sneak
 * Steal

Features:
 * They started at 0. tag! skills start at 20.
 * They did not have a % symbol behind them, as this concept was ruled generally frivolous, seeing as players could go far beyond 100% in previous games.
 * The cost on a per-rank basis was:
 * 1 for 1-50
 * 2 for 51-100
 * 3 for 101-150
 * 4 for 151-200 (Max skill)

Each rank bought for a tag! skill was doubled. If you had a 55 Medic, it would cost you two points to increase it one rank -- but you would get an additional rank for free.
 * Each skill had a bonus applied to all rolls that was equal to three ability score values (AG*3 or CH*2 + IN or ST + AG + PE, etc.)
 * Perks that require skill values only looked at the rank, not the rank + bonus. E.g.: you wanted to take Advanced Research; the prerequisites were IN 8, PE 6, science 175. If the character's science only has 168 ranks, but it's effectively 182 because of his high IN and PE, he wouldn't qualify.

Tag bonus
It was possible that the tag bonus would be 24, since that would have made the bonus equally divisible into 1, 2, 3, and 4. However, +20 was considered a rather hefty bonus on top of what was already accelerated points to rank ratio. A tag bonus of 12 was considered as well because it would fit the first pre-requisite (Being equally divisible), but it ultimately still didn't solve the bonus problem if the skill rank "crossed the barrier" during the increase. Unspent fractions would probably be lost in this scenario.

Speech skills
There were several ideas for broader application of archetypes that are often called "Charisma Boy" or "Diplomacy Boy" skills. In Fallout and Fallout 2, such characters could focus on two skills with good, but fairly limited applications: Barter and Speech. Barter affected buy and sell prices, Speech affected dialogue options (Along with certain attributes)

"Combat Boys" by contrast, not only have skills but tools that helped define their characters. Three characters who focus on Melee can all use different weapon sets for different purposes. This gives a level of depth to match or exceed that character type's skill breadth.

It was generally held by J.E. Sawyer(though he noted many might or would disagree), the "Charisma Boy" had neither depth or nor breadth in character development as "He's got two skills, one with no depth, one with slight depth. Barter is pretty flat. It's just a score that goes up and changes store prices. A player can't do much with it to change his or her gameplay experience other than dump points into it and save money. Even the perks available for Barter don't really allow the player to do anything new with the skill."

He went on to explain that Speech opened up a lot of dialogue options, but that was in the end, its whole point. It did not go beyond that. "Attributes can be checked with Speech in dialogue, but ultimately those static checks are just pass/fail. Randomized checks in speech are easily overcome by the ol' "uncontested reload", so there's not much point to them -- they need to be static checks because of the environment in which they appear."

For these reasons he wanted to keep Barter, but divide Speech into two skills: Deception and Persuasion. However, this division was potentially harmful unless the Deception and Persuasion skills had a broader application in the game outside of standard dialogue.

Traits

 * Chem Resistant was renamed to Clean Living
 * One In a Million was added
 * Red Scare was added

Perks
In Van Buren, perks were no longer tied to your character's level, but depended solely on your character's statistics and skills. Only high-level characters would have high skills anyway, and powerful perks being dependant on very high skills would be more of an incentive to specialize in a given skill.

J.E. Sawyer said in another statement that he wanted to move past many perks that were just skill additions as he found that they didn't allow characters to do anything conceptually new. He noted that there were many skill-up perks, such as (Ghost, Thief, Harmless, Master Thief, Medic!, Mr. Fixit) that were under this category. He posited it may be a better idea to turn these perks into sub-perks of general skill perks. (E.g.: the player hits level 6 and picks skill++ perk, then is given another list showing all the skills. He or she picks one. On the character record screen, it shows Skill++: Computer Ops.)

A large number of perks were also either directly related to combat skills or were completely unrelated to any skills (Strong Back, Quick Pockets, etc.), Sawyer was attempting to make more perks that were directly connected to having high non-combat skills, like Healer, in order to balance and flesh out the other dimensions of gameplay. In this capacity "manufacturing perks" were there that would allow "Science Boy" characters to create equipment from otherwise useless items that they would find in their travels. The items could range from drugs to explosives to medical kits and so on.

He noted that Master Trader (25% reduction in cost, which is the basic function of the barter skill essentially), Salesman (+20% Barter), and Negotiator (+20% to Barter) did not need to exist and may have been able to have been creatively replaced by concepts that were more involving. In light of this, he suggested some changes:


 * Bulk Trader: The higher the volume of items you buy and sell, the better the deals (players start to orient their inventory management and purchasing around getting the highest count of a single item).


 * Junk Merchant: All items worth 1-3 "dollars" are worth twice as much when you sell them (players store assorted odds and ends in their locker/trunk waiting for a rainy day to cash them all in).

The concept that tended to run through all the others was that they were seeking to make perks that would allow players to actually play differently. "If a player can take a perk for their character and it makes them think differently about how they are playing, that seems more interesting to me than just jacking the skill value up."

Another change was that point weighing was to be implemented sooner, as to make skills more difficult to get good at. So theoretically they would make all skills begin at 0. After that skills would be weighed as such.
 * 0-50: 1
 * 51-100: 2
 * 101-150: 3
 * 151-200: 4

Perks weren't even necesarily going to be the same value however. However, the higher value perks would only be accessible by people with high (inefficient) skills. So thusly a skill generalist would get more bang for his or her buck by spreading points around. a skill specialist would make less overall progress, but would have access to more perks that make him or her even more formidable with a skill than the rank alone would indicate.

New perks

 * Advanced Research
 * Ayyyyyy!
 * Body Snatcher
 * Bulk Trader
 * Eye on the Prize
 * In Your Face!
 * Junk Merchant
 * Mental Catalogue
 * Suicide King
 * Triage

Action Points
J.E. Sawyer said: "The biggest stumbling block in Fallout TB -> RT is movement and AP. So far, the best movement translation seems to be this: high AP characters move faster since, for practical purposes, they do in both TB and RT. A 10 AP character will move 10 hexes in TB over one round while a 6 AP character will move 6 hexes in TB over one round. If that is converted into real-time, the 10 AP character will move 10 hexes in six seconds and the 6 AP character will move 6 hexes in six seconds. That's an analogue.

However, the general tendency in RT combat systems is that movement can't "really" cost anything. When characters move hurky-jerky around the battlefield, stopping to pause for precious APs that they immediately burn, it becomes a little... bizarre. So, what then can be the cost? The best answer I can find is: AP regeneration. A moving character never regenerates AP. He or she can run and run and run all the live-long day at whatever rate is dictated by his or her base AP, but he or she won't gain a single AP back until he or she stops (or perhaps the regeneration rate still exists, but at a pitiful fraction of its total value).

Higher AP characters would still catch up to fleeing characters in less time and either attack or easily re-accumulate APs that will eventually result in an attack into the fleeing character's back. A character who gleefully shoots a submachinegun burst and then runs for the hills will have to stop and wait for a full six seconds to get his or her AP pool back. If two characters with expended AP pools run the same distance, the higher base AP character will arrive at the location first and regenerate the equivalent AP for time saved by the time the slower character arrives.

This is not a perfect analogue, but it's really not horrible, and again, it has no effect on the TB component of the game. People playing using the RT system will find that certain scenarios play out easier, and some scenarios play out with more difficulty. Ultimately, though, it still has more fidelity to TB SPECIAL than any RT D&D game has to TB D&D.

Unarmed
If the advantage of firearms is range and damage at the cost of ammo conservation, and the advantage of melee is in reliability and good potential damage from powered weapons at the cost of (usually) range and less overall damage than firearms, then (IMO), the advantage of unarmed should be in flexibility at the cost of range and damage.

The highly skilled unarmed character should always have at least two moves to perform for each AP level between 2 and 10. Because interface limitations can be overcome in a future Fallout title, the unarmed character should have access to half of these attacks with one click-hold-release. Each move should have its own benefits and drawbacks so that a healthy amount of the moves stay useful throughout the game. The moves could be split into these groups: hand attacks, hand combos, foot attacks, foot combos and hand-foot combos. For example, the character could have Jab, Cross, Uppercut, Elbow Smash, Backhand, Sucker Punch, Spearhand, and Ridgehand as standard hand attacks, each with their own AP cost, bonus or penalty to hit, DT modifier, and damage. However, the character could also gain "two-in-one" combos.

For instance, Jab-Elbow. The combo would do both moves, each at a different hex. The Jab would go into the targeted hex, and the Elbow Smash would go into the hex back and to the right. The combo would cost less AP than both moves individually, but it would be at a lower chance to hit with each attack, and would incur a fatigue cost. Another combo might be Cross-Backhand-Ridgehand, hitting the first hex targeted, the hex to the right, and the hex two more to the right.

Kicks could have the same general layout (with different moves, of course). The kicks don't even have to be crazy wire-fu'ed out. They can just be regular ol' kicks. Snap Kick, Axe Kick, Roundhouse, Back Kick, Side Kick, Hook Kick, etc. You could have the same sorts of combos. Roundhouse-Hook, Side-Back, Snap-Side-Axe.

The most complex combos would only be available when the character was fighting with no equipment in either hand, allowing hand-foot combos that could hit four, five, or even six hexes. Axe-Backhand-Round-Spear, Cross-Round-Back-Jab-Uppercut, Uppercut-Elbow-Side-Axe-Ridge-Spear. The high-skill complex combo unarmed character is like a mobile low-powered grenade, able to hit the hexes he or she wants when he or she wants from round to round. He or she never runs out of ammo, but has to accept that at high efficiency, he or she is accumulating fatigue and doing less damage than a comparable melee or firearms character. But with more than thirty moves to perform at high levels, never needing to equip or reload weapons, the unarmed character has ultimate flexibility for dealing with any close-range encounter with small to very large numbers of opponents.

Aimed shots
I believe that the different called shots should be made more useful overall. Eyes is clearly "the way to go" in the first two Fallout games. It shouldn't just be a "well, duh" choice. Limb crippling should be more common, IMO. Blinding should also have even more dramatic penalties, but the chance to hit the eyes should be reduced even more.

Critical hits
Well, overall I can say I'd like to see fewer damage multipliers, more crippled limbs, more severe penalties to hit the eyes, and crits that ignore a portion of the armor, but never bypass it completely.

Fatigue
Fatigue isn't something you accrue by doing mundane things. It increases as you do things like come down from chems (and super-stims), perform extremely strenuous actions (unarmed combos), and "bash" damage that's a portion of the damage absorbed by armor.

It goes up, hit points go down. Fatigue is lowered by your Healing Rate every round. If your Fatigue passes your current hit points, momma said knock you out. When your Fatigue drops below your current hit points, you wake up again."