Fallout: New Vegas SPECIAL

Character creation
Upon waking up, the player chooses the player character's name, gender, age, stats, and appearance.

The maximum level the player can achieve in Fallout: New Vegas is 30.

Primary statistics
The S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system should be familiar to Fallout veterans. The player's S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attributes default at 5 points per attribute, with an additional 5 points for distribution for a total of 40 points. Individual attributes cannot score lower than 1 or higher than 10, regardless of equipment, chems, or ailments.

. stands for:
 * Strength
 * Perception
 * Endurance
 * Charisma
 * Intelligence
 * Agility
 * Luck

Each S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Stat governs one or more skills (With the exception of luck):

Strength: Melee Weapons. (Also determines which weapons you can effectively use, inventory carry weight and melee combat damage.)

Perception: Energy Weapons, Lockpick, Explosives. (Also determines compass range.)

Endurance: Unarmed, Survival. (Also determines hit points and radiation resistance, and number of implants obtainable.)

Charisma: Speech, Barter. (Also determines companion nerve.)

Intelligence: Medicine, Science, Repair. (Also determines the number of skill points gained upon levelling up.)

Agility: Guns, Sneak. (Also determines walking speed and action point regeneration.)

Luck: Luck does not determine any particular skills but it governs all skills slightly, affects your critical hit chance, the chance of enemy mishaps and how lucky you are when gambling.

A point in a S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Stat will increase its governed Skill by a comparative amount. It is however worth noting that it's more efficient to increase the skill itself rather than the Stat if you want to have a high Skill.

S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Stats may be increased temporarly by using drugs or wearing certain equipment, and permanently with the Intense Training Perk, and by buying Physical Implants in the New Vegas Medical Clinic.

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

The following derived statistics are known to exist in Fallout: New Vegas:
 * Action points
 * Carry weight
 * Hit points
 * Melee damage
 * Unarmed damage
 * Guns Damage

Skills
Skills in Fallout: New Vegas determine the player's effectiveness in a variety of situations. As in the previous games, the player chooses three tag skills out of thirteen to be the character's specialties. Tagging a skill only grants the player a 15 point bonus to that skill. Your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. points affect the amount of skill points your character starts with.

The skills in Fallout: New Vegas are:
 * Combat skills: Energy Weapons, Explosives, Guns, Melee Weapons, Unarmed,
 * Other skills: Barter, Lockpick, Medicine, Repair, Science, Sneak, Speech, Survival

Perks
Perks are special elements of the level up system which grant special effects and abilities. In Fallout: New Vegas, you gain perks every two levels. However, Josh Sawyer has said this isn't set in stone. Many perks have an attribute requirement, for example the Mysterious Stranger perk requires a luck of 6 to become an option. Other perks have attribute and skill requirements. A perk's S.P.E.C.I.A.L. requirements cannot be met by equipping items or using drugs.

For a list of perks, please see Fallout: New Vegas perks.

Traits
Traits modify different aspects of gameplay, including (but not limited to): Primary statistics, derived statistics and skills. Traits always have both positive and negative results.

One can choose up to two traits when designing a character (or none at all).

For a list of traits, please see Fallout: New Vegas traits.

Changes from previous Fallout games
Much of the SPECIAL from Fallout 3 remains intact, with very few new features being added in the way of character creation or stats. Weapons now have a minimum strength requirement to be used effectively, like in Fallout and Fallout 2.

One significant change is that there are no bobbleheads available with permanent increase to SPECIAL scores. The only way to permanently increase SPECIAL scores in Fallout: New Vegas is via the Intense Training perk or by purchasing expensive implants from Dr. Usanagi at the New Vegas Medical Clinic. You may only purchase 1 implant per point in endurance, so you might as well put 9 points into endurance at the start so you can get all 9 implants, unless you really don't want one of the implants. For instance, let's say you ultimately want 3 charm. You might as well make that 2 charm and put that 3rd point into endurance. Later in the game, once you have the easily obtainable caps, you can just put a point into charm with an implant (an implant you might not have been able to get had you not put the point into endurance). This logic holds for all other attributes. Thus the implant mechanic effectively just makes having 10 endurance "free" in terms of its impact on the other attributes.