How would you do SPECIAL?

N

Nonagon

Still Mildly Glowing
SPECIAL isn't perfect, and I've though about this extensively some of the stats could be put to use or some new ones could be added... If you could change it in any way what would you use instead to make it more synergistic with the skills?

How would you change it for the "better"?
 
SPECIAL is fine, if you ask me. Why change it? Anything else you come up with will just be another arbitrary stat system, and Fallout, with the exception of Tactics, has worked well with this one so far.

I would much sooner change the skills. I liked where VB was headed.

You bring up a good point though...how exactly should it tie in the skills? Should stats have a bigger impact on skills? I think so. I think a physical character, with high strength and agility, should not just be a little better at melee and unarmed. They should be a lot better. If you are an above average physical specimen, you should start with above average physical skills.*

Anyway, bottom line, I think stats should have a powerful impact on skills. F3 tied every stat to skills, which was good, but I don't think they went far enough. The starting character is not really good at anything, which kind of sucks. There is no reason you can't be good at something right off the bat. It would add some more weight to character creation.



*What is an average level of skill in something? It should be addressed.
 
He probably means SPECIAL as in the entire character system, not as in the main attributes only.
 
I would get rid of levels and ridiculous hit points. Why does becoming "10th Level" allow me to absorb twice as many shotgun blasts than a level 1 guy?

More sub skills and/or specialities would be cool too.

SO you have 75% "small guns" but you are equally worthwhile with the 10mm pistol you have thrown 150 rounds with and the spanking new sniper rifle you just picked up for the first time. I would subskill things like repair and and science as well - tricky to do without making the UI odious.

Say you had repair 60 and "repair waterpumps" 70 (because you fixed a couple) and "repair jetengines" 65. Whatever what you were fixing, you would still click "repair" but the engine would pick the best subskill. If you had none, it would default to base repair. (Similar to default skills based on stats).
 
fa2241 said:
I've though about this extensively
Click to expand...
If you thought about this extensively, why is your post so short and why don't you sum up some of the things you would change?

SPECIAL, as in the main attributes alone, is probably the best system I ever saw in an RPG. It's not complicated, it's logical and it's easy to remember.

As for the skills: getting 300% on them is ridiculous. But Van Buren was going to look into this. Some skills should have been dropped or there should have been made game contents to justify their existence (throwing, for instance).
 
SPECIALED

Strength
Perception
Endurance
Charisma
Intelligence
Agility
Luck
Excellence
Dexterity

A point in Excellence raises all other stats by 2.
 
This could be a very bad idea, but if done right it might work...

Each stat is related to 5 skills. One point on a stat gives you 5 points on every related skill. You can only add 1 point per level to your stat and you can't put points on your skills. So a high charisma increases all charisma related stats. Lets say you want to max your lock pick. To do so you need 10 points on Endurance and 10 points on Perception. Does everything make sence so far? Probably not. The table is a mess, since some of the skills don't make sence, but you know, it's just an example.

skilltabme0.png


Also Luck is not included, since a high luck increases all skils' chance of succes.
 
Herr Mike said:
SPECIALED

Strength
Perception
Endurance
Charisma
Intelligence
Agility
Luck
Excellence
Dexterity

A point in Excellence raises all other stats by 2.
Click to expand...

Well, "excellence" would just throw the balance off.

Dexterity and Agility are the same thing, or?
 
alec said:
fa2241 said:
I've though about this extensively
Click to expand...
If you thought about this extensively, why is your post so short and why don't you sum up some of the things you would change?
Click to expand...

Sorry, I was in a rush. I mostly wanted to hear what anyone else would say, but I will list a few examples.

Some of the things that I would change include:
  • Further use of skills in concordance with the SPECIAL system. I feel that several skills were not fully explored. Weapons were split into large ranging categories, which worked well, but was not a believable "skill", as being able to fire a shotgun well does not necessarily make you a great shot at going full-auto with a Light Machine gun.
  • Traits were interesting, but sometimes gave you too great an advantage over other characters you rolled(Gifted- almost too good to pass up). Bloody mess was a useless trait, you actually would see MORE death animations if you didn't take it, and the extreme death animations were much more entertaining when you finally saw them happen.
  • Another proposition would be to split Agility into two stats, one that handles action points, and another that handles armor class, otherwise agility is THE combat stat to have.

That's all I can remember at the moment, a long time ago I had this all planned out but I'll have to find my writing notebook in which I wrote this all down.
 
Ausir said:
I was not fond of the merging of the combat skills, but other than that, I pretty much agree with most of JE Sawyer's changes to SPECIAL in Van Buren, especially regarding perks. See:

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Van_Buren_SPECIAL
Click to expand...

Eh, if you throw in Strength requirements and the like for each gun, it's okay. And since energy weapons are just small and big guns with a pulse... personally, it never made sense. If anything, Small energy weapons and big energy weapons would've been more realistic.

I'd go with Van Buren's system though. Throw in some more uses for Outdoorsman though.
 
Traits were interesting, but sometimes gave you too great an advantage over other characters you rolled(Gifted- almost too good to pass up).
Click to expand...

Gifted was actually nerfed a bit in Van Buren.

Eh, if you throw in Strength requirements and the like for each gun, it's okay. And since energy weapons are just small and big guns with a pulse... personally, it never made sense. If anything, Small energy weapons and big energy weapons would've been more realistic.
Click to expand...

Thing is, you also have to take balancing issues into account. And having one skill for all firearms would make this skill way overpowered compared to the others.
 
If anything divide it into Small and Big guns. Energy weapons should require the science skill when it comes to chances for it to backfire and the like. I'd prefer that than big, small, and big/small energy weapons.
 
nemetoad said:
If anything divide it into Small and Big guns. Energy weapons should require the science skill when it comes to chances for it to backfire and the like. I'd prefer that than big, small, and big/small energy weapons.
Click to expand...

Why not have energy weapons as an "assisting" skill? For example, you might need to have some competence in a "pistol" skill to use a plasma pistol well, and having a high energy weapons skill would add a very large bonus to accuracy and reduce the chance of critical failure.
 
Ausir said:
I was not fond of the merging of the combat skills, but other than that, I pretty much agree with most of JE Sawyer's changes to SPECIAL in Van Buren, especially regarding perks. See:

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Van_Buren_SPECIAL
Click to expand...

Agreed. Though I think Throwing could be skill-less, melee weapons or dependant on strength. Its too useless to get a skill on its own.
Deception looks like a particullary interesting skill, something fun to fool people.
 
I always thought that about the Outdoorsman skill. It's sort of useless if you raise your luck high enough at the beginning of the game, after all and all it affects is world-travel. Less encounters crossing the map means less oppertunities for stuff to gaine exp. from and to sell, afterall. Could be useful in combat too maybe? Or just dealing with enemies in general afterall. Using bait or something, I don't know I'd just like to see it more useful.

A RADICAL idea that I have I'd like to see is a SPECIAL system that doesn't use levelling really... it's weird for me to say this, but I'd like to see how well Quest For Glory's leveling system would work. Something that has no eventual levels like in Bethesda's games or Fallout itself, but requires skills to be built up on practice and the like. Lack of practice leads to a decay of skill and so forth... Not to mention I enjoyed it's setup for stamina and health, where everything required stamina to happen and if your stamina was out, your health was used instead. It was a good system then for those games, but I'm curious if the SPECIAL system can use it.
 
Ausdoerrt said:
Herr Mike said:
SPECIALED

Strength
Perception
Endurance
Charisma
Intelligence
Agility
Luck
Excellence
Dexterity

A point in Excellence raises all other stats by 2.
Click to expand...

Well, "excellence" would just throw the balance off.

Dexterity and Agility are the same thing, or?
Click to expand...

Obviously excellence would throw the balance off, in favor of excellent characters. Such is the cost of excellence.
 
Energy Weapons

What is the skill, exactly? Is shooting a laser pistol different in some way that a 10mm? Is shooting a laser gatling more similar to a plasma pistol than a minigun? I have a hard time accepting that. They need to explain why the skill is seperate, otherwise, just put the energy weapons under their respective small/big skills.

Is it maintenance? More logical. But there is no reason this shouldn't be lumped into the repair and/or science skill. It takes repair to fix a regular gun, it takes repair and science to fix an energy weapon.

I don't think that keeping the player from being adept with all guns in any one game really enhances the experience, as the game isn't very different when playing with energy weapons as opposed to small guns.
 
Herr Mike said:
SPECIALED

Strength
Perception
Endurance
Charisma
Intelligence
Agility
Luck
Excellence
Dexterity

A point in Excellence raises all other stats by 2.
Click to expand...

This post is great for so many reasons. Special Ed

I'd max out Excellence.
 
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