Increasing Stats?

[Guest]

With the patch coming out Friday (fingers crossed, everyone), and with the announcement that a bunch of extra healing loot will now be on mission one if you haven't already done it, and with the additional announcement that Cautious Nature is officially 100% worthless (first Perk I took, in keeping with my character's paranoid concept) ... I plan to restart.
Okay, on to my actual question: what means are there in the game for increasing statistics? In the Fallout RPGs, it was a bad idea to max out certain stats because you could get devices or operations to increase them, and having above 10 did you no good. Is that still true in BOS? If so, which stats can be increased and by how much? I don't want to waste stat points, but I want to start with some stats really high.

Thanks in advance
Zombra

P.S. Since you're all soooooo interested, I think I'm going to step back from the cool sniper we all made the first time around and make a slow, stupid powerhouse - 10 END, 10 STR! Let's brawl!

 

[Guest]

Good luck with the brawler. I'll be interested to hear if you find it easier or more difficult that way. (I was always curious about how effective melee attacks would be, but since most of the time you encounter groups of the or four critters with burst weapons, I didn't dare to get close enough for a knife attack.)

Anyway, as to the increasing of stats. I don't know about other methods (I think FO2 had some operations that would raise your stats), but there are perks available at around level 9 that will raise any attribute by one point. I used the first round of these perks to give all of my characters 1 more Perception, since I'm essentially playing with 6 snipers. I've given a few people increased Strength (since carrying more is always nice, as is the ability to wield larger weapons). As far as I can tell, each "Gain Attribute" perk is only available once per character, so you can't gain Perception 3 times. (Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on this.) So when restarting, I would still consider Perception to be important (at least 5), since it helps so much with shooting. I love having 10 Intelligence (it helps raise skills MUCH faster). 10 Agility has always been my way of playing, since you can get off 2 aimed shots per turn (if you're not using CTB). High Strength is nice for carrying stuff, but now that you can become "Encumbered" before being "Immobile", it's not as important. Charisma has been discussed to death, but I don't really care about it. (Thank goodness it doesn't affect how many people you can take on a mission!) Luck is again one of those that I don't bother much with. And I usually leave Endurance at about 5, since HP isn't that important. (A massive crit will kill you regardless of how many HP you have.) All in all, I'm pretty happy with my character that started out with SPECIAL of 6 5 6 4 10 10 4 (taking the Gifted trait - probably the most important thing to do!) If I were doing it over, I would consider dropping End 1 and upping Per 1. You could probably also drop Char and Luck if you wanted to go lower. Anyway, that's my thoughts.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the thoughts. I did know about the perks, but so many of the perks are useful that I'm not planning on spending many if any on Increase Stat. I mostly need to know - if I take a 10 STR to start, am I going to be kicking myself when I find the Magic Dumbbells that let me permanently increase my STR by 1 (maximum of 10)?
Yeah, the super-high INT, PER, AGI guy has historically been my favorite type of Fallout character, too (I usually go with high CHA as well, but why bother in Tactics?). I'm going to try the dummy as a change of pace. I'm not actually planning to go all the way and tag Melee or Unarmed, though ... I'm just thinking of carrying around a bazooka, a couple of miniguns, and a rocket launcher with 50 or 60 spare rockets. Oh, and a flamethrower. I've always neglected Big Guns in the Fallout RPGs, and I've always kind of regretted it. BOS seems like the perfect forum to unleash a dumb killing machine. And I've gotta go with that high END, in contrast to all my past characters ... the killing machine has to be able to walk into a room with seven guys, take all their fire without twitching, and mow 'em all down. Did I mention I'm planning on taking Kamikaze as well? :p

In the fightin' spirit
Zombra

 

[Guest]

I wouldn't reccommend it, (maybe with a good agi and lots of sneak) I've had a hell of a time recovering any ammo from supermutants other than 7.62 as they tend to blow off all their ammo before I get to them. I've recovered a total of 8 rockets off the first two supermutant missions, and used them up promptly on my heavy weapons guy. I haven't got far enough that I've got any items to increase stats (other than the oh so useless drugs) environmental armor II lowers per by 1 though (ick) It seems there is no 10 cap on any stat though from when I was trying out drugs, so you are probably safe taking a 10 in anything you want. Good luck with it anyway, that's half the fun is trying out different characters...