the failings of the SPECIAL system

Wumbology

Wumbology

Actually a sentient CRT
I've heard people talk about complaints with SPECIAL, but never actually heard them myself.
to start with a few I think are there-


-Insane amount of stats are related to Agility,
-Luck, as ever, is *usually* useless
-Intelligence is a bucket term, and isn't distinguished from something like Education (like in the TravelerRPG)

It works as a system, but it has a couple faults. thoughts?
 
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Main flaws, which are killing entire beauty of SPECIAL:

-A lot of perks don't work at all, all the rest is non-balanced.
-Non-balanced traits.
-Too many useless skills and too many must-have skills.
 
Imho, the "useless skills" are vital to the role-play-ness of the game, to give that flavor, and that choice, it is role-play after all. In fact, after playing FO2 so much, that I by now have to check my routines, and almost force myself to just mess around sometimes, I miss looking back at when I picked useless perks, believing them to 'seem fun' :D
I like having the option
 
IMO, must-have perks are irrelevant in that kind of game.

You are not in an MMO in which you need the best build on pvp. You are not in a Diablo-like in which the point is the point is to become a war machine that beaten the game many times and is ready to beat off other players on battle net.

You are given a journey, within a great story/setting in which you choose what kind of approach you want when facing various difficulties/obstacles/characters/cities/faction.

The relevant build is what you want to make. Any characters has chances to win the game and provide enjoyements. Some methods are harder than orders and come with new issues and new nice surprises. But in the end, you can do it and even set yourself other goals. (i fondly remember a let's play by an idiot sociopath character that took occasionnally mentats)

(by the way, i am still a sucker on character planning. i mainly improvise according what i feel cool at the moment)
 
Wumbology said:
I've heard people talk about complaints with SPECIAL, but never actually heard them myself.
to start with a few I think are there-


-Insane amount of stats are related to Agility,
-Luck, as ever, is *usually* useless
-Intelligence is a bucket term, and isn't distinguished from something like Education (like in the TravelerRPG)

It works as a system, but it has a couple faults. thoughts?
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You don't appreciate luck until you play LUK 1.
 
Yeah, or Luck 10. But if you have to max or min the skill to appreciate it, it's not *that* useful. Or maybe that's the nature of luck.
 
Wumbology said:
Yeah, or Luck 10. But if you have to max or min the skill to appreciate it, it's not *that* useful. Or maybe that's the nature of luck.
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Well, having a normal luck means you don't have any particular luck, if you really notice it's there without going to the extremes, I'm not sure if the stat is well balanced. I mean, if nothing in particular happens to you too often, would you think you have very bad or very good luck? :P
But yeah, when talking about gameplay, something that is not noticeable becomes kind of boring.
 
I don't know about the failings of special, and this might seem weird coming from a huge Fallout fan, but the failings come more from the limitations of the Fallout universe and the games conent than the system. Not saying that the game isn't awesome and worth playing after... how long's it been?

Simply put, the way you interact in combat, mainly with malle/projectile attacks and no magic really restricts the ammount of plausible interactions. Since the game goes for a brand of realism by default what you can do to boost your combat options or make them more varied than shoot/aim at body part is... well, I'd say limited, but it's more non-existant than limited. You cant do much other than shoot stuff. The party roles in fallout come down to "Can shoot from greater distance", "Can shoot from less distance but can shoot more"... And when you look at an RPG which includes magic before everyone had some sort of superhuman ability, the most boring and bland guys were ussually fighters who just hit stuff, followed by dps mages who also just hit stuff from a distance. So in those terms, Fallout is really restrictive.

But then you think about all the cool non-combat interactions. Ok, so combat is very limited, but there's tons of other stuff in the game, right? Well, there kinda is, but not all approaches are equaly supported. Playing an evil character really screwes you over for content. Sneaking doesn't really do all that much for you. Everything sort of revolves around speech and stat checks. You have very little ways to improve your stats, or you have chems which temporarly let you edit your stats to be whatever you want them to be. Repair and Science are needed for some very cool point-and-click adventure kind of situations but have no other practical applications. And you only have one customizable character in your party, who's trying to be everything at once.

So technicaly, if someone took the current shadowrun: returns thematic concept and remade say, fallout 2 in it with magic and proper party members, it would work like a charm. All you'd need is magic for the more varied tactics options for both your party and enemies (not because anyone thinks it's cool but just so you can do things in combat which aren't shooting), and more more opportunities for different character builds to make you glad you're playing them. It could work with special without too much hassle or too many needed adjustments.
 
zegh8578 said:
Imho, the "useless skills" are vital to the role-play-ness of the game, to give that flavor, and that choice, it is role-play after all.
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That's not role-playing, that's "virtual LARPing"... role-playing in a video game is when your character's "role" is recognized by the game-world actually reacting to the actions your character(s) take and your character's statistically-measurable abilities/knowledge-base/etc. actually affecting gameplay in a meaningful way due to how the game is designed rather than depending on self-imposed restrictions cooked up by the player themself.
 
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Bumping this because I have some issues with SPECIAL.

The numbers are capped at 10.

This is fine, until you realise that its piss easy to get OVER 10 in stats, but have it capped to 10.

I never make strength more than 5, because APA+ACE strength booster gets it to 10, anything over 5 means that down the line, your character is gimped.

Maybe this is just because I am a minmaxxer at heart, but it is quite annoying, what is stopping my character from getting stronger than 10? He's already buff as fuck, AND now has a supersuit, I want my damned 400 pounds of lifting!

Luck is basically a godsend, but damnit, again, 8 luck+ZetaScan=10 luck, and 10 luck is amazingly useful, affecting basically every roll in the game to your favour.

I guess every skill is useful, but I'd rather have a monster character, than have to rely on companions to do my ditywork with a CHA build.

The skills kinda act weird to, my 1 CHA character is somehow expected to be a master at speech? He but have some smooth damned words, although he is wearing a damned helmet all the time.

I also don't like how absurdly needed AGI is...Its...Its literally what makes a character able to do more than shoot once per turn and actually move.
 
ThatZenoGuy said:
Bumping this because I have some issues with SPECIAL.

The numbers are capped at 10.

This is fine, until you realise that its piss easy to get OVER 10 in stats, but have it capped to 10.

I never make strength more than 5, because APA+ACE strength booster gets it to 10, anything over 5 means that down the line, your character is gimped.

Maybe this is just because I am a minmaxxer at heart, but it is quite annoying, what is stopping my character from getting stronger than 10? He's already buff as fuck, AND now has a supersuit, I want my damned 400 pounds of lifting!

Luck is basically a godsend, but damnit, again, 8 luck+ZetaScan=10 luck, and 10 luck is amazingly useful, affecting basically every roll in the game to your favour.

I guess every skill is useful, but I'd rather have a monster character, than have to rely on companions to do my ditywork with a CHA build.

The skills kinda act weird to, my 1 CHA character is somehow expected to be a master at speech? He but have some smooth damned words, although he is wearing a damned helmet all the time.

I also don't like how absurdly needed AGI is...Its...Its literally what makes a character able to do more than shoot once per turn and actually move.
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I won't say that SPECIAL is flawless, some stats are better than others especialy in NV or 1 and 2.

However, what you are saying is that we should go over 10 stat cap. Shitout 4 did something like this and it made SPECIAL even more useless than in 3. With a choice of drugs you could have like 30 strength or something. Basically you were what 3 times stronger than a human should ever be. It was simply retarded.

The ten SPECIAL cap prevents that, but I see what you mean. For example power armour should help you break the limit since it has got motors and such, but when that happens how do we judge it? How do we name putting us a 13 strength when 10 makes us hercules' bigger cousin, a hercule himself?

The ten cap should stay, but any excess stats should have different effects. Let's say you boost strength over 10, then it would show 10+ but our carry weight and melee and weapons would deal more damage. The same could be applied towards other stats with exceptions such as luck.

SPECIAL is not perfect but I would rather keep it how it is in orginal trilogy than turn it into abomination like betheshit did.
 
Ediros said:
I won't say that SPECIAL is flawless, some stats are better than others especialy in NV or 1 and 2.

However, what you are saying is that we should go over 10 stat cap. Shitout 4 did something like this and it made SPECIAL even more useless than in 3. With a choice of drugs you could have like 30 strength or something. Basically you were what 3 times stronger than a human should ever be. It was simply retarded.

The ten SPECIAL cap prevents that, but I see what you mean. For example power armour should help you break the limit since it has got motors and such, but when that happens how do we judge it? How do we name putting us a 13 strength when 10 makes us hercules' bigger cousin, a hercule himself?

The ten cap should stay, but any excess stats should have different effects. Let's say you boost strength over 10, then it would show 10+ but our carry weight and melee and weapons would deal more damage. The same could be applied towards other stats with exceptions such as luck.

SPECIAL is not perfect but I would rather keep it how it is in orginal trilogy than turn it into abomination like betheshit did.
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IMO the 10 cap basically represents the limit of human potential naturally, a guy with 10 strength is simply the buffest dude in the world, a dude with 10 AGI is the fastest in the world, etc.

But combat drugs/augments/buffs should be able to improve that, why not?

PCP allows tiny dudes to basically break down brick walls with their bare hands, which is basically Buffout/Psycho.
 
ThatZenoGuy said:
IMO the 10 cap basically represents the limit of human potential naturally, a guy with 10 strength is simply the buffest dude in the world, a dude with 10 AGI is the fastest in the world, etc.

But combat drugs/augments/buffs should be able to improve that, why not?

PCP allows tiny dudes to basically break down brick walls with their bare hands, which is basically Buffout/Psycho.
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I never said they shouldn't I just don't think you can then apply SPECIAL stats. You said it yourself, they are a limit of human body, which is why I proposed 10+ solution.

The other idea would be to make SPECIAL bigger and any stats beyond 10 would be considered inhuman. However, it would in turn SPECIAL into another MMO, where stats go in thousands.

So, basically what I am saying is that we would have to design the whole system from scratch of we wanted to go over the cap of ten.
 
Ediros said:
I never said they shouldn't I just don't think you can then apply SPECIAL stats. You said it yourself, they are a limit of human body, which is why I proposed 10+ solution.

The other idea would be to make SPECIAL bigger and any stats beyond 10 would be considered inhuman. However, it would in turn SPECIAL into another MMO, where stats go in thousands.

So, basically what I am saying is that we would have to design the whole system from scratch of we wanted to go over the cap of ten.
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Hmm...Maybe keep the numbers cap to 10, but increase the stats anyway? But only with temporary stuff like drugs?

I mean, a really buff dude on a shitload of combat drugs should be able to carry more than a really buff dude.
 
ThatZenoGuy said:
Hmm...Maybe keep the numbers cap to 10, but increase the stats anyway? But only with temporary stuff like drugs?

I mean, a really buff dude on a shitload of combat drugs should be able to carry more than a really buff dude.
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... that is what I said in my first post here!

Urgh.. nevermind, re read my first post here, where I wrote about it.

I am simply stating you can not just increase stats over ten, without SPECIAL losing it's strength.
 
zegh8578 said:
Imho, the "useless skills" are vital to the role-play-ness of the game, to give that flavor, and that choice, it is role-play after all. In fact, after playing FO2 so much, that I by now have to check my routines, and almost force myself to just mess around sometimes, I miss looking back at when I picked useless perks, believing them to 'seem fun' :D
I like having the option
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After playing arcanum - even though it is an unbalanced game - i can't agree with that. In Fallout you have the "choice" to tag, for example, thrown science and first aid, to roleplay a doctor who loves grenades or sneak, pickpocket and traps to be a thief, but can you really? I mean, you could finish the game with that build, but it would be overall a poorer experience than that of the generic guns ( or melee-unarmed), speech and lockpick character that the game clearly encourages. Meaning those builds would not add any more quests, context, weapons or gameplay value and would even remove some stuff from your experience.

In arcanum ( even though magick is ovepowered ), you could do anything and it would play out differently and usually it would be perfectly viable.
So you could pick thrown, guns, magick, melee, bows as your primary skill and there are weapons that work for each category and also different quests, different reactions from different places ( that are unique to each build ) etc
so it would be more rewarding. Almost none of these skills is useless and you can roleplay without torturing yourself.

So i wish Fallout would reward being a thief or a doctor instead of just allowing it.
 
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