Luck at least for my first character. so far I will start Luck, Agility and endurance at 1 and rank them up as I go. Might change when we get more info/ official ranks and what not.

Lol, that's what I love about the new system. We don't have any idea what's "right" for it, so we're forced to just trust our gut; and Bethesda's design philosophy means there are no wrong answers for character development.

Armorer or whatever it's called at S3 is definitely the only reason I'm putting my ST there, although I certainly may bump it up to 5 or 6 for Big Guns and Strong Back. But I want to be a tank, and the best way to do that is to build some solid armor.

Luck.

I'll be starting with luck and endurance at 1 and strength 3. I'm on edge about perception as I'm not sure how useful it would be for a sniper.. I tend to use VATS indoors only and I'll probably turn compass off as well. Anyone have opinions about that?

I'll go 4's across the board. I've always been the sort to minimize weaknesses rather than reinforce strengths, and given that you can raise a special every level I can get from 4 to anywhere I really want to be fairly quickly. The only reason I ever did the 'dump stat' thing in previous games was that intelligence was so disproportionally important to skill point accumulation.

Gameplaywise it's probably not very important if you're not going to use VATS, but it probably adds more dialogue-options, like:

"[PER] ... moongold?"

Luck's going to be my dump stat, which is kind of a shame though, as it probably offers the funniest dialogue-options.

Securitron: Security check! Name the manager of this factory!
[LUCK] Oh [censored], I don't know tha-
Securitron: Nickname accepted! Access granted!

All specials 10 goooooo.

My dump stat will probably be luck.

Depending on how far in the game settlements come into play i may dump charisma. Local leader is the only thing that appeals to me.

If I am 20-30 before I start my settlement AI may just wait on charisma.

Probably perception if it retains the same roles as it did in previous games. I don't much care for the idea of any of them being below 5 though so I'm probably going to work to get them all at least to that point as quickly as I can

I used to put CHR at 1 (and even then only because you were forced t have at least 1, ideally I'd put it at 0), but because of the new system I'll put it at 3 so I can have pick Lone Wanderer.

Because you need points in charisma to be an asocial loner >.>

I think a DT+DR solution is perfect.

But just to halt your anti-DR train for a moment, you're forgetting that there are multiple resistance types now - kinetic and energy - and from what it looks like certain armor types will handle each type better than the other. Leather armor, from what I recall, has higher energy resistance than kinetic.

Lastly, it doesn't look like DR is % based anymore. The T60-b has 260 DR, 180 ER, and 150 RR. The X-01 pieces go crazy high as well (into the 300's).

That's simply hiding the real number behind an inflated and meaningless statistic the way Skyrim did, where 567 was the 80% damage reduction cap and everything above that was superfluous but made people feel better about seeing a number go up forever. Now those values are even more inflated and meaningless.

Possibly you're right. I'm mainly looking at how it was handled in Fallout 3 *...and possibly in Fallout 4.

It's the same in the engine. Only the numbers displayed are different. There is no distinct advantage to a pure DR% system; only in terms of easily balancing encounter damage output so the player cannot achieve an arbitrary DT and then smoothly steamroll over the enemy making them meaningless distractions.

The potential exists for a system that splits DR among different types (radiation is also, apparently, a damage type.

On topic though, I don't think I'll have a dump stat as it seems like every perk has a particular use. Originally though I was going to use Endurance as my main dump stat...not anymore it looks like.

You know, for me it's going to go like this: I'll make the decision about SPECIAL on the fly, but I won't put any of them below 3. Reason being I believe it will be more fun for me to build on a few stats and make them great rather than have already high stats and work to improve my weaknesses.

That way I can focus on my strengths as I develop, which, for me, feels better. Going from good to great has always been more attractive than going from inept to a little less than inept lol

Primary: Agility

Secondary: Perception, Intelligence, Luck

Dump: Strength, Endurance, Charisma

im going with 10 int and 10 charisma as a scientist/leader playthrough building a settlement and relying on my intelligence/leader skills to survive therefore i will not see much use in strength as there will always be a companion or two (if that rumor that higher levels of inspiration perk gives a second follower slot is true) between me and my enemies buffed up with inspiration perk.

Intelligence for me, with Charisma as my secondary. I just feel like intelligence is going to be very valuable in this one since the main story will no doubtedly feature The Institute. I don't really use energy weapons but I'll make an exception fir the cryo weapons.

Luck. My character is good because he/she is skilled, not lucky. Also most of the luck perks are not that interesting.

If you make your Endurance your dump stat well...

Start at 85 HP vs 130 HP or 125 if waiting for the bobblehead.

Each level up gives 5 HP + some amount per point of END,

END does not give you HP retro-actively that you would have, if you started with the higher END earlier.

Then there is all the Perks that having END higher gives if you invest points.

So sure a character with 1 END will die in like 4 or 5 hits too a 10mm pistol

At level 10 though it'll likely only take 6 or 7?...unless of course the opponents also have perks or better versions of that same 10mm.

The END 10 character is tougher and will gain more hp over the course of the game.

Also I read somewhere that at 51 you stop getting HP on level up so apparently the max hp is around 600 and only achievable with 10 END outta the gate.

--------------------

So the issue is that when you start out with the END 10 character your not that much more hardy than the other guy but once you get some levels behind you this quickly changes and also the armor % resistance starts to favor the player with more HP.

So the question is how is the game balanced in regards to how the damage occurs and will players that start say below a 4 END really feel appropriately punished for having done so?

It seems that a 10 END isn't really great compared to a 1 over the long haul as the difference is about 2X as many HP.

Looking at each SPECIAL you don't seem to be greatly punished for taking a really low score as opposed to a very high score.

It would seem that by placing all of your points into just 3 SPECIALs would be the best way to cripple your character from the start as you would be severely challenged in some ways.

So take 1 END, STR, and AGI.

That may produce the most crippling result

Picking a High END character though is more for a different playstyle it suits players that prefer to play the game up close and more direct whereas the other way should be more for player's that will make use of stealth attacks, cover, and or distance to buffer retaliation.

You have no idea whether or not HP increases are retroactive.

The HP has never been retroactive in previous games so just an educated guess here but I'm going to say that its very unlikely that they would decide to write a script that would then fix your characters "missing hp"

STR: 4
PER: 4
END: 1
CHA: 3
INT: 10
AGI: 4
LUCK: 2????

I'll be focusing on Settlements and Crafting at first.?

If they decided from the start it wouldn't be retroactive, they wouldn't need to write a script to "fix" anything. Just change the formula from calculating the health increase per level, to just recalculating max health on each level-up. Not that they've definitely done this, but then who knows.

Also, you'll have to tell me where you read that we stop gaining health at level 51. I've never heard that before, and I have my doubts about it.