I am curious what people think are the best non combat skills. Repair, Speech, Lockpicking, Science, Surival, Barter or Medicene. Also, which ones gives the most unique dialog options? I am guessing Speech, but does it open up new quests or just lets you skip parts?

Speech is VERY influential in this game, and so, i find, is very important. Its a good way to shortcut a mission, and yes, can sometimes open up new dialogue.
Repair and Barter are good together, as you can repair weapons you loot, then sell them for more caps.
Lockpick and Science are usefull for getting into places with good or unique loot, and also for taking easy shortcuts in some buildings and or quests.
Survival, is useful for hardcoe mode, and also has some useful perks attached to it,
Medicine, personally i could do without, although it does help with certain quests and some people love it.
In general, each stat has its ups and downs, and no Stat is pointless, Its all about personal preference.

Hope this helps.

Barter is also a speech option in a reasonable number of quests.

Repair and speech are the most consistently useful skills in my experience.

There are lotsa speech checks in the game... I just wish they didn't put the required skill level next to them. I don't need training wheels. :rolleyes:

What's with the Radchild love?

Critical Radiation Poisoning put an -3 END, -2 AGL, -1 STR debuff on your character, and you still need 10 sec to cover the lost health from END -3.

Well, obviously this is just my opinion, and its pretty much all to do with preference, but i find it really useful for my melee character, as it regenerates health that i lose when i run in. You dont have to take it all the way to critical, its just as useful for a low level character on the minor stages.

High lockpick and science will keep you from being "locked out" of a whole bunch of content. I maxed-out my points here just for that fact.

If you are relying on stims for healing then high medicine would be a good bet.

High repair is valuable if you don't wanna pay a third-party to fix your stuff. More useful if you take the Jury Rigging perk.

For the first time I maxed-out Speech and, yes, I found it did give you the most unique dialogue options and let you avoid a lot of combat by using diplomacy.

In my playthrough, I found that Barter had probably the second-most unique dialogue options behind speech.

And survival, well, this skill is only really useful if you're playing on hardcoe mode as far as I know.

In summary, then, Speech and Barter - from my own experiences - gave the most unique dialogue options.

Although if you're playing a melee based character then survival can help out with the poisons for melee weaponry.

SPEECH: There are a LOT of quests that can be skipped entirely with Speech and several things that can't be initiated without a high Speech score (like recruiting certain companions). I like keeping this high, but I'd be curious to play without points in it.

BARTER: Most useful if you want the Pack Rat perk. I think most dialog options that require it for quest purposes only require it pretty low, so you can get by with a magazine and some Charisma-boosting booze. Otherwise, it's not as if caps are at a shortage.

SCIENCE: I think you can get by with only a few points in Science (unless you're playing Energy Weapons or want to be able to complete the one or two "Science 90" dialog options). Most terminals with quest-crucial info are Average or easier, and between clothing, magazines, and chems, that means science can be as low as 26 (or 16 with Comprehension).

MEDICINE: Similarly, Medicine can safely be pretty low, as most medicine speech checks can be passed with a magazine and/or clothing with your default stat if your Intelligence is over 5. I think there's only one optional quest that requires Medicine to be pretty high, and you can still complete the larger quest it belongs to without doing that part.

LOCKPICK: Handy to get some special items, and reassuring yourself that you have seen all you can see, but I don't think it's quest-essential in any case.

SURVIVAL: I think is fine to leave at its default, or 45 if you want Travel Light and/or Animal Friend. If you are playing a Melee/Unarmed build, though, Rad Child is one of the best perks in the game. Which brings us to....



I think you'd need to try playing with Rad Child to see how amazing the effect is. With DT-enhancing perks and implant, even in light armor, you can basically wander into any firefight and automatically heal all damage from gunfire. Keep in mind, too, that the health regen from Rad Child stacks with other healing effects in hardcoe. My strategy for a certain cave full of deathclaws was to eat a couple snacks, drink a Nuka Cola, and wander in with my fists raised. You heal up almost instantly after being struck. While it does mean a loss of max HP, it represents a constant gain, as if you've got a stimpack on IV.

.......it still makes absolutely no sense to me.

Whatever your setup is, extra 60HP helps you take damage just as good as regeneration for 10 seconds.

Food regeneration stacks regardless whether or not you have Rad Child.

The only good way to use it is if you can somehow put 700 rads on yourself when your health is low, then wash it away.

Repair is important. It ties with guns for the handloader perk. The higher your repair, the more ammo you can handload. If you are using guns, I think it is almost a must. The juryrig is great, and I will always take it.

Survival ties in nicely with melee for the poisons alone.

Science is nice, so is lockpick. Speech is a must if you want to get several quests finished with little violence, or the most desirable outcome. There doesn't appear to be too many quests that require medicine, but is great if you use lots of stims.

Just my opinion.

While there are not many that require medicine, there are some and of those you'll need a highish skill.

REPAIR: Hand Loader is an amazing perk, so is Jury Rigging. Repair gets used in a few quests as well. Weapon Repair Kits save tons of caps also.
SPEECH/BARTER: You really only need one or the other.....a lot of quests give a choice of either to use to complete via conversation. Either one can net you Cass as a companion, but only Speech will get you Gannon (unless you are a Confirmed Bachelor, or stupid)
SCIENCE: A must for energy weapons users for overcharged ammo, and Math Wrath is a decent perk. Kind of an either/or with Lockpicking since there a few situations where either one achieves the same thing. Also needed to get the "best" ending for Jacobstown. Used in several other quests also.

The not-so-useful:
SNEAK: It's not so much that it isn't useful, but when you REALLY wish you had 100 sneak you can just use a Stealth Boy. Ninja perk-based Melee/Unarmed builds can be fun though, I'll admit.
LOCKPICK: Science's red-headed stepbrother. It allows a few quest shortcuts, but not many. Does provide an amazing alternative to the "run of death" required to meet the Boomers the first time though. Mostly provides useful but not really needed loot.
SURVIVAL: Rad Child is nice, but the skill is otherwise so....bleh. Poisons take too long to do their damage against the few enemies tough enough to really want to use them. The other craftables are meh.

Middle of the road:
MEDICINE: A small handful of quests use it, and it boosts healing. It's not bad. Living Anatomy is an interesting perk.

On hardcoe, Medicine hands-down is the best in my opinion.

the first thing to know is the design philosophy totally changed.

According to Beth's own GECK tutorial they considered it bad practice to put in things the player could never obtain linked to skill checks (locked doors, hacking, ect).

Obsidian has totally gone the other way. Without 100 lockpick or science there's at least one item you cannot obtain, and a few more rare guns that take lockpicking 75 or better.

Speech is a god skill in this game, you can avoid so much conflict, you can get better rewards, you can get through tough areas and even skip the last boss on some endings.

Repair, speech, and science.

Why barter when you can steal what you want?

So seems like most people think speech and science are the best. Glad to see both of those skills being useful - speech was really weak in Fallout 3. How about sneak? Seems like that would be really strong too. Take that skill and the Friend of the Night perk and you would have a strong sniper build.

Speech. It's been utterly essential to me. I wouldn't want to play a character who had Speech below 80.

Rad Child is one of the best perks in the game, but it's a perk not a skill, and the topic of this thread is the best non combat skills.

It's 60-80 times more effective than the regen implant if you stay at critical or deadly radiation (which I have done with no problems for about 120 of the 160 hrs I've logged so far during my first playthrough). It's +6HP or +8HP every second compared to +1HP every ten seconds for the regen implant.

Cass's perk helps counteract the STR hit with some whiskey and Brahmin or Bighorner steaks or Ant Nectar.

Regarding Speech, if you have Comprehension you only need to get to about 30-35 points below the highest speech check you want to pass. In my case that is Arcade Gannon's speech check which is 75, so speech of 45 (after finding all four Lying Congressional Style books for permanent +16 speech) is enough for me with Meeting People plus Benny's suit and some Party Mentats. The same goes for lockpick and science (if you get to 80 points after finding all the skill books, then you can pick any very hard lock or hack very hard computer terminals using magazines for the extra +20 boost).

Survival, Science and Medicine are also great non-combat skills to put points into, as they unlock some interesting recipes at the campfire and workbench.

On hardcoe: Medicine.
Otherwise I'd say Speech.
The game focuses around quests this time so speech is a lot more useful than it was in FO3.