Note to the reader: This build is an exercise in 'can it be done' and is highly discouraged to be used as a 'first time' build. If you have not yet finished Fallout New Vegas, I would advise that you stick to a more streamlined, and overall, easier build like a sneak/sniper combination. If however you're looking to make an 'ultimate' character for your next playthrough, or just enjoy discussing the mechanics of the game, read on.

So the goal of this entire build is to make a Swiss Army Knife character. That is a character that can pass any skill check in the game, be it a speech check, weapon requirement, or any other situation in which the game calculates a player's skill score. Ideally, that would require that the player have 100 in every skill. While the new skill point formula precludes that from happening, I believe that it is still very much possible to attain a situational 100 in every skill.

The build is reliant on a few things.

1.An Intelligence of 10 as soon as possible: For optimum efficiency, this requires a 'speed run' to the New Vegas Medical Clinic at level 1. It also requires being able to attain 4000 caps for the cost of the surgery. Both of these feats can be easily accomplished with a Stealthboy,a sufficient Luck score, and finally some seed money to gamble at the Atomic Wrangler and hit the jackpot on the slot machines.

2.Taking the Educated, Comprehension, and Tag! Perks: The extra skill points will put you right at where you need to be. I would suggest taking Educated first for the bonus skill points per level right away, and saving any skill books you find for when you are able to take Comprehension at level 6.

3.Every skill book is MANDATORY: They must not be used until you have gained the Comprehension perk in order to gain the full benefit of the bonus. As well, every book is required to be able to attain the full 100% in every skill.

The basic theory works like this: With magazines and Comprehension, no skill ever needs to be raised over 80. The few times that you need those extra skill points are dominantly situational, and so can be remedied simply by using a magazine. Take this a step further and add in the bonus granted by skill books (4 points per book with Comprehension) and multiply it by the number of available skill books.(4 for each skill except Science, which has an opportunity to collect a 5th skill book.) http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas_books and that gives a bonus of 16 skill points per skill. This lowers our requirement of 80 down to 64 for each skill.

So taking this information into account, is it possible to gain enough skill points through level ups, proper feat selection, and skill books to attain 64 in every skill? The answer is no. But it's very close and many of the hurdles can be overcome with multiple solutions.

The goal is to attain an aggregate 1040 skill points in the character's career. That's 80 skill points per skill, multiplied over 13 skills.

The starting statistics would be:

S: 5
P: 5
E: 8
C: 1
I: 9
A: 5
L: 7

These stats, once calculated will give an aggregate starting skill sum of 224.

1040-224= 816 points to go

Assuming you are able to install your intelligence implant at level 1, and max your intelligence at 10, this will yield 15 skill points per level, over 29 levels.

15*29 = 435

816-435 = 381 skill points to go.

Add in all the skill points earned from collecting books, AFTER you have gained the Comprehension Perk.

13 skills, 4 skill books per skill at 4 skill points per book. 13*4*4 = 208. Add another +4 for the extra Science Book that can be earned at Helios One and the result is 212 skill points
earned for all skill books.

381-212 = 169 points to go

While in New Vegas, you will no doubt want to get a full set of SPECIAL implants. Intelligence has the highest priority, but each SPECIAL point will raise it's derived skill by 2 points. In the case of Luck, 8 was selected, meaning the overall bonus to all skills is the Luck Score/ 2, rounded up. In this case 8/2 = 4. Once the Luck implant is purchased however, the equation becomes 9/2 = 4.5. Since Luck rounds it's results up, the Luck bonus to all skills is increased by 1 with a Luck Score of 9.

So every skill gains a +2 bonus for the stat bonus it receives from it's derived stat, and another +1 bonus from the added Luck point. This makes +3 to all skills, over 13 skills

3*13 = 39

169-39 = 130 points to go.

The Educated Perk will grant an additional 2 skill points per level. Assuming you take this perk at level 4, that's 25 levels where you will be able to enjoy this bonus.

25*2 = 50

130-50 = 80 points to go.

To get to the last 80 points, you will be required to take the tag perk. With 4 tag skills, that's another 60 points.

80-60 = 20 points to go.

The last 20, are a deficit that are split between the two lowest skills, Speech and Barter. This means that Speech and Barter will only be raised to 54, respectively, as opposed to 64 for all other skills.

In this build, Charisma is the dump stat. This was chosen as it's the only stat that affects only two skills. It was also chosen, as Charisma is the easiest stat to buff with chems and items. Mentats, Party Time Mentats, Moonshine, Regular Alcohol, certain clothing and armors, as well as Cass's Whiskey Rose perk, can all attribute to taking a lowly 2 Charisma and boosting it well beyond 10 for the short time that it's needed. Speech and Barter checks are very important and beneficial in NV, but they are also highly situational. What's more, the situations are very much controlled by the player, so it's easy to 'chem up' before an important Speech or Barter skill check.

This build is all theorycraft. The Swiss Army Knife can do everything well. What it cannot do is do one thing superbly for an indeterminate amount of time. As it's a situational savant, it has some drawbacks when compared to other specialist builds. Namely:

1. The Perks Unstoppable Force, Jury Rigging, Meltdown, Laser Commander, Nuka Chemist, and Slayer are unavailable in this build, due to their 90 skill point requirements.

2. All Combat skills are maxed out at 80. This means that using any weapon that requires a skill of 100 to use will result in a penalty, unless a magazine is read. Tier 3 weapons (skill requirement of 75) are still well within use without penalty.


So if you've read this far, I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on this. I've double-checked the math, but I will admit that math has never been my strongest skill. If there are any mistakes you are able to find, conditions I hadn't considered, or even tweaks and improvements that can be made to this build, I am eager to hear your input.

That is very interesting. But what happens when you run out of skill books. I would just prefer having 100 in skills, do i don't have to rely on items.

And i think that being a 'swiss army knife' is not as fun. But if it pleases y

Is this a hypothesis or have you actually done it? I would've thought getting to the medical clinic without a single level-up would be something of a challenge, even with a stealthboy (surely you'd need more than one?). Mightn't it be easier to drop a point of luck and have 10 INT from the off, forgoing the need to raise the implant cash so early on? Interesting idea though.

ZZZZ

It takes you a while to figure it out did you?

Also extra implant from extra endurance is kind of counter productive,,,,

To posters above: I have done three runs level 1 to Clinic already....

Seems like it would work, in theory. Downsides seem to be:

I don't think I could do much of this with out meta-gaming.

You don't need to use every skill in the game. Though the swiss army build has its attraction the fact that some skills overlap in their purpose kinda ruins the purpose of such a build. I'm thinking mostly of weapons skills here. Seems better to focus on one skill and get the upper tier weapons for that skill.

If I want an "access" build I focus on science, lockpick, speech.

A great base for any style of build, but after level 20, most of my skills are so high that there's not much my character can't do, even w/ a less efficent build.

After awhile, doing the whole min/max character build gets old.

It is usually the kind of character I make for my first run, but after that you might as well tweak your character to get a different gaming experience. The game is fairly easy in terms of combat difficulty, pretty much any character post lvl 20 will be able finish the game and complete the majority of quests.

Here's a change of heart. I'd take +20% armor and damage on Veronica or Cass over 15 extra skill points from extra INT...

I do like the sound of this and i will probably try it later on, but I am more of a person that picks a certain skill(s) to max out right now i think i have a build with almost no points in survival, melee, unarmed, medicine( i have a few in that but i rarely need stim packs, rad away, things of the sort) I think thats all if i did my math right i should be able to max out the rest to 84 then read the skill books to get them to 100. imo I am just the mini version of the swiss army knife

I'd like to thank everyone for taking the time to comment on this build and sharing your thoughts.

This build is still theorycraft, I have a few days off coming up and I plan to try it out then. I have managed to roll this character up and get him to Vegas at level 1. He's about 20xp from leveling up, and inside Mitch and Ralph's. If I can make it to the Atomic Wrangler without gaining any experience I should be set. Until that time, I wanted to get everyone's opinion. Most of the responses seem to indicate that this type of build wouldn't fit a certain play style, but I haven't seen anything that points out technical flaws in the build or out and out math errors which is highly encouraging.

The biggest reason for the 'Swiss Army Knife Build' is the idea that I want to be able to explore all the skills. In every Fallout I've played (talking FO1-FO3 and even FOnline) I've always leaned towards the sneak/speech/sniper/lockpick/science style of build. The idea behind the 'Swiss Army Knife' is to be able to explore other skills and abilities without having to surrender 'what works'.


The extra point of endurance bestows hp, skill points and Rad Resistance. It would only cost 4000 caps. How is that counter productive?

That setup is very close to what I usually do, I go with

Str 5
Per 5
End 5
Char 1
Int 9
Agil 6
Luck 9

I also get the Strength Implant, Perception Implant, Endurance Implant, Intelligence Implant, and the DT Implant.