Fallout: New Vegas Character Builds

[TheFugitive]

We had one for Fallout 3. Why the hell not have one for New Vegas? Well, what do we know about levelling up in general? You have your regular perks, you have companion perks and you have challenge perks. Unsure of any quest perks yet. With only gaining a regular perk every second level, you're looking at selecting 15 perks from a list of 88, so there's a lot more weighing up. You also get 10 + 1/2 your Intelligence in skill points per level up, with half points carrying over. So with that in mind:

SPECIAL
STR: 6
PER: 6
END: 6
CHA: 5
INT: 6
AGI: 6.
LCK: 5

Traits
Kamikaze - I'll happily suffer a -2 DT penalty in exchange for more AP.

Skills
Tagged: Guns, Lockpick, Repair
Priorities: Energy Weapons, Guns, Lockpick, Repair, Science.

Regular Perks
2: Intense Training. I would argue the extra SPECIAL point is worth more than any of the other level 2 perks. Black Widow/Confirmed Bachelor could have a case made for them though, given the majority of male enemies. I don't think Retention is worth it.
4: Educated (INT 4). An extra +52 skill points to spend? Don't mind if I do.
6: Comprehension (INT 4). An additional skill point for reading books and double the skill points for reading magazines.
8: Strong Back (STR 5, END 5). What can I say? I get overloaded easily.
10: Finesse. A free 5% Critical Chance? How could you say no?
12: (Scrounger?)
14: (Light Step?)
16: Better Criticals. (PER 6, LCK 6). +50% damage with critical hits isn't anything to sneeze at.
18: (Action Boy?)
20: Grim Reaper's Spirit. The 20 AP instead of completely restored AP hurts, but I'll take what AP I can get.
22: (Concentrated Fire?)
24: (Center of Mass?)
26: Nerves of Steel (AGI 7).
28: Undecided.
30: Undecided.

Companion perks
I figure the best choices for companions are Raul and ED-E. The hope is that Regular Maintenance is a great companion perk and does slow down the item decay significantly. Enhanced Sensors should be useful for Nightkins and in general for wandering around in open spaces. Boone's Spotter perk has been of debatable value, but I have to admit, the guy is awesome with a sniper rifle, so I'll probably alternate between the two.

What is everyone else doing?

[skitzor]

i don't remember the exact numbers, but i emphasised strength, intelligence and luck over the others, and especially cut down on charisma. big mistake. SO many things contain speech checks in this game, it is insane. i ended spending quite a few points in my early levels to get that up so i could actually do missions.

i tagged guns, lockpick and science. i would have gone with guns, lockpick and speech if i did it again.

i picked the +3% damage perk with 15% fast weapon degradation. i probably shouldn't have. i would probably take that kamikaze perk if i could do it again.

i picked rapid reload as my first perk, and i probably would pick that again.
i have educated, comprehension, strong back, and then commando. next will be finesse.
level 16 is going to be hard to choose. tag, better crits or action boy. will have to make up for them in later levels.

another thing, if a perk requires x amount of a SPECIAL stat, can items subsidise the requirements? that is, if a perk requires 6 perception, and i only have 5 base, with 1+ from an item, can i still take the perk?

[Mythor]

I picked Guns as one of my main skills, thinking there wouldn't be any/many energy weapons and ammo early on as they were scarce in 3.
Then of course I found an energy rifle and plenty of ammo lying around all over the place in NV!

Also went lockpick and repair since I figured those're skills that're needed throughout.

May start over and go energy weapons though, now I know you can actually find them.

And one of my starting perks was Wild Wasteland. Still no idea what it does.

[Commander Boom]

"Bah! Too many little men on this team!"

Strength, Endurance, Intelligence
10 10 7

Everything else: 3-5

Unarmed, Science, Survival.

Very Hard, Realistic.

[Minkelz]

I maxed intel and agi, and put 9 into luck. I took all my points out of endurance and charisma. Intel is important because it governs skill gain, agi is for guns and sneak, luck was for casino abuse and crits. Having low strength is a real pain because you get encumbered so easily so I left that at 5 or 4. Although it's nice sometimes, quests* (*non trivial quests) never require you to have a certain science/first aid/barter/speech, there's always the brute force method.

I dumped all my skill points into guns and sneak, I think they're both maxed now at level 11.

For the traits I took all the dmg modifiers and 3% crit one, as well as the extra skills at each level up. Basically my play style has been sneak and 1 shot whoever, repeat. It feels very abusive when the AI is so glitchy enemies don't even agro you when you start taking them out 1 by 1 in a group from long range. It's kind of like playing a post-apocalyptic Splinter Cell.

I think for my next run through I'll try a melee/explosive tank character. I've used dynamite and claymores a bit and they're so much fun. Reverse pickpocketing mines is amazing.

[skitzor]

comprehension is a bit of meh in new vegas as there are only 4 books per skill, and going from +3 to +4 is much worse than +1 to +2 for FO3. i regret taking it now.

my tips: don't take comprehension, don't forget about speech.

as for 10 in intelligence, is that really necessary? how many skills do you actually want to max, and how many points is that going to take?

[Minkelz]

Well if I could I'd max all of them. But yeah I'm really bad at books. I try to rush through stuff and always forget to check if stuff is just cool graphics or a useful item.

[TheFugitive]

I have to strongly advise that you don't put any SPECIAL stats at 10 since... *spoilers ahoy*

Hidden: show

While there aren't bobbleheads in the game, later on in the game, you can increase SPECIAL stats via implants. These implants have to be bought from an NPC and you are limited to how many you can use by your initial END score. Have an END of 5, you can't use more than 5. Have 9 and you can use 9. From what I've read, the implants are +1 STR, PER, END, CHA, INT, AGI, LCK and two other implants, one that offers +4 DT and another that offers +1 HP every 3 seconds Regen.

Tags: I'm starting to question what I picked. Guns is useful, don't get me wrong, but I question Repair and Lockpick.

As Cyberpunk mentioned, Speech is a big part now and it's not a case of 'fail speech check, reload, success'. I would probably take that over Repair, which doesn't seem to affect exactly how much you can repair an item.

Lockpick and Science were always going to be my two 'juggling' choices for tags and I initally chose Lockpick because I thought there would be more doors to unlock and safes could always be picked if there was a terminal nearby I couldn't use. While I still see the value in tagging Lockpick, Science does seem to be an equally powerful choice.

Skills: With the shifting on skill tags, it's time for a refocus on skill priorities. I've never been a big Unarmed and Melee Weapon player, so those get shifted to the bottom. Guns, Lockpick/Science and Speech are ones to heavily dump into. To be exact, this is what I have in mind:

1. Guns
2. Lockpick
3. Science
4. Speech
5. Energy Weapons
6. Explosives
7. Survivial
8. Medicine
9. Sneak
10. Repair
11. Barter
12. Melee Weapons
13. Unarmed

Comprehension: I'm going to have to disagree with this one. Even if you go 10 INT at the start and you take Educated at level 4, there's no way you're going to have enough skillpoints to get everything up to decent levels (granted I haven't played through enough to determine the 'decent' point for skills). The change from a temporary +10 skillpoints per book reading to +20 is too good to pass up.

[Mythor]

Just tried Energy Weapons on a new character and the Laser Pistol is garbage, even when you repair it up a bunch.
Really can't recommend picking it up early. Going back to my Guns character I think.

[r107]

My build is a little close to home .

S - 6
P - 5
E - 5
C - 5
I - 9
A - 5
L - 5

also took the weird wacky wasteland perk.

my tagged skills were energy weapons, medicine, and science.

I take intense training a lot, and I took the extra 2 skill points per level when I first could.

Also the energy rifle you find is freaking awesome, I love it. Unfortunately I have **** all energy ammo.

[skitzor]

not really a build, but can't really be bothered making a new thread.

if you want money, good karma and experience, go to vault 3. so good. spent ages in there, think i came out with 8000+ caps. now to buy some implants :>

[WorthlesSnypeR]

comprehension is a bit of meh in new vegas as there are only 4 books per skill.

Damn, didn't know that . I assumed it was like FO3 with tonnes of books hidden in the game, thus making it worthwhile to get it. Oh well there's always my 2nd run through .