Part 42: Mechanics 3: More Followers, More Feats!

Mechanics 3: More Followers, More Feats!

Minions

So we've had a chance at a few more followers, and it's worth it to take a moment to talk about them. We'll start in order of appearance with...



Cassidy. Acquired in Vault City, Cassidy can level up 4 times and stays a really useful ally throughout the course of the game. As a human character he can equip the best armor, and he's moderately durable overall. You can give Cassidy both rifles and shotguns, but since he starts with a shotgun I usually keep him that way. Might be worth it to give him a sniper rifle or hunting rifle if you really want to have him reach out and touch somebody. As far as comparisons go, Cassidy is a bit more fragile than Vic but has better aim and a higher crit chance. People have mentioned it before, but he also has a weak heart so you don't want to use drugs on him.

Level 2
ST: 6
PE: 7
EN: 4
CH: 5
IN: 4
AG: 6
LK: 9

HP: 92
Top 3 Skills: Small Guns 105%, Unarmed 100%, Melee Weapons 100%
Carry Weight: 175
AP: 8
Crit Chance: 21%

Level 3
ST: 6
PE: 7
EN: 4
CH: 5
IN: 4
AG: 6
LK: 9

HP: 104
Top 3 Skills: Small Guns 125%, Unarmed 120%, Melee Weapons 120%
Carry Weight: 175
AP: 9
Crit Chance: 26%

Level 4
ST: 6
PE: 8
EN: 4
CH: 5
IN: 4
AG: 7
LK: 9

HP: 116
Top 3 Skills: Small Guns 140%, Unarmed 130%, Melee Weapons 125%
Carry Weight: 150
AP: 9
Crit Chance: 31%

Level 5
ST: 6
PE: 8
EN: 4
CH: 5
IN: 4
AG: 7
LK: 9

HP: 120
Top 3 Skills: Small Guns 160%, Unarmed 140%, Melee Weapons 130%, Energy Weapons 130%
Carry Weight: 175
AP: 10
Crit Chance: 36%

Next up, we've got a character I didn't actually get: Lenny from Gecko. If you don't remember him, that's okay. It's this guy:



I'll be blunt and say it right out: Lenny sucks. He's terrible with guns, his skill as a doctor isn't all that useful, and he only levels up three times. He uses submachine guns and pistols, the later of which he's slightly less likely to shoot you in the back with. On the very small plus side, Lenny does have more HP than any other companion and comes with a slight natural resistance to all kinds of damage. You can actually dig up his father, still living, from a grave in Golgotha, and that's about the most interesting thing about him. Lenny's also a pain in the ass who requires you to have 5 charisma as long as you keep him in your party and may leave if you tell him to move out of the way too often. On the plus side, if you have him and Cassidy together in the party Cassidy will constantly complain about how bad he smells.

Level 1
ST: 4
PE: 6
EN: 5
CH: 3
IN: 7
AG: 5
LK: 5

HP: 129
AP: 7
Carry Weight: 125

Level 2
ST: 4
PE: 6
EN: 5
CH: 3
IN: 7
AG: 5
LK: 5

HP: 154
AP: 7
Carry Weight: 125

Level 3
ST: 4
PE: 6
EN: 6
CH: 4
IN: 7
AG: 5
LK: 5

HP: 181
AP: 7
Carry Weight: 125

Level 4
ST: 4
PE: 7
EN: 6
CH: 5
IN: 7
AG: 5
LK: 6

HP: 206
AP: 7
Carry Weight: 125

Next up, our favorite Mutant Sheriff, who is most certainly not a merry mutant:



Marcus is a beast, and he's always been one of my favorite NPCs. He's surly, irritable, and mean as hell in a fight. Marcus starts off tough as nails, and only gets better as he goes along. He makes a great pack mule, but you do you want to be a bit careful with him in combat. He can be a bit free with his minigun, and it's not uncommon for him to peg an ally or two. On the other hand, I've also had him shoot an enemy directly on the other side of me and somehow manage to kill them and not touch me. You can set his AI to charge and then fire his gun from right in front of the enemy. Some people give him energy weapons instead to reduce the chances of this happening, but the one thing you don't want to do is leave him with any kind of grenades. For some reason Marcus just loves to pull out grenades when he can't reach an enemy.

Level 2
ST: 10
PE: 8
EN: 10
CH: 3
IN: 7
AG: 8
LK: 9

HP: 145
Top Skills: Big Guns 99%, Energy Weapons 71%,
Carry Weight: 275
AP: 10
Crit Chance: 20%

Level 3
ST: 10
PE: 8
EN: 10
CH: 3
IN: 7
AG: 8
LK: 9

HP: 175
Top Skills: Big Guns 121%, Energy Weapons 85%,
Carry Weight: 275
AP: 11
Crit Chance: 22%

Level 4
ST: 10
PE: 9
EN: 10
CH: 3
IN: 7
AG: 9
LK: 9

HP: 190
Top Skills: Big Guns 129%, Energy Weapons 91%,
Carry Weight: 275
AP: 12
Crit Chance: 22%

Level 4
ST: 10
PE: 9
EN: 10
CH: 3
IN: 7
AG: 9
LK: 9

HP: 205
Top Skills: Big Guns 145%, Energy Weapons 100%,
Carry Weight: 275
AP: 13
Crit Chance: 24%

One thing to keep in mind with Marcus is that he can't wear armor. To compensate he has a decent natural armor class as well as damage resistance against all sources of damage that's actually pretty substantial.

Next up, our latest two sets of feats:

Level 9 Perks

Better Criticals
Requires: 6 PE, 6 LK, 4 AG
Repeatable: No
Effect: +20 bonus to the critical hit table
Thoughts: A useful perk for all kinds of playthroughs, this makes sure that your crits will do more damage and is actually required to get access to a number of the instant death crits since they're above 100 on the table.

Demolition Expert
Requires: 4 AG, Traps 90%
Repeatable: No
Effect: Your explosives always detonate on time, and will cause more damage.
Thoughts: I don't know how you'd even try to use timed explosives in combat, and it seems kind of situational. There's only a few places where you actually need to drop explosives in the game, and most times it doesn't matter if they go off a bit early. Pass.

Dodger
Requires: 6 AG
Repeatable: No
Effect: +5 to AC
Thoughts: Later on in the game your AC stops really mattering, and there are much easier ways to get a better AC than spending a perk slot for a measly five.

Explorer
Requires: Nothing
Repeatable: No
Effect: Makes it more likely that you'll find strange and interesting random encounters
Thoughts: If you're trying to hunt for secrets, great. Otherwise, a waste of a perk slot.

Karma Beacon
Requires: 6 CH
Repeatable: No
Effect: Doubles the effect of Karma reactions for conversational purposes
Thoughts: I don't think this really makes enough of a difference to be worthwhile, but I suppose you could do something with it to make it useful. Best for characters who are talking their way out of everything, obviously.

Light Step
Requires: 5 AG, 5 LK
Repeatable: No
Effect: Halves your chance of setting off traps
Thoughts: There are about 2-3 trapped areas in the game outside of the Temple of Trials. So… no. Just no. Most traps you can tank through with decent armor anyway.

Master Trader
Requires: 7 CH, 60% Barter
Repeatable: No
Effect: Reduces cost of goods by 25%
Thoughts: Not actually terrible, but not very useful anyway. You usually end up with so many spare guns and cash that money isn't an object, as weird as trading 3 10mm pistols for a book and a stimpack sounds. Another terrible perk.

Mutate!
Requires: Nothing
Repeatable: No
Effect: Allows you to replace one of your traits with another
Thoughts: There might be a few clever tricks you can play with this like getting Gifted later on when the penalty to skill bases doesn't hurt as bad or something like that, but that'd be a very gimmicky run.

Mysterious Stranger
Requires: 4 LK
Repeatable: No
Effect: Gives you a 38-50% (based on luck) chance to have a mysterious stranger come out and help you in battle.
Thoughts: Kind of fun from a role playing perspective, kind of useless otherwise. The ally evidently isn't that powerful, and if they die you don't get another one.

Pyromaniac
Requires: 75% Big Guns
Repeatable: No
Effect: +5 damage when using flamethrowers
Thoughts: Who the hell uses a flamethrower?

Sharpshooter
Requires: 7 PE, 6 IN
Repeatable: No
Effect: +2 PE for calculating range modifiers
Thoughts: The net effect of this is to reduce the accuracy penalty for long range targets, and it's actually very useful if you're going to start picking people off from 40-50 hexes away. This perk can boost your effective perception over 10, so it's actually not a bad one at all if you're doing a sniper character.

Speaker
Requires: 50% Speech
Repeatable: No
Effect: +20% Speech Skill
Thoughts: Nope.

Level 12 Perks - AKA the good stuff

Action Boy
Requires: 5 AG
Repeatable: Twice
Effect: +1 AP
Thoughts: Nothing complicated here, just 1 generic AP that you can do anything you want with. Great for increasing the effectiveness of slow characters, and for characters who are already pretty speed you can push your AP up as far as 12.

Cult of Personality
Requires: 10 CH
Repeatable: No
Effect: Your reputation is always a positive modifier
Thoughts: Doesn't matter who you talk to or what you've done, if you've got this Perk people will always like you. Kind of handy if you want to do absolutely everything and don't want people to peg you as a dick, but that requirement is pretty damn steep.

Gain (insert stat here)
Requires: 1-9 in chosen stat
Repeatable: One use per stat
Effect: +1 point to selected stat
Thoughts: Generically useful, and it can help you boost your characters a bit. Strength is the only one that's not terribly useful to boost, otherwise these points can be pretty helpful. The IN boost is bugged, however, and you don't get extra skill points for using this perk. One thing to consider is that temporary stat boosts can help you qualify for perks, so if you're trying to do this to get another perk just take some drugs.

HtH Evade
Requires: 75 Unarmed
Repeatable: No
Effect: +2 AC instead of +1 for each unused action point, add 1/12 of your unarmed skill to your AC at the end of your turn.
Thoughts: You can get some crazy high AC with this playing an unarmed character, and although the description says that your hands have to be empty that doesn't apply to knuckles and fist weapons. If you're going to be punching everything with a power fist anyway this won't hurt. I've had my AC up in the 70s using this perk.

Lifegiver
Requires: 4 EN
Repeatable: Twice
Effect: +4 HP per level up
Thoughts: Great way to get mountains of HP. Later on in the game you're in more danger from chip damage than anything except for a lucky critical, and this will help you survive fights much better.

Living Anatomy
Requires: 60% Doctor
Repeatable: No
Effect: +10% Doctor skill, +5 damage to living creatures
Thoughts: Another pretty awesome choice. That +5 damage is great for single shot weapons, and the bonus to the doctor skill isn't bad either. This isn't weapon specific, either, so it applies equally to your hand to hand and ranged attacks.

Master Thief
Requires: 50% Lockpick, 50% Steal
Repeatable: No
Effect: +15% Lockpick and Steal
Thoughts: You mean the two skills I already had to have above 50% in order to get this to work in the first place? Eh… no.

Medic
Requires: 40% First Aid or 40% Doctor
Repeatable: No
Effect: +10% First Aid and Doctor
Thoughts: Somehow even worse, especially as one of those skills can be increased with books. I suppose it might be useful to build your doctor up some with free points after getting a couple First Aid books but there are so many better options.

Mr. Fixit
Requires: 40% Repair or 40% Science
Repeatable: No
Effect: +10% Repair and Science
Thoughts: And just when you didn't think a Perk could get more useless, this one boosts two skills that can both be raised by skill books!

Tag!
Requires: Nothing
Repeatable: No
Effect: Allows you to Tag an additional skill
Thoughts: Absolutely amazing if you want to raise another skill up quickly, and even more useful due to a bug. Tagging a skill is supposed to give you a +20% bonus, but due to a bug it instead doubles the skill points you've put into the skill. Going from 150 to 300 in a skill (see the run-through of Fallout 2 in the Archives) is bad enough, but you can also take those points back if you don't finish your level and spend them on other skills. You could use this on something raised by a skill book and then suddenly end up with a couple of hundred extra skill points that you can apply however you want.

Weapon Handling
Requires: 6 or lower ST, 5 AG
Repeatable: No
Effect: +3 strength for the purpose of avoiding accuracy penalties
Thoughts: There are suits of armor in the game that give you +3 and +4 strength. No weapon requires more than a 7-8 ST. It's not hard to see how useless this is.