Part 8: Of Henchmen and Perks

Update 8: Of Henchmen and Perks

Henchmen

Now that we've got a pair of henchmen, it's probably a good time to talk about the improvements in the follower system for Fallout 2 and explain how it all works. One major difference that I can't show here easily is that your followers will occasionally gain a level when you do and get additional HP, better skills, and increased stats.



Sulik has a unique command to provide hints for a given area, but otherwise all of the commands we can give are the same for everyone. Your followers can attempt to heal themselves (most aren't very good at it), and you can give them a number of commands.



Distance commands aren't very exact, but can help prevent your group from traveling in a giant bunch. It's also useful to keep your ranged fighters away from you so that you can create a crossfire. This also affects how they move when you're not in combat, so you might need to adjust the distance based on obstacles. It can make them bunch up in doorways, but you have a shove command to move your henchmen is necessary.



Under weapons, your followers will start off by giving you a breakdown of what kind of weapons they can use. For Sulik that's hammers, knives, submachine guns, and his hands and feet… as he says, he's a handful. You can also tell them to put away their armor and weapons, which is pretty handy in some situations where people won't take kindly to you or your followers having a weapon out. Having them take their armor off just makes it easier to get it away from them if you need it for another purpose.



Speaking of which, you no longer have to steal from your followers when you want to trade items like in the original Fallout. You can just have them hand over anything other than money and give them whatever you want so they can act as your pack mules.



Clicking on combat control from the main screen brings us to this page, where we can set their AI behavior and tell them to use their best armor and weapon. Anybody who's played Fallout knows the frustration of having their characters decide to ignore the half dozen pistols you've given them to charge into battle wielding a knife while wearing the same armor they were wielding when you met them. Being able to fix that goes a long way toward making characters useful and keeping them around. We also get a little summary screen, which shows us some basic information on the characters. Sulik is indeed a beast with his 85 HP, and he's only going to get better. We won't have that until around level 15.



The custom AI entry allows you to select from a number of options to try and customize how your followers behave, with a greater or lesser degree of success. It's not really all that necessary to use this sub-screen, but I'm sure a lot of people who are familiar with the game are interested in the Burst setting.



Taking a closer look at it, you can see that some of the settings are greyed out and not available for all characters. Sulik can only be so careful with a submachine gun, which is a very good reason to never give him one. Characters who are more accurate can be terrifyingly so; a later character who specializes in big guns once stood directly behind me and fired a minigun at two enemies on the other side of me, somehow managing to not hit me with a single bullet. I'd told him to be sure he wouldn't hit me, and he was sure he wouldn't so he went ahead.



We can close out with a look at Vic. He's got less HP than Sulik, but he's also got an additional skill. If you're trying to use repair skill, Vic will sometimes step in and do a better job than you can. It's not exactly reliable and sometimes he's kind of dumb about it.

Perks

As I mentioned before, Perks are upgrades to your character that you get every 3 levels (4 if you have the skilled trait) that are almost universally positive. A good set of perks can define your character and make a lot of difficult tasks much easier. One note about perks is that if you take drugs to raise your stats this will allow you to qualify for perks. I'll go over the various perks we've had access to now:

Level 3 Perks

Awareness
Requires: 5 PE
Repeatable: No
Effect: Lets you see what weapons enemies have and their current/max HP.
Thoughts: Not bad if you're new to the game, and useful if you ever need to know exactly how much HP an enemy has. This is actually useful more than you would think.

Quick Pockets
Requires: 5 AG
Repeatable: No
Effect: You only use 2 AP to go into your inventory instead of 4 during a fight.
Thoughts: A lot of people find this one really useful, since once you're in the inventory you can use whatever items you want and reload all of your weapons before clicking out of it.

Magnetic Personality
Requires: Less than 10 CH.
Repeatable: No
Effect: You can have an extra follower above what your CH would normally allow.
Thoughts: Not bad if you want to have a large entourage, but if you want that you'd usually just put some more points into CH.

Scout
Requires: 7 PE
Repeatable: No
Effect: You see a square further on the world map, and you have a higher chance of finding special encounters.
Thoughts: Useful if you want to go hunting for oddities. I'll probably put this on another character and go wandering the wasteland to show some of those off.

Strong Back
Requires: 6 ST, 6 EN
Repeatable: 3 times
Effect: +50 max carry weight.
Thoughts: Not bad if you're not likely to have many friends and are thus going to have to carry a lot of stuff yourself. That said, there are better things to spend a perk on.

Survivalist
Requires: 6 EN, 6 IN, 40% Outdoorsman Skill
Repeatable: 3 times
Effect: +25% bonus to Outdoorsman
Thoughts: Who thought this was a good idea? It's a one time bonus, not a bonus to your performance or anything else. It's basically 25 free skill points if you were planning on spending any on Outdoorsman, which you shouldn't.

Thief
Requires: None
Repeatable: No
Effect: +10% bonus to sneak, lockpick, steal, and traps.
Thoughts: Same as Survivalist, only it's 40 free skill points. I suppose it's alright if you're playing that kind of character.

Toughness
Requires: 6 EN, 6 LK
Repeatable: 3 times
Effect: +10% damage resistance
Thoughts: Makes you a bit more of a bullet sponge. It's a straight 10% reduction in normal damage, but the difference between taking 18 damage versus 20 isn't that much. You'll also probably hit near max damage resistance in the game anyway.

Bonus HtH Damage
Requires: 6 AG, 6 ST
Repeatable: 3 times
Effect: +2 to your max damage with hand to hand and melee weapons.
Thoughts: 2 damage isn't worth it, but if you're insistent...

Earlier Sequence
Requires: PE 6
Repeatable: 3 times
Effect: You get +2 sequence
Thoughts: Works like an extra point of perception for the purpose of determining initiative. Since you already have 6 PE to get this, you've already got a pretty good score in that.

Faster Healing
Requires: EN 6
Repeatable: 3 times
Effect: +2 to your healing rate.
Thoughts: Might make you recover a bit more quickly while traveling or otherwise, but most of the time you're not going to want to be sitting around healing when you could be doing things.

Healer
Requires: 7 PE, 6 IN, 40% First Aid Skill
Repeatable: Twice
Effect: Heal 4-10 additional HP when using First Aid and Doctor
Thoughts: This isn't a bad one, although you'd have to have a pretty good first aid skill to use it in the first place.

Here and Now
Requires: Nothing
Repeatable: No? Everything I've found says this is also a level 9 perk, so now I'm not sure.
Effect: Gain an immediate level up
Thoughts: This gets you nothing that playing for another half an hour to an hour would get you. Not worth the trade off for one of your few perk slots. I've actually never gotten this one, which is also why I don't know for sure if it's repeatable or not.

Night Vision
Requires: 6 PE
Repeatable: No
Effect: Reduces darkness level by 20%
Thoughts: Already covered this. It doesn't hurt, but it doesn't help that much.

Smooth Talker
Requires: 4 IN
Repeatable: 3 times
Effect: You get conversation choices as though you had an extra point of IN
Thoughts: If you're playing a dumb character, you're not doing it to see what smart people might say. Likewise if you have a smart character you've already decided to go that route.

Swift Learner
Requires: 4 IN
Repeatable: 3 times
Effect: +5% to your experience earned
Thoughts: This one sounds really nice, but you have to realize that Fallout 2 requires your current level times 1000 for the next level. One rank of this will at most get you another level by the end of the game, and by the time you get another chance at a perk you'll have much better options.

Cautious Nature
Requires: 3 PE
Repeatable: No
Effect: +3 perception when determining distance in random encounters
Thoughts: Doesn't make much of a difference either way, really, and most of the time you want enemies close so you can shoot and/or punch them.

Comprehension
Requires: 6 IN
Repeatable: No
Effect:+50% more skill gained when reading books
Thoughts: Books have diminishing returns, teaching a lot at lower levels and little at higher levels. This perk will get steadily less useful the more you use it, and you can only increase a few skills with books.

Kama Sutra Master
Requires: 5 EN, 5 AG
Repeatable: No
Effect: None, really. Might change a bit of dialogue.
Thoughts: You can also replace this one with good old fashioned practice. No, really, there's a perk you get for having a lot of sex that replaces this one.

Presence
Requires: 6 CH
Repeatable: 3 times
Effect: Improves initial reaction by 10% when meeting people
Thoughts: You make most of your money after the first impression in Fallout, so not so useful.

Stonewall
Requires: 6 ST
Repeatable: No
Effect: You're 50% less likely to get knocked down.
Thoughts: If you get knocked down it's going to be somewhat infrequent, and you only lose a couple AP getting up anyway.

Level 6 Perks

Bonus Move
Requires: 5 AG
Repeatable: Twice
Effect: +2 AP that can only be used to move
Thoughts: Pretty handy, especially if you're using a hand to hand character since you have to get to the enemy before you can kill them. Not so useful for everyone else, but not terrible either.

Empathy
Requires: 7 PE, 5 IN
Repeatable: No
Effect: Color codes conversation. Blue is good, red is bad.
Thoughts: Very helpful if you don't know the conversations inside and out. It would actually probably be interesting to play with this and see if I'm missing any good conversational gambits.

Educated
Requires: 6 IN
Repeatable: 3 times
Effect: +2 skill points per level
Thoughts: This will add about 40 extra skill points for each level you buy, so that's not an insignificant boost. It can help make up for some of the shortfall if you take gifted, and if you have nothing else you want to take this isn't a bad option.

Gambler
Requires: 50% Gambling Skill
Repeatable: No
Effect: +20% bonus to Gambling Skill
Thoughts: About as useful as all the other instant skill perks, which is to say not very. Especially since it only helps your gambling skill.

Ghost
Requires: 60% Sneak Skill
Repeatable: No
Effect: +20% sneak skill in dark conditions
Thoughts: If you're planning a stealth character, go nuts. Surprisingly, however, you will end up doing most of your sneaking in the daytime.

Harmless
Requires: 50% Steal Skill, Karma of 50 or better.
Repeatable: No
Effect: +20% Steal Skill
Thoughts: Another way to boost your steal skill, if you plan on playing a thief. You can stack it up with a few other skills to get a pretty formidable bonus.

More Criticals
Requires: 6 LK
Repeatable: 3 times
Effect: +5% critical chance
Thoughts: This will double your chance of getting a critical if you have 6 LK, which is actually a pretty sweet deal. There are much better critical increasing perks later, but this is a pretty good one.

Negotiator
Requires: 50% Barter Skill, 50% Speech
Repeatable: No
Effect: +10% Barter and Speech Skills
Thoughts: Speech is one of the better skills to boost if you're going to boost something. Barter, not so much.

Pack Rat
Requires: None
Repeatable: No
Effect: Carry Weight +50 lbs
Thoughts: Pretty much the same as Strong Back, minus having any stat requirements. This makes it much easier to use for characters who actually use it. Might be worthwhile for characters who are using Small Frame.

Silent Running
Requires: 6 AG, 50% Sneak Skill
Repeatable: No
Effect: Lets you run while sneaking
Thoughts: If you're going to play a thief, this is a necessity just for the sake of your mental health. Walking is slow slow slow, and if you accidentally click on an area twice you're going to take off running and break out of sneak mode. All such worries are gone if you have this perk.

Adrenaline Rush
Requires: ST under 10
Repeatable: No
Effect: Get a +1 bonus to ST when you have less than 50% HP
Thoughts: Strength doesn't do that much for you, and when you're at less than 50% HP your priority is probably going to be on getting more HP, not hitting people.

Bonus Ranged Damage
Requires: 6 AG, 6 LK
Repeatable: Twice
Effect: +2 max damage for ranged attacks
Thoughts: The damage spread on most guns is big enough that you'll barely notice the +2 damage. Luke's .44 revolver has a damage of 6-18 right now, so 6-20 isn't much of a difference. This might apply to every bullet on a burst attack, making it more useful for characters build around those.

Pathfinder
Requires: 6 EN, 60% Outdoorsman Skill
Repeatable: Twice
Effect: Reduces travel time on the world map by 25%
Thoughts: Doesn't really do anything in game, but can be pretty convenient if you're impatient about watching your characters move around on the map.

Ranger
Requires: 6 PE
Repeatable: No
Effect: +15% Outdoorsman, increased chance to find special encounters
Thoughts: Another one I'll probably take to create a special character to find special encounters with. The +15% Outdoorsman also helps you choose to avoid those encounters if you want to as well.

Salesman
Requires: 50% Barter Skill
Repeatable: No
Effect: +20% Barter Skill
Thoughts: Another skill increaser. Barter isn't really that useful, so this isn't useful.

Fortune Finder
Requires: 8 LK
Repeatable: No
Effect: You find more money in random encounters
Thoughts: Most of your random encounters aren't going to result in money, so this is functionally useless.

Heave Ho!
Requires: Nothing
Repeatable: 3 times
Effect: +2 strength to determine range with thrown weapons.
Thoughts: Thrown weapons are crap, thus this perk is crap. QED.

Quick Recovery
Requires: 5 AG
Repeatable: No
Effect: Getting up only requires 1 AP
Thoughts: Probably a better bet than the perk that keeps you from being knocked down in the first place, but that's not saying much.

Rad Resistance
Requires: 6 EN, 4 IN
Repeatable: Twice
Effect: +15% radiation resistance
Thoughts: You can take a pill that gives you +50% rad resistance, which doesn't cost you a perk slot. Pass.

Snakeeater
Requires: 3 EN
Repeatable: Twice
Effect: +25% poison resistance
Thoughts: You don't get poisoned often enough to make this useful, and if you do get poisoned you'll have copious unused antidotes sitting around.