Introduction

There isn't one best character that you can use in the game. Many different builds can be effective. In this section we'll describe the character we used when writing the walkthrough, and discuss some of the reasoning behind the decisions we made.


Gender

Gender doesn't make a lot of difference in the game. It won't change the dialogue at all. The only difference between the sexes is that females are slightly smaller than males, and so they can fit into narrower spaces. This is an issue in Macomb, but nowhere else, so you're free to make whatever gender choice you'd like.


Tagged Skills

We've heard people claim that they've played Fallout Tactics using melee characters, but from our experience it's best to play with ranged characters -- and the longer the range, the better. So we tagged small weapons, energy weapons, and doctor. It would also make sense to tag sneak (and then use the tag! perk to build up energy weapons later), but sneak doesn't work very well late in the game, and so we never put much emphasis on it.

There aren't any great doctors in the game, and so by tagging the skill yourself, you can take care of that problem, plus gain extra experience from healing other characters.

You'll also receive numerous books in the game, and so there isn't any reason to tag "book skills," such as piloting, first aid, traps, and science.


Traits

Since Fallout Tactics is a combat game rather than a RPG, combat is very important, and skills aren't. As long as you tag three useful skills for your character, and as long as you read all of the books that come your way, you won't have to worry about skills too much. So we'd easily recommend the gifted trait since it will add to your primary statistics while only hurting your skills. We'd also recommend the fast shot trait since it helps heavy gunners and balances out for snipers, but if you don't like that trait, the small frame trait is pretty safe as well. Giving up some carrying capacity isn't a big deal when you have five other squad members to share the load.


Primary Statistics

Given that we selected the gifted trait, and given that we wanted our character to be a sniper, we emphasized sniper statistics such as perception, agility, and luck. Charisma isn't very important in the game (basically, it only lets you recruit new squad members more quickly, but we liked the early squad members more than the more advanced ones, and so it didn't help us any), and so we didn't rate it very highly.

This is how we'd recommend you allocate your statistics: 6 ST, 9 PE, 6 EN, 4 CH, 6 IN, 8 AG, 8 LK. You can play around with the numbers if you'd like, but you'll need at least 8 PE, 6 IN, 8 AG and 6 LK to select the "good" perks.


Perks

As we've suggested elsewhere, you should concentrate on combat perks when building your character. Here are the perks we selected.

3. Thief. This was our lone non-combat perk. We selected it to make up slightly for taking the gifted trait, and to make the early part of the game easier to play. If you're more interested in looking ahead, you might want to skip selecting a perk at this level, and take two perks at level 6.

6. Bonus Ranged Damage (6 AG, 6 LK).

9. Sharpshooter (7 PE, 6 IN).

12. Bonus Ranged Damage (Rank 2).

15. Bonus Rate of Fire (6 PE, 6 IN, 7 AG).

18. More Criticals (6 LK).

21. Better Criticals (6 PE, 4 AG, 6 LK).

24. Sniper (80% Small Guns, 8 PE, 8 AG). The sniper perk requires level 24, and you'll probably only hit level 24 at the end of the final mission, so there isn't any reason to build your character around this perk. We've also heard conflicting reports about whether it works or not, but we had it for so little time, we couldn't tell.

If you're playing in a turn-based mode, then perks like action boy and bonus move can be useful. Other perks, like mutate and gain statistic, should only be used on your squad members. You shouldn't select perks like educated and comprehension for any character, because they're not nearly powerful enough to be worthwhile.