Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Game News More on playable races in Fallout 3

Saint_Proverbius

Administrator
Staff Member
Joined
Jun 16, 2002
Messages
11,475
Location
Behind you.
Tags: Damien Foletto; Fallout 3 (Van Buren)

Per <a href="http://forums.interplay.com/viewtopic.php?t=25402&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30">this thread</a>, the fine chaps at <A href="http://www.blackisle.com">Black Isle</a> are talking about why there should be playable Orcs.. I mean.. Supermutants and ghouls in <i>Fallout 3</i>. Here's a bit from our good buddy <b>Puuk</b>:
<br>
<br>
<blockquote>But ghouls live a VERY long time. It's not unreasonable to have a ghoul be more than 150 years old, or more. Also, playing a ghoul, or super mutant, would result in a lot of prejudicial treatment by the smooth-skinned locals. It would definitely be a different playing experience. The player would have to carefully weigh how much emphasis he would put into his speech skills just to avoid getting in a lot of fights, or at least heavy emphasis on stealth skills. Also, not every human would instantly go homicidal on a ghoul or super mutant on first sight. In fact, a ghoul or super mutant might be able to use their scary appearance as an intimidation tool. Just because the PC is a ghoul or super mutant does not mean they must fight through the whole game; the player would just have to play strategically.</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
I really like the idea of "<i>Well, if you're going to play a supermutant, you need to be charming</i>." Does he know what the Master's Army did? I can really see an NPC saying, "<i>I like the cut of that mutant's jib, that's why I'm going to forget about the whole GENOCIDE THE HUMANS thing</i>."
<br>
<br>
Spotted this at <A href="http://www.nma-fallout.com">No Mutants Allowed</a>.
<br>
 

Jed

Cipher
Joined
Nov 3, 2002
Messages
3,287
Location
Tech Bro Hell
Saint_Proverbius said:
I really like the idea of "<i>Well, if you're going to play a supermutant, you need to be charming</i>." Does he know what the Master's Army did? I can really see an NPC saying, "<i>I like the cut of that mutant's jib, that's why I'm going to forget about the whole GENOCIDE THE HUMANS thing</i>."
I'm going to play a chaotic-good Supermutant named Drippy that dual-wields mini-guns and travels with his pet Wannamingo named Gooeyfart. We'll travel the land and help out all the other adventurers! Wee!!!

But seriously folks, what the fuck is up with JE these days? Was he kidnapped by marketing and subjected to Clockwork Orange-style brainwashing? Is he so bummed he couldn't make Jefferson that he is unconsciously trying to make FO3 into BG3? Or is he just trying to gradually let us down since the decadence of Everything that Was Good about FO is "out of his control"?
 

Saint_Proverbius

Administrator
Staff Member
Joined
Jun 16, 2002
Messages
11,475
Location
Behind you.
I have to wonder about the FO3 into BG3 thing, considering:

  • Real time combat included.
  • Co-op multiplayer planned
  • Playable races
  • Dual wielding
  • Making weapon specialty in to perks while reducing the combat skills(very 3E idea)
  • Controllable NPC party members

Frankly, I'm just waiting for him to ask what types of spells we want for Fallout 3.
 

chiefnewo

Liturgist
Joined
Jun 18, 2003
Messages
118
<quote>The player would have to carefully weigh how much emphasis he would put into his speech skills just to avoid getting in a lot of fights, or at least heavy emphasis on stealth skills.</quote>

So basically if I choose to play a supermutant or a ghoul, I'm forced into taking speech skills or else I have to wipe out everything I meet? Gee, what an abundance of choice.
 

Sol Invictus

Erudite
Joined
Oct 19, 2002
Messages
9,614
Location
Pax Romana
I am convinced that there are chimpanzees running the show at Black Isle Studios.

If I recall the Fallout 1 ending correctly, it mentioned that most of the supermutants were killed on site, by those who were previously victimized by the Supermutant army, or by those who were simply fucking creeped out by the way they looked. It at least said something of that sort.

Fallout 2 rather sucked for not following up with that. Why didn't having Marcus in your party have more effect?
 

Voss

Erudite
Joined
Jun 25, 2003
Messages
1,770
I think the chimps are called Interplay.

I really want to see the initial set up for the game...

"While travelling, you stop in a bar, and a mysterious stranger approaches..."

The thread on the interplay forums is down right frigthening...people want super mutants in power armor, half-mutants/half deathclaws and all sorts of crap.
M doubts are growing...FO3 is looking more and more like just another game where the goal is to pick up phat loot, and get levels and stats.
 

Jed

Cipher
Joined
Nov 3, 2002
Messages
3,287
Location
Tech Bro Hell
Saint_Proverbius said:
[*] Making weapon specialty in to perks while reducing the combat skills(very 3E idea)
Very bad idea. Per the Interplay thread linked elsewhere on this forum, I was just aghast at all the changes JE wants to make to SPECIAL. The man wants to gut what is arguably the best CRPG rule-set ever. Tragic, just tragic. I just fucking hope Interplay goes bankrupt so that Troika can buy the rights to Fallout and SPECIAL and that fucking JE gets mobbed Frankenstein-style, complete with pitchforks and torches.
 

Icarus

Novice
Joined
Jul 5, 2003
Messages
2
Hmm. I must say I'm pretty nervous about the evolving development of FO3 at the moment. While some of the ideas are promising, it'll be interesting to see if they manage to actually pull it off successfully.

The whole thing with race selection seems to have echoes of FO:BOS. While I take the view that presenting more choice in an RPG is a GOOD idea, I find it difficult to envisage how one could create a story in the FO universe (wasteland?) with such wildly different races. I mean how would a supermutant start out? WHY would he need to start out?

Story-wise, in the later iterations of FO supermutants were beginning to be somewhat accepted in certain societies, usually out of necessity (viz. Broken Hills of FO2). After all, the wasteland is still a hostile place and if I'm not mistaken it's been over a century since the destruction of the Hub by the supermutant army, so people MAY be willing to accept their contributions in a society. That said however, I find it difficult to accept that people will overcome bigotry no matter how dire the situation, much less accept a hulking brute of low intelligence as their saviour. So...no, I don't think the race selection is a good idea.

It's probably a good idea to get away from the whole Vault 13 descendant thing though as it's starting to wear a bit thin. As someone mentioned on these forums (and I'm paraphrasing here) it's starting to smack of " the whole destiny thing". And we hardly need FO to become more like D&D now do we?

Finally, if I may make a comment, is ragging on Black Isle/Interplay really necessary? Heaven knows that that they've made some...questionable decisions in the past but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. By all means voice the concerns, then wait and see what the end result is....

...and if it sucks...THEN we can lynch them....
 

Spazmo

Erudite
Joined
Nov 9, 2002
Messages
5,752
Location
Monkey Island
Icarus said:
Finally, if I may make a comment, is ragging on Black Isle/Interplay really necessary? Heaven knows that that they've made some...questionable decisions in the past but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. By all means voice the concerns, then wait and see what the end result is....

...and if it sucks...THEN we can lynch them....

We believe in preventive medicine. In our humble estimation, it's not too late. JE has hopefully been telling us all this stuff in order to get some constructive criticism (although his preference of SA over DAC or NMA is worrying...). Therefore, if we complain loud enough and maybe intelligently enough, we might just be able to show JE a better way to make FO3.

We hope.
 

Icarus

Novice
Joined
Jul 5, 2003
Messages
2
Thanks for the reply Spazmo. It wan't my intention some across as one objecting to constructive criticism, provided of course that the critcism is.... well...constructive. Sorry about that. One can only hope however that the developers are actually reading the forums to get an idea of what should be included in the new FO, and more importantly are able to discern a GOOD idea from a REALLY BAD one.

I really, really want this game to be good, but I'm so afraid....

"Mommy, I'm scared....."
 

Sol Invictus

Erudite
Joined
Oct 19, 2002
Messages
9,614
Location
Pax Romana
I'm going to finally come out and say this:

SA Forum goers are some of the most idiotic, arrogant, stupid pissants who think that they're smarter than they really are because they're forum members of a "satrical" website on the internet. The fact that they pay 10 dollars just to become members of this little movement is sheer evidence of their idiocy. Are they that deprived of social contact?

Granted, they aren't as dumb as the people at Interplay's forums but their step on the ladder isn't all that far away from the shit pit.

I've nothing against Somethingawful.com as a website, and one should know to treat the Forums as a separate entity.

Who do you think made JeffK popular?
 

DarkUnderlord

Professional Throne Sitter
Staff Member
Joined
Jun 18, 2002
Messages
28,343
Perhaps they're trying to salvage what they had made of Jefferson and turn it into FO3 with little work as possible for themselves. It's just sad about JE though. Seems like he'd be more at home designing a new game, rather than working on a well-established title.
 

Dan

Liturgist
Joined
Oct 21, 2002
Messages
255
Location
Israel
Spazmo said:
We believe in preventive medicine. In our humble estimation, it's not too late. JE has hopefully been telling us all this stuff in order to get some constructive criticism (although his preference of SA over DAC or NMA is worrying...). Therefore, if we complain loud enough and maybe intelligently enough, we might just be able to show JE a better way to make FO3.

We hope.

I'm thinking JE is asking for feedback to avoid what happened with Fo:BoS.
Meaning, he doesn't really want feeadback, but he wants everyone to see him asking for one.
 

Crazy Tuvok

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 17, 2002
Messages
429
JE going to the SA forums (which, to paraphrase Exitium, are craptacular) is incredibly disheartening. I really like some of his ideas but the reason I think he is avoiding DAC, NMA and the Codex is because he is afraid of getting his ass handed to him about some of these truly terrible design decisions. With any luck he is at least lurking and noticing how deep the dissatisfaction runs about some of these choices. But hey what do we know? We are much too hardcore fanboys to whom no attention should be paid. Because we know and understand the setting and what made the first games great and what was wrong we are unqualified to comment.

I like Josh and think him *more* than capable of making a great game, but sweet Jebus...playable races?! *one* gun skill?! ughhh. and by that I mean UGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

Azael

Magister
Joined
Dec 6, 2002
Messages
4,405
Location
Multikult Central South
Wasteland 2
Now, in his defense, J.E. does have some point about how SPECIAL worked in the previous games. It was a clear ladder from Small Weapons up to Energy Weapons and Diplomatic characters did have a pretty easy time with only one skill necessary to tag and invest points in. His solution strikes me as odd though, seeing how he splits up Speech into two skills (which I believe is a good thing) and then compresses all three gun skills into a single one, which I believe is a bad thing. Having specialisation through Perks just seems strange to me, especially since it's a bit unclear how big a difference it will make if you have a high skill but no specialisation perks vs. medium skill and specialisation perks. Also, forcing Combat Boy to spend perks in order to be proficient seems to put them at a disadvantage to Diplomacy Boy who only needs to invest in two different skills.

Playable races also strikes me as odd, for many of the same reasons that have been stated here. Ignoring the bigotry for a while, both mutants and ghouls are old which makes it hard to accept them as n00bs, especially considering the martial nature of the Unity.
 

Crazy Tuvok

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 17, 2002
Messages
429
Yup the Speech divison is cool as is his intent to make a science skillset- based PC a truly playable PC and I even like the changes he wants to make to Unarmed which is precisely why some of his other choices are so odd. The RT/TB thing seems to have been completely out of his control so I can't blame *him* for that (I"m looking at you IPLY execs) and it is quite possible that the playable races thing is out of his control too. Still, the attempts over at the Illplay boards to justify these decisions are embarrassing.
Minigames...?! minigames?!
The guns being forced into *one* skill is completely weird. Hell I'll accept some changes to the system in terms of combat, but this completely fucks it. About the best anyone over there can come up with in terms of its defense is: " it worked well in JA2 and I love that game". Yeah? Me too. So GO FUCKING PLAY THAT.
I must be completely daft becasue I thought the three category division made not only sense but worked really rather well. Jebus, at least his two category (Big Guns/Small Guns) schema was defensible.
Of course if you try to make these arguments on any of the boards that Josh says he visits you are immediatley dismissed as "stoopid fanboi who wants everything to be exactly the same". Yeah assclown, that's what I am saying.

sorry for derailing the thread a bit.
me cranky.

edit: for spelling
 

Jed

Cipher
Joined
Nov 3, 2002
Messages
3,287
Location
Tech Bro Hell
Azael said:
Having specialisation through Perks just seems strange to me, especially since it's a bit unclear how big a difference it will make if you have a high skill but no specialisation perks vs. medium skill and specialisation perks. Also, forcing Combat Boy to spend perks in order to be proficient seems to put them at a disadvantage to Diplomacy Boy who only needs to invest in two different skills.
The biggest problem with merging skills is that many of these changes seem to be pushing SPECIAL toward a class-based, faux-classless ruleset. Bad, bad, bad.

Bad!
 

Saint_Proverbius

Administrator
Staff Member
Joined
Jun 16, 2002
Messages
11,475
Location
Behind you.
Icarus said:
Hmm. I must say I'm pretty nervous about the evolving development of FO3 at the moment. While some of the ideas are promising, it'll be interesting to see if they manage to actually pull it off successfully.

The whole thing with race selection seems to have echoes of FO:BOS. While I take the view that presenting more choice in an RPG is a GOOD idea, I find it difficult to envisage how one could create a story in the FO universe (wasteland?) with such wildly different races. I mean how would a supermutant start out? WHY would he need to start out?

That depends on what choices you allow. In a D&D campaign, you wouldn't want a level 1 character be a lich, for example. It's really silly to even TRY to balance a Supermutant with a human, like it would be to balance a lich with a level one character in D&D. Supermutants in Fallout are on par with 8-10th level characters with armor, and that's just a Supermutant wearing pants.

It's probably a good idea to get away from the whole Vault 13 descendant thing though as it's starting to wear a bit thin. As someone mentioned on these forums (and I'm paraphrasing here) it's starting to smack of " the whole destiny thing". And we hardly need FO to become more like D&D now do we?

I think Vault 13 should be involved in the story, since the story of Fallout is basically the story of Vault 13. Vault 13 played a huge role in Fallout 2, even though it ended with New Arroyo - and Vault 13 would probably have some issues with clean up following the massacre of the deathclaws there.

Finally, if I may make a comment, is ragging on Black Isle/Interplay really necessary? Heaven knows that that they've made some...questionable decisions in the past but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. By all means voice the concerns, then wait and see what the end result is....

...and if it sucks...THEN we can lynch them....

Interplay died back in 2001. It's really now Titus-USA judging by the focus and quality of what they're doing.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
Saint_Proverbius said:
Frankly, I'm just waiting for him to ask what types of spells we want for Fallout 3.
Corpse explosion seems a popular choice these days :lol: Seriously though, it's scary how quickly FO3 turns into a BG clone. I wonder why Tim Cain expressed his confidence in JE's abilities to handle FO3. Either JE is making an incredible game and I'm too stupid to share his brilliant vision or he's fucking Fallout to the ground. Somehow I don't think it's the former.
 

triCritical

Erudite
Joined
Jan 8, 2003
Messages
1,329
Location
Colorado Springs
Vault Dweller said:
Corpse explosion seems a popular choice these days :lol: Seriously though, it's scary how quickly FO3 turns into a BG clone. I wonder why Tim Cain expressed his confidence in JE's abilities to handle FO3. Either JE is making an incredible game and I'm too stupid to share his brilliant vision or he's fucking Fallout to the ground. Somehow I don't think it's the former.
\

I don't know, he has said that a lot of the more political decisions have not been his to make. And the last time there was a serious gap between a lead design and producer/manager the project was canned, ie. Torn.

One thing to keep in mind, is that FO3 will be built using the Jefferson engine, which was an engine built to headline a sequal to the most popular IE game. So it should not surprise anyone that technically speaking a lot of things are going to remind people of the IE experience.

Some things I like that he has done are,

1) kept TB, for what its worth.
2) reduced the enclave to a footnote in FO3.
3) addressing skill issue thoughtfully rather then bandaging it, ala Feargus who would just blame everything on TB combat and not enough Frank Horrigan's.
4) I like his ideas on disguise and deception. FO1 was revolutionary in this respect and I felt FO2 abandoned this in favor of making you uber-munchkin in the most l33t power armor 3V4R!111!!
 

triCritical

Erudite
Joined
Jan 8, 2003
Messages
1,329
Location
Colorado Springs
Vault Dweller said:
triCritical said:
4) I like his ideas on disguise and deception.
I'm curious about your opinion on that. Can you elaborate?

In Fallout 1, there was this robe, that offered no protection and did not increase any of your stats. What could it be for, I asked? I never figured it out, because at the time, I thought that there could be no game clever enough to allow myself to use a disguise and infiltrate the base of baddies. It was a beautiful way for a non-combat oriented character to accomplish a mission without directly entering into combat.

In Fallout 2, I felt ripped off, as if they had to have some sort of disguise to make some people happy. So what did they do, they allowed the enlcave power armor to be the disguise, and given the end quest kind of required you to have it. Basically no matter what kind of character you play you have to play combat boy. I am sorry, but when I am talking to the scientist on the oil rig and trying to convince him not to do it, I find difficult to imagine how articulate and convincing some guy in power armor, thats just suppose to be one of the soldiers... err tribals is gonna come off. The whole linearity of the final sequence of that game were IMO a real let down.

This is what Josh has proposed

Hello. As I wrote earlier this week, I'd like to throw up some ideas for broader applications of what are often called "Charisma Boy" or "Diplomacy Boy" skills. In Fallout and Fallout 2, such characters could focus on two skills with good, but fairly limited, applications: Barter and Speech. Barter affected buy and sell prices, Speech affected dialogue options (along with attributes).

Combat boys not only have skills but tools to help define their characters. Three characters who focus on Melee can all use different weapon sets for different purposes. This gives a level of depth to match or exceed that character type's skill breadth.

In my opinion (though some may [read: will] disagree), the Charisma Boy has neither depth or nor breadth in character development. He's got two skills, one with no depth, one with slight depth. Barter is pretty flat. It's just a score that goes up and changes store prices. A player can't do much with it to change his or her gameplay experience other than dump points into it and save money. Even the perks available for Barter don't really allow the player to do anything new with the skill.

Speech opens up a lot of dialogue options, but that's its whole point. It doesn't go beyond that. Attributes can be checked with Speech in dialogue, but ultimately those static checks are just pass/fail. Randomized checks in speech are easily overcome by the ol' "uncontested reload", so there's not much point to them -- they need to be static checks because of the environment in which they appear.

For these reasons, I would like to keep Barter, but divide Speech into two skills: Deception and Persuasion. However, this division is harmful unless the Deception and Persuasion skills have a broader application in the game outside of standard dialogue.

Barter: As in Fallout and Fallout 2, this skill does affect store prices. However, it also represents a certain level of knowledge about the caravan houses and trading in general, giving it a small role in dialogue. The intended depth to Barter development comes in the perks available at higher skill ranks. Though I have previously posted ideas for a few of these, I'll repost them here for ease.

Bulk Trader
Prerequisites: Barter 100
Ranks: 1
Benefit: Quantity is the name of the game, and you're holding all the cards. When you buy and sell goods, you get a better deal for larger quantities of a single item.

E.g.: John has Bulk Trader. When traveling, he notices that all of the Blackspear tribals carry spears along with their assorted equipment. He goes out of his way to save up a few dozen of them for a rainy day. When he has about fifty, he and his companions haul the load down to the weapons dealer for a bag of cash.

Junk Merchant
Prerequisites: Barter 75
Ranks: 1
Benefit: All items you find that have a base value of 1-5 bottlecaps are worth three times as much when you trade them.

E.g.: Frank searches every damned container and corpse he comes across. A lot of them have tidbits of old world nostalgia or technology that's effectively worthless and practically only worth a few caps. However, most bits weigh almost nothing, so he collects it all, knowing that he can sell even a broken little doll to some poor sap for a decent amount of money.

Mental Catalogue
Prerequisites: PE 4, Barter 150
Ranks: 1
Benefit: You can get the identified name and description of any item you examine, even if you don't meet the other skill requirements.

E.g.: The Fallout world is a big cesspool of ignorance unless you're part of the FotA, BoS, the Enclave, or a similar group. Though you can get the basic statistics and description of any item you pick up, more detailed and useful descriptions often appear for characters with right stats (Science for energy weapons, Medic for super stims, etc.). This is especially helpful for builder characters who pick up random pieces of salvaged technology in the wasteland. To know what tech elements make up any given piece of equipment, characters need the right statistics. However, a character with Mental Catalogue has so much experience with and knowledge of trading that he or she always gets the detailed description of an item.

Deception: This skill is used in dialogue, but it is also used as a limited building skill as means to an "alternate" stealth route. As with Speech in Fallout, Deception is checked in dialogue along with stats. But Deception's dialogue options all take the form of bluffing, misleading, or otherwise flat out lying to the other person in the conversation.

Deception can also be used to "sneak in plain sight" through the use of disguises. Disguises can be either found or created with a Disguise Kit. A disguise is a single item that a character wears, though it may occupy several equipped slots when necessary. Disguises may include things like: NCR Ranger Outfit, Hubologist Outfit, Viper Raider Outfit, etc. When a character uses a disguise, the character's effective reputation and identity become invisible. As far as AI is concerned, the character is part of that disguise's "team" as long as the NPC's PE doesn't see through the character's Deception skill (affected by range, lighting, etc.). Of course, for practical/gameplay purposes, a character's disguise does not hold up once he or she enters combat or attempts to initiate dialogue. And some disguises just don't work for some characters (no super mutants in BoS Scribe disguises, no humans in Night Kin disguises).

Characters can also manufacture disguises from individual disguise elements through the use of a disguise kit. Placing all the elements of the intended disguise into the kit creates the disguise if the character's Deception skill is high enough. E.g.: Joe wants an NCR Ranger Outfit. This requires an NCR Ranger uniform, NCR Ranger boots, and an NCR Ranger pin (I love that pin). He finds the uniform on a dead Ranger, buys the boots at a surplus store, and trades for the pin with a group of unpleasant but businesslike raiders. Dump them in the kit and -- voila -- NCR Ranger Outfit.

Sample Deception perk:

Body Snatcher
Prerequisites: Deception 100
Ranks: 1
Benefit: A few blood stains and bullet holes never stopped you from making a proper disguise. When critters with outfits die near you, you will often be able to salvage a piece of their outfit for use with a disguise kit.

E.g.: Ted has his own Blackspear Tribal disguise, but he wants to take his CNPC pal, Destructo, into the bunker as well. A random encounter finds him watching a group of Blackspears fighting raiders. Ted and Destructo sit the combat out until the Blackspears get annihilated. Ted then walks up and gingerly searches the bodies, finding a Blackspear headdress, gooey black facepaint made of... something, and one of their patchwork brahmin-skin outfits.

Persuasion: This skill is the other half of what Speech encompassed. It is used for friendly diplomacy, subtle manipulation, and outright intimidation. Also, as previously discussed, I believe it could be used to good effect for attempting to control CNPCs (companion NPCs) during combat. Though CNPCs would be computer-controlled by default, I believe that giving the high-Persuasion character a chance to control their followers is sensible and good for the purposes of expanding Persuasion's usefulness throughout the game.

NOTE: CNPCs SHOULD STILL HAVE IMPROVED AI. IN FACT, IT SHOULD BE MUCH BETTER THAN FO AND FO2. THIS IS NOT INTENDED AS A SUBSTITUTION FOR GOOD AI, SIMPLY AS A WAY TO REWARD CHARISMA BOYS FOR A HIGH PERSUASION SKILL.

Some CNPCs are really agreeable, and some are belligerent jackasses who don't listen to anything. Some also go crazy when they see certain types of creatures or otherwise are annoyed by local behavior. A wounded CNPC can also be extremely difficult to control, as their life tends to take precedence over your desire to be a big winner. Persuasion can be used to offset a CNPC's tendencies to do exactly what they want, when they want. The higher the Persuasion, the more likely it is that the CNPC will allow the player to control them, even under duress.

Sample Persuasion perk:

Suicide King
Prerequisites: Persuasion 150 and CH 8
Ranks: 1
Benefit: When standing within your area of influence, CNPC allies always ignore how wounded they are when you attempt to control them in combat.

E.g.: Ted and Destructo are fighting deathclaws. Destructo's got nothing against deathclaws, but he isn't too fond of the gaping wound that's left him with 28/100 hit points. Normally, he would head for the hills, even if his enemy was pretty wounded. However, Ted's a Suicide King, so Destructo knows that his pal will get him out of this mess somehow if he just follows his lead. (i.e., Destructo ignores his wounds for purposes of comparsion to Ted's Persuasion). Ted exercises manual control over Destructo. He has him attack the deathclaw, killing it, then has Destructo move down next to Ted. On Ted's next turn, Ted uses a Super Stim on Destructo, and everyone is happy until the other three deathclaws get in melee range.

Comments are welcome.

Frankly since disguise and deception do not really fall under any real category, for instance both a stealth guy and diplomat could have easily used disguise in Fallout1, this allows for a much more specialized character. One who specializes in making people believe that they are someone they are really not. It takes disguise and deceptive talk to the next level. Its different then sneaking and its different the straight diplomacy. Its being dishonest, its being blunt, and it requires balls. I mean if at any point your disguise is found out, then your are pretty much screwed. IMO it also adds a lot to the rogue characters, you now have more variations with it, considering that now your rogue character can go the more notorious route, or instead play somewhat like Leonardo Diccaprio;s character in "Catch me if you can".

The same goes for the diplomatic character. Either you can go the fedex try to make everyone happy route, like Fallout 2, or your can lie, cheat and bluff yor way through many quest and encounters. I think it opens up various new types of characters and sounds fun. While more and more RPG's have become nothing but combat-fest its good to know that FO3 will potentially have a fair amount of focus away from combat, almost adventure like. I actually made a point to people on the Blackisle board, that with all this talk about guns and akimbo that people have actually missed the point behind Fallout. Its not a tactical combat game or a game with l33t b0z4rs and power armor. I think we all know what the game is about and a lot of us are missing the point. Consequently Josh came out with the following post discussing a lot of the diplomatic features.

A caveat would be to require research before talk and exploration before actions. In other words, instead of going into a conversation and just knowing the answer, I think the character should be forced to explore and learn about the surrounding before he can talk his way through anything, or have the ability to use a disguise. This was done to some extent in Fallout 1, for instance you can't talk the master down until you know the results of the autopsy, but I think for a lot of possible diplomatic and deceptive scenarious, the player should be forced to do some homework on the situation he is trying to deal with.

linky:http://forums.interplay.com/viewtopic.php?t=25063
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
Thanks, that was interesting. And yes, I definitely agree with you that FO1 wasn't about combat but about exploring the culture and people, and "professional" deception is an interesting way to do it.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom