The Fallout 3 Renaissance (Wo)Man Character Building Guide

A Beginning, The Renaissance (Wo)Man’s Inception

With this character you are going to be able to play throughout the entire game pick up and switch to any weapon as you come upon it and use it with a high level of proficiency. This character is highly adaptable.

This character was originally going to utilize explosives as the primary weapon. After starting I found out that this was not feasible due to grenades being a bit too scarce early on and their tendency to bounce awkwardly, missing the target entirely, or just winging them, even if the to hit chance was 95%. I switched from using grenades primarily to using small guns once I got the terrible shotgun. I then switched again to using energy weapons when I got an unique plasma rifle. I switched a final time when I got the Chinese stealth armor and the unique electric sword, the dart gun, and an unique, heavy hitting, laser rifle for those hard to kill enemies. This is how I’m currently playing my character.

The stealth armor allows you to choose if, when, and how you engage in combat. You can kill Enclave soldiers in plain sight of other enclave members without them “seeing” you. It’s a bit dumb, but I don’t think it’s a bug, but more a core problem with using an engine originally designed for a fantasy based game. In Oblivion there are not enemies that are in constant contact with each other via radios, but in Fallout 3 there should be. In two places you can walk through Enclave bases slaughtering dozens of soldiers without a general alarm going off and alerting the enemy that something is not quite right.

Suffice to say, Fallout 3 AI, scripting, and logic is a bit on the dumb side.

Fallout 3, the Bad and the Ugly

There are couple truths about this game that should be mentioned. First off, this game is buggy. Bethesda is known for releasing buggy games, and this one is no exception. Second off, this game was developed for people who are new to RPG’s, or for people who only play them casually.

As a result of the first truth, you can break the game’s logic, characters you might need can die, or you may get a corrupted save that prevents you from doing something you need to do down the line. I have not ran into any serious problems, but some annoyances have cropped up a couple of times. Also, you should wait at least a week before nabbing any new DLC’s as there have been serious bugs in most of them.

As a result of the second truth, the game can be played in just about anyway with just about any character and you will not miss out on much, if anything. If you are a power gamer, and have played DND based games, or Morrowind, or even Oblivion (though to a lesser extent) this game’s character system will likely seem simplistic to you.

Who Should Play With Me

Who this character is for:

People who want to rock with any weapon they pick up.
People who want to be able to swap play styles at anytime and not be stuck with a character that is setup for only one.
People who want a comfortable AND powerful character to play.
People who are going to do side-quests, explore, and get the DLC’s.
People who do not want to be reliant on a certain set of armor, head gear, weapon, or eye glasses.

Who this character is not for:

People who want to get special charisma related perks for a few extra (and unnecessary) dialog options (if Bethesda had hired some better writers, and set this game up like Fallout 1 and 2, this might of been a worthwhile option. The diplo-sniper was my favorite Fallout 1/2 character type).
People who think they need 10 intelligence.
People who are just doing a quick, main quest only, jaunt through the game (though it would work, you wouldn’t get the most out of this character).
(Potentially) Role-players who would sacrifice character effectiveness for character personification.
(Possibly) Evil diplomats.

Handy Dandy Links

These are the two resources that I found most helpful during character planning and throughout playing the game. I hit up lots of forums, FAQ’s, and random sites as well, but these are the two I returned to frequently, and the two that seemed to have the most consistently good, and accurate, information.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_3

http://wikicheats.gametrailers.com/index.php/Fallout_3_-_PC_PS3_XB360

Below is the best character planner that I’ve found for Fallout 3.

http://perpetuallygaming.com/perpetually-originals/fallout-3-character-planner/

And, this is the best map I’ve found.

http://www.wikicheats.com/flash/fallout3map/fallout3_map.swf

It’s all about the Skills Boys and Girls

Skills are generally more important than SPECIAL. A character with a high Speech and low charisma will pass difficult speech challenges. A character with low speech and high charisma will not.

With that said, unless you’re rushing to meet a perk requirements increase your skills evenly (and then, don’t increase the boosted skills until the rest have caught back up).

If you don’t keep your skills even, you may find yourself with a shiny new weapon that’s in a skill set that you haven’t been increasing regularly. This character is all about adaptability, so keep those skills even.

Remember, do not read any skill books until you get the Comprehension perk.

Also, if you’re going more completetionist, read about the unlimited science and big weapons books and don’t increase those skills at level time.

SPECIAL Information

Each SPECIAL stat increases skill points for a variable number of skills. They also each have attributes they influence. These attributes are:

(ST) Strength: carry weight, unarmed damage bonus
(PE) Perception: accuracy, compass markers
(EN) Endurance: health, poison/rad resistances, lung capacity
(CH) Charisma: disposition
(IN) Intelligence: skill points per level
(AG) Agility: action points
(LK) Luck: critical chance.

I base my SPECIAL layout off of these attributes rather than the skills they effect. You can always increase skills, but these attributes can generally only be increased directly through your SPECIAL (and with a couple perks).

See below for a more in depth explanation before moving on to the Renaissance (Wo)Man’s SPECIAL breakdown.

ST

You will find a lot of stuff in the wasteland. In the DLC’s you’ll have spots where you will not be able to run stuff back to your house, you may also quickly get tired of ferrying stuff back and forth when you can. Simply, more strength equals more carry weight. You will also be able to hit for more damage if you find a neat unarmed weapon.

If you’d rather have a +6.5 damage bonus for unarmed damage versus +3 and 40 more lbs of carrying capacity, and, don’t mind taking a 80 HP hit, and an 8% decrease to your rad/poison resistances see the Alternative SPECIAL’s section towards the end of this FAQ.

PE

If you know where your enemies are, you’ll be able to react more properly and deal with them quicker. To use a cliche, knowledge is power. This may also increases accuracy, but I have not been able to confirm this, nor do I know exactly how this works.

EN

Endurance gives you more health, and more rad/poison resistances. The former will definitely make the game more comfortable. The latter will help a bit. And hey, you can swim you’re little heart out without needing to go up for air, so yay for EN.

CH

Of the above, this is the least useful, by far. Disposition affects how easily you can succeed at speech checks. But, in most cases speech checks simply allow you to short-cut a quest so this is not a big deal, or even ideal.

You can also wear CH boosting gear in the event of any important speech checks (and save/reload until you get pass it). Good karma will also help you out here, so if you’re evil you’re going to have a harder time with these.

IN

The second lowest on the utility spectrum is Intelligence. Yes, above I said skills are generally more important than SPECIAL, and IN increases how many skill points you get to spend each level, but starting out with a 9 IN and getting your IN bobble head (B.H.) by level 2 will net you. 579 skill points at level 30. Starting out with 3 IN and getting 4 by level 2 will get you 405. And, getting Educated at level four will add another hundred to that, so 505 total.

On top of the above, you will get 589 skill points from stats, skill bobble heads, Cyborg, Silent Running, Yews Bear Charm, and the Covert-Ops perk (all but 39 coming from stats and skill bobble heads). This means, with 3/4 IN and Educated you will, at level 30, have a total of 1094 skill points.

You need 1300 total skill points to max every skill, so you would only need to have picked up 103 skill books in your hours and hours of, quest required,

dungeon crawling and wasteland exploring. There are 324 skill books total (and the unlimited re-spawning science and heavy weapon books), so you only need to happen upon less than a third of these to max all skills.

And we’re talking about OCD maxing here, you do not need to max all skills to be proficient with anything. After 50 your character will feel skilled with any weapons. After 75 your lock pick will get you into all but a handful of doors and weapons cache’s (and even these generally have alternative ways to access them).

The big changes in skills are between 1-50. After 50 your character is adept, and you’re into the refining of already developed skills.

I’ll reiterate here, that this is a console, and casual gamer, friendly game, without finding a single skill book you will have more than enough skill points to do everything that is needed to progress through the game, and you will do it well.

I’m spending a lot of time on this because a lot of people have the misconception that you need full IN to have a successful character. This may be true if you’re just rushing through the main quest of the game, and aren’t going to do any exploring. But for anyone that has an interest in playing the game more fully, anything more than 3/4 IN is not necessary.

AG

AG increases action points. The more action points the more damage you can do in VATS. If you plan to use VATs, there is no such thing as too many AP’s. If you’re on a PC and don’t plan on using VATS see the Alternative SPECIAL’s section towards the end of the FAQ.

LK

LK seems to be a stat that people like to minimize. Why, you might ask? I’m not quite sure. LK increases critical chance which, increases your chance to make critical hits on enemies.

Depending on the weapon, critical hits can do up to triple the base damage. Weapons also have critical chance multipliers. So, if you have a weapon with a x3 critical chance multiplier and a base 10% critical chance, a third of your attacks will do double to triple damage.

This is a significant advantage for your tougher enemies. And is simply fun for your numerous weaker enemies which you will start killing with single hits (like raiders and weaker super mutants).

See here for a break down of weapons and their critical chance multiplies and damage: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_3_weapons

SPECIAL Break Down

Level 1 SPECIAL

S – 3
P – 9
E – 7
C – 1
I – 3
A – 9
L – 8

Level ~6 SPECIAL (I.T. = Intensive Training Perk, B.H. = Bobble Head)

S – 6 – I.T. at lvl 6, Ant Might from Those!, and B.H.
P – 10 – B.H.
E – 10 – I.T. at lvl 2 and 3 plus B.H.
C – 2 – B.H.
I – 4 – B.H. by lvl 2 (in Rivet City, by Dr. Lee).
A – 10 – B.H.
L – 10 – B.H. and lucky eight ball from Big Town.

Level 30 Special

You can take Almost Perfect or No Weaknesses to further increase your lower stats. This will raise them to 9 and 5 respectively. Also, if you don’t get the ST, or CH until level 30 you would have 10′s in all but one of your SPECIAL.

SPECIAL, The Why

You can see by the numbers which SPECIAL related attributes I consider most important. I have played characters with 2 in ST and EN, and while they definitely were playable, the above character is a lot more fun, a lot more comfortable, and, a lot more effective.

On the flip side of that, I have played characters with 10 CH, and taken all of CH based perks. It was really hard for me at first to not crank up the CH, but really, it and the related perks added nothing to the game. And, as the speech challenges generally don’t matter (I can think of two or three that I’ve actually needed to make to get a unique item or to progress through a quest) there’s really nothing to gain from going with a high CH.

On to the Perks

I’m going to list the must have perks by the level I recommend taking them at. After that I will list recommended perks that can be taken whenever there’s no must have perks to take.

While in many RPG’s you’ll be trying hard to take the best perks, in Fallout 3 you’ll be trying hard to take the least bad perks. This is because once you’ve thrown out all the CH related perks, all the needless skill perks, and all the other ones that are just dumb (like almost all the post-20 perks) you don’t have a whole lot left.

And again, this is an adaptable character, so don’t take perks that are good for only a certain type of enemy (like entomologist, or Robotics Expert). You should be able to kill any enemy with equal efficiency. Do however take perks that increase weapon effectiveness. You want to be able to use any weapon at max effectiveness.

I’m also not going to go into details about the perks as they have been listed elsewhere (like the links above). If you’re unfamiliar you can read more about them at: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_3_perks

With that said, the must have Perks at Level:

No Perks Available
Intense Training – Endurance
Intense Training – Endurance
Educated
Comprehension
Intense Training – Strength
Toughness
Commando
Scrounger
Finesse
Demolition Expert 1
Silent Running
Sniper
Cyborg
Pyromaniac
Better Criticals
Action Boy/Girl
Concentrated Fire
Demolition Expert 2
Grim Reaper’s Sprint
Ninja
Gunslinger
Demolition Expert 3
Recommended Filler
Recommended Filler
Recommended Filler
Recommended Filler
Recommended Filler
Recommended Filler
Recommended Filler

Requisites for Must Have perks

IN 4 by level 4
EN 5 by level 7
LK 5 by level 9
Explosives 50 by level 11
AG 6, Sneak 50 by level 12
PE 6 by level 13
Medicine/Science 60 by level 14
Explosives 60 by level 60
LK 6 by level 16
Melee/Sneak 80 by level 21
AG 7 by level 26

Must Have Perk Notes

If you don’t meet one of the perk requisites at the right level just shift the perks around, or take a recommended filler earlier and take the must have perk when you can. I didn’t take Cyborg until level 18 or 19, which, is really where the perk should be considering how powerful it is.

Recommend Filler Perks

Rad Resistance, Strong Back, Adamantium Skeleton, Chemist, Solar Powered, Nerves of Steel (Note: this perk is buggy and has no effect, but I suggest taking it in hopes it’s fixed in a future patch), Rad Absorption, Almost Perfect or No Weaknesses.

Recommended Filler Perk Notes

There are 9 recommended filler slots above and 8 recommended filler perks. Pick based on what you feel is best for your character at a certain point in the game, or based on what would make your character more comfortable to play.

There is a lot of room to tweak your character based on what you think is best. There are lots of rad-x and rad away in the game and very few spots of high radiation. You could easily take zero rad based perks and be a-okay.

An alternative would be to take No Weaknesses and another level of Intensive Training to get Nerd Rage. And, possibly another level of Intensive Training, to get Warmonger if you don’t want to hunt for all the customized weapons schematics.

Again, there’s lots of room for building the character for how you want to play it while still keeping all the Must Have perks and still staying true to the Renaissance (Wo)Man idea behind the character.

Perks to Avoid

With that said, the perks below are ones you should think twice about before taking:

Skill Increase Perks – these are unnecessary, and are a waste of a perk that could improve your character in unique ways. For why see the IN details above.
CH related perks, I’ve already gone over these twice above.
Swift Learner/Deep Sleep/Here and Now – There is tons of experience in Fallout 3 and you will not have a problem hitting the level cap before you run out of quests.
Fortune Finder/Master Trader – If you sell only a small bit of the items you can find in the wastes you will never be hard up for cash. And, if you invest in the merchants in Canterbury Commons and you will always have merchants that have a large supply of caps on hand.
Chem Resistant – You can detox in your house, addictions aren’t that bad, and can be overcome by simply taking another dose of the chem you’re addicted to.
Computer Whiz/Infiltrator: Lock picking is easy and lock picks are abundant. Computers are annoying, but you can close out and reopen and try endlessly.
Karma Adjustment – The only reason I’d take these is at level 30 to get the Achievements on the 360 (then reload and take a good perk instead). Otherwise, changing your karma is easy in game (kill people/steal or give water to the dudes outside of Megaton/Rivet City).
Lead Belly – Stimpacks are readily available, and way more effective. You should never need to drink water for health.

Recommended Quest Perks

There are no Quest items or perks that this build is absolutely dependent on. If this is your first time playing you should probably just explore on your own and enjoy the game first hand (you’ll eventually get all of the quests below if you do the least bit of exploring or questing).

If you have already been through the game a couple times you may want to hit up guides to try and optimize your game experience and to get the best quest perks and best quest items that are available. I started out this character by getting all my bobble heads (with the help of a guide). It was a good way to get a lot of locations mapped out, and to get going on my book collection and to get my character up to level 10.

To reach the Level ~6 Special you’ll need to get Ant Might which you can get through the Those! quest which can be found in Grayditch.

Also, to get 10 LK you need to get

the Lucky Eight Ball that you can get from one of the characters in Big Town after you save them from the Super Mutuants and Slavers.

Apart from that, the only quest perk I really recommend is the one you can get from Moira in Megaton. When you’re doing the Wasteland Survival Guide quest you should complete all the optional objectives. Answer Moira with the snide remarks (which should be the bottom ones) and you’ll get a 3% increase in your critical chance (see the LK section above for more about why critical chance rocks).

Alternative SPECIAL’s

ST instead of EN

This is for people who would rather have 3.5 extra unarmed damage and 50 lbs. carrying weight over 80 extra hit points and 8% poison/radiation resistances.

Level 1 SPECIAL

S – 7
P – 8
E – 4
C – 1
I – 3
A – 9
L – 8

Level ~6 SPECIAL (I.T. = Intensive Training Perk, B.H. = Bobble Head)

S – 10 – I.T. at lvl 2 and 3 plus B.H.
P – 10 – B.H. and Ant Sight from Those!
E – 6 – I.T. at lvl 6 and B.H.
C – 2 – B.H.
I – 4 – B.H. by lvl 2 (in Rivet City, by Dr. Lee).
A – 10 – B.H.
L – 10 – B.H. and lucky eight ball from Big Town.

Notes: Take the same perks as the standard SPECIAL character.

ST instead of AG

This is for people who will be playing on the PC and who wont be using VATS with any regularity.

Level 1 SPECIAL

S – 7
P – 9
E – 7
C – 1
I – 3
A – 5
L – 8

Level ~6 SPECIAL (I.T. = Intensive Training Perk, B.H. = Bobble Head)

S – 10 – I.T. at lvl 6, Ant Might from Those!, and B.H.
P – 10 – B.H.
E – 10 – I.T. at lvl 2 and 3 plus B.H.
C – 2 – B.H.
I – 4 – B.H. by lvl 2 (in Rivet City, by Dr. Lee).
A – 6 – B.H.
L – 10 – B.H. and lucky eight ball from Big Town.

Note: Take the same perks except for Action Boy/Girl, Grim Reaper’s Sprint, and Nerves of Steel. Replace them with whatever you think is fitting.

Closing

This guide is still a little rough around the edges. I had some additional revisions that were lost and I’m no longer playing this game. With that said I wanted to publish this guide as I think it’s quite a solid character building guide as it currently stands.

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