Character Creation Part One: Character Concept
Character Creation Part Two: Race
Character Creation Part Three: Traits
Character Creation Part Four: Statistics
Character Creation Part Five: Skills

Character Creation Part One: Character Concept

Who are you?
- Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Think about what your character will be like. Your character is your alter-ego in the Fallout universe. Will your character be a gun-happy sniper? A dune-buggy racer? A sneaky thief? A fast talker who can squeak past the armed guards with a good excuse? A boxing champ, strong but slow? A beautiful seductress who takes what she wants after the moment? The possibilities are endless. It might be a good time to familiarize yourself with the character sheets at this time, and learn a few terms.

Throughout the character creation process and a good deal of the game explanation, we will be following the examples of Jack and Jane, our unassuming and politically correct friends.

(Before you start creating your own character you might want to download and print one of these character sheets)

1 Character Terminology:
1.1 Primary Statistics - S.P.E.C.I.A.L.
1.2 Skills
1.3 Traits
1.4 Perks
1.5 Karma
1.6 Secondary Statistics

Character Terminology

Primary Statistics - S.P.E.C.I.A.L.

There are 7 Primary Statistics, or Stats that describe various attributes of a character: Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck. These are the character's strengths and weaknesses, and are the limits by which other aspects of a character are determined. Players determine Stats with a certain number of Character Points, determined by the character’s Race, distributed among the 7 statistics. In general, Primary Statistics are not altered after the game begins. For more information on what specific Statistics mean to the game, see Character Creation Part Four: Statistics.

Skills

There are 19 skills a character knows. These represent the knowledge a character learns as he or she travels the highways of life, or knew before starting his or her adventures. Not all of them are covered in the Boy Scout Handbook, either. They are: Melee Weapons(STR), Marksmanship(PER), Explosives(PER), Guns(AGL), Energy Weapons(PER), Medicine(INT), Sneak(AGL), Jump(STR), Lockpick(PER), Science(INT), Repair(INT), Pilot(AGL), Speech(CHA), Barter(CHA), Gamble(LCK), Survival(END), Climb(STR), and Swim(STR), and Unarmed(END). Skills can go up all the time, and can sometimes go down. For more information on what specific Skills mean, see Character Creation Part Five- Skills below.

Traits

Traits are an optional part of a character. They are usually double-edged swords, giving a bonus as well as a penalty, making your character unique. See Character Creation Part Three: Traits for a list of Traits and their effects.

Perks

Perks are special abilities a character gains every few levels, and sometimes just for doing something extra neat in the game. Perks sometimes affect skills, or will make gameplay more interesting. Perks never penalize the character, they just do good things. For a list of perks, see Advancement: Perks in Chapter V: Advancement.

Karma

Just like in the real world, the post-nuclear world has a system of morals. Performing certain actions can raise and lower a person's karma. Rather than an abstract idea of morality, punishment, and reward, karma in Fallout is a numerical value of how many good or bad things a character has done. Karma also connotes a person's reputation among the other inhabitants of the wastes. Do enough good things, and word gets around. Do enough bad things, people know about it. Really good people tend not to associate with really bad people, and vice-versa. If a character is really good or really bad, or performs an action that heavily affects their karma one way or another, they can sometimes get a karmic perk. Most of the time, these just describe a usually well-known aspect of a character, but can sometimes give bonuses for being especially good (or evil). Maybe there is something to this karma stuff after all. In addition to normal karmic perks, there are special karmic perks that a character can pick up along the way, and you can bet that they will have some kind of major impact on the character's life. See Chapter IV: Life in the Wastes for a list of karmic perks. A beginning player's karma is always zero.

Secondary Statistics

This is a catchall category for many of the other parts of a character that do not fall under any of the previous slots. Many of these do not change all that often, except for those related to armor. Secondary Stats include Armor Class, Radiation Resistance, Poison Resistance, Electricity Resistance, Healing Rate, Unarmed Damage, Action Points, Carry Weight, Damage Threshold, Sequence, and Critical Chance. For more information on these statistics, see Character Creation Part Four: Statistics.



Character Creation Part Two: Race

He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million, laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what’s his reason? I am a Jew.
- The Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene 1:45-8


Before going any further, the player needs to choose a race. Most PCs will be human, but occasionally a GM will allow a non-human race if it adds to the flavor of the campaign. Because some races will not work in all stories, always check with the GM for approval before choosing a non-human race.

Note that races have minimum and maximum statistic numbers; this means that the statistics for any given race cannot go below a minimum number or exceed a maximum number. The player will want to make a note of these numbers for later, when he or she assigns his or her character statistics. Each race has a certain number of Character Points as well, distributed among the statistics in the next state of creation. In addition, each race gains perks at a different rate; this can combine with various traits that effect how fast a character gains perks (see Traits, below). The player will want to note the rate at which his or her character gains perks on the character sheet, in the appropriate section by the experience points box.

Some races have innate Radiation and Poison Resistances bonuses. When calculating these secondary statistics (see Secondary Statistics, below), add these numbers to the character’s base resistances.

Human

Your basic human. Two arms, two legs, two eyes. You and me. Humans gain no bonuses or penalties to their secondary statistics, except a 10% resistance to electricity, and gain a perk every 3 levels. Humans weigh anywhere from 110 to 280 pounds, and stand around 1.5 to 2.5 meters tall. They get 40 Character Points to distribute among their statistics. Most people in the Fallout world can still be considered human, even though many of them have minor mutations, like additional toes, greenish skin or complete lack of hair. Still, they are nowhere near ghouls or super mutants.

Human:
ST 1 - 10
PE 1 - 10
EN 1 - 10
CH 1 - 10
IN 1 - 10
AG 1 - 10
LK 1 - 10
1 - minimum, 10 - maximum

Ghoul

When the bombs hit, some people were irrevocably changed (and not just the ones who were atomized at ground zero, either). Ghouls are humans who were alive when the bomb went off, and the radiation altered them at a cellular level. Ghouls enjoy an extremely slow cellular mitosis rate, rendering them essentially immune to the effects of old age. The radiation also changed their outward appearance, forever marking them as outsiders. Their skin hangs off their bones, sometimes in shreds, and sunken eyes peer out from skulls twisted and burned by radiation, giving these unfortunate people their name. Their skin can be anywhere from pale white to dirt brown in color, with green and yellow the most common. When they do have hair remaining, it usually does not grow. Some ghouls were inexplicably merged with plant species, and have shrubs and moss growing out of various parts of their bodies. It might have twisted their bodies, but the radiation did not affect their minds, and they are forced to live as misshapen outcasts, fully aware of the society they were once part of, but also aware they can never rejoin it. For this reason, many ghouls have formed settlements of their own, or live in settlements with humans and mutants who do not mind their appearance. Unlike their mythical namesakes, ghouls do not eat human flesh. They do, however, require a small amount of radiation to survive, and for this reason, one can often find a population of ghouls around a leaky nuclear reactor or an impact crater from the war.


Ghouls age very slowly, and their lifespan is a whopping 300 years past when they were exposed to the radiation. Their unnaturally long lifespan does not mean that they can't be killed by other means, however, and ghouls are just as vulnerable to disease, falls, and bullets as everyone else. Ghouls usually weigh anywhere from 80 to 160 pounds, and stand anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 meters tall. Whether or not ghouls can reproduce is a subject open to scientific debate. Ghouls have a natural 40% Radiation Resistance bonus along with a 10% Poison Resistance bonus. Ghouls gain a perk every 4 levels. Ghouls start with 5 fewer maximum hit points than normal; deduct this number after fully calculating HPs. For the remainder of the game, they gain HPs as normal. Luckily, Ghouls can wear any kind of armor that normal humans can wear. They get 42 Character Points to distribute among their statistics.

Ghoul:
ST 1 - 6
PE 4 - 14
EN 1 - 10
CH 1 - 9
IN 2 - 13
AG 1 - 8
LK 5 - 10


Super Mutant

Super mutants (meta-humans,or just mutants, as they prefer to call themselves) are not the product of "natural" after effects from the war, but a race created by extensions of genetic and germ research from pre-war times. American scientists working deep inside a mountain created a biological agent called the Forced Evolutionary Virus, or FEV. The FEV was designed to drastically increase evolution, creating a kind of “super-soldier:” faster, smarter, and stronger. Most creatures exposed to FEV suffered only mild effects, but some were twisted beyond recognition. A member of an expedition into this base fell into the FEV vats and mutated into a super-intelligent, inhuman monster called “The Master,” who began creating a master race by exposing humans to FEV.

After "dipping" the person in a vat containing the FEV virus, the victim would emerge and undergo an intense physiological change. They grew much stronger and more intelligent, as well as growing in height and stature. Armies of Super-Mutants were once slaves to the Master and his dream to "dip" every human on the planet, but the Master was eventually killed and the mutants freed (although to hear them tell it, the Master was more of a Messiah than a madman). Like ghouls, mutants age very slowly, but not as slowly as their cousins.

There are two kinds of mutants on the West Coast. “Alpha” mutants, the leaders of the Master’s Army, were the result of dipping genetically pure humans. The “Beta” mutant footsoldiers – stronger, but dumber grunts whose brains were slightly damaged by the dipping process - are a result of dipping people with minor mutations caused by radiation or the airborne strain of FEV.

Alpha mutants are by far the less numerous of the two. Many of them were killed in the Master’s war, so in games set after this chain of events Alpha mutants are only allowed with GM's approval.

Mutants are huge, easily reaching 2.8 to 3 meters in height, weigh around 350 pounds, and come either male or female. Their skin is usually a greenish yellow color, and various bunions and growths cover their bodies. They have hair in all the usual places, but it usually grows slowly (a result of the slowed cellular mitosis from the FEV virus). The virus makes them completely sterile, although there are rumors of mutant scientists working on a cure for their sterility. Unfortunately, like ghouls, mutants are largely outcast from human society. Many of them prefer it this way, looking on human society as diseased or inferior because of the prejudice and corruption that still exist. Mutants were once part of what they see as an attempt to finally unite humanity and overcome humankind's weaknesses, and it is rumored that vats of the FEV virus still exist, and a mutant society is at work attempting to achieve this goal, even after the Master's death.

Mutants enjoy a 10% Radiation Resistance bonus, a 20% Poison Resistance bonus, a 0/35 initial Gas Resist, and gain a perk every 4 levels. Mutants get an extra 10 hit points to their starting total (this bonus applies only once, at the beginning of the game). Mutants cannot easily use small arms; when using a weapon that requires a roll on the small guns skill, mutants make the roll as if their Perception were two points lower. These giant humans have a form of built-in armor: they start with the following initial DT levels:

N:5 L:2 F:5 P:2 E:3

Note that a mutant’s DT/DR can never drop below those numbers. Mutants can easily live 200 years beyond when they were "dipped". Mutants cannot wear armor designed for humans; they just don't make it their size. Someone in that vast wasteland might, however. Alpha Mutants and Beta Mutants both get 40 Character Points to distribute among their statistics.

Alpha
ST 4 - 13
PE 1 - 10
EN 3 - 12
CH 1 - 8
IN 1 - 11
AG 1 - 8
LK 1 - 10

Beta
ST 5 - 13
PE 1 - 10
EN 4 - 12
CH 1 - 8
IN 1 - 8
AG 1 - 8
LK 1 - 10


Character Creation Part Three: Traits

Traits are the details that can make your character really unique. They can add more colors to the character. Traits can make the difference between an average human with all Primary Statistics at 5 and an average human with all Primary Statistics at 5 who is chem resistant. There are lots of combinations and each trait can give you lots of fun..or pain. Well, it happens.

Traits are an optional part of the character creation process. They simply describe an aspect of the character's personality or physical description, and permanently affect things like Skills, Primary Statistics, and Secondary Statistics. Some traits are not available to every race, and some traits are only available to robots or animal races.

A character can pick two traits, one trait, or no traits at all. A character can never have more than two traits.

Contents
1 Bloody Mess
2 Bruiser
3 Chem Reliant
4 Chem Resistant
5 Fast Metabolism
6 Fast Shot
7 Fear the Reaper
8 Finesse
9 Gifted
10 Glowing One
11 Good Natured
12 Ham Fisted
13 Heavy Handed
14 Jinxed
15 Kamikaze
16 Night Person
17 One Hander
18 Sex Appeal
19 Skilled
20 Small Frame
21 Tech Wizard
22 Vat Skin

Bloody Mess

By some strange twist of fate, people around you die violently. You always see the worst way a person can die. This does not mean you kill them any faster or slower, but when they do die, it will be dramatic. Just how dramatic is up to the Gamemaster.

Bruiser

A little slower, but a little bigger. You may not hit as often, but they will feel it when you do! Your total action points are lowered, but your Strength is increased. You get a 2-point bonus to Strength, but lose 2 Action Points. Ghouls cannot choose this trait.

Chem Reliant

You are more easily addicted to chems. Your chance to be addicted is twice normal, but you recover in half the time from their ill effects.

Chem Resistant

Chems only affect you half as long as normal, but your chance to be addicted is only 50% the normal amount.

Fast Metabolism

Your metabolic rate is twice the normal rate. This means that you are much less resistant to radiation and poison, but your body heals faster. You get a 2-point bonus to Healing Rate, but your Radiation and Poison Resistance start at 0% (racial modifiers are added later). Ghouls cannot choose this trait.

Fast Shot

Why take time to aim when you can spray your enemies with a rain of bullets? That’s your motto! You cannot perform targeted shots, but all weapons take one less action point to use. Note that the Fast Shot trait has no effect on HtH or Melee attacks.

Fear the Reaper

You have cheated death! You gain perks as if you were a human, but you are now on death’s short list. This means that once a month, you must roll against Luck or else drop dead. Only Ghouls can choose this trait.

Finesse

Your attacks show a lot of finesse. You don't do as much damage, but you cause more critical hits. All of your attacks lose 25% of their damage (after Damage Threshold, and round up) but you gain a 10% bonus to Critical Chance. Super Mutants cannot choose this trait.

Gifted

You have more innate abilities than most, so you have not spent as much time honing your skills. Your statistics are better than the average person, but your skills are lacking. You get 5 more Character Points to distribute among your Primary Statistics, but all skills get a 10% penalty and you receive 5 less Skill Points per level.

Glowing One

Extreme radiation exposure has left you glowing in the dark. Your glow eliminates modifiers from light in combat for both you and your enemies. In addition, you gain a +50% bonus to Radiation Resistance, but everyone around you takes 10 rads per hour (see Radiation under Damage and Death, below). Only Ghouls can choose this trait.

Good Natured

You studied less-combative skills as you were growing up. Your combat skills start at a lower level, but First Aid, Doctor, Speech, and Barter are substantially improved. Those skills get a 20% bonus. You get a 10% penalty to starting combat skills (Simple Weapons skills and Ranged Weapons skills).

Ham Fisted

Genetic engineering – or dumb luck – has endowed you with huge hands. You get a “free” tag skill in Unarmed, but you suffer a -20% penalty to Ranged Weapons skills, First Aid, Doctor, Repair, Science, and Lockpick Skills (these numbers cannot go below 0). Only Super Mutants can choose this trait.

Heavy Handed

You swing harder, not better. Your attacks are very brutal, but lack finesse. You rarely cause a good critical hit, but you always do more melee damage. You get a 4-point bonus to Melee Damage, but your critical hits do half of their normal damage (50%) and targets get a 50% chance to avoid a critical hit that would cripple a limb or cause blindness.

Jinxed

The good thing is that everyone around you has more critical failures in combat. The bad thing is: so do you! If you, a member of your party, or a non-player character have a failure in combat, there is a greater likelihood the failure will be upgraded (downgraded?) to a critical failure. Critical failures are bad: weapons explode, you may hit the wrong target, you could lose part of your turn, or any number of bad things. Failures are 50% more likely to become critical failures around the character or anyone else in combat.

Kamikaze

By not paying attention to any threats, you can act a lot faster in a turn. This lowers your Armor Class to just what you are wearing, but you sequence much faster in a combat turn. You have no natural Armor Class (Armor Class is therefore 0 regardless of Agility). You must wear armor to get an Armor Class. Your sequence gets a 5 point bonus.

Night Person

As a night-time person, you are more awake when the sun goes down. Your Intelligence and Perception are improved at night but are dulled during the day. You get a 1-point penalty to these Statistics from 0601 to 1800, and a 1-point bonus to these Stats from 1801 to 0600. Note that the bonus cannot take IN and PE above the character’s racial maximum or below the character’s racial minimum.

One Hander

One of your hands is very dominant. You excel with single-handed weapons, but two-handed weapons cause a problem. You have a 40% penalty to hit with two-handed weapons, but get a 20% bonus to hit with weapons that only require one hand.

Sex Appeal

This trait increases your chances of having a good reaction with members of the attracted sex. Unfortunately, this trait tends to annoy members of the sex that finds your unattractive. Jealous twats. When interacting with members of the attracted sex, you gain a 1-point bonus to Charisma for reactions only. When making Speech and Barter rolls, you gain a 40% bonus for each. When interacting with members of the unattracted sex, you have a 1-point penalty to Charisma for reactions only and have a 40% penalty to both Speech and Barter rolls. Only humans can choose this trait.

Skilled

Since you spend more time improving your skills than a normal person, you gain more skill points. The tradeoff is that you do not gain as many extra abilities. You will gain a perk at one level higher than normal. For example, if you normally gained a perk every 4 levels, you would now gain a perk every 5 levels. You will get an additional 5 skill points per new experience level.

Small Frame

You are not quite as big as everyone else, but that never slowed you down. You can't carry as much, but you are more agile. You get a 1-point bonus to Agility, but your Carry Weight is only 15 lbs X Strength. Super Mutants cannot choose this trait.

Tech Wizard

You spent your formative years hunched over a bench learning all about the way things work. The trouble is that you’ve ruined your eyes! You get a +15% bonus to Science, Repair, and Lockpick skills, but you lose 1 Perception. Only Ghouls can chose this trait.

Vat Skin

Other people find you hideous to behold and disgusting to smell after your “dip” in the FEV vats. The good news is that you gain a +10 bonus to your Armor Class thanks to your extra-tough skin. The bad news is that everyone within ten hexes of your location, friend and foe, suffers a 1-point penalty to Perception (you are unaffected) because of your awful stench. Only Super Mutants can choose this trait.