Bab 56: Character Creation

Afton shoved as many supplies as his bag would fit, the Chapter could last without a couple bottles of water and cans of food, but him? Not so much. With that he headed for the bunker's exit, excitement beginning to fill him.

*Clank!*

He stepped outside into the cold desert night, and only then realised the bunker's defence system was still on... A dust storm was raging and he had no idea how he was going to leave, or where he would be going...

[Escape with Pipboy: Success!]

The notification had him remembering that he still hadn't checked out the Pipboy. He entered the bunker and sat in the hallway, wishing to leave the duststorm alone for the time being, he'd check the device and leave as soon as possible... Who knew when someone would notice the unconscious Paladin.

He took the device out and strapped it to his wrist, looking at it peculiarly as it seemed to meld with his forearm, it felt almost natural to have it there, as if it weighed nothing at all. The screen lit up the dim hallway, the amber Pipboy mascot gave him a thumbs up before the device started booting up.

Immediately it presented him with five options to look at, Status, S.P.E.C.I.A.L, Skills, Perks, and General. One of the three red buttons that was labelled "stats" was lit up. Afton was more or less familiar with this set up.

Status would display his physical health, injuries, buffs or debuffs such as drugs or similar things, and radiation levels.

S.P.E.C.I.A.L was essentially everything he was quantified numerically, like how an RPG put a number on your strength, speed, agility, etc. The exact stats it displayed were Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck.

Moving on, the skills, this would detail how proficient or knowledgable he was in a certain subject, lockpicking, science, guns, energy weapons, explosives, repair, etc.

Next was Perks, if it was the same as in the games, this would be where he'd be able to see what perks he'd gathered, either through levelling up or other unique events.

Last but not least was General, this would detail his reputation with other factions, as well as other general stats, this was relatively useless as knowing how many stimpacks you've ever used isn't something important.

He flipped a switch on the top of the Pipboy to move to the next tab called "items", he had no idea how it'd work outside the game, but right now it only seemed to be registering everything on his person, and giving basic information about it.

Ignoring this tab for new, he moved onto the next, "data", it held Local maps, World map, Quests, Misc, and Radio. Everything but the maps were useless to him right now, but it seems the Pipboy only knew one location... Vault 3.

He'd have to visit it eventually if he were going to grab the components for the ventilation system, so at least it wasn't somewhere useless.

For now though, he'd check his stats.

Afton Parker

S.P.E.C.I.A.L :

Strength : 8

Perception : 7

Endurance : 7

Charisma : 4

Intelligence : 6

Agility : 7

Luck : 3

Skills :

Barter : 15

Energy Weapons : 40

Explosives : 20

Guns : 23

Lockpick : 10

Medicine : 40

Melee Weapons : 38

Repair : 41

Science : 41

Sneak : 20

Speech : 19

Survival : 15

Unarmed : 30

Perks :

None

As soon as he checked it another notification came up, along with some options.

[Tutorial Ended]

[Edit Name?]

[Rebuild Character?]

[Continue Onwards?]

...

Afton didn't really care much about his name and so kept it, he didn't know what effects it'd have if he tried to change it anyway, instead, he selected [Rebuild Chacter].

Immediately he was greeted with a character creation screen, it allowed him to redesign his face, body, and even his gender... He didn't want to touch any of that right now, plastic surgery had never been an interest of his. Though, if he could give himself-No!

He immediately put a stop to that line of thought, choosing what he liked and what he didn't made him feel almost artificial... He didn't want to look different either, as he retains traits from both his parents, the least he could do was keep them.

Next was his S.P.E.C.I.A.L stats, he was actually pretty happy with the distribution, though, he did want to alter his Luck value, he had no idea what effect it'd have on his life if he left it as it was. He took a point away from his Strength and added it to Luck.

Happy with that, he moved onto the next options, Skills. Now, he couldn't do much with them aside from put "tags" on them, these would add fifteen points to skills you select. It seems that he hadn't had any before he started to Character customization.

He mulled over his options, this wasn't a game, and if he died he'd be dead for good. Sure, science sounded good, but would it help him get out of this situation? Probably not.

In the end he eventually decided to place the tags on Energy Weapons, Speech, and Survival. Raising them to 55, 34, and 30 respectively.

After that he was greeted with a trait selection, these were basically perks that you start off with... There were quite a few he could pick from, though most had positives and negatives.

For example, the [Skilled] trait gave +5 points to every skill, while decreasing EXP gain by 10%, something that looked relatively good to Afton now that he caught in a dangerous position.

Though, he would probably just pick [Trigger Discipline], a trait that reduced your firerate by 20% but increased your accuracy by the same amount. This was incredibly valuable due to how difficult finding ammunition would likely be in future, not to mention people would probably go down with a single shot.

He also picked [Heavy Handed], the perk would cause your unarmed attack do to 20% more damage while doing 60% less Critical damage. Afton had no idea what effects Critical Strikes would have in reality... In Fallout 3 they'd more or less cause your enemies head to explode even if you hit them with a 9mm round. He doubted it was the same here, so he valued the raw damage as opposed to risking it on luck. It was a good choice aswell, considering his Luck was currently four.