SPECIAL (role-playing system)
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The SPECIAL system is a character-creation scheme developed specifically for the Fallout franchise of computer role-playing games. SPECIAL is an acronym, representing the seven attributes used to define Fallout characters: Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck. SPECIAL is heavily based on GURPS, which was originally intended to be the character system used in the game.
The SPECIAL system involves three sets of key features:
- Attributes (listed above) represent a character's core, inborn abilities. Attributes stay largely constant throughout the game, though they can be temporarily affected by drugs, altered indefinitely by conditions such as the wearing of Power Armor, the presence of certain NPCs or eye damage received in a critical hit, or permanently changed at certain points in the game, through use of certain items or by picking certain Perks (see below).
- Skills represent a character's chance of successfully performing a group of specific tasks (such as firing a gun, or picking a lock). They are represented as percentages, though these percentages can extend well beyond the expected maximum of 100%. Skills are initially determined by formulae, and are derived from the core Attributes, but can thereafter be improved with Skill Points that are earned each time the character levels up. At character creation, the player also selects three Tag Skills — Skills which can be increased at double the normal rate. Tag Skills allow the player to create an informal class for the character.
- Perks are special abilities that allow the player to bend the rules of the game similar to Feats in Dungeons & Dragons. A new Perk is chosen every three or four levels. In addition to these Perks, the player may also select up to two initial Traits — special Perks that involve tradeoffs, such as giving up some Action Points to do more damage in mêlée combat. Traits can only be selected at the time of initial character creation. But through the "Mutate!" perk, one trait may be replaced by another by the player's choice.
The SPECIAL system has thus far been used in the games Fallout, Fallout 2, and Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel. Van Buren, the cancelled project that would have become Fallout 3, also used the system. After the rights to the Fallout franchise were acquired by Bethesda Softworks, Bethesda's Todd Howard expressed in a 2005 interview [1] that his company currently intends to use the SPECIAL system in future Fallout titles. This has been verified in gameplay footage of the current Fallout 3 game by Bethesda Softworks. A heavily modified version of the system was used for Fallout: Warfare, a tabletop battle game available on the Fallout Tactics bonus CD.
Aside from Fallout games, modified versions of SPECIAL were also used in Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader (also referred to as Fallout Fantasy early in production), a fantasy role-playing game that involved spirits and magic in addition to the traditional SPECIAL features, as well as two cancelled projects - Black Isle's Torn and Reflexive Entertainment's Deadlands game.
[edit] External links
- SPECIAL article at The Vault, the Fallout wiki
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