Wasteland 2: Director's Cut Playthrough - Character Creation

For those starting this game and interested in making custom characters.

The formula for computing Action Points per round in combat is this: AP = 3 + Coordination/2 + (Strength + Speed + Intelligence)/4

The AP formula is the single most confusing thing about character creation if you go in not knowing how it works. Once you do know, it's probably best to give all of your rangers an even number in coordination at creation and to make sure the sum of your Strength, Speed, and Intelligence adds up to an integer multiple of 4.

That said, the total number of skill points you get at Intelligence 1-3 is 2 per character level, if you have an Intelligence of 4-7 you get 3 skill points per level, at Int of 8-9 you get 4 skill points per level, and with an Int of 10 you get a total of 5 skill points per level. So you want Int to be either a 4, 8, or 10 (or maybe 1, if you don't care about skills, but I don't personally recommend that, there are enough NPCs you can add tot he team that have Int below 4 as it is). It's not necessary to give all four of your custom rangers a 10 in Intelligence at creation, if you do that you'll have a lot of extra skill points you don't need by the second half of the game. I recommend giving one or two rangers Int of 4, including the Leadership guy, who needs those points for Charisma anyway, and then give two or three guys 8 or 10 Int. Or maybe one 8 and one 10.

Strength and Speed are only really necessary on melee characters, but encumbrance and movement speed are still a concern. That said, people with sniper rifles and assault rifles have enough range that they can take cover behind scenery and shoot and not have to move very much. You probably don't want to dump Strength to a 1 on everyone, because you need to be able to carry some amount of stuff overall. The party can benefit from having one or two high Strength characters just to be able to carry more stuff around. That said there are multiple NPCs you can recruit for that.

Luck and Charisma are both generally dump stats. You only need a Charisma above 1 on the Leadership guy, and the lowest I'd put on him, to start, is a 4. You get an attribute point at level 10, 20, 30 etc, and can up Charisma a bit with that later. All that really does is increase the effective radius of the Leadership buff aura. Eventually getting Charisma to like 6 is ideal for the Leadership guy.

Awareness is a very good stat. Every point you put in Awareness increases your vision radius, which is something you want more or less maxxed on one character, just to increase your illuminated "push back the fog of war" distance. Beyond that though, Awareness also gives your rangers increases to a derived stat you don't really get to see called Combat Initiative. The higher your Combat Initiative, the earlier you get to act in combat. Even more than that though, high Combat Initiative also causes you to get to act more often in combat as well. So a high Awareness will get to take earlier turns and more of them, which is really strong.

Basically you want as much Awareness, Coordination, and Intelligence as you can get. That said the break points on Intelligence are at 4, 8, and 10, and you don't need more than two guys with Int of 10. You probably want to have one Sniper with an Awareness of 10. It's a great stat, but you probably can't afford to make it a 10 on every character, due tot he need for other stats on some characters. Make sure your Coordination is high enough that you have enough AP to move a little and use your weapon of choice at least once. You probably don't want to make a character that has les than 8 Action Points at creation. Some Sniper Rifles take 7AP to shoot one time.

There are a bunch of different NPCs you can recruit to join the team. Not many of them have Intelligence over 7, and two of the smartest ones that do are mutually exclusive. There are enough high-Strength, low Int guys you can get fairly early on. So at character creation, you can probably skip the high Strength melee guy because you'll find those soon enough, and you only really need one. Even Angela Deth does Blunt weapons and has decent stats for that role from the get-go. You can recruit Angela Deth on the first map you start on after Ace's funeral.

Outdoorsman, Animal Whisperer, and Barter are all skippable skills. Outdoorsman does help you start random encounters in a better starting position than you might get without it (Angela Deth has a few ranks in this anyway though). Barter gives you better prices and so forth in trade. There's maybe one skill check in the late game that requires Animal Whisperer, apart from that it's largely superfluous. You can tame animals you find and get little "familiar" buffs from them but it's not that crucial. Brute Force is used primarily to break things, like fences and so forth, and almost all of those can be broken with gunfire, explosives, or a Proton Ax/Plasma Hammer (this is also one of Angela's skills in the early game). You should plan on giving multiple people a few ranks in First Aid and Surgeon, just to be able to heal and revive your team. All of the other skills (Lock Picking, Safecracking, Mechanics, Computers, Kiss Ass, Hard Ass, Smart Ass, Weapon Smithing, Perception, Demolitions, Toaster Repair, Alarms, etc) are skills you need one person to specialize in, but you can skip Toaster Repair in the character creation and start ranking it up later on. Nothing you get out of the toasters is of any immediate use or importance.

There's a nice Perk you can get at level 2 of Weapon Smithing called Tinkerer that gives you +1AP while wearing light armor. I like to dip everyone into that for the bonus action point, if I can. You won't be able to wear heavy armor if your Strength is too low anyway, and the heavy metal armors are actually worse than being stark naked. They cause you to take MORE damage from energy weapons than you would with no armor at all. Also, all heavy armors still reduce your combat movement speed to some extent, even if you DO have enough Strength to actually wear them, which sucks. Heavier armor was everything in Wasteland 1, and I think Brian Fargo made it a trap in this game on purpose. There isn't a ton of heavy, non-metal armor in the game, and what you do find can be given to an NPC like Takayuki or Chisel, since they come with high Strength anyway, and there's nothing you can do to change that.

There's a bunch of good items you can get from fixing the toasters in the game. That said, you'll need to look up internet spoilers to really maximize your Toaster Repair investment, because some of the toasters are not easy to find. Also, the way it generally works is, you fix a toaster and find some useless item inside of it, like a tube of Preparation H. Then later you meet an NPC who needs that item and you can trade it to him for some weapon or something that you DO want. There are some very good items to be had this way, but you almost have to know where they are and how to get them for it all to work. Also, it can take FOREVER to actually find the guy that wants the toaster thing, and you have to haul those items around with you all the time just in case you meet that guy, again, unless you read spoilers.

The best combat skills are probably Sniper Rifle and Assault Rifles. Heavy Weapons is probably worth having on one guy, at most, but a bit disappointing in terms of range and damage given the amount of ammo you use, and the cost and weight of it. The other guns (Pistol, Shotgun, and SMG) are not that great, for various reasons, but mostly because of their short range and not awesome damage output. Ironically, Bladed and Blunt Weapons (which are both THE shortest range, melee combat) are both good, if you want a melee guy, Pugilism is not so good, as there is no great late game Pugilism weapon to speak of. Fans of the first Wasteland game might be expecting to eventually get a Proton Ax at some point, and won't be disappointed. There's also a Blunt equivalent in this game called a Plasma Hammer. Energy Weapons is not a skill you want any one ranger to specialize in. The laser guns etc are really only good against robots, and you want to shoot literally anything else against non-robot targets. That said some of the toughest fights are against robots and the better energy weapons do make a difference in those fights. I would give at least one of your high Intelligence guys enough points in Energy Weapons to effectively use a Pulse Rifle or whatever your best Energy Weapon is, just for the robot fights, and carry at least one such energy weapon around all the time, in case you run into robots. Sniper rifles are probably the best guns in the game, and are your second best option against robots, so don't make the Sniper guy the one who has the Energy weapon backup.

Lastly, you should give every ranger you make a hat and a backpack to start. They do literally nothing at all in game mechanics, but you can unequip them and sell them for money. Some people also like to give every starting character one skill point in each of two different combat skills, because you start with a free weapon for each combat skill you have. That approach also allows people to have a back-up weapon options, in case you run out of ammo for your main gun and have to use stuff you find in the early game when you're super poor. I believe Demolitions starts you with a couple sticks of dynamite. Also, starting a ranger with a rank in Field Medic gives them a small first aid kit, and starting someone with a rank in Surgeon gets them a low level surgical kit, IIRC. You need field medic kits, as they are the healing potions of this game, and you should carry around a couple of surgical kits, they become necessary occasionally, I'd also buy a few doses of anti-venom if and when you have the ability to use it.