SPECIAL

SPECIAL — Player Guide

A simple, practical reference for players. Pick SPECIAL to match your playstyle — here's what each stat actually does.

TL;DR

SPECIAL are the 7 core stats: Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, Luck.
Each stat normally ranges from 1–10.
Default is 5 in every stat.
Character creation starts from 5 in every stat and allows redistribution, with 5 extra total points available.
Values below 5 give penalties; values above 5 give bonuses.
Temporary modifiers can affect effective SPECIAL, but gameplay effects clamp effective values to 1–10.
SPECIAL scaling is curved rather than fully linear, so edge values matter more than small middle adjustments.

Quick Reference (Player-Friendly)

**At-a-glance: what each stat gives you**
Level	Str: Melee dmg	Per: Spread / recoil	End: HP adj	Int: G-craft time	Agi: Move speed	Luck: Crit / Junk loot
1	90%	115%	−20 HP	Cannot hand craft	92.5%	0% / 0%
2	93%	110.5%	−14 HP	145%	94.75%	0% / 0%
3	95.5%	106.75%	−9 HP	130%	96.6%	0% / 0%
4	98%	103%	−4 HP	115%	98.5%	0% / 0%
5	100%	100%	normal	100%	100%	0% / 0%
6	102%	96.67%	+2.67 HP	90%	101%	3.33% / 6.67%
7	104.5%	92.5%	+6 HP	80%	102.25%	7.5% / 15%
8	107.5%	87.5%	+10 HP	70%	103.75%	12.5% / 25%
9	111%	81.67%	+14.67 HP	60%	105.5%	18.33% / 36.67%
10	115%	75%	+20 HP	50%	107.5%	25% / 50%

How to Use This

If you want to hit harder in melee, stack Strength.
If you want tighter gun handling, better recoil control, better heavy gun control, and faster mine work, pick Perception.
If you want to tank better, recover stamina faster, and handle wasteland hazards better, pick Endurance.
If you want better trade prices, better payouts, and bigger speech presence, pick Charisma.
If you want faster crafting, better lathe use, better surgery speed, chemical-reading utility, and medical HUD at max level, pick Intelligence.
If you want faster movement and shorter combat action delays, pick Agility.
If you want crits and much better lucky junk-pile rewards, pick Luck.

Player Tips & Examples

Melee fighter: STR 8–10, AGI 6–8 — hit harder and attack more smoothly.
Marksman: PER 8–10, AGI 5–7 — tighter spread, better recoil, and better combat pacing.
Heavy gunner: PER 8–10, STR 6–8 — Perception controls heavy gun spread/recoil, while Strength still helps with melee and carrying/pulling.
Medic/Engineer: INT 8–10 — faster crafting, faster surgery, better lathe performance, chemical-reading utility, and Medical HUD at 10 INT.
Survivalist/Tank: END 8–10, STR 6–8 — more health, better stamina recovery, and stronger resistance to toxin-style damage.
Trader/Face: CHA 8–10 — better vendor pricing, better sell payouts, and larger speech text.
Scavenger/Rogue: LCK 7–10, AGI 7–10 — more crits, better lucky loot, and faster movement.

Notable Level Mechanics

Some stat levels grant explicit mechanical effects. These are important for gameplay and can have strong consequences.

Below 3 Luck: grants the Clumsy trait.
- Clumsy can cause affected interactions to fail, including hyposprays, defibrillators, some guns, and climbing/table interactions.

1 Intelligence: prevents G-menu hand crafting and gives the low-intelligence speech accent.

1–3 Intelligence: prevents opening or using lathes.

8 Intelligence: allows you to see chemicals without chem goggles.

10 Intelligence: grants a Medical HUD effect.

High Charisma: makes your speech text larger.

Below 5 Charisma: examining the character shows awkward or hard-to-approach social tells.

1–2 Charisma: speech can occasionally gain awkward phrasing, hesitant openers, trailing closers, or a brief stutter.

Followers of the Apocalypse roles: receive a hidden Fireman Carry trait, allowing them to carry or drag people without speed loss.

Detailed Stat Notes

Strength

Strength affects melee weapon damage and helps offset carrying and pulling slowdowns.

Higher Strength increases melee damage. Lower Strength reduces melee damage.

Melee damage scaling:

1 STR: 90%
2 STR: 93%
3 STR: 95.5%
4 STR: 98%
5 STR: 100%
6 STR: 102%
7 STR: 104.5%
8 STR: 107.5%
9 STR: 111%
10 STR: 115%

Perception

Perception affects gun handling, heavy gun handling, and mine handling.

Higher Perception improves spread, recoil growth, and camera recoil. Lower Perception worsens them. Heavy gun spread and recoil also scale from Perception. Higher Perception also arms and disarms landmines faster, while lower Perception makes mine handling slower.

Spread / recoil scaling:

1 PER: 115%
2 PER: 110.5%
3 PER: 106.75%
4 PER: 103%
5 PER: 100%
6 PER: 96.67%
7 PER: 92.5%
8 PER: 87.5%
9 PER: 81.67%
10 PER: 75%

Lower is better for spread/recoil.

Endurance

Endurance affects health, hunger, thirst, stamina recovery, and toxin-style damage taken.

Higher Endurance increases health thresholds, slows hunger and thirst decay, improves stamina recovery, and reduces Poison, Radiation, Caustic, and Cellular damage. Lower Endurance reduces health and makes those damage types worse.

Health threshold modifier:

1 END: −20 HP
2 END: −14 HP
3 END: −9 HP
4 END: −4 HP
5 END: normal
6 END: +2.67 HP
7 END: +6 HP
8 END: +10 HP
9 END: +14.67 HP
10 END: +20 HP

Charisma

Charisma affects trade, reward payouts, loadout points, social presentation, and text size.

Higher Charisma improves trade value, sell payouts, exchange rewards, mass-sell crate totals, contract currency rewards, and gives more loadout points. Lower Charisma worsens trade value and reduces loadout points.

Trade scaling:

1 CHA: 110% buy price, 90% sell/reward payout
5 CHA: normal
10 CHA: 90% buy price, 110% sell/reward payout

Approximate loadout point modifier:

1 CHA: −10 points
2 CHA: −7 points
3 CHA: −5 points
4 CHA: −2 points
5 CHA: normal
6 CHA: +2 points
7 CHA: +5 points
8 CHA: +8 points
9 CHA: +11 points
10 CHA: +15 points

Intelligence

Intelligence affects hand crafting, lathe access, lathe crafting time, surgery speed, chemical identification, and max-level medical awareness.

At 1 Intelligence, characters cannot hand craft through the G menu and gain the low-intelligence speech accent. At 8 Intelligence, characters can see chemicals without chem goggles. At 10 Intelligence, characters gain a Medical HUD effect.

G-menu hand crafting:

1 INT: cannot hand craft through the G menu
2 INT: 145% crafting time
3 INT: 130% crafting time
4 INT: 115% crafting time
5 INT: 100% crafting time
6 INT: 90% crafting time
7 INT: 80% crafting time
8 INT: 70% crafting time
9 INT: 60% crafting time
10 INT: 50% crafting time and Medical HUD

Lathe crafting:

1–3 INT: cannot open/use lathes
4 INT: 115% crafting time
5 INT: 100% crafting time
6 INT: 90% crafting time
7 INT: 80% crafting time
8 INT: 70% crafting time
9 INT: 60% crafting time
10 INT: 50% crafting time

Surgery speed:

1 INT: 60% surgery speed
5 INT: 100% surgery speed
10 INT: 150% surgery speed

Agility

Agility affects movement speed and combat action delay.

Higher Agility increases movement speed and reduces melee attack delay and gun fire delay. Lower Agility reduces movement speed and increases combat action delay.

Movement speed modifier:

1 AGI: 92.5%
2 AGI: 94.75%
3 AGI: 96.6%
4 AGI: 98.5%
5 AGI: 100%
6 AGI: 101%
7 AGI: 102.25%
8 AGI: 103.75%
9 AGI: 105.5%
10 AGI: 107.5%

Combat action delay:

1 AGI: 108% delay
5 AGI: normal
10 AGI: 90% delay

Lower delay is better.

Luck

Luck affects critical hits, lucky junk-pile bonus loot, and Clumsy.

Critical hits deal 1.5× damage. For ranged weapons, crit chance scales against ammo capacity: single-shot weapons use the listed chance, while multi-shot weapons divide that chance by ammo capacity. Melee weapons use the same Luck crit curve as single-shot ranged weapons.

Lucky junk-pile rewards are rarity-weighted. Common supplies are more likely, while the rarest rewards are extremely uncommon. Lucky loot now spawns inside the junk pile inventory instead of on the ground.

Melee and single-shot weapon crit chance:

1–5 LCK: 0%
6 LCK: 3.33%
7 LCK: 7.5%
8 LCK: 12.5%
9 LCK: 18.33%
10 LCK: 25%

Lucky junk-pile bonus loot chance:

1–5 LCK: 0%
6 LCK: 6.67%
7 LCK: 15%
8 LCK: 25%
9 LCK: 36.67%
10 LCK: 50%

Lucky junk containers can spawn bonus items once per player per container. Lucky loot can include useful medical supplies, magazines, drinks, ammo rewards, and very rare high-value rewards.