Character building guide for Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel

Another one of those posts where I brain dump. Been playing Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel lately because it's something I can do for an hour to unwind. Pick up and put down as it were. Not a good game in the pantheon of Fallout, but fine on its own. The early levels are much more tactically interesting than the late game. Ambushes and minelaying work pretty well against raiders and mutants. Reavers are always static and wait for you, which makes sniping the (boring) game, and robots also have huge health which means you have to basically just run up with a full squad of laser/plasma and shoot the crap out of them. Pretty boring but at least the last few missions are fast. Anyway, thought I'd write a character guide because Tactics is quite different to other Fallout games, notably:

•  There is no "role-playing" in this game. This is a tactical squad-based shooter akin to Jagged Alliance or XCOM (it is much weaker than those games, but still enjoyable). As such, charisma is completely wasted, and intelligence isn't much use either. Intelligence gets you skills, but all you really need is guns, guns, guns.
• The game is staggered in a way that makes being able to use big guns compulsory. Not necessarily for your main character (you only need 2+ big guns users), but it really helps. 
• Following on from that, the best big gun requires 9(!) strength to use effectively. By the time you get power armour to take your STR to 9 you will have moved on to energy weapons, so you need 9 STR base. Gauss rifles only arrive at the very end of the game.
• The best, fastest, and most straightforward way to play the game is in "continuous turn-based" mode. This means that close-quarters combat and aiming are kind of shite, because they're too finicky. You just pound people in the torso with 6 warriors firing continuously. 
• As you don't aim, and a third of the game is using burst-only big guns, critical hits aren't as relevant as raw damage-per-second (DPS). As such, fast shot is the bomb.   

Sidenote: the most powerful character for shooting your way through the enclave in Fallout 2 is a fast-shot, pistol-using gunslinger. Fight me. This character is relatively weak through most of the game bc they can't aim shots and thus rely on burst weapons against tough enemies like wanamingoes (the p90c is OK), but as soon as they get sniper they are an absolute menace; much more so than any other character. 10AG (with chip), and 10LCK (with Zeta-scan), sniper, 2 levels of action girl, and bonus rate of fire, means you take 6 shots per round with a gauss pistol or pulse pistol, auto-crit doing ~70 damage a shot on a power-armoured enclave guard. People melt. That said, shooting your way through the enclave is pretty lame given the cooler RPG approach. The optimal way to play Fallout 2 is probably with a high CH/INT character (gifted and small frame/finesse) with only enough AG/PE/LK to get sniper and take 1 (or 2 with bonus rate of fire) aimed shots a round causing an instant death critical. Anyway...back to Fallout Tactics

• Medical chems and the skills first aid and doctor are abundant in F:T and so you don't need high END, but it's nice. Not having to take more critical and better criticals frees up a lot of perks, and toughness and lifegiver are decent options. 
• Living anatomy is bad in F:T (and only OK in Fallout 2, not great) because by the time you get it most enemies are robotic
• Your squadmates can cover any skills you don't have, notably lockpick, traps, and doctor, and you get a tonne of books that add massive amounts of skill points linearly (i.e. the points don't decrease as your base skill gets higher) to repair, pilot, first aid, science, traps, and outdoorsman. As such, you really just want to focus on guns, guns, guns, and sneak.
• Sneak and fighting at night is critical to completing the early missions
• A quick side note, the game uses frames per second to determine random encounters, which means that if you play it on a new computer you will have a random encounter every 0.2 seconds. Quite frustrating, and makes getting someone to 100% outdoorsman a priority (Farsight is your girl).

Taking all of this into consideration, I would suggest the following character for a first-and-only run (this game has very little replay value):

ST 9 

PE 8 

EN 4 

CH 2 

IN 8 

AG 10 

LK 6 

Traits: Gifted, Fast Shot

TAG Skills: small guns, big guns, sneak. You get small guns to 100, then sneak to 100, then small guns to 130, big guns to 130, then swap to energy weapons until it's 130, then back to sneak to 130 (to offset the power armour penalty). You can get all the other skills from books. Any leftover points go to doctor or first aid so that you have a second medic. Your main char should read all books except maybe traps, which should go to a dedicated traps/lockpick person. 

Justifications:

• STR 9 will allow you to swing the Browning HP, the most awesome heavy weapon in the game, which makes mince meat of mutants and is even strong against Robots if you have (rare) depleted uranium rounds loaded. 
• PE8 really helps with long range fire fights, which are a very important part of the game
• END 4 is plenty of hit points given all the meds available (plus you shouldn't be getting hit much if you play tactically) and unlocks toughness and lifegiver if you want to go that route
• CH 2 is as low as possible with gifted. You do not need CH for anything
• 8 IN gives you plenty of skill points in the early game without becoming redundant later. You could drop it to 6 and pump PE to 10 or END to 6 if you are playing on tough guy mode. 
• AG 10 hands down the most important stat. Shoot more bullets!!!
• LK 6 is necessary for Bonus Ranged Damage, which is one of the most important perks. 
• Gifted is the best trait, especially in F:T because skills are redundant and books are awesome
• Fast shot has no drawbacks in continuous turn based and let's you shoot more bullets
• Small guns and sneak are critical to the early missions, big guns is critical to the mutant missions in the mid-game, and then you swap to energy weapons well before you actually get them so that when they arrive you are already a master. You will need to use them immediately. 
• This character is your assassin - they do sniping and crawling around to ambush people behind cover with a big burst from their Browning HP. You can use them as a breacher, but someone with higher END and lower PER is better for that. 
• High STR and low END might seem weird from a roleplaying point of view, but just imagine you're really buff with bad lungs from huffing toxic fumes as a child or something. This is the wasteland after all. 

Perks:

lvl3: Night vision - most missions are best done at night to help you sneak (only exception is the defend the ghouls mission in mid-game) and this makes sniping at night straightforward (it's basically day time for you). Quick pockets is useless in continuous turned based, and awareness (I don't rate it) can go on a single other character who doesn't snipe. Alternative is toughness, because 2 ranks of toughness with power armour and psycho is 95% damage res. 

lvl6: Bonus ranged damage (Massive upgrade from Fallout 2 from +2 damage to +15% damage) 

lvl9: Bonus ranged damage (it's basically the more criticals of F:T)

lvl12: Action Boy/Girl

lvl15: Bonus rate of fire (3AP to fire a pulse rifle? Yes please!)

lvl18: Action Boy/Girl

lvl21: Better Criticals (just setting up sniper)

lvl24: Sniper (why not? 60% chance to critical is a lot)

Alternatively, you could take silent running or lifegiver at 12 and the second level of action boy at 21, but I think this build is optimal. Silent running makes things quicker but you're never in a rush. You can never have enough hit points to stop a browning from 1-shot killing you, so lifegiver is kind of pointless, but maybe worth it in tough guy mode. In fact, in tough guy mode I would probably build someone more for survival with multiple ranks of toughness and lifegiver rather than action boy and better criticals. Better criticals is not worth taking early because you won't be doing many criticals (even with finesse and 3 levels of more criticals). Get it at level 21 just before you get sniper. You get sniper about 1/3 of the way into the final mission, so it's not worth building around. The point of this character is just to sneak into a good position and then snipe/burst the shit out of the opposition. Simple.