The Fallout TV show is here and, in a development I've still not fully internalised, it's good. You know what that means: Time to completely lose our minds obsessing over it, and particularly to lose our minds obsessing over what seems to Bethesda's official SPECIAL stats sheets for its main characters. Because I have questions.
The stats come from Fallout Shelter, Bethesda's vault management sim that's been quietly ticking along ever since it came out in 2015. Show characters Lucy, The Ghoul, Maximus, and (for some reason) Ma June and the Snake Oil Salesman have all been added to the game as "Legendary Dwellers," the name Bethesda gives to cameo characters from its other games (and now, shows).
Which means they all get proper SPECIAL stats, which you can see here in convenient list form:
-
Lucy
- Strength: 4
- Perception: 7
- Endurance: 6
- Charisma: 5
- Intelligence: 6
- Agility: 5
- Luck: 7
-
The Ghoul
- Strength: 5
- Perception: 6
- Endurance: 7
- Charisma: 7
- Intelligence: 4
- Agility: 7
- Luck: 4
-
Maximus
- Strength: 7
- Perception: 6
- Endurance: 6
- Charisma: 5
- Intelligence: 4
- Agility: 7
- Luck: 5
-
Ma June
- Strength: 5
- Perception: 7
- Endurance: 5
- Charisma: 7
- Intelligence: 6
- Agility: 4
- Luck: 6
-
Snake Oil Salesman
- Strength: 4
- Perception: 5
- Endurance: 5
- Charisma: 8
- Intelligence: 8
- Agility: 4
- Luck: 6
Look, I might be biased, but I think I'm more on-board with these estimates from PCG's Jody Macgregor than I am with Bethesda's own workings. First up, I really feel like Lucy's Charisma should be higher. The woman is specced for Speech checks, and with the show pretty much calling out Speech as one of her tagged skills, I can't help but think someone got confused and transposed the numbers for Agility and Charisma somewhere down the line.
But that's a minor quibble. What really gets me is The Ghoul's Charisma. Fallout Shelter gives Walton Ghoulggins a Charisma of 7, which is six points higher than the flat 1 our Jody gave him. I reckon Jody's closer.
Sure, The Ghoul is just the irradiated version of rizz-dripping star of stage and screen Cooper Howard, but a few hundred years of Wasteland living has taken its toll. This is not a man who is all about winning friends and influencing people, and—in Fallout 2 terms—I can't really imagine him maintaining a super-high party limit.
But hey, I think Maximus is pretty close to how I'd imagine his stats, although I'd probably amp his Endurance up a little more to be closer to the full-on 10 Jody gave him. To be fair to Bethesda, the studio is working within the rules of the Fallouts of yore, which gave you five SPECIAL points to allocate as you see fit and demand you decrease stats to get more. PCG obeys no law but its own, and so we were free to give characters as many points as we wanted.
Also, Ma June is there, which I feel obliged to point out but have no strong feelings about either way. She seems a bit of an odd character to include alongside the main three when you could have put Kyle MacLachlan in there, but who am I to judge? Perhaps that's why she has 6 points in Luck.
Update: This piece has been changed to reflect that the Snake Oil Salesman was also added. Your author admits not noticing because he was named "Snake Oil Salesman" and not "Chicken pervert."
