Overview
Grindable Perk Magazines gives the player another option to obtain the various perk magazines from the base game, DLCs, and various magazine mods around the Nexus (more patches coming soon), and also allows the crafting of all S.P.E.C.I.A.L. perk magazines. Build your character how you want and rest easy knowing that your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats aren't going to hold you back!


Story Time
I play a lot of completely different play-throughs in Bethesda games, characters unique in their strengths, weaknesses, interests, end goals, etc. One thing that I never appreciated was having to know that 90% of my characters in Fallout were going to have to have at least six Charisma, six Intelligence, and four Perception to perform what I consider base functionality of the game. This puts me nearly ⅔ of the way through my character creation before I even get to think about who the character is, and what should make them S.P.E.C.I.A.L.; not so much fun in my opinion. When playing "the Hero class", this makes sense. I mean you'll have pretty much everything by end game anyway, and what little bit you're missing might be enough to get you to have another character some day. This logic completely breaks down when you play, say, Reinhardt. Now I need how many points in Intelligence in order to use power armor like a second skin?

And while that pretty much covers the 'why' of this mod's S.P.E.C.I.A.L. magazines, the mod actually started from being annoyed that, since I haven't played this game long enough to just know where all the Total Hack magazines are, I caught myself going and looking them up, and figuring out which ones I wanted for a particular character so I could go look a map up and be the character I was playing at the time.

How to Use
Torn Magazine Pages are a new item that can now drop from humans or be found in various containers. Scrounger may increase your find somewhat. Once you've collected a few (10+; don't worry, they weigh nothing), bring them and some Adhesive to a chemistry station to rebind a magazine or two!

S.P.E.C.I.A.L. magazines are read from your inventory or from the world in order to grant you their perk. They also can be placed in display containers like any other magazine if you feel like collecting.

Random magazines are just that, random. After crafting, they will be an unusable item in your inventory (there seems to be an engine limitation here that makes this more involved than I'd like). Take this item (or these items; it's more fun that way) and, like Andy Samberg would probably tell you, throw them on the ground. Now, pick them up one at a time and see what they become. So exciting!


Magazines
S.P.E.C.I.A.L. perk magazines for all 70 perks, including all DLC-added final ranks

Random perk magazines...

• Astoundingly Awesome Tales
• Grognak the Barbarian
• Guns and Bullets
• Hot Rodder
• Islander's Almanac
• Tales of a Junktown Jerky Vendor
• La Coiffe
• Live & Love
• Massachusetts Surgical Journal
• Tesla Science
• Picket Fences
• RobCo Fun
• SCAV!
• Taboo Tattoos
• Total Hack
• Tumblers Today
• Unstoppables
• U.S. Covert Operations Manual
• Wasteland Survival Guide
• SL Magazines (with optional patch)
  
  

Balance
The intent of the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. magazines was not to encourage getting a ton of something for nothing. As such, level requirements for the perks are all kept in place, while the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. requirements are removed. This may change in the future (e.g. obtaining a S.P.E.C.I.A.L. item that will reduce or remove the level requirements, or perhaps simply removing them altogether), but for now this feels fair and balanced.

Compatibility
Due to the various complaints I still read about people wanting mod authors to release DLC-independent versions of their mods, I started GPM without DLCs, and as of v1.8.0, all S.P.E.C.I.A.L. magazines and base-game perk magazines are accounted for. If you don't have the Far Harbor and Nuka-World DLCs, please use v1.8.0; everyone else, please use v2.0.0+.

Torn Magazine Pages are script-injected into leveled lists, so there should not be any conflicts with mods that get greedy with them.

No cells were harmed in the making of this mod. I've not removed any magazines from their previous locations, so you can feel free to treasure hunt or just stumble upon the existing magazines as you see fit. There is no way to obtain the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. magazines other than crafting, however.

Also, the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. perks themselves weren't updated in any way, so any alterations to their effects made by other mods should work with without issue.

Future Plans
I currently plan to create patches for various magazine mods from around the Nexus, but this may take some time, as I don't know that I want to support patches while I'm still fleshing out the mod. GPM now supports DLC content as of v2.0.0 via the main file.

As people (and myself) continue to use this, it may or may not evolve. Hopefully it will be to your liking, but please know that if you disapprove of a decision I make in how to do things, what magazines to create first, how I like to balance my game, etc., I will certainly understand if you choose to go and make patches for this on your own, or simply not use it at all. Feel free to let me know what you'd like to see though, and if it feels right, I'll be glad to help. Thanks so much for your understanding, and for giving Grindable Perk Magazines a place in your LO if you choose to.

Happy grinding! ❤️