mimsi: After revisiting Fallout 1 for the umpteenth time, I decided to just be a major asshole and do a low karma run. Well guess what I found out after hours of wasting my time during this playthrough? You actually can't get power armor without taking on the Brotherhood of Steel and stealing one of their suits... While Power armorless.

Let me elaborate, and newcomers to this game I hope you pay attention so that you don't make the same fatal error that I just did. I started off the game like usual- Doing the temporarily available quests (err, quest should I say) of eradicating scorpions in Shady Sands, but then I thought it'd be worthwhile to "help" Killian get rid of Gizmo (fear not, I will refrain from spoilers incase newbies are reading) but then backstab Killian as well so the entire town hated me. I basically did every evil outcome of every quest in Junktown to ensure my stench filled low karma level reeked of... Low levelness, or what was left of it, to ensure that everyone else in the game from this point on would... Hate me essentially. It's just a given that when given the choice of being good or bad in a video game you should always do a pure run-through for each scenario... Right?

Then I go to the Hub, do the quest to obtain the electric lockpick device so that I can "sneak" into the Brotherhood early on in the game (ensuring that my lockpick and repair skill was high, since I knew it was pointless to save the initiate in hopes of receiving power armor from Talus since I already knew he doesn't give that out as a reward to characters with bad karma and thus repairing the broken power armor would be my only option). So I go up to Michael, after talking to Kyle about needing to obtain the Systematic Motivator, then I retrieve that from him and go back to Kyle, but when I speak to him he simple says "Leave me alone, I'm busy" without even giving me the option to give him the part first so that I can repair it... God dammit why???? Was it a bug? Or is this just a lame punishment for being evil?

So that only leaves me with one hopeless option, and that is to take on the entire Brotherhood so that I can steal a suit from one of the locker rooms. I really do not want to do this considering they all have superior armor and you have to get REALLY lucky opening the damn storage room since it won't let you lockpick when in combat (there are Brotherhood Paladins on the other side of the locked room which always engages combat mode when you go near the door). So yeah I feel like the game just gave me a huge slap in the face. Power Armor isn't required to beat the game, I get that. But I tried going through the military base without it before and you literally die if you get hit with a single rocket from a super mutant or get critically injured from one of their plasma rifles. So WTF game??? You mean to tell me I can't even be purely evil without having to deal with this nonsense, making it almost virtually impossible to beat all of a sudden?

/rant

EDIT: Okay so I just read another topic with the exact same thing that happened to someone else and apparently you CAN use the electronic lockpick to open the door containing the storage room lockers with Power Armor while in combat. I guess it won't be too difficult of a fight once I acquire the turbo plasma rifle anyway and I guess I was just venting steam because I couldn't come up with any solutions and was afraid that my evil character runthrough was doomed to fail. Hopefully this advice helps anyone who is attempting to have bad karma throughout the game!

Cheers

Elmofongo: I would argue that its more realistic since always harder to be the bad guy in RPGs than the good guy.

Also have you tried being evil in this way, avoid combat entirely and take the stealthy rout by just sneaking and talking people out of fighting like.

Spoiler

Convincing the Master to kill himself by him evidance that all mutants are sterile.

Elmofongo: I would argue that its more realistic since always harder to be the bad guy in RPGs than the good guy.

mimsi: <...>

Petrell: It is or should be bit of a mix. The rewards for doing evil deeds should almost always be greater to compensate disavantages and higher risk:

vendors either demand higher price or refuce to deal with you (there should be vendors that only deal with evil people but are expensive as they are evil bastarts themselves)
people would be unhelpfull or refuce to talk to you (with option to force response from them adding more bad karma and eventually turning residents hostile).
Some quests should become unavailable (no one asks criminal to help an ophanage) and some evil ones should become available (involving assasinations, robbery, extortion etc.) as players infamy increases.
there would eventually be bounty on your head making outhorities hostile to you and have bounty hunters hunt you.

Arthandas: There are various random encounters between military base and BoS where super mutants fight Brotherhood paladins. I believe you can loot power armor from dead ones.

Jonesy89: If you actually got the quest to help repair the armor and it refused to compute that you had completed it, I'd be more tempted to think that it's some bizarre kind of bug. If it is an intended consequence of having low karma, then I have to say that it makes absolutely no sense. I could understand (but maybe not agree with) the guy rebuilding the armor and then realizing that he probably shouldn't let you have it, but this reeks of a scripting error (of which Fallout already contains a few).

mimsi: After revisiting Fallout 1 for the umpteenth time, I decided to just be a major asshole and do a low karma run. Well guess what I found out after hours of wasting my time during this playthrough? You actually can't get power armor without taking on the Brotherhood of Steel and stealing one of their suits... While Power armorless.

Let me elaborate, and newcomers to this game I hope you pay attention so that you don't make the same fatal error that I just did. I started off the game like usual- Doing the temporarily available quests (err, quest should I say) of eradicating scorpions in Shady Sands, but then I thought it'd be worthwhile to "help" Killian get rid of Gizmo (fear not, I will refrain from spoilers incase newbies are reading) but then backstab Killian as well so the entire town hated me. I basically did every evil outcome of every quest in Junktown to ensure my stench filled low karma level reeked of... Low levelness, or what was left of it, to ensure that everyone else in the game from this point on would... Hate me essentially. It's just a given that when given the choice of being good or bad in a video game you should always do a pure run-through for each scenario... Right?

Then I go to the Hub, do the quest to obtain the electric lockpick device so that I can "sneak" into the Brotherhood early on in the game (ensuring that my lockpick and repair skill was high, since I knew it was pointless to save the initiate in hopes of receiving power armor from Talus since I already knew he doesn't give that out as a reward to characters with bad karma and thus repairing the broken power armor would be my only option). So I go up to Michael, after talking to Kyle about needing to obtain the Systematic Motivator, then I retrieve that from him and go back to Kyle, but when I speak to him he simple says "Leave me alone, I'm busy" without even giving me the option to give him the part first so that I can repair it... God dammit why???? Was it a bug? Or is this just a lame punishment for being evil?

So that only leaves me with one hopeless option, and that is to take on the entire Brotherhood so that I can steal a suit from one of the locker rooms. I really do not want to do this considering they all have superior armor and you have to get REALLY lucky opening the damn storage room since it won't let you lockpick when in combat (there are Brotherhood Paladins on the other side of the locked room which always engages combat mode when you go near the door). So yeah I feel like the game just gave me a huge slap in the face. Power Armor isn't required to beat the game, I get that. But I tried going through the military base without it before and you literally die if you get hit with a single rocket from a super mutant or get critically injured from one of their plasma rifles. So WTF game??? You mean to tell me I can't even be purely evil without having to deal with this nonsense, making it almost virtually impossible to beat all of a sudden?

/rant

EDIT: Okay so I just read another topic with the exact same thing that happened to someone else and apparently you CAN use the electronic lockpick to open the door containing the storage room lockers with Power Armor while in combat. I guess it won't be too difficult of a fight once I acquire the turbo plasma rifle anyway and I guess I was just venting steam because I couldn't come up with any solutions and was afraid that my evil character runthrough was doomed to fail. Hopefully this advice helps anyone who is attempting to have bad karma throughout the game!

Cheers