S.P.E.C.I.A.L.
Vicious Wastes attempts to make SPECIAL attributes more important to the character building process. In the vanilla game, there's a number of crucial issues, and many of them stem from features being cut before release, or simply oversights

Outline of vanilla issue

• Perception only affects the range at which the compass displays enemies
  
  • Many would prefer to play without a HUD/compass, eliminating this benefit entirely
  • It's a very minor benefit even for those who keep the HUD on
    
• Charisma only confers a minor damage bonus to companions.
  
  • Damage bonus can be completely ignored, since companions are inherently incredibly effective in combat
    
• Agility affects your reload and draw/holstering speeds, and a negligible impact on your Action Points availability
  
  • The majority of Action Points available are inherent to your character: 65. From there, your Agility only grants +3 AP per point.
  • Reloading and draw/holstering multipliers are so high that if you spend more than a couple points into Agility, animations become incredibly fast, and can even break them when taken to extremes.
  • Does not affect the player movement speed, despite being stated in the Vit-o-Matic as providing that benefit.
    

• Perception now affects your accuracy with ranged weaponry, as per Fallout 1 and 2. Going beyond or dropping below 5 will grant a benefit or a penalty, respectively.
  
  • Provides a much needed accuracy boost to fully-automatic weapons, which inherently have large 'spread' values.
  • Spread is penalized at lower PER levels, to make it a valuable stat when used in combination with Sniper-type weapons.
    
• Charisma now determines the maximum number of Companions the player can recruit, as per Fallout 2. A party slot is granted for every 3 points of Charisma, allowing for a maximum of three companions, and a minimum of zero.
  
  • Companions are a huge influence on the difficulty of the game, effectively giving the player extra inventory space, damage output, and take aggression away from the player
  • Considering the benefits companions provide, it felt appropriate to be able to lock yourself out of companions if deciding to dump Charisma
    
• Agility now affects player movement speed, and makes up a higher portion of the formula determining the player's total Action Points.
  
  • Reload and draw/holstering speeds were lowered so that they don't come anywhere near close enough to breaking animations.
    

• Barter could be largely ignored due to the incredibly forgiving economy. Barter also has zero impact on NPC repair prices, which could be incredibly expensive.
• Medicine had minimal usefulness due to most restorative items being incredibly effective, even with 0 Medicine
  skill. There just wasn't any incentive to make really good healing items
  even better.

• Survival could be moderately useful, but with how food was balanced in the vanilla game, you never needed or wanted to craft the higher end food. It was much easier to just kill a herd of Bighorners and have enough steaks to last the next dozen hours.
  

• Barter is now the majority determining factor in buying and selling prices. It also reduces NPC repair costs substantially.
  
  • Jury Rigging perk was removed as it superseded the NPC repair system, entirely removing a money sink, and cutting off an avenue for Barter to excel at.
    
• Medicine is now a larger factor in how powerful your restorative items are. More 'chem' items scale with Medicine instead of having fixed effects, and existing items had their effectiveness reduced to make room for Medicine scaling ability
• Survival is now imperative to the experience in Hardcore Mode. Basic foods (steaks) are much less effective, and some complex items were improved so that they are desirable to make.