Preferences: Good/Evil, Mage/Tech

[fable]

Just curious what people have tended to prefer in playing the game: good vs evil, mage vs tech (or fighter/thief, for that matter).

[Ned Flanders]

I still haven't completed the game, in fact I believe I've seen very little but I've tried twice.

First attempt: Level 7 good tekkie dwarf with an emphasis on firearms and explosives. Some poorly placed early CP's kept this character from doing much. (low charisma = no sogg mead mugg, put a point in bow???, no points in dodge, etc...)

Second attempt: Level 17 Chaotic goodish magick elf with empahsis in fire and black necromantic magick. Harm really kicks as a spell, so does summon undead. Put an early point into charisma and have sogg and virgil as followers. Things have really shaped up in this game and has really heightened my interest as of late.

Looking forward to playing the evil path. Would actually like to play a heartless, pursuasive, conniving pacifist and try and get through the game ripping off as many people with as little combat as possible.

Is this more than what you are looking for?

[fable]

Yeah, exactly. I think that as soon as I finish BG2/ToB again, I'm going to give Arcanum another shot, and I'm thinking along somewhat similar lines: an elven mage. Harm is a fantastic spell. The magicusers have it over the techno types in that respect: you get a great attack right from the beginning, if you learn Harm.

[Ned Flanders]

Harm does seem way overpowered. It would have more sense to have the spell progress (ala magic missile) as you learned more levels in black necromany (accompanied with greater constitution, willpower, and intelligence. I'd like to go back to the gun totin' dwarf but combat was always so difficult. Reload after reload. It almost seems like having a brute like sogg or gar is mandatory.

[fable]

Originally posted by Ned Flanders:
<STRONG>Harm does seem way overpowered. It would have more sense to have the spell progress (ala magic missile) as you learned more levels in black necromany (accompanied with greater constitution, willpower, and intelligence. I'd like to go back to the gun totin' dwarf but combat was always so difficult. Reload after reload. It almost seems like having a brute like sogg or gar is mandatory.</STRONG>

Exactly. And although you get the experience for the kills of your party, you don't get experience for each piece of damage done by others. It's a bit unbalanced.

[Ned Flanders]

by fable
Exactly. And although you get the experience for the kills of your party, you don't get experience for each piece of damage done by others. It's a bit unbalanced

Which is exactly where harm comes in. I usually use harm to get all enemies below the 12% line for health and then let virgil and/or sogg put on the finishing blow. I think it maximizes protagonist combat experience.

Personally, I feel the combat is weak after playing all the infinity engine games. However, Arcanum excels with the depth of all the NPC's in the various towns and cities. The fact that your race and/or skills affect the conversation of almost every citizen is fantastic in arcanum. The BG series sort of carried alignment and rep factors into conversations but the games do not possess such detail as felt in arcanum.

All in all though, you're correct, Arcanum does seem a little unbalanced. You would hope that any group of a particular level would always be able to handle an encounter of similar and/or lesser level. Granted the means would be different, but the end is the same, a victorious party. This has not been the case and again, I use harm as an example, to show how skewed the game is toward magick.

question: What would you do with a character with an emphasis in explosives. It just seems the enemy can get on you so quickly, you'd never have to throw your grenades. I guess you'd have to become an expert in prowling as well.

[Skinbeard]

Actually, there's a neat little 'bug' when playing an explosives character in turn based mode. It seems that throwing a bomb take little or no action points. Meaning that you can blast as you wish without the enemy advancing on you. Just make sure that your followers sre not in the blast radius. They tend to do that sometimes. A bad thing when your peppering the area with molotov ****tails

[Skinbeard]

Hrmf. Can't believe it edited that... We all know what I was talking about, right?

[fable]

Originally posted by Skinbeard:
<STRONG>Hrmf. Can't believe it edited that... We all know what I was talking about, right?</STRONG>

I have trouble figuring out what I'm talking about, most times, so why should I have any idea about what you're saying?

Actually, that piece of cheese is counterbalanced by the fact that explosives damage or destroy items in the victim's inventory (like nice, expensive armor), and yield *no* experience points to the thrower except on the victim's death. This is in direct opposition to melee-based attacks, where every solid hit yields experience. I'm not sure if Troika handled it this way because they felt molotov ****tails and such were too enticing to players.

[Skinbeard]

I believe that you do get experience for explosives that actualy hit the target. That is, no xp for enemies caught in the blast radius (unless they die) and xp gained for those hit by the bomb even if it doesn't kill them.

From what I've read from players and devs alike on this, it doesn't look like it was planned this way...

Still. It's about the only thing that makes techies worth anything until you hit the later levels I find.