Background thoughts

Discussion in 'Arcanum Discussion' started by The Pigeon, Sep 12, 2015.

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  1. The Pigeon

    The Pigeon Member

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    Out of curiosity, what Backgrounds do people like to use here if any and why? I tend to go no significant background mostly because I find the penalties the backgrounds typically give are things I need to spend points in so there's no point. Not in every case but for a fair few.
     
  2. Dr. Ferb Wallace Mythril

    Dr. Ferb Wallace Mythril Member

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    beaten with an ugly stick has no real drawback. myrical operation is good for a gunner. most of your penalty can be negated or ignored, depending on the end gole, equipment, spells(the first in each element school), and tech(mainly therapeutics and electricity).
     
  3. The_Bob

    The_Bob Administrator Staff Member

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    IIRC "Raised by monks" gives you an extra point of perception in return for some silly amount of staring gold. While most have somewhat balanced pros/cons, that there is a character point for basically nothing.
     
  4. Jojobobo

    Jojobobo Well-Known Member

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    I tend to specialise my characters, so I will always pick a background to that end. For any character I play there will always be some sort of dump stat, all-rounders bore me.
     
  5. Dr. Ferb Wallace Mythril

    Dr. Ferb Wallace Mythril Member

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    Tell me about it. My last couple play thrues have been with at least 2 massive Penalties, Lonesome Traveler from rroro's WIP is particularly difficult on a technologist because you can only have one companion(except dog, Dante etc, witch for RP reasons I didn't pick up) and its almost got to be the tech healer. Using Con as a dump-stat is very !fun! on a pure caster. Beauty is useless, outside of RP. Basically the only two stats I've never been able to dump are Int and Dex
     
  6. The Pigeon

    The Pigeon Member

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    Thanks for your replies everyone :) In addition to stats are any there are backgrounds you'd pick for other reasons? E.g. I always thought Escaped Lunatic sounded amusing but haven't tried it. Also thought making some kind of Elven technologist or Dwarven mage would be interesting
     
  7. Ruda

    Ruda Active Member

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    I used the otherwise fairly useless Bandit background for an elven gunslinger awhile back. Dwarven mages on the other hand are a lot more trouble as there really isn't any way to offset the doubled fatigue cost for spell usage.
     
  8. Dr. Ferb Wallace Mythril

    Dr. Ferb Wallace Mythril Member

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    ludicrous numbers of mana potions seem to help. that and maxing Con and Will and getting the 2x recovery necklace might be good too (maybe? never got it my self.) I have built a playable force dwarf mage thru massive amounts of metagaming.
     
  9. The Pigeon

    The Pigeon Member

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    Dwarves have doubled fatigue cost for spells? Man I haven't played this game in way too long. I really should go at it again soon.
     
  10. Jojobobo

    Jojobobo Well-Known Member

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    The Sold Your Soul background is useful, particularly if you either don't want to invest much in spells and hit maximum aptitude or if you want to dabble slightly in tech (thrown explosives and therapeutics are just as useful to a max magickal aptitude character as a tech head, plus you can also make automatons with full magickal aptitude so long as you know where to get the parts) and want more magickal aptitude to redress the balance. Plus, it gives you face-melting harm spells early on.

    Other than that, Feral Child can be used on a half-ogre to offset the prowling drop (I think you can still master prowling regardless, but it's not as cool if the red bar isn't full all the way to the end). Tough Hide is useful in the same manner as Escaped Lunatic that you mentioned, but is generally outclassed by the stat altering backgrounds. As Ruda mentioned, the Bandit background sees use on a half-elf gunslinger. Rare Half-Ogre Birth can be useful to let a half-ogre hit heights of intelligence he normally wouldn't be able to and still be able to speak like a normal person unlike Idiot Savant.

    Obviously there's backgrounds that have some inherent role-play appeal, like the Frankenstein ones, but I think that about covers it. The backgrounds that are truly useless are the ones which are more or less a poor man's version of another background, e.g. Sent to Charm School vs Debutante.
     
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