Best race to play?

CN matters not. As soon as you get to Black Root, you get Mage's staves and your own fatigue is not all that important.

High starting MA is a temporary advantage, of course, but it does save you some CPs if you only want the most necessery spells, but plan to have MA100.

Low heal rate matters not. Who relies on time to heal, anyway? There are spells for that.

The +1DX bonus is more important than +1WP. There is no real reason to boost WP up beyond 18 (even the bonus for WP 20 is of doubtful importance), but extra DX is never useless.

Half elves make better battlemages in the long run, perhaps, as they do not lose 1ST for 1WP, but for a pure mage ST doesn't matter, so elves are just about the best choice (well, except for halflings, perhaps. +2DX bonus is hard to beat, either for a mage or a tech).

 

Try playing as a bard. Quite the challenge, they are the Jack-Of-All-Trades of gaming. ^_^ They can do a little bit of everything, but they don't truly specialize in anything, making them challenging and powerful.

 

I played one on Baldures Gate 2 once becuase my cousin suggested i do so, Wasnt all that impressed, although i didnt play through with one, its one of those classes thats hard to starrt with (being crappy at everything and all).

 

Umm, I never found bard's to be challenging or powerful, I prefer to specialize. Bard's are always weaker at everything, so why pick a class that has no strengths?

 

DE, as offended as I am due to my extreme love of Bards and Linthars, I must say that was truly funny. Oh, and with a nice two-handed sword (Spider's Bane from BG1) and a light crossbow (the light crossbow of speed) and some good leather armor, they're pretty damn versatile. Oh, DE, there are two 'f's in ''off.''

 

I like half-orcs the most, for roleplaying and creating warrior type characters.

 

Jack-of-all-trades are not my kind of characters to play. I always seek to find a couple of major advantages and exploit them as fully as I can. Marx was right in something, after all- specialization does increase efficiency

 

After finishing the game a few times, trying different chars, I came to a conclusion I've faced in about all rpgs before. I just can't really play other than mage. In Arcanum, after I learned the use of Teleport, it cam clear that a tech char is never going to be my pick.
Then I tried thieves, which all turned into half mage backstabbers with hell of a lot of spells. Same with bow users and thrown weapons.

As for race, since I go mages, elves are nice pick, that WP plus Only child and I don't need to use points to WP almost at all. Half elves are nice too.
Still, my overall favorite is humans. No cons, no pros, just a blank table for me to modify.

Now a little more OT, the biggest problem in this game was that since I play mages, the game is far too easy. Sure it is long, but so damn easy and a mage is awfully easy to level up, since after you got Harm, you can go practically anywhere to pick a fight. Add Weaken to that, and no golem nor seething mass/other high DR monster is gonna stop me.
Really, I got very bored in the end, since everytime I've finished the game with a mage, I was lvl 40 before I first time left Tarant... and after I learned how to force locations, well Dark Necro mastery made the even easier.

Btw, has anyone tried the combo Haste, Tempus Fugit, DX 20 and the magical bow from the trader in Qintarra? Talk about an arrow storm..

 

so far i'we allways preferred the elves. right now i'we got a 50lvl elf, all the spells in phantasm, necromatic black, necromatic white, force (was it force??), fire and summoning. i just killed everyone in the whole arcanum just for the fun of it (took a save and continued from where i was before the massacre´). you should try it...

 

Hehe, i remember trying that in Fallout 2. I got to the Broken Hills, buffed up my character with some Buffouts, Jets and Psychos and tried on the mutants with bare fists. Quite enjoyable seeing a flying mutie with a broken leg after one blow.

 

Yeah... and your stats were 0 0 0 0 0 0 24 hours later right?

I killed everyone in Vault City, at the military base, and San Fransisco, but then I got bored and stopped. Seriously, it takes way to long when you're fighting a whole town.

 

Nope, after having the sector whiped off, I just reloaded the game. Didn't had the chance to peek what happened the day after.

 

The penalties go away after a few days of recuperation I believe.

 

The amount of injury is a ratio to how tight your ass is. If your ass is loose the jalapeno won't actually burst and those nasty juices won't get into the sensitive areas. If your ass is tight however, it will burst, resulting in pain.

 

When I have played Arcanum for the first time (right after it came out) I chose human as a race.
Invested most of the points in melee, dodge and warrior-related attributes, some battle-magic.
It actually bored me, and I was upset, because, honestly.. all I was hoping to get from Arcanum is more Fallout, because I really love the latter.
That time I gave up playing somewhere around Tarant.

Fallout captured me with it's atmosphere, it's story.
But my role-playing in those times was mostly powergamming.

Despaired in finding a sequel, I began replaying FO with different characters. I found it amusing to play a woman, a ST 3 character.. I even tried to get through Fallout without a single fight (to no avail . To keep on topic, I played every game of Fallout as a human

That's when my style of role-playing became more mature, as I feel now.

A week ago I've decided to give Arcanum another try and I must say that I have discovered another wonderful world to explore and enjoy.

Back to the topic:
I am now playing an Educator Half-elf named Douglas, which mainly specializes in Persuasion, Gambling and Picklocks; a little Prowling and Firearms to save his hide, a little more in Throwing (I tend to enjoy exotic weapons, Molotov Cocktails also help saving the live of a character whose main statistics are IN, WP, BE and CH.)
I like playing Half-Elf because it gives me a feeling of finesse; also the oportunities to play off Douglas' hot temper when some tavern drunk calls him a "half-bred bastard"
Douglas is an inquisitive person, so he's trying to balance between Magick and Technology, which I see as a challenge so far. Douglas is generally being good, but at the same time he is a very selfish person. Learning Electricity and Gun Smithy, as well as Force and the college that contains Sense Alignment and Read Aura (can't remember those names..)

Sorry, I just couldn't refrain from rambling about my character

 

Well, then it'll be no pain for you. But I don't want to *know* how you discovered such a thing, but have fun with the jalepanoes. If I play a human, I use a techno with a Long Ranged Pistol, and a Mastery (or grand master, what ever it is) in FireArms.