Diplomatic Technomancer - Possible or too broad?

Hey all.
I've decided to leave my Dwarf Techie on the sidelines and re-create my Persuasian character now that I know slightly more about the early early game.

So I've got myself a Female Half-Elf Debutante, but I'm not sure if my character plan is achievable or if my points will be spread too thin:

Primary Purpose
Social/Persuasion character, so planning to go max or near max in Haggle, Persuade and Gamble, and high Beauty & Charisma

Secondary
For some combat usefulness, I plan to put a few points in Pistols.
Other than that, I'm looking at Tech skills like Herbalism (gods those salves are handy!), Electrical, Smithy (pure ore & making gear for followers) and Gunsmithing.

Does this actually look viable or am I just not going to get enough points to be decent at all these?

On an unrelated note, how do I get my followers to learn things like Apprentice melee etc?

 

Having the teacher background will allow you that, however it means you will have one less follower than you usually would be able to have. As for your plan, how high into beauty do you want to go? Remember there are items that can compensate for a regular beauty as well as blessings. Haggle seems like it would be a bit of a stretch simply because you will need high willpower for that and as a technologist the willpower wouldn't be used for anything else. The gambling is viable as a technologist plans to have higher intelligence however I suggest looking into what followers you want and look at what abilities they have. Technologists such as Magnus can usually craft a few items.

 

I might be biased, because I've never gotten into gambling enough to actually see any benefits from it despite obsessively playing Arcanum for far too long. But still... Personally, I would skip gambling. If you're looking for ways to make extra money, a technologist can do that just by making stuff and selling it.

If you get up to, say, Expert in Haggle (three character points, plus training) you start making ridiculous amounts of cash without having to play dice games with anybody.

Admittedly, a Gambling master can solve at least one quest in a different way and supposedly you're able to get shop keepers to gamble for items. Personally, I'm not sure if it's worth going to all the trouble of investing the CP and finding people to train you and so forth.

The rest of your plan seems pretty good. I might not worry too much about Beauty, though. Your background gives you plenty of points in that, and you can always wear a fancy dress to make people like you more (there are a couple of different types of dresses that increase everybody's reactions to you by 20 as long as you're wearing them).

Follower skills definitely make life easier, like Zanza was saying.

Magnus learns the first four schematics from the Smithy and Mechanical disciplines, so you can have him make things for you and then use them as components for other weapons. You can make my favorite sword that way without any points in smithy (but you would need to buy technical manuals at Tarant University).

If you wanted to, you could wait for a while on investing in Smithy and rely on Magnus instead. But on the other hand, feather-weight chain mail is cool and it takes a long time for Magnus to learn how to make some things you might not want to wait for. So it really comes down to what would make your game more fun for you.

Gunsmithy can be fun, because there are a lot of guns to learn how to make. And a Fine Revolver makes life slightly easier for a beginning gunslinger, since it will be better than any of the pistols you can find or buy before you get out of Shrouded Hills.

A follower you can recruit later makes some guns, so you could stop at Fine Revolvers and then rely on his skills to help you make other stuff. But on the other hand, learning how to make Looking-Glass Rifles can come in really handy. So it depends on what you want to do.

 

Since it seems you're very new to Arcanum I'll put the detailed info in spoiler tags for you. All tech followers only learn their tech schools to 4 IIRC.

Spoiler

Magnus learns Mechanical and Smithy.
Jayna learns Herbology and Therapeutics.
Sebastian learns Electrical and Explosives.
Vollinger learns Gunsmithy and Chemistry.

Those 4 learn all the schools of tech.

Don't focus too heavily on Beauty.

Spoiler

By the time you leave Tarant you should be able to have blessings and equipment giving you +5 Reaction, +2 Beauty, +2 Charisma, and a dress giving +20 reaction.

Charisma, Intelligence and Persuasion are more important as a persuasive techie.

To train your own followers you need the Educator background which reduces your followers by 1, so you'll look more to free followers such as Dog to round out your entourage. IIRC you can only train followers in skills you know and only to 1 level below your current mastery. For example to train a follower to be an expert in Melee you need to have master melee.

So, given all this I think you're stretching yourself pretty thin (to max out the schools you've listed will be 28 out of 64 character points). You can pick up an herbalist very early in the game so you can drop that tech school. If you really want Haggle, then 3 points is the most I'd recommend, anything more is just wasting CPs.


This is just how I would invest your CPs (assuming no significant background), feel free to ignore it.

3 Firearms
3 Haggle/Gamble
5 Persuasion
10 Charisma
11 Intelligence
4 Willpower (only if you really want Haggle, otherwise max gamble and rest in beauty)
4 Perception
3 Beauty
7 Electrical
7 Smithy
7 Gunsmithy

That should be all 64 CPs. You could save a lot of CPs if you metagame and do the Gods quests, but as a new player you probably won't finish those until you are close to the level cap anyways.

 

If you truly wished to metagame this scenario then you could develop a spreadsheet and plug your goals into it. I'm torn on that because on the one hand it seems as if it strips the fun out of playing Arcanum but on the other hand, there is nothing wrong with a little planning.

Personally, I think the Haggle skill and the Gambling skill are useless. These skills amount to the Print Money skill, and what good is that? If one could load coins into a slingshot and shoot them at others I would champion their use. Gambling doesn't even open up an amusing mini-game. If it's one thing I've never needed in Arcanum, it's more money. As Zanza pointed out, opting for Gambling would make better use of the inherently high Intelligence you would pursue.

It seems that you are deliberately building a puny character, so I encourage shying away from melee combat. I also think that Dodge is invaluable. The Dodge skill makes use of Dexterity, as does the Bow skill, so I would recommend using bows as opposed to firearms.

This sounds like a fun build! My suggestion is that you focus on Charisma and Persuasion, then Intelligence and Technology, and branch out toward the auxiliary skills from there. Start the game with combat skills so you can survive the Crash Site, then build your Charisma and Persuasion to gain an entourage.

 

IIRC, the Debutante background has slight combat penalties in exchange for high Beauty and Charisma.

It's, like, -2 ranks to all combat skills. So, Firearms actually makes more sense to me for this character even with the racial penalty from being a half-elf.

Oh! I get it now! You're talking about Perception! You don't need much PE to use a bow, but Firearms is a totally different story.

Bows wouldn't be my first choice because A.) you have to get up to three points in the skill before they're worth a darn and B.) some of the good bows have high MSRs.

This character could use a Compound Bow, I suppose... but that's just not as fun as messing around with guns.

Personally, if I wanted to go with a Dex-based skill, I'd consider Throwing instead. You need it anyway if you want to use Explosives, the MSR issues aren't as bad if you use a boomerang or something to kill sewer rats and you don't need ammo for your main weapon.

 

If you really want high beauty I'd recommend to learn the first water spell and forget all backgrounds that raise beauty. Due to high intelligence you can even stack it several times and gain max beauty. At least on a temporary basis.

It's the powergamer's approach though.

As for bows, the best bow is, iirc, the pyrotechnic bow, which would be a technological item. However, it would require you to invest some points in the explosives discipline to create one of the necessary components.

 

Some handy advice all round, thanks peoples

Thus far I'm at lvl 5, and have 13 each in Charisma & Beauty (starting values) along with the Fancy Dress from the starting vendor, and the blessing from.. whatsit.. the guy whose family was killed by bandits. So my reaction is normally ~70-80 depending on the individual.

I've picked up Dog, and holy bananas is combat easier now! Virgil & Sogg now have some tasty magical items courtesy of the first couple of dungeon levels in the "jewelers" shop in Tarant.
I've now left there because I hit the undead Dwarves and went "Surely Magnus would have something to say about these if I brought him along" but he says I'm too green for him to join the party, so I'm assuming I need another level or two.

From reading about Magnus, looks like I can ignore Smithy and let him take care of that, so I'll be concentrating on Electricity and Firearms (I'd love to get that Tesla gun, and from my reading I'll need both techs at 7). Slowly building all the Charged Rings I'll need as well.

From the previous advice here I may ignore Gambling for now at least and go with Haggle & Persuasion, plus another point or two in Firearms.

Very good point on putting bits in Throwing, good for grenades and not wasting bullets on sewer rats and the like.

So from here it's looking like (in no particular order):
Another couple of points in Firearms
Two points in Throwing
Max Persuade
At least two more in Haggle
Max Electrical and Gunsmithy
A couple more points in Herbalism, maybe
Enough points in Stats to make the above actually happen

On a side note, is there any Tech way to bring someone back from the dead, or do I need to wait for Virgil to get to the top of White Necromancy?

 

The Reanimator works like that (but first you have to find the schematic), or you can find life-restorers at the herbalist's shop in Tarant and Shrouded hills for something like 2000 gold if you haven't put anything into Haggle.

 

Magnus should want to join you if you are about the same level as him. It's the same for some other NPCs.

Actually, you don't. You merely need a looking-glass rifle, of which at least one can be acquired during the game (that is, the firearms master quest - although that might be a bit too late for your tastes). Thus, if you don't intend to build more than one you don't really need any points in gunsmithy.

In my experience you rarely need more than ~3 points in persuasion as well. However, if you intend to become a master of persuasion early on there's nothing to stop you. The same is true if you don't intend to get all the gods' blessings.

You might also want to invest one point or more in explosives (or have Sebastian in your party later on) so you that you can put that throwing skill to good use. Don't overuse it however, or you might start wondering why you even bother with guns.

 

Explosives are definitely worth the trouble. Stun grenades are pretty awesome and if you get up to making explosive grenades, there are all sorts of cool WMDs you can learn how to make.

And you can get filthy rich selling smoke grenades to shop keepers.

But yeah... Once you start messing around with the good grenades, you'll wonder how you ever lived without them. It makes Sebastian less useful to you as a follower, but it generally seems worth the CP.

One point for Molotov cocktails would definitely be good. You can use your Explosives skill to make cheaper bullets, and the improvised bombs can come in handy for getting tough enemies to back off, or to injure multiple targets.