Tech-neutral build?

I've gone through the game with a number of various builds but I've never tried going tech-neutral. Any recommendations from anyone who's actually played through or beat the game with such a character?

 

Unless you mean neutral with a bit of tech but not enough to be inclined? In that case I would suggest learning healing salves. Come to think of it I don't see why healing salves are technology based, all you are doing is grinding two plants with a mortar and pestle. I dare say the Elves were doing things like that centuries ago.

 

Shoulda clarified. By 'tech-neutral' I mean someone who takes both magick and tech while keeping the aptitude at zero (or low enough not to adversely affect either too much).

I know it's sub-optimal compared to someone focusing on pure tech or magick but I was just curious at how it can be done, especially since one of the premade characters seems to follow such a build.

 

Take the agility spell from fire and the healing salve from technology, you could then just invest in combat skills, stats and the like.

 

I think the way it works is that each tech item or skill raises your Technical Aptitude by 5.5 (rounded up to the nearest whole number as necessary) and each spell raises your Magickal Aptitude by five.

If you know how to make two learned schematics, your TA will be 11. If you learn a third, it goes up to 17. Learning three spells would then drop your TA back down to two (17-15).

So, you could do what Zanza said (good idea, by the way) and end up with a TA of one.

Or you could do something like investing in Pick Locks and then taking a bunch of first level spells until you're close to zero. Agility of Fire and Illuminate apparently still work even if you have some TA. Harm probably wouldn't work for this exercise...

Making Charged Rings might not be worth your time since you'll only get one point in Dex per ring. Unless you have followers who would benefit from them... Do you want to try using guns?

 

Guns would be a good choice too, from a roleplay perspective the idea of guns is cheap, effective and anyone could use them without skills. I could definitely see a true neutral gunslinger as a build.

 

You can use guns with a really low Magickal Aptitude (like, 10 or less) without crippling yourself or something, so that would probably be a better way to go than getting into Repair or Disarm Traps.

Explosives might be a fun way to go too. It would be easy to justify since a student of magic could easily have also learned enough chemistry to make smoke bombs out of sugar and fertilizer.

 

I object. I doubt a student of magic would be learned even the basics of chemistry, because why should he? Rather than "How the universe works", his classes would compose of "How to make the universe work your way". Learning about any laws of nature would be a pointless waste of time for a mage, seeing how those aren't at all "laws" for him.

 

Sorry, couldn't resist.

 

I was thinking of alchemy, which is sometimes portrayed as involving some real chemistry along with the magic. Magic users are often portrayed as needing to know a fair amount of math and science in order to mess with the laws of nature.

I can see what you're saying, though. Magic in Arcanum is more of a "pure imagination" thing where you just do stuff and don't worry about the details.

 

Alchemy mixes magic and science, which is strange in Arcanum's setting seeing how the two forces are the exact opposites of each other. Figures alchemy isn't very popular and in fact Jongle Dunn is the only alchemist one ever encounters.

 

I suggest that the effect magic has upon science is simply not understood and not actually random. I interpret magic's influence over science as a sort of interference and if that interference were better understood it could be predicted or controlled in such a way as to enhance the effects of science.