Created a new character

I have created an elven battlemage sorta character. I am specializing in melee and (so far) Force magic. I have never done anything with magic before and I was wondering what other colleges of magic I should go into. I am staying out of black necromantics as this is a good guy. Any suggestions?

 

Hmmm....

I'd still pick Black Necromancy. There's nothing inherently evil about it, just the way it can be used. Force is an option, but disintegrate destroys the target. I highly recommend conveyence. It's the best college, in my opinion. Let's take a look at its spells:
Disarm: knocks the enemy's weapon out of its hand!
Unlocking Cantrip: Unlocks doors, chests, etc.
Unseen force: Pushes enemy (or item!) away from you, and can damage a person.
Spatial Distortion: Short distance teleport. Need to get across the river? Surrounded by enemies? Just planted dynamite? :-o :lol:
*Teleportation!: BAM! Does it get better than this spell?! I think NOT. This can get you FAR away from a tight squeeze (as long as your sword isn't out), can save you money and time, can allow you to skip certain unpleasantries, and you can raspberry at the trains that won't let you on because you're magical.
Earth is not a bad college either. I made one save in which my strength was very tiny. I was able to stack strength of earth spells to counteract that. I did that another time with beauty an purity of water: I just put on my face whenever I walked into town.
If there were a background that took away my strength, my beauty, and my charisma, I'd just put one point in earth and water and mental or three into summoning.

Right now I'm recovering from the latest Arcanum patch freezing my perfectly normal save and playing a sickly half-ogre mage. He's truly a sight to behold.

 

Most battlemages use weapons to do damage, hyping themselves up for battle with spells. Try Agility of Fire, Striength of Earth, Shield of Protection, & Disarm. To get in more strikes, look at the Temporial college. If running an archer, consider Illuminate and either Entangle or Stun.

I rarely use direct damage spells when running a battlemage. I sometimes take Force to Lightining Bolt or Fire to Fireflash for backup. Went for Disintergrate with my first, hardly ever used it. Wanted the loot from humans & hardly ever needed it for monsters.

 

Temporal is definitely the most useful. My character Gwynnbleidd, an Elven battlemage, had speed 77 with Haste and Tempus Fugit. I lost count of how many attacks per turn it enabled.

 

i found that useful myself. try a potion of haste on top of that, btw does tempus fugit increase the effect when you stack it up so your using it like 3 times?

 

Wow, thanks for all the ideas. When I get a chance to play again I will do some experimenting. BTW, I have already maxed out Force (basically thought it was cool). I have what I'm goin with next narrowed down to three.

 

I don't know about the potion of Speed, never used it while playing Gwynnbleidd- with an Arcane Great sword and speed 77 I was flishing most combats during the first round (in TBC I mean). Kerghan was the toughest and needed 3 or 4 rounds. But most drugs and spells in Arcanum seem to give a combined effect when used together, so I'd say you would get your speed beyond 100 at least using the potion.

 

That brings up an important point.

Having a good character and being a good player seem to be on opposite sides of a spectrum for me. I like the feel of a fresh character because you can use little tricks like hit and run to defeat more powerful beings. But when you gain enough power that nothing is much of a challenge, what keeps you playing? Probably the laughs.

I'm going to build an automaton and cast haste on it. :lol:

 

I know. I would have preferred a lower level cap, maybe around 30 or 35 at the most. After that point I seem to lose a bit of interest and I usually stop spending my character points. My character is complete, so spending the points in random things seems counterproductive.

 

Ha!

Epic players like us don't need a level cap! We need an expansion. Darn those guys that didn't buy Arcanum like I did. Darn them all to heck!
Point moving away rapidly... TANGENT!

It's the strangest thing. When people really interested in their own games break off of a larger company and start their own project, they become more vulnerable. They may make a game the likes of which has not been seen since profits became the focus over content years ago, making their game all the more likely to be stolen. Grrr. Don't the people who cheat the system and steal software see themselves struggling in the job market, trying to get into a software company that won't make them sell their souls?
The reason I so openly voice my opinion of Troika is because I respect them. They're human, like me, and they've struck out on their own with what should have been a breathtaking success. If it hadn't been for a few greedy individuals... quite a few....
I buy a game I enjoy because I see myself in its creation. I see myself trying to make money from something I enjoy without tainting it and my reputation forever with a low quality, high hype job.

Can I get an "AMEN, SISTER EMRYS"?

 

thats a lot of the fun with arcanum... I've been playing daily since I got the game in Dec and still haven't finished a game. I keep starting different characters to see how they play.

I did the normal brute force guy first with not many followers and just beat them silly. Got really easy so I tried some harder to play guys to see the difference.

So far, we're still having fun and thats all that matters.

Parmanian said that

 

Har har

Brute force. :roll: Nicely pun.

My first guy was just like my current: A sickly half-ogre mage with points in thief skills. I like a challenge. Right now I'm wearing an amulet that gives me +4 cn, leaving me with a character that will reach the 20s in all attributes except beauty, I think, which will be one less than perfect because of his ogrish ancestry.

 

Re: Har har

Probably not, but I do wonder if you are patched. In the patched game, you are capped at your starting stats + 12 with an upper limit.

 

if you do certain god quests and things maybe you can get beuty up to 20 anyway? or dont they count against upper limit?

 

I know.

It doesn't make much sense, but there it is. I tested it and put the +4 cn amulet on. I can get all the stats up to 20 except beauty, which is stuck at 19 until I can find a way around it. Maybe it's a bug? Remember that this is a SICKLY half-ogre. Oh, and my strength can get to 22 I think.

 

In the patched game he should cap at ST 22, CH 16, DX 19, BE 19, all the rest 20. This should include all the jewlery & blessing stuff.

 

Ah.

I should also mention my gloves of dexterity. It seems my items have taken me illogically over the limits. Strange....