Need help in planing my character

Hey all.

Well, I'm planning my first play trough Arcanum and while I understand the character system and its mechanics, I'm a bit clueless about what skills etc. to invest in.

I was planning to play a human diplomatic gunslinger/mechanical followers constructor. Please don't tell me about playing a mage, I know the game is supposedly a bit imba when it comes to mage vs. tech but there's np way Im gonna play an elven mage in a game which offers me the unique opportunity to play a steampunk character.

Now here are my questions:
1) Is concentrating on guns/mechanical summoning a senseful combination?
2) Im a bit clueless how widespread my investations into the technology branches (weaponsmithing, electrics, mechanics etc. )should be. On how many of them should I concentrate? 1? 2? 3, maybe even 4?
I have little idea how many points I will have available to spend throughout the game and therefore don't really know if I should exclusivly concentrate on 1 or 2 ability trees or on more of them parralely.

3) Which character attributes should I raise for this kind of character? I figured Dextertity, Beauty, Charisma, Intelligence and perception would be the most important attributes for my kind of character? What about constitution, I guess every character could need lots of energy and hitpoints...how much should I raise it throughout the game?
What about strength, can I make it more or less my dump stat?

4) Is there anything else important for a diplomatic char than a high charisma and high persuade skill?
Do I need to raise beauty and/or intelligence heavily to get all the diplomatic options?

I'd be very helpful for some general directions concerning my questions as I a bit lost right now.

Thanks in advance

 

I was about to say you should play a strong, pure meele & dodge character, or a kickass evil mage. But if you don't want to be a mage...

On the other hand, if you have problems only with arrogant elves, not mages (just like I do ), you can choose a human mage at any time.

 

He no problem dude I admit the topic title is a bit misleading, I should alter it.
Do you have any recommendations regarding the character type I want to create?

Is diplomat/techno summonor/gunslinger a valid option in this game?
Oh and please, I need an answer to my 4th question very much since I can't find anything about it in the manual.
Are diplomatic options determined only by charisma and persuade skill or are intelligence and beauty important factors aswell?

 

Intellegence very muchly factors in to diplomatic choices. If you're a dumbass, you say dumbass things, even if you say them so everyone thinks it's right.

 

Wow, thanks so much everybody but especially Bob for his detailed in-depth answer

Although Bob already answered everything I need to know, further hints and advices are of course appreciated.

Thanks again, I'm sure Im gonna have a blast with this wonderful game!

 

Don't be afraid to learn Agility of Fire. Each casting boosts AG by 4 points, and with high enough IN and CN you'll be able to sustain enough of those spells to not need to put a single point into AG. You can also learn Purity of Water and use that in the same fashion to boost Beauty, but as I've discovered, that can have some unfortunate side effects when the game decides to artifically lower an NPCs reaction while you're using magic to boost that same reaction. Can make them become hostile when they see you without the magic. Having a high Beauty mostly seems useful to get cheaper prices when buying stuff, while Haggle increases the money you get when selling stuff.

Or don't learn those spells at all if you think they're waaay overpowered for being so easy to learn and cast. Which they are. They even work on tech characters as far as I've seen, and that just seems silly. But they do work, and with only 64 points to spend things on, who wouldn't want to get +8 points at the cost of only a single point? That's with IN 8 though. A real technologist/diplomat would of course have higher IN, and thus get more bang out of their single spell. Well, as long as they have the CN to maintain it.

Another way to boost attributes is to learn the full therapeutics line. Those things last for 4 hours, and can boost all attributes by a total of 4, and then boost AG, PE and ST by 2 more points. So that's potentially +38 attribute points for only 7 points and a lot of ingredients which you can shop around for in Tarant. For 30 real time seconds of diplomatic rush-click-speeches and quick schematic-clicking, you could use the magical Potion of Intellect which boosts IN by 10 points, even for tech characters. Only lasts for a short while though, so it's not really worth it unless you are desperate to save points for other things. Or if you're just too cheap to spend points on IN, even though you've got enough of them by the end. Like me. :cry:

When it comes to technological disciplines you may not want to just buy 1-4 degrees in any one of them, because there are four different NPCs who all get up to four degress in two different disciplines each (I think). Magnus, Jayna, Vollinger and Sebastian can all make various items for you if you pick them up and keep them around so that they level up. So rather than spending two points on the Electrical discipline to get Charged Rings, you could just wait until you pick up Sebastian. And when it comes to guns, you can steal those from people, so if you just want a single Looking Glass Rifle, you don't have to build it yourself. You can spend those points on Prowling, since it uses PE just like Firearms does. Whatever Vollinger can't build, you can find/steal.

Kind of sucks though, to make a discipline almost useless by offering the results of that discipline to anyone with a fate point to steal it with. Sure, sure, roleplaying a gunsmith still works I guess, but it really weakens the incentive for me to spend points in that discipline. :/

 

Persuasion vs big guns

I'm not into gravedigging, but I'd still like to say that if you've got a big enough gun, persuasion can be overlooked for a bit. I think. But I never play gunslingers, so I wouldn't know.

 

He, since the thread is only 2 days old or so I dont think that qualifies as gravedigging

Thanks for you helpful input Gillsing and Timothy