New back grounds:

I'm trying to create a new back ground for use with Arcanum, "Sorcerer's Aprentice", basicly it gives a +4 bonus to Inteligence and Willpower, and a -2 to perception. It also gives a 4/4 bonus to haggle (running to the market for your Master sharpened your skills) and a 3/4 penalty to all tech skills as well as only 300 starting gold. The problem is that while it's giving the bonus to will, and the penalty to Perception I can't seem to get the bonus to intelegence to show up. the efect is stated out like this:

{-3 picklock, -3 firearms, -3 armtrap, -3 repair, +4 haggle, -2 pe, +4 wp, +4 in}

Is there a reason this isn't working? Am I trying to cram to many modifyers?

By the way, I'm not concerned if no one thinks it's balenced it's just for personal single player use anyway. I just want to know why it's not working.

 

I've personally crammed more than that into a background so that's probably not it. However, I've never reversed the modifiers as you have. In every other effect it's, for instance, {st -1, in +1}, and you've got {-1 st, +1 in}. Maybe that's it?

Ah, indeed. I reversed everything and it works fine. Give it a try.

{picklock -3, firearms -3, armtrap -3, repair -3, haggle +4, pe -2, wp +4, in +4}

 

A small quibble: The PE -2 does not fit the name of this background. The sorceror's apprentice was perhaps naive or inexperienced about magic, but not lacking in perception of his surroundings.. You have a background for someone who, apprenticed to a magician, learned some Magic skill, forsook all tech skills, and is also nearsighted or naive. So why not name it a little differently, perhaps:
Sorceror's Runaway Apprentice
Sorceror's Nearsighted Apprentice.

Anyway, sounds like fun.

 

Background

First: managed to fix it. I was a dumb ass and managed to use the D&D abreveation "int" instead of "in", no wonder it didn't work.

As for the perception penalty, in the back grounds description I have that explained with "Years of pouring over ancient tomes by fire light has damaged your eye sight". I figured I should have SOME stat penalty and didn't want to mess up my carry capacity or Fatigue and Hit Points.