Roleplaying in Arcanum

Just wondering,

when you're roleplaying, what things in the game make it hard for you to stay "in character" ?

Mine:

- getting Magnus into the party. Since he's extremely obnoxious most characters would just rip his head off instead of wooing him to join.

- getting past the Shrouded Hills thieves at the beginning with a good aligned character. A fighter character can get into trouble here depending on his starting skills. Fireflash works great obviously as do Molotov's.

- no killing/ stealing from merchants makes it hard for good characters to get some gold early on

 

For me, it's basically 2 things:

NPCs in general. There just aren't enough recruitable NPCs in the game. This makes it impossible to recruit a full posse of competent gunslingers or mages. Also the fact that their level isn't pinned to the character's level causes you to do some things you wouldn't be doing strictly speaking (like beeline to Dernholm to get Jayna when you have absolutely no other reason to go there right now).

The second is that I believe you should get experience for EVERY time you successfully exercise a skill - meaning you could theoretically get to level 50 by doing nothing but making healing salves. Obviously, we're talking tiny experience gains for routine things (on par with scoring a single hit on an ailing wolf) and the exp requirements might need tweeking. It's just that if I could make the perfect game, your character could thrive and grow by exercising any of his or her skills (instead of that pacifist roaming the wilderness for months at a time waiting for his crew to kill enough things to gain him a level).

 

I used to post on another Arcanum-related message board and one of the regulars there said once, "Once you know the best results, there is no role playing any more."

There's some truth to that. If you're doing something for the first time, there's a chance to role play a little since you don't know for certain what's going to happen. But if you're a hardened Arcanum veteran, or you got curious and looked at the UHS hints page or something and you know which set of dialogue choices give you the best results, it's hard to stay in character and not just do whatever is easiest and/or gives you the best reward.

For example, there are a bunch of different ways to get the taxes back for King Praetor. I usually play persuasive characters, so it would make the most sense to choose one of the nonviolent options. Instead, I always kill the thieves outside Blackroot because I want their gear.

When doing the Persuasion Master Quest, I always choose the dialogue options that talk about giving up magic and embracing the new industrial age because all I care about is getting the new reputation and [spoiler, I guess] those sweet discounts in Tarant's shops. Which feels really sleazy when I'm playing a mage. Is it worth being a total hypocrite in exchange for a bigger cash reward and cheaper potions? The answer to that question is yes. But I still feel a little dirty for a while afterward.

 

Really now? There are so many possible companions that none of them (well maybe except Virgil and Magnus) feel like a real character instead of a recruitable drone. In my opinion, the developers should have halved the number of followers and worked more on their personalities.

 

Oh, I definitely agree that they should have worked on their personalities and if I had to chose either MORE or MORE FLESHED OUT, I'd go with the second option any day.

I don't tend to use a lot of followers anyway, so just an Improved Virgil would do me more than fine. I've always thought there should have been a dialogue upon your hitting the first level-up with him in the party where he says something along the lines of, "Sir, I feel like I am at a crossroads in my life and would like your advice.", followed by several options where you could choose from several leveling schemes.

Since I've always played technologists, I've just always felt cheated that if I'm going with someone with a high TA, I'm virtually forced to choose Jayna over him.

It'd just be great if my buddy from the start could be a gunslinging doctor or a mad chemist, or a summoning specialist or whatever.

 

I've been trying to think of some examples that are more in keeping with the original post.

I keep thinking of things like how I always tell Doc Roberts I'm interested in technology so I can get that revolver. Even though I usually play persuasive magic users. Just because the gun is a better prize than that bugged sword and it will be nice to have a pistol for when I eventually recruit Sebastian.

You raise an interesting point about Virgil.

Somebody who is more savvy than I am about things like editing follower skills could probably give Virgil Doc Roberts' level scheme. But it would be fun to have something like that in-game. Like, say, if your technical aptitude gets too high for Minor Heal to work on you consistently, that Virgil follows your lead and starts getting into Herbology.

I can't imagine playing a game without Virgil, but I have definitely played characters where he was in my party mostly for story reasons. I can feel your pain.

 

Yes, the lack of control over your followers' stats was disappointing.

When I was working on the high resolution patch and fiddling with the UI, I also made a trainer that makes the follower character editor menu active in-game, it's pretty user-friendly. Lets you change or disable their auto-level scheme, distribute their points manually.

 

Thanks for the trainer Drog, it's very useful.

 

What I found the aspect making my gameplay less enjoyable and harder is, XP being bound to the damage my PC deals, and the kills he fragged.

I have to stop my team from time to time and kill myself which is not a RP at all. (especially for characters who focus on technology (not firearms) / CH and utility spells)

if it were more like;

-All damage done by party / all skills done by party converts into XP for PC. (must be lowered drastically must be lowered further for each new NPC in party)

-All skill usage (spells/tech recipe crafts/bandage skill) should contribute to XP gained.

-Following smart dialog options should reward with XP (some characters are strong in CH/INT). I know some quests give the XP when completed through persuasion, but these XP is given regardless of the method upon completion, so a fighting character gets his additional XP while doing the quest otherway around killing.

Another thing I found problemetic is NPC(followers) gaining a lvl only when PC gains one. It is alright to pick up a follower with low lvl when ou PC has already passed above that lvl.

But it is not alright, when the low lvl NPC will NEVER catch up. It would be wise to have all NPC personal XP bars where they gain additional XP when they are underlvled, and can not surpass PC in lvl as a cap.

 

Two clarifications.

- You always get XP for the kill, whether you do it yourself or your follower does it, the amount is 1/5 of the critter's XP. E.g. Ailing Wolf is level 1 and worth 160XP, you get 192XP (160 + (160/5)) for killing it without any help and only 32XP if you let Virgil do all the work.

- Even once you reach level 50, you still keep gaining XP. When you're about to reach the supposed level 51, you're reset back to 50. This mechanic was added by the developers in the first patch to let you bring all your followers up to level 50.

 

Hopefully four days isn't a grave dig. Anyway...

Shrouded Hills:

I always sweet talk Ristezze into telling me about P. Schuyler and Sons. Even though with some characters, it would make more sense to use the responses where you pretty much accuse him of lying or exaggerating when he talks about how great his life was before he somehow ended up running his store in Shrouded Hills. Just so I can keep Bessie Toone's boot and sell it in Tarant.

I'll kill the rats in the Panarii temple in Shrouded Hills for a little extra XP even though I haven't taken Jongle Dunne's quest in years. Which makes no sense at all when I think about it. I could rationalize it as wanting to take a look inside, I suppose. But it's hard to come up with a compelling in-character reason to justify going in there when I usually don't even want the stuff you can steal from the main room.

Wheel Clan:

I always talk Loghaire into returning to his throne because I want that Fate Point. Even though I've never gotten any use out of Harrow and I don't like recruiting him as a follower. I can usually justify that because A.) it seems like the right thing to do and B.) Fate Point. But every so often, I play a character who probably wouldn't care much if Loghaire continued to sit around in his underwear feeling sorry for himself. So it's a little weird when I go ahead and go for the best result anyway. Like the time I finally stuck with an evil character past level 12.

Stillwater:

I always retrieve the stolen idol. Even though the extra blessing from Geshtiana doesn't help much if your Beauty is already nine or above. "All right! Sogg and Magnus like me a little more now!"

In a power game-y way, it's important for completing all the circles of blessings. But it's the kind of thing where your character wouldn't even know about it unless you went out of your way to talk to the priestess and you could just ignore it if you didn't feel like finding out more about the perverted sex cult.

 

You two just seem to be lacking the will/willpower to actually roleplay and make in-game decisions on the basis of the knowledge and viewpoints of your characters rather than your own.

 

I like Magnus >_>

 

That's rather unique. What makes you like Magnus, in particular?

 

I dunno, I like all the dwarves in the game.