The most powerful background.

Discussion in 'Arcanum Discussion' started by Dark Elf, Jul 22, 2009.

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  1. Dark Elf

    Dark Elf Administrator Staff Member

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    I know that "powerful" is a relative term and that one could ascribe various meanings to it, but let's be conventional here and allow it to apply to sheer combat effectiveness, the way the Gods intended.

    Naturally, only vanilla backgrounds count. No homemade contraptions in this thread.

    Personally, I vouch for the Tough Hide background, especially when used by a half-ogre. Being able to shrug off 20% of any physical damage directed at you without wearing a single piece of armour is a great feat indeed. Couple this with Melee and Dodge mastery, maxed Strength, Dex and a good suit of armour and you will be a nigh unstoppable killing machine.

    Sure, other backgrounds will give you stat bonuses, but you will easily cap the combat-related stats before level 50 anyway. Everything else depends on equipment, and Tough Hide is the only background that enhances that.

    I suppose Escaped Lunatic would come as a close second.
     
  2. Frigo

    Frigo Active Member

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    Escaped Lunatic.

    Nigh-invulnerability with the proper set of armors.
     
  3. Mesteut

    Mesteut New Member

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    I prefer "Born Under a Sign" myself, partly because of the huge list of critical hit effects that it causes in case of a crit. Using that with Filament Sword (bolsters Crit Efficiency) and Master Melee (No critical failure), you get massive criticals.

    Most resists can be "almost" capped with Arcane Mails, Shields, Rings and Shield of Protection spell anyways.
     
  4. Muro

    Muro Well-Known Member

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    As mentioned, Escaped Lunatic. Everything can be maxed with either character points, good equipment and blessings, but at the end always the Escaped Lunatic will have the best defence.
     
  5. Philes

    Philes Well-Known Member

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    Whichever the "spoiled brat" one is that gives you +6 to WP is pretty sweet for a mage. Quick access to higher echelons of magickal colleges one your levels permit is hard to argue with. The negatives (-CHA and -haggle or something) are quite negligible and only really interfere if you planned on getting mastery with any of those skills.
     
  6. Xiao_Caity

    Xiao_Caity New Member

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    Sold Your Soul is perfect for an evil mage-type. Bonuses to ones Magic Aptitude are not to be scoffed at, and through experimentation, I have discovered that, while not displayed as such, it's more than possible to get more than 100 MA. (Seriously, I had to learn basically an entire college of schematics to get my MA to drop under 100 with my SYS character.)
     
  7. Frigo

    Frigo Active Member

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    I noticed it by the repeated application of the Dark Helm trick. With Harm, they drop like flies.
     
  8. DarkFool

    DarkFool Nemesis of the Ancients

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    I think I'm running A:WIP, but I'm not positive. However, I know that for me, with whatever I'm running, Tough Hide only takes 10% off.
     
  9. Wolfsbane

    Wolfsbane Well-Known Member

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    Half-Ogres have a damage resistance of 10% as well.
     
  10. DarkFool

    DarkFool Nemesis of the Ancients

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    It strikes me as interesting that I'm playing a half ogre, and somehow I've never spotted that fact.
     
  11. Wolfsbane

    Wolfsbane Well-Known Member

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    Now you know.

    Balanced, yeah? :p
     
  12. The_Bob

    The_Bob Administrator Staff Member

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    Raised by monks, because it gives any gunslinger 1CP for 300 gold. And any other character can use 1 extra point in perception, for such negligible cost.

    Otherwise its either only child or sickly, IIRC, because of the huge bonuses they give in WP/INT.

    Stuff like resistance or speed can be sufficiently increased through other means, but everything else can as well - there's therapeutics for tech users and buffs for magick users (and power gamers).

    Increasing resistances over 95% feels like a bug, just like exceeding 100MA with 'Sold Your Soul'. And even if not considered an exploit, backgrounds that give higher stats instead seem more beneficial except during the end-game part.
     
  13. Muro

    Muro Well-Known Member

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    :double confusion:
    Aren't resistances capped at 95%?
    Isn't MA capped at 100?
    By what has been said I presume that proper backgrounds can get over the cap, right?
    I can easily imagine what happens with a resistance over 95%, but what are the bonuses of MA>100?
     
  14. Charonte

    Charonte Member

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    Same as MA>10, more damage with spells, higher chance of tech items failing etc. Harm gets even better...
     
  15. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    Harm's damage caps at 40. Actually, I believe all aptitude reliant spells have certain caps.

    And no, resistances can't go above 95%. They could go above that for monster NPCs in the vanilla version though, but I fixed that, as it was a powerful exploit, e.g. you could summon an Ogre and then cast Shield of Protection on him to render him virtually invincible.
     
  16. Charonte

    Charonte Member

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    40? Has it always been like that? I remember switching floats onto verbose for the first time and being surprised how much damage harm did. Atleast I think it was harm...
     
  17. Anonymous

    Anonymous Guest

    Harm's damage goes from 3 to 40. It was never rebalanced in any of the official or unofficial patches.
     
  18. Wolfsbane

    Wolfsbane Well-Known Member

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    You were playing on the "Easy" difficulty level, weren't you?
     
  19. Charonte

    Charonte Member

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    Considering how long ago it was, probably.
     
  20. Xiao_Caity

    Xiao_Caity New Member

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    My medic character ABUSED buffs of all kinds. And ironically, she pretty much never attacked anything. But her allies... ah, her allies. :D Therapautics + Buff Spells = serious, serious powergamery.

    One of these days I'll use those tricks on a character who actually hits things.
     
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