Tech, magic, or neutral? (Arcanum)

Which is better for my half-orc melee/dodge warrior? It's my first character in Arcanum. It seems like there is more stuff from the tech side (balanced swords for example), but I heard some of the magic spells are really good like teleport.

 

Technology is the most fun.
Magic is the most overpowered.
take your pick.

 

- Why is tech more fun?

- What makes magic overpowered?

 

Why would anybody play a magical character in Arcanum? That's like having missionary-only sex with Sasha Grey. Just go play any other rpg if you want magic.

 

- I'm unaware of how exactly magic works in Arcanum. I know it uses fatigue and Virgil spams heals. I also know that going tech makes me more resistant to magic. Other than that, I don't know much else.

I was thinking about going tech, getting points i throw, and then making grenades to throw at things.

 

Tech is definitely more interesting and lends itself well to the setting, but both have lots of potential for fun both from a gameplay and role-playing perspective. Playing a mage and having the world actually react to that choice, sometimes with scorn is great, as are the more creative and interesting spells (even if they are of limited use). Tech is great, but I find it requires a bit to much micro-management in the stat department to really get the most out of it and is a bit over-reliant on crafting.

Neutral is boring, don't bother with it.

 

magic isn't that bad really, you just have to avoid certain spells/magic colleges.

avoid fireflash,call fire elemental,harm,disengrate,haste,tempus fugit,succour beast. those are really the worst.

if you want reasons why to avoid these spells, i guess i can give them.

fireflash: extremely damaging AoE that destroys most enemies in few casts. so powerful nothing will touch you when you spam it. very few enemies can resist fire or spells in general.
call fire elemental: summon two of these things and watch them destroy everything you ever face. they do ridicilous amount of fire damage and most enemies won't have resistances.
harm: lvl 1 spell doing 40 damage at 100 magic aptitude for 5 fatigue? pop on haste and haste potion, the potion that reduces fatigue costs to half and spam every encounter to your win with this spell.
disengrate: kills one enemy for 50 fatigue. works on everyone and everything except last boss.
haste: doubles your speed. if you know anything about arcanums combat system you know why this is op as hell.
tempus fugit: raises speed and also lowers enemies speed so pretty much same as haste except it also stacks with haste and potion of haste.
succour beast: summon bunnies at 100 magic aptitude that destroy everything the same way that fire elementals do except little less damage because they do physical.

also when it comes to tech, go guns or something like grenades, melee weapons+tech is just as overpowered as magic except for BMC.

 

Neutral works depending on the type of character you make, a high speed and strength chakram thrower can cheese their way through anything including the bmc. However, i would encourage you to choose one or the other to get the strongest effect; the strength of technological and magical items are both affected by your degree of aptitude in the respective fields. Id est charged rings only give +1 dex instead of 2 to low-medium tech shifted character (i also believe damage from technical weapons is affected to some degree). If going for a mechanized armor or whatever it is called be aware the steam engine parts for it are uncommon so keep an eye out in the tech shops.

 

Tech is the most fun.
Magic is the most overpowered.

 

Definitely go technology, way more fun but try and squeeze in that teleport spell for convenience.

 

So you can get done with the banal shit boring combat as fast as possible by spamming harm, summoning demons or whatever.

 

Magic is overpowered. The combo Harm + Summon Ogre, for instance, makes combat extremely easy.

Magic will also save you a lot of pain and time. Teleportation will save you from the long journeys on the overland map and their random encounters. Invisibility will save you from the repetitive monsters found in Arcanum's linear dungeons.

 

Magic is more powerful and way more convenient to use. Just carry around a bunch of mana potions, spam spells and you're set.

Tech is really a kind of crafting, requiring you to pick up every little spring and doo-hicky you find in every damn crate and barrel, hoping you'll eventually have enough parts to make devices and chemicals that give you, more or less, magic-like effects. You'll constantly be playing inventory Tetris, or taking on as many companions as you can find to be your mules. It can get very tedious.

 

Magic gives you Conjure Spirit which allows you to extract information from the souls of the departed, quite often those you killed yourself. It is very enjoyable and thus highly recommended.

Edit: Although not necessarily appropriate for an un-monocled half-orc savage.

 

I remember that neutral as in neither tech nor magic, pure minmaxed brute force char definitely worked. Although I never made such a char myself, a friend made a minimum INT etc Half Ogre melee char at my place, which I also tried playing with and the char certainly breezed through anything prior to the Void anyhow (didn't actually play past that point with it). So yeah, it definitely worked, but seemed like a pretty boring char to play, once the novelty of low int dialogs, which could be admittedly hilarious, wore off.

Personally, I prefferred tech since I liked fiddling around with things, but have no idea whether I'd like this kind of approach anymore, since the last time I touched Arcanum was so long ago.

 

Another option to take is having a high charisma character with lots of followers. Spares you from the tedious combat, you don't have to do anything to win.

 

Get some large machined plate mail and a pryotechnic axe and pop those moles.

You still have to watch and there are some fights where your assistance is required.

 

If you want to play a shooter, it's recommended to steal a good gun asap (everyone can steal anything if they expend a fate point to it - there are 2 top notch guns available after leaving the first town), so you won't be as painfully underpowered in the beginning compared to other builds. Ask if you want to find where the good guns are at.



And if you want to bypass combat to skip boredom, pretty much any character can invest points in picking the Charm spell (perfectly usable also by tech characters) and some sneaking, then just charm every enemy after another. Or does Drogs patch cover up that?

 

Decided to go magic. I can never resist Teleport style spells since:

1- Back tracking is fucking banal shit boring.

2- Love the convenience of teleporting.

It's a shame that there are no tech items that enable teleporation.

 

I'm not sure about that. The first time I played, I maxed Charisma and Persuasion in order to take as many followers as possible (I was even able to have Raven and the dark elf chick at the same time), yet I still had to do a lot of the work during fights. The magic-using followers were especially bad, since they barely ever used their spells during most fights. And when they did use them, it wasn't always in a very smart way (Virgil would often exhaust himself trying to heal Magnus, even when the dwarf had become almost completely resistant to magic).

So, all in all, I didn't find most of the followers to be very useful. There are some exceptions (Raven is a real Gatling with her bow, for instance), but none of them will be as efficient as the PC in combat.

 

Magic is op as hell, this much is true, spending one point on harm pretty much makes you able to kill everything easily with enough potions. However, there are two things about Arcanum's combat:

1) It's shit.
2) There's tons of it.

So picking an option that lets you breeze through it isn't that silly. If you pick technology there will be parts and portions of the game that will be a chore without powergaming and/or extensive knowledge of game and its mechanics. Magic has an easy answer to everything - weapon-destroying golems, closed locks, diplomacy.

That said, melee/dodge orc is pretty op on its own as well. Adding stuff to it just makes you a bigger rapist.

 

Hm. orc shd go magic. lots of good, cheap buff spells. but lots of tech items work too. So pick one n stick with it. Both are equally viable. But the latter needs Magnus or INT points to shine.

 

Yeah, summon ogre is a joke. he slays everything in a few hits. I heard harm was Bs so i decided to go a summoner/charisma party member route, and the ogre just made everything far too ez

 

Strangely enough, from what I've seen, the demon you can summon with the level 4 summoning spell is clearly less powerful. Two ogres can deal with pretty much any fight by themselves in the first half of the game (except the Boil) and, in the second half, you'll just sometimes have to replace the ones who get killed or knocked out.

I think the only fight that's really required me to use tactics is the chief assassin. He's one fast fucker (probably with 20 Dex) and could kill my wizard before the ogres could even lift a finger. I had to use Spatial Distortion a lot not to get shish kebabed (I guess Desintegrate would have dealt with him, but I didn't have it).