Hello,
So I play a few different RPG PC games.
IWD as an example of games where you make your whole party.
BG was a game where you only play one character and add NPCs, which bring content with them. I beat the game traditional way, but also (especially for total conversions with no real NPC content) I made parties through a workaround, 3~6 characters.

Rather than play Arcanum through several times I'd like to (if possible) make a few characters and play through just once, but getting to play with the different options.

questions-
Is it possible to put NPCs in the game from the start that I can add as followers (to make a party for myself)?

If so how many is a good number/reasonable/possible?

Will I be able to custom level this NPC/followers, or will they have to do the autolevel thing? (kinda kills the point if I can't customize them as I go)


That covers the basic questions. As a question to go on if its all possible would be what kind of party to build, what kind of builds are possible.

I think I7d want the main t obe the charisma/beauty character, not sure what kind of skills can compliment in this game yet (still reading the horrible manual, I know some people probably like ti but I think its absolutely horrible)
I7d want a thief type, that has the full thief skills, would they then work good as a marksman or gunner mabye? An archer?
I'd want a character to explore in depth the tech stuff, and one to explore the magic stuff.
Then I'd want a melee guy that just kills stuff. You know a half-ogre brute. Just to smash stuff for fun.

SO mabye...
Elf female beauty/Charisma queen...good with the magic stuff...
Dwarf Technician/gunner
Half-ogre brute
hafling or gnome thief type

Well if its even possible to make a party for this game.

No, the game provides many NPCs throughout your travels who may (or may not) be willing to join you, depending on your Charisma and Alignment. The game autolevels them as you go along.

The only character you can create is your own, but don't let that stop you from playing Arcanum. Its a magnificent game.

Arcanum calls for different kinds of finesse than one finds in games like Baldur's Gate. Rather, it's closer to Fallout in terms of its approach to problem solving. Not quite as tactical, but with considerably more options.
Part of that, though, is that the NPCs available are actually people in this world, interact accordingly, and some won't suit your needs; sometimes, those who suit your needs won't avail themselves to you; and sometimes (especially when you wish to avoid combat in solving a problem) you just need to do it yourself.

That sucks. I want to play with the tech and the magic. But no way to know if the game is worth playing through twice. ho-hum.

It seems there are two games actually or campaigns or whatever. Whats that all about? I guess I'll play with it. If it has two different basic campaigns then maybe I'll run one tech and the other magick or something.

No dummy brute half ogre for me :(

Actually, there are some pretty brutal half-ogre party members you can get.
Hmm. Anybody know if there are any evil ones available?

As to the second campaign, it seems kinda token. I'm almost certain it exists just to prove the possibility of making your own campaigns.

NPCs in Arcanum are exceptionally dumb. You can't control them directly in combat, you can't make casters cast problem-solving spells for you, you can't teach new schematics to techies.

Lack of direct control in combat has an obvious consequence: there are no close wins. You either win in a landslide or get ripped apart - and yes, the same fight can become a cakewalk or a murderfest depending on your luck - but not on tactics. Tactics doesn't get a say. (Now, obviously, given that you'll want to survive a number of tactic-free fights in succession, you'll want character skills and party composition that make every battle a cakewalk.)

What makes Arcanum great is the story, which aside from obvious things like setting/writing/characters means the variety of ways quests can be resolved with actual completion (you did what the questgiver told you to and collected your reward) being just one outcome out of several.

Now, NPCs are dumb. They are a huge help in fights but where quest resolution is concerned you're on your own - and quest resolution is the game (because combat in Arcanum is dumb and if it was important the game wouldn't be a cult classic).

That being said, barring unsquashed bugs and acute stabinitis, I don't think it is actually possible to get stuck in Arcanum, so any build is playable to completion. However, playing a less socially capable character on your first run might make you feel like you're missing on interesting and important stuff (which you are) AND will make it more likely to miss a crucial clue and get the pre-Internet variety of stuck (and too many trips to gamefaqs reduces the sense of achievement and it all goes downhill from there).

However... there are also endings to consider. As usual, since it is a videogame, doing evil stuff is easy: kill it if it moves and loot it if it doesn't. Doing the most good is a thousand times harder, because people will object, sometimes violently. Persuasion is a huge help.

As for choosing between magick and tech, they're potentially equally powerful. Magick is just easier to use. Tech has neat stuff to craft and schematics to find, magick has harm spam.

I like you, Starmaker. You're always willing to give a brief lecture for the sake of promoting this amazing game.

+1 for you!

I like you, ChaunceyK, and in fact "+1" you any time you call Arcanum amazing or any variety thereof. Because it is.

Arcanum is absolutely worth playing through twice. In fact, it's probably worth playing through five times or more. There's simply a staggering amount of different things you can do on a given playthrough, from designing a completely different character to the choices you make along the way. You can play a diplomat who recruits a small army of followers to fight everything for you, or an evil gunman, or a magical thief, or a grenadier who likes crafting armor, or.... the list goes on and on. And in addition to that, you can choose to be good, evil, or somewhere in between, and you can pick and choose from all manner of sidequests and also choose to SOLVE those quests in many different ways.

A single playthrough will only give you a glimpse of the amount of content in the game. Repeated plays are highly recommended.

Oh, and as others said, the bonus campaign is more just a showcase of the editor tool. It's quite small compared to the orignal game's campaign.

Different people have different play styles.
Some say BG is worth playing thorugh multiple times. For me it was only worth while with modding for lots of extra content. have you played BG? Would you say BG is signifigantly more linear than aracanum?

I actually like linear games if the story is good and or the combat/strategy is good and balanced and all that. Absolutely hate repeating content.

mabye I'll run the side comaign, since its shorter, to get a feel for the game. That way I might start with something I turned out not to like and by the time I get to real campaign I can choose the right character to fit my playstyle. Awesome post, thank you very much.
You answered a lot of questions for me.
On combat-
multiple NPCs seems like it would suck. I hate AI on AI/NPC on NPC anything in a video game. story is good, but it should play like a movie, because if I am not actively particpating...then it is just a movie. You know what I mean?
So for me perhaps combat would make best sense as a solo artist. If its just me versus the AI, and how many ever baddies it throws out there, then I could make a game out of it perhaps. Mechanically though the difficulty might be rather high. Might be fun to play with AFTER I get a handle on the different tech/magic/combat skill systems. But I'll take your word that the combat is lackluster and not make exploring the combat any kind of goal.

On Content-
Sounds like I'll need a social character to see the content of this game. In that line how critical are having certain NPCs in or not in your party for the content. If I get annoyed with the clutter and tedium of a magnitude of premade NPCs then I might just let them die in combat (as I would do in BG) once their content chain had run its course (which I could do such that my PC remained on the 'good' track...
'evil' is usually a non-option which never interests me much anyway, which I suppose is why I prefer a 1run through on teh good track. Evil usually amounts to getting gimped out of many quests/encounters and hacking and slashing to the climax...whilst roleplaying something that, for me, is not really fun. The good or kinda good can be fun though, I digress...

Questions -
How important is intelligence score to getting quests and so forth?
How important is beauty?
How important is Charisma?
How much Charisma should I need, same of intelligence to have basic access to all content.
Like in some games it works so there is kidna a cutoff. If you have INT under 6 for example you wont have access to most anything, but any points after like 12 or so wont really increase the amount of content you get access to. You know what I mean?

I might set myself up to have waht is necessary to get access to the right dialogues and then put the rest of hte points into combat and/or tech/magic whenever I finally decide which one seems more appealing. Or mabye dable in the two...but it sounds like doing both leaves you gimped.

> How important is intelligence score to getting quests and so forth?
Not much. Intelligence boosting potions are openly for sale and they work on techies. 8 is average. A mage needs 12 to maintain 3 spells at once.

> How important is beauty?
Not at all as long as you have some means of raising Reaction, which is one point away for a mage or a techie (Purity of Water, a 1st level stackable spell - for the low low cost of 1 point almost everyone is going to be in love with you). If you don't have the IN for stacking PoW, there's also the Ring of Influence (subsequently shortened to RoI) which gives +3 beauty among other things, a +1 BE blessing, a +2 BE/+1CH amulet, a +20 Reaction suit (ladies can travel far and wide for the dress with the same quality) and a +5 Reaction blessing.

> How important is Charisma? How much Charisma should I need, same of intelligence to have basic access to all content.
Basic access - not really. In fact, if you're not persuasive, you'll have to endure more running around doing various errands. Persuasion gives cool lines to say, positive reputation records (everyone can be Pervert of Tarant but being Honorary Ambassador of Tarant takes effort) and access to the best ending.

> I might set myself up to have waht is necessary to get access to the right dialogues
High charisma is not necessary to complete the game, and high levels give more options, not more quests. However, the best ending ("best" as in "the world becomes more peaceful and enlightened") requires lots of it. To lighten the burden, RoI gives CH+3, there's a blessing of CH+1, a necklace of CH+1, a medium armor of +1 to every stat, a blessing of +4 Persuasion (+1 rank). Also, RoI gives +0.75 ranks to Persuasion. Immediately before the point of no return, there's a huge bless that gives +12 Persuasion (aka +3 ranks) among other things, and yet another +1 to all stats boost, but at that stage there's not a lot to do socially.

> but it sounds like doing both leaves you gimped.
Trying to multiclass as a techie/mage will leave you gimped. Being a neutral-aptitude self-buffing fighter or thief is all sorts of awesome.

Awesome, you totally answer my questions and then some. Actually I was toying around with it a bit earlier, and I kinda had an incling this persuasion thing is the key.

Oh and then I saw the economic elements..haggle/gamble which seem fun enough.

So some basic tech/magic, persuasion and then I can just work on being combatitve/theiving. It doesn't let you really do it all, which is fair enough. So I'll need to do some pro/con and think about my character concept and stuff.

I think I'll toy around a bit with some basic builds in the bonus campaign thing before getting started on the actual compaign.

Thanks again! you been a big help!

<span class="bold">This should have been in the manual</span>: stats, skills, their workings and usefulness (scroll down)