Hi. I've played this game for a few hours many years ago but other than that I'm new to it. I always like conversation-based characters so I'd like to do that, and mages are always cool. I'm not sure how much I'm screwing myself over by being a female elf with the Miracle Operation origin thing. You can see my stats in the pic. My Dex seems dangerously low, especially for before I have any party members, but that's nothing compared to how terrible by Strength and Con are. I was thinking of going for Necromancy and Temporal magic, the latter for Tempus Fugit to speed up my eventually massive party. Necromancy gives me early damage in the form of Harm and eventually lets me add even more things to my party. Plus, the ability to talk to spirits sounds cool.

So anyway, how much of a terrible idea is this? Should I instead spend my intial points on fixing my Dex?

(I copy-pasted this from my post on Reddit since I'm not sure how long I'll wait for a response).

Edit: On Reddit, someone suggested Debutante instead. Thoughts?
Also, can anyone tell me about some important dialogue checks through the game so I can plan to have the right stats/skills by that point? I know there's something to do with getting two party members to stay with you that are normally mutually exclusive unless you have 20 Charisma.

What you should play as, depends on how you want to accomplish your goals.

It is possible to play as a pure pacifist, talking your way out of trouble and letting your followers loose on anyone or anything that won't listen to reason. But it's not recommended for a first time through, since it's helpful to have some meta knowledge of the game.

If you do want to play that way, put a few points into Beauty, but mostly Charisma and Persuasion. Spells can include Stun (so that you can run away, or your followers can have an easier time of dispatching foes), the entire Mental college (if you can't beat 'em, mind control 'em!) and eventually Teleport (reduces random encounters by eliminating fast travel entirely).

The game is unbalanced, perhaps on purpose. Magic is much, MUCH easier than tech. Brute force is more reliable than sneaking around and trickery.

I honestly recommend starting over with a less extreme background, bumping your Dexterity up to 9 and putting two points immediately into either Melee or Throwing. (This will greatly reduce the chances of a critical miss.) Buy either the fine steel dagger or the boomerang from the starting shopkeeper, and let your own hands get a little bloody. Take Minor Healing early on, and perhaps Shield of Protection as well. Dodge is also a good choice.

Don't just put points into skills; seek out people from whom to learn apprenticeship, expertise, and eventually mastery. The first two levels cost gold, while earning mastery usually involves a quest of some sort.

Beyond that, explore your interests. Dark Necromancy is cool; damage-dealing spells such as Harm become increasingly more powerful the higher your MA (magic aptitude) goes. But spells cost Fatigue, so either bump up your Constitution or invest in a lot of fatigue potions.

I'm not going to spoil your first full playthrough any further; just be prepared for surprises, and don't be afraid to explore. This is a true sandbox world, where even the outcome of the main quest can change depending on whether you favor good or evil, diplomacy or the axe.

If, as you play, you have any further questions or want more specific advice, drop another post here. Other than that, go forth and have fun.

Thanks, that's really good advice. Unfortunately I've run into some bugs with the game. I was helping that guy stop the bank robbery and a series of weird things happened. First of all it stopped auto-ending my turn when I ran out of action points. No big deal. But then it just infinitely cycled the action point meter (what it does when other people are moving) but only no one was actually moving. I left it for about 5 minutes and it hadn't moved back to my turn. I reloaded three times and that error happened repeatedly. Then finally, after I managed to get through the fight without a glitch, the game crashed. Oddly enough, the circle at the feet of the companion you get from the bar (Mead Mug or something?) was yellow - like it is in BG when someone is fleeing. Not sure what that's about, but he still acted as normal in combat. I'm on the latest unofficial patch, too.

I'll go back to the game tomorrow. In the end I went ahead with the same build but with Debutante. I'll put points into Dodge and Melee as my character is AWFUL at close combat (though kills things in 1-3 apparently guaranteed hits with Harm, which is nice).

Sounds like the bug that can be cured by pushing the space bar a couple of times.

Thanks, I'll try that if it happens again.

If I remember right it is due to the ai freezing and the way to fix it is to switch between battle modes. That will unfreeze the ai freeze and allow you to continue. If I remember correctly hitting the space bar changes from turn based to real time and back.

abbayarra is right. Tap the space bar twice, to toggle out of and back into turn-based combat. It's a known glitch. Check his reaction to you. He may not like you all that much, even though he liked you enough to be willing to join your party. A bottle or two of wine might make him reevaluate your friendship. As I mentioned above, the more spells you know, the better Harm works. Just be sure to have a lot of Fatigue potions, as you're probably going to burn through them very quickly, especially in dungeons.

Protip: you can drag almost anything into the hotkey bank (the ten empty boxes above your HP and Fatigue; this includes a Fatigue potion, or even the Harm spell itself (so as to always have it handy). Then you either click on it, or press the equivalent number (1 for the first box, etc.) in order to use it.

As a mage you've different ways to handle a combat without Dex (stun, summons, entangle, etc...) so you can be that low dex and still survive a fight.
On the other hand, Con is important as it determines your mana rege out of combat (heal rate). With a low Con, you'll regenerate your mana veryyyyyy slowyyyyyy.
Not to mention that every trap will deal half your low hp damages (and there are many traps in this game).

Harm is very powerful when you reach 100 Magick Aptitude. But the most powerful mage build is a summoner with 100 MA (especially the Nature summon).

To unlock more quest dialogs, you'll need Expert Persuasion and Int 13.