It's made up for by the damage (more or less, 10-80 is a pretty big spread so now and then I find myself doing pretty low damage), but it does mean I get very wishy washy about shooting at weak things, since it feels like kind of a waste. And even though Vollinger can make batteries, the materials are a lot harder to find than for bullets (the liquid, specifically).
And yeah, thanks. I'm a little nervous about going in with only Virgil, Torian, and Vollinger, but the only other guy I can recruit would be Sogg and that would require bumping my Cha (well, and Dog, but I purposely passed him up because he's kind of ridiculous).

whaaa... nooo! Dog is the best. haha
I love him. I am super cheap and get him for all of my characters, even if they don't need him/it really doesn't make sense to have a pet dog. Though, maybe even horrible, evil, world-killers need doggy friends too? It is a metaphor for life? haha (I'm acting weird and I'm only half way through my second gin & tonic, bad signs).

But yeah, I totally get what you mean with the not wanting to waste shut a good weapon on weak enemies. It seems super silly a lot of the time to be killing Ailing Wolves, or Rats with something that can destroy creatures so much more powerful.

Yeah, actually, he probably would've worked rp-wise on this guy. He's just completely ridiculous, he basically carried the game as my Mage until I got disintegrate. If you got him later in the game it'd be less of a big deal, but he's just kind of silly considering you can get him as soon as you go to Tarant and have enough moolah for the train. (and that's to say nothing of the inherent weirdness in having a random sickly dog be the best melee character in the game.)n

Speaking of Disintegrate, the powerful weapon vs rats thing is even weirder there once you get Mastery of Force. Rat? Disintegrate. Spider? Disintegrate. Disturbingly tiny monkey (Seriously, what is with all the monkeys in the second half of the game. I know Troika ran out of resources, but... monkeys?!)? Disintegrate. Ailing Wolf? I could use a single Harm... Nah, Disintegrate.

haha
But then you don't get the wolf-sliced-in-half by Harm animation. You just get the normal, everything is turned into ash animation.
But yeah, if you master Force as a mage character you can just use Disintegrate to win any battle at all.

I actually decided to work on clearing Malachi Ren's castle first, so now it's off to the BMC for real! :D

Also

[SPOILER]






I just learned that if you kill K'an Hua or Nasrudin you get teleported to The Void. In addition to being generally hilarious, you can actually use it as a shortcut to beat the final boss (though you don't have the Vendigroth Device, Kyrggird's Falchion can apparently kill Kerghan. And you can always side with him, of course.).

Yeah! It is really great that Arcanum gives you alternative ways to finish the game. I think you also have to use Kyrggird's Falchion if you have the Techphobic (is that a real background? I think it is) where you can't pick up technological items.

Darn, shame I came late to this thread, as I'm partway through my first playthrough, doing the exact same character (only good instead of evil, and human; I actually had a sort of less sociopathic James Bond in mind).

Most of what's been said I would readily agree with. I emphasized building up my gun and tech skills before amping up persuasion. The 1 point in Explosives for bullets is by far the most important investment, IMHO. Electricity never even occurred to me, certainly seems like an interesting proposition, though. Might try throwing some points into there.

I will say that gunslinging really comes into its own, IMHO, in Ashbury. Maxed out Master Firearms plus some of the guns there can really give you a lot of power. I don't believe they're nearly as good as the Tesla rod, but they'll give you something a bit less taxing on your ammo reserves.

I took a break from Arcanum because I got absorbed into Fallout instead. Then Icewind Dale. Then Might and Magic VII. Then Fallout 2. But I'm back now. More or less.