So I've got a half-orc with the ugly stick background, I thought it would be interesting to have to persuade and fight my way through everything with no charm. Indeed the NPCs don't react well, they hate the half breed and all have -15 reaction from the start, but I can talk them up to neutral.

The trouble I'm having is being randomly attacked. For example, I accepted the quest from the doctor to help foil the bank robbery. If I follow him to the bank he becomes aggressive and attacks me, breaking the quest. I managed to reload and not follow him closely, then once he was at his destination he was no longer aggressive. We killed the bank robbers, then shortly afterwards 2 town guards AND the doctor randomly attacked me!

Does having very low beauty/charisma and being halfbreed really cause you to always be under attack? Or more specifically, is the mechanic of the game such that anyone with a negative reaction score to you can attack at any moment? It doesn't really seem playable in this state when level 30 NPCs attack my level 5 character.

Cheers,

Chumm

its a tough life being ugly :) you can only add points in be to help out or keep an eye out for items with be on them i found an ring with be +2
try traveling around on the world map to get exp for a while just save oftern
or if its to tough start again without the ugly stick

Yeah I understand that I can modify my reaction by other means, but is it usual for characters to attack when they have a low reaction? I can stand next to a guard for a few minutes with no problems, then he randomly attacks, so it feels like a bug.

Admittedly, I haven't started playing Arcanum yet (still gotta finish Fallout 2), but there are 2 possible explanations I can think of...

1> Did you install the unofficial patch? Could just be a bug.

2> Maybe "hate crimes" are a part of Arcanum, which seems not so much immoral as unfair...like you said, level 30 NPCs beating up on your level 5 PC? Really, how are you supposed to survive? I'm all for a challenging game, but that's a little much.

I don't THINK you should be getting attacked outright... as ChaunceyK said, definitely install the unofficial patch if you haven't yet and see if that fixes the problem. I've played half-orcs before and not had this issue, but they didn't also have the ugly stick background so I can't say for certain.

SPECIAL system used in Arcanum (and Fallout 1/2) works like this, you have to get used to it. Is it tough - yes. Is it realistic - well, yes! Imagine a situation - an ugly half-orc arrives to the city, he's a complete stranger - no one knows what to think about him, except for the obvious - he's ugly as hell and his kind (half-orcs) are considered a lesser race. Do you think that people will react favorably or even remain neutral? I don't think so.
The SPECIAL system is, well, special. You can play a character with intelligence of 1 and probably you'll be able to finish the game, but you'll also miss a lot of quests as you won't be able to create a simple sentence. The same goes for beauty, charisma and other statistics. You can get attacked if NPCs have a low reaction level towards your character. As for level 30 characters beating the crap out of your level 5 character - it's normal in Arcanum, that up till some point all your enemies are on much higher level than you.
You say you're playing Fallout 2 now - good for you. Be prepared that even though Arcanum uses the same system, it got lifted to the whole new level - it's much more complicated - not only max level of statistics is 20 (compared to 10 in Fallout), you also have to take into consideration the tech/magick alignment of your character and NPCs you interact with, their reaction, among other things.

Just don't get discouraged. If one liked Fallout 1/2, Arcanum has the same atmosphere. Of course if you can cope with the whole steam punk thing ;-)

Actually, Arcanum does not use SPECIAL but rather a new system designed for the game. But it is similar to SPECIAL in the way it models how people react to you based on your appearance, or how your conversation options change depending on your intelligence.

I'm still not sure that being ugly should cause people to attack you on sight though. It will certainly make them not like you, but attack outright? Can anyone confirm that that's the intended behavior?

I don't remember how this system was called, so I named it "upgraded-SPECIAL" ;-) The basic rules are still the same, though, with a lot of new things added.

As for the attacking ugly characters - I'll try to check this in a moment.


EDIT:
OK, so I created a half-orc with "Beaten with an ugly stick" background, which resulted in the beauty of 1. People in the first village had the reaction of -20 AND they reacted especially bad because of my race. No one attacked me though, even after helping the doctor to deal with the bandits in the bank (though, what was interesting, bank robbers had higher level of reaction than the citizens - 0 compared to -20).
I must mention that I'm playing with the unofficial patch. Maybe this whole thing is random - some people just react with violence. Taking into consideration that -20 in reaction means pure hatred - I think it's possible.

EDIT #2:
Another thing that made me love this game even more - Constable Owens had the initial reaction of -20, but after threatening him a little, his reaction reached +40. Talk about being a pussy, eh? ;-)

I'd expect a poor & distrustful reaction for all that, but outright attacking without being provoked is brutal...especially after helping stop the bank robbers. Just seems like something's a little TOO off in computing the reaction factor.

Until we hear back from Chumm, I'm guessing he doesn't have it patched.

Yeah, that's more what I was expecting; people dislike you but won't attack outright unless you really provoke them. I imagine that Chumm's problems with getting attacked were actually bugs. Are you using the Unofficial Patch, Chumm? If not, it's highly recommended. While you're at it, the high resolution patch and high quality townmaps are also awesome, though purely cosmetic (unless you count being able to see farther away in higher res).

I installed the patch after I had the problem and indeed the same thing happened. The one situation I could recreate every time was if I followed the doc closely while he was walking to the bank. Once he was in place to stop the robbery he became docile, but if I got too close on the way he would attack. Strange thing was that he had 41 reaction at that point because I talked him up. It is possible that it was only the doctor doing the attacking in the other situation and the guards just joined in to help him.

After completing the bank robbery quest and after the doc went back into his home I had no further problems, but I got the reputation bonus for doing the quest so everyone's reaction was 0 instead of -15.

Anyway, if none of you have had this problem then maybe it was a bug. The save I had when I patched the game was just after the doc started walking towards the bank, so whatever hostility flag he had may have been still up.

Otherwise I'm liking this style of play! I started with 11 int and am able to talk most people up from their unfriendly reaction, but I can also respond to their threats and pick whatever fights I want.

Thanks for the input everyone, long live GOG