Im trying to find some mods for this game, in particular ones for backgrounds so I can make bamf chacters at the start and uber derpy ones can anyone hook a brother up?

Blammo. I believe it's also supposed to be fairly simple to make your own.

then do you know how to make your own because my little brother wants to try this game but the last time he did he got butchered pretty much from the start so I kinda want to lean the game more in his favor until he learns the systems

So, while it isn't overly difficult to make backgrounds (it is just typing things in the right places in Notepad files) to get access to the files without unpacking them yourself you should download one of the Background mods in the link provided by Gazoinks.

Then what you want are to take the three files you get (gameback.mes - which goes in the Arcanum/data/mes folder (if you don't have one, create it); backgrnd.mes - which goes in the Arcanum/data/rules folder (if you don't have one, create it); and finally, effect.mes - which also goes in the Arcanum/data/rules folder).

Open each in Notepad.

Gameback.mes is the text description of the background. You can type whatever you want in there (in the correct format, which I'll explain in a bit) and it will show up in the Description section when you choose the background, it also is the name of the specific background.

A couple of rules for this file: The numbering has to begin at 1000 (no idea why), but the one you download should already have stuff in it, so just start with the next number at the bottom. And there is a character limit as to what will actually display in the game (it won't scroll in the Description box), so you can write a novel if you want, but you can only read so much of it (I'm not sure the exact character limit).

The format should look like this (as an example):

{1000}{ForSparda's First Background
You are the most Godly god ever created. You start with +10 to all of your stats. Woo!}

Effect.mes is the games account of spell effects and background effects. The one that I downloaded and modified has a lot of commented out descriptions ( commented out meaning like this: // I'm a comment now, it doesn't effect the actual reading of the code on this line!)

Rules: You can only have five of each types of change (so five changes to stats, five changes to skills, etc; which means it is actually impossible to give yourself +10 to every stat, only five of them). Also, the highest line number that the game will read is 399 (I have no idea why, and my file begins at the line numbered 50, so I don't know if you can go lower than that - but you can try and see what happens. After 399 it would just crash my game to the desktop when I tried to load up the background which used the particular effect).

The format is as such:
{310}{st +10, pe +10, cn +10, speed +10, haggle +20} // Comments go here if you want!

Finally, backgrnd.mes is the "background rules" file. This is where you combine the description/name with the effect you created, as well as define what races can use the background, how much gold the character begins with, and any items the character begins with.

My file came with a description of all of the rules for this in it, but to hammer the point home, the format is five lines for each background. The format is as such:

{10}{1000}
{11}{310}
{12}{}
{13}{1337}
{14}{}

Each new section has to increase the units by 10 (so first 0-4, then 10-14, then 20-24, etc). The first line is calling the Description (the background.mes file code). The second line is calling the effect (the effect.mes file code). The third line is the race or races which can use the background. If it is left blank that means any. The fourth line is the amount of money the character begins with. The fifth and final line is the item hex code(s) if you are beginning with items.

Item hex codes for Arcanum can be found here.

Hopefully that isn't too complicated, it really isn't that difficult but it can be a bid tedious if you put one line of code wrong somewhere and mess the numbering up or something (which I've done before).

Have fun and good luck!

Edit: clarity.