Hi all,
I'm starting my first playthrough on Arcanum, and I'd like to play as a charismatic character.

After some reading, I think I should invest in Persuasion, Charisma and Intelligence... and use magic over technology, to learn some spell like charm and others to manipulate people.

Is it a good way to build a "Tyrion Lannister" type of character that know some Jedi mind tricks and left other to do the hard work for him? Also, should I invest in beauty too?

Thanks

1) Maximize your CH and your Persuasion skill. Purchase expertise in Persuasion to give you the most possible followers: six, not counting free followers such as familiars and Dog. Having a 20 CH (charisma) means that no one will leave you or refuse to join you, despite issues with your alignment or with any of your other followers.

2) Mental spells are your friends. Just remember that when they wear off, there will be a backlash; if the backlash is enough to drop their relationship with you down to Hatred, prepare to be attacked. Stun will also buy your followers some time to protect you, if you're being attacked.

3) Other helpful spells include Purity of Water (+4 to Beauty, stacks with itself), Shield of Protection, Minor Healing, Teleportation, and the Nature college. The more spells you have, the higher your MA, which makes scalable spells like Minor Healing that much more effective.

4) Give your followers the best weapons and armor you can afford. They're your enforcers; don't gimp them. Be sure to match magic to magic and tech to tech; giving a mage a gun is a BAD IDEA.

5) If you're not planning to fight, then real time mode may be your best bet. You can use the space bar to toggle turn-based if you need the time to cast a spell or two.

6) Invest in DX (dexterity) as well. Higher DX means more APs (action points) which equals more time to do stuff, especially in turn-based. Similarly, a higher CN (constitution) means faster Fatigue recovery and less need for FT potions.

7) IN (intelligence) is mostly a waste, unless you're investing in tech colleges. Minor Healing is much more practical than the Heal skill, unless you're dealing with high-TA characters; and even then, there are salves galore that can be purchased or found. Gambling (the other skill that requires IN) is by its very nature unreliable and unnecessary. The only way IN helps mages is by allowing more spells to be maintained at once (two at IN 8, three at 12, etc.)

8) Might as well invest in Haggle; it requires WP (willpower) but puts your CH to good use. With expertise, you can sell anything to anyone, and buy at much lower prices than otherwise.

9) Minor spoiler: There is one point (in the late middle game) at which Virgil leaves you; if you've given him anything especially valuable, reclaim it before he does so, since when you find him again he'll be starting over with nothing.

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SPOILER

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∞) There is a way to take over the whole world, one by one, with a broken spell exploit. No details here; google "meta abuse" if and when you wish to give it a try.

Great suggestions, many thanks

- Investing in Beauty is mostly a waste of CP, as with sufficiently high Charisma nobody will care if you're ugly as long as you aren't wearing anything that lowers the reaction modifier further (e.g. barbarian-style armor). 20 Charisma allows you to talk any ticked off followers out of leaving you, and Master training in Persuasion bypasses alignment differences. If you want store discounts, learn Purity of Water and cast it whenever you're buying something, or buy the +20 reaction clothes to wear when not in combat. There's also some very good jewelry that raises both Beauty and Charisma, if you know where to steal it from.

- Intelligence isn't as useful as it may appear, as maintaining 4-5 spells at once is usually going to make your character faint unless he has absurdly high Constitution or is wearing something that increases Heal Rate. The highest Intelligence you'll ever need for quests is 12, and there's a potion that increases it by 10 for a few seconds, so... (This temporary buff, incidentally, does allow you to put points into skills that require Intelligence; I have a habit of investing into the Heal skill as a character trait of sorts, so this saves CP. This is also true for other stat/skill sets, being able to reliably maintain a few copies of Agility of Fire allows for early development of combat skills.)

- Spell exploits are mostly fixed in the unofficial patch, though you can still get some to work.

- Although the maximum number of non-free followers you can get is supposed to cap at 6 (technically 7, but the one piece of equipment that was meant to add another follower slot was left out of the game), even in the patched game the party checks are rather wonky, so you might wind up with more party members than your stat screen says you're allowed to have (I've had Magnus, of all people, as a "freebie"). However, if this happens and you want to keep them, you should never ask them to wait or otherwise remove them from the party, because they won't rejoin.

- [Spoiler] Virgil's stats/equipment won't get reset if he leaves the party for plot reasons, since GOG's release is based on the latest game version which fixed this issue. But this is still true for another character who may or may not leave your party around the same point, for different reasons.

Thanks

Ok, so... I should invest only on charisma and reputation, take INT max to 12 and beauty to 8-9... what about willpower? Is it useful to magic?

Willpower is actually considered a mage's primary stat, since it controls how far into a spell college you're allowed to get (1 spell per 3 points of WP, starting at 6), plus it increases HP and Fatigue. However, this only matters if you're in fact intending to learn at least one full spell college - this has its benefits, but is not required. If you want just a few low-level spells from different colleges, then there isn't much need to raise WP beyond what's needed to learn those spells (but you might as well invest into it anyway if you have no other use for your character points, of course).

I'd recommend playing around with the character generator to get a good idea of how stats/skills/tech/magic are connected with each other, because it's actually very easy to plan your levelling very far ahead when you know what exactly you want your character to be like.

I'll try, thanks.

Haggle Mastery is nice too. Once you achieve mastery you can buy personal items that shopkeepers have equipped. Normally they won't sell these, and some of them are quite good.

In any case, have fun with your first exposure to Arcanum. Don't let us spoil it for you too much, because it's a great game.