Well, I already played the game second times and I had not so big problems with my followers.
Okay followers in Arcanum always tend to be kind of problematic but this time on my third playthrough they are real awkward with Magnus being the awfullest diva of them all.
He complains after every quest I've completed and he hates me more and more. I had to give him a present few times so that he won't leave me.
Now I'm happy he deserted me, I won't run after him even though he is one of the few npc's who talk and say something about the current location.
But the problems aren't solved yet.
Dog keeps getting mad at me and Waromon finally joined my chaotic group --> now the traders aren't talking to me anymore?!
They say, they don't want a monster in their shop which would scare away all the customers.
Do I really have to make him leave the group every time I wan't to speak to other people?
And besides I seem to be too 'noble' for him, his alignment is around 0 so he's a very neutral person.
So I need to become more evil to make him stay?
I really badly want a lizardman in my group I just adore them as you can imagine and he's a good archer so this is frustrating...
And I have yet to go for a master in persuasion in order to convice Torian Kel to join my humble army because I don't want to miss out his intervening in the boss fight.
Anyone else currently frustrated with that fuss?

Personally, I played Arcanum solo just for these reasons - maintaining party requires a lot of sacrifices and inconvenience. And I think I always provoked Magnus to fight me, because he was quite a hideous dwarf. Every tiny bit of EXP helps early in the game, especially when you still have places like Black Mountain Mines to go :)

Haha poor Magnus serving as an exp donor ^^ But he is indeed really nasty, besides once I decided to side with the necromancers from P. Schuyler and Sons which was the beginning of a profound enemyship between us^^
But I couldn't help thinking he would come in handy at some point with his crafting abilities and with the whole dwarven clan stuff^^
Well the mines can be really painfull, It must have been quite a task to go there alone even with many exp gathered before...
I never thought that would work out well until I read some comments here which say the same thing that it can be easier just making the game a one man show :D
But then I spend too few points on attributes like strength and condition and on skills like melee fighting because I always want to learn the teleportation spell, spotting traps, full lock picking, persuasion and pickpocketing.
And then I expect the enimies as being too superior, maybe I would never get past the cursed paladins near the end.
Virgil is healing group members a lot not speaking of taking away the poison effects.
And the inventories of all of my 4 group members is already full including mine, how would that end if I was to carry it all by myself :D
But maybe one doesn't have to keep all the books, letters and passports and stuff, I always think I might need them one day so where to put them? And the additional armors and weapons if one come across the hideous rock golem thingies and such.
And hey, sometimes you find things in the inventories of your companion you would have never spotted in the environment, they are real cleptomaniacs, can be funny as hell but also annoying especially if they decide to secretly put on a cursed item or inappropriate things which they can't handle with their attributes.
Oh sweet megalomania.

Well, Magnus can make Featherweight Axes, which can be upgraded to Pyrotechnic Axes. That's a good enough reason to recruit him at least temporarely, if you don't study Smithy yourself. Although I actually liked his subplot. Depends on who you ask. If you aren't doing anything to tick off your followers and provide them with good equipment, they can be fun to have around. Then again, I seem to always play charismatic characters in RPGs, so my Arcanum playthroughs ended up this way as well, with a huge party that likes me a lot but doesn't do much :). You can stash your inventory somewhere in a stable container (I usually use those warehouses in Tarant, lots of chests and crates there), so that you can retrieve it whenever you need it. Or stuff single larger objects in some of your hotkey slots, so they don't take up space on the inventory grid. Ranged fighters are especially bad about this, because they have high Perception, and thus can see stuff lying on the ground before even getting close to it. And Jayna Stiles (the tech healer from Dernholm) actually maxes out Perception for the sole purpose of being able to spot herbs across the screen. (There's really no other reason for her to be doing this, since she uses melee.) :D

Point of order: the chest at the Black Root inn is much more convenient, especially if you learn Teleportation. Whenever you enter the town (other than by ship) you're right there.

And a clarification for the OP: stashing something big in a hotkey only frees up space; it otherwise does nothing about encumbrance (you're still carrying it, after all). You're also limited to only one of a given item, so if you happen to have five identical barbarian armours looted from half-ogre corpses, umm, good luck with that.

For Pyrotechnic axes it seems to be too late now :(
But since I put the dark helm on I'm a pure magician and don't need anything like this anymore^^
Finally my harm spell has some power.
And my other party members are also rather on the magic side of life.
The subplot is only important for the iron clan?
I didn't get so much dialogue options so far possibly I did something wrong.
Everything indicates I have to go through the game a forth time xd

I play charismatic characters aswell because that offers a lot more information in dialogue heavy games like this.
The game really is superb in nearly every regard but the dialogue between the party members which is quasi non existent could have been implemented better..
It would have been lovely to have them discussing which each other like in Planescape Torment or Dragon Age.
But someone like me who nearly doesen't talk a word among other people shouldn't complain I guess xd
How did you make them like you, you don't only need charisma for this but also beauty don't you?

Still have to cleanse some buildings including warehouses? in Tarant but maybe I will consider it.
Seems like I have a new problem in Tarant.
The quest where you have to get a map of the sewers, the map just isn't there in the safe of the city hall. It's just somehow missing? Is it a bug?

Wow, I didn't know about that perception influence..that's interesting. But then again she won't be so autonomous when it comes to mixing the herbs I guess?^^
In this regard I have another question, how can party members like Virgil pick locks? Do you need to tell them?
And which level schemes does one use best?
+ I just got another problem with Waromon, he suddenly refuses to wear his bow instead he is fist fighting, how can that be? xD I will do it if I finally have the teleportation skill, it's quite annoying that you've only got one point with that staggering choice of abilities...and my willpower needs to be pimped urgently.

Haha would be nice, I did that a few times with things as the shovel but I end up at using it for consumables.
However, never considered to but the babarian armour there xd

Nope. You still have to ask her (or any other follower) every time. Every. Single. Time. 1) Make sure he already has his own set of lockpicks.

2) Start to pick the lock.

3) If his skill level is close to or better than yours, he will offer to take over.

Technically, yes. Not much to it, but it's one the very few cases when a follower has anything resembling a personal quest. Beauty does help, but not to the point of being worth spending CP. (Though stealing the Jewel of Hebe and the Ring of Influence is worth the trouble because of their Charisma bonus, and both add to Beauty as well.)
There are reputations that can have a positive effect on the party's reaction towards you, depending on the follower, and some - like Heal Mastery - affect everyone. Followers also sometimes start to like you more if they die and you revive them. Does he have arrows in his inventory? If a bowman or gunslinger runs out of ammo, they switch to melee.

Thanks! I feel so stupid right now..
You two helped me, I didn't knew about the lockpicks and I totally forgot about the arrows, that isn't exactly something you find en masse and I never used ranged weapons in the game myself.
I have the feeling ammuniton can really trouble you in the game, unless I go eagerly from store to store and prey on dead skeleton archers^^
Haha okay so maybe I won't load the next time one of my companions bites the dust just making them their guardian angel they have to love x)
Where can I steal that ring? just random people, women, who wander the streets?

Arrows are tricky; I even learn the first two schematics from Herbology if I feel masochistic enough to play an archer (which happens a lot :D), this way I can sell the end product for profit so I can afford lots of ammo, as the components are very cheap in stores and are generally available for free on the worldmap and around towns. Of course, later on you usually get enough money from selling various loot. Other types of ammo are a bit easier to maintain because they're craftable. [SPOILER]
The Ring of Influence is the reward for the Haggle Mastery quest... but the master, J.M. Morat, is wearing it, so if you know where to find him, you can use one of your Fate Points to crit-pickpocket him. (There are ways to get equipped items off NPCs without pickpocketing, but alignment hits are usually not an issue, so if you aren't using Fate Points for anything else, might as well use them to get cool stuff.) It's magickal, but still gives 2 out of 3 bonus points to both stats on an aptitude-neutral character.

The Educator background can make certain followers more attractive too. If you have Educator and Mastery of a skill, all your followers who qualify will turn into Experts at that skill.

That can be quite powerful if you have a large party and the right kinds of skills.

It doesn't make Magnus any less annoying, though.

S'why I love Throwing so much. All the advantages of range, with none of the downside. Plus, thrown weapons can be used at melee range with zero penalty.

And speaking of downsides, beware that Educator comes with a substantial one: you max out at one fewer followers. Plus, it only improves skills that you and a follower share: it won't teach Virgil how to shoot, for example, much less how to shoot better.

You picked my curiosity YnK, when you said that there are ways to get equipped items off NPCs without pickpocketing, did you mean Fate Point crit-pickpocket? Or you were referring to some other method?

Anyway, it's great to see that the forum is still active and people are still playing this gem.

The point is to not use Fate Points. :)

One method that is very well-known is to drop a hexed item with a poison effect in front of an NPC, wait until their cleptomaniac scripts make them pick the thing up, then sit back and watch them die so you can loot their corpse (and possibly resurrect them afterwards). However, good hexed items aren't available until later in the game, whereas good equipment to steal is pretty much everywhere.

If you feel particularly masochistic, though, you can do this a bit differently.

This involves garbage, and by "garbage" I mean "anything cheap enough to get in large amounts yet expensive enough to trigger the cleptomaniac scripts". Broken flintlock pistols should work, as should newspapers, coal, and tons of other things.

The goal is to dump a full inventory - this is important - of such garbage in front of your target, then wait for them to finish picking it up, so their inventory fills up with no space left.

Then cast a Body of [Element] spell on them.

What happens is, when they go elemental, their equipment is shifted into their inventory - but if there's not enough space for it, then whatever they wore falls into an item pile on the ground below them, free for you to pick up, 'cause stuff on the floor has no owner :D. Naturally, this has the same requirement as the hexed item method, which is that the target should be cleptomaniac (surprisingly enough, NPCs who don't automatically pick up stuff do exist.)

(Credit for this piece of time-killing AI abuse goes to Perriman Smythe, also known as Mr. I-Turned-Into-A-Fire-Elemental-And-Now-I-Am-Naked-Because-The-Living-One-Made-Me-Carry-Too-Much-Stuff-So-I-Dro pped-My-Robe.)

Incidentally, I believe that pickpocketing an item that's just sitting in somebody's general inventory is easier that pickpocketing something that's equipped. So if you do have a bit of pickpocketing skill, then you can cast the spell on your target and pickpocket them normally with reduced difficulty. Much less time-consuming, but still carries a risk of failure.

It's amazing, I'm playing this game for so many years and there are still a lot of things to reveal.
Wonder why it isn't discussed more about in the forum^^
I learnt the 2 schematics from herbology, too, but so far for own consumption only.
It's really good those incredients never run out.
So all in all, it's better to use throwing weapons than weapons using projectiles?
But with every ranged weapon there is the chance to hit party members and they again turn mad ?
Seems masochistic indeed :D

My much too friendly self would have never thought about utilizing the poisonous effects for robbery =D
Educator background sounds convenient for some parts at least.
Only got less exciting backgrounds so far as agoraphobia and such^^
I'll try pickpocket that haggle master, my pickpocketing skill luckily is high and I never cared about haggling even if it might be handy when you can sell everything to everyone.
You sure would get the money for the bates mansion a lot faster, or at all^^
And for the body of element spells, man they are annoying. I just threw Jormund out of my party because of that.
Also a bit silly that he's human looking afterwards, that feels so wrong for a former dwarf just like a dwarf using magic :D
And the water and air element body spell, you actually can't swim or fly, do you? xD
Is it wise to have a medical spider in a group with rather magic oriented characters or is it wise at all, it's pretty slow but somehow cuddly.