Hello everyone :)

I'll start by saying that I only played this game a bit a loooong time ago, so I pretty much have forgotten everything.

Well, with that said, I want to make a magic focused character that it's also good with words. I'm not intersted in hording followers, actually, I want to kill most fo the things myself, but I also want to get most out of the story in this game.

Can you help please?

P.S. While I'm new to the game, I don't actually mind a rough start as long as it gets me where I want with this build :)

You don't really need a ton of stat points to be good as a mage. Just take a good attack spell (the easiest one to get is harm from dark necromancy) and pick starting options + additional spells that will raise your magical rating to 100%. That's about it, anything else can make you better but isn't really needed.

For a diplomat, you need high charisma and high persuasion, plus decent intelligence to have the best dialog options, that's it.

Personally, I'd focus on getting at least 9 cha, 2 ranks of persuasion, the harm spell and decent willpower first, which will take care of your starting points. Then with the persuasion you can solve most early quests peacefully, and the magic is enough to get you through most fights.

After that, you can choose whether to boost magic or persuasion first. I'd go with magic considering there are plenty of fights that can't be avoided and you don't want to rely too much on followers.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's my favorite question!

http://www.gog.com/forum/arcanum_of_steamworks_and_magick_obscura/is_fighting_supposed_to_be_this_hard/post18
http://www.gog.com/forum/arcanum_of_steamworks_and_magick_obscura/please_help_to_clarify_the_games_difficulty_for_me/post6

Raise WP, CH, and Persuasion.
Don't bother with BE; get Purity of Water (Water 1) instead and stack it (cast several times on yourself) before conversations.
For combat, get Harm (Black Necromancy 1).
For exploration, get Conveyance 2 for unlocking places and eventually 5 for Teleport.

(Unlocking Cantrip is loud, but you are the source of sound, not the object. If you are standing far away enough you might not get noticed. Save. Also, you can steal stuff from people's backrooms by walking in with the place's owner when they go to sleep, waiting until morning when they wake up, unlocking the container, then walking out next evening.)

Buy at least 12 IN to maintain 3 spells soon-ish.
Whenever necessary (several quests), drink a potion of intellect before talking (warning: effect expires soon, save beforehand and be very fast).
There's a gnome in Tarant, Grant's Tavern - J.T. Morat. As soon as you arrive, use a Fate Point to steal his awesome ring.
There's also other stuff that adds to social abilities and magic, but it's probably too spoilery.

Arcanum is not meant to be played freeflow. There are quite a number of situations that can permanently screw you over. Save early, save often, and don't be ashamed to reload.

Edit: another link
http://www.gog.com/forum/arcanum_of_steamworks_and_magick_obscura/adding_npcs_make_a_party/post11

Can you please give a bit more info, especially for the first 5 levels maybe? (like in, where to put the points for the first levels)

Starmaker, in that other post you say to go human with sell your soul background, but for roleplaying purposes I want to play as a good guy, so I'm not sure about that...and what is karma?

Start with WP9, CH9, Harm, Purity of Water, and possibly Persuasion.
Next to get: Unlocking Cantrip, CH to 12, Persuasion to 3, IN to 12.
Then CH and WP to 18 (total, including bonuses) respectively as you see fit (CH 20 provides a good bonus for herding followers, but 18 is enough to get Persuasion Mastery).
When you hit 18 WP, buy up the rest of Conveyance (3-5) to Teleport.
And while you're at that, buy up spells and skills that you think will be *fun* to use. When you get 18 WP, you might want to save up, say, 5 points, save the game, get a whole college and try its spells, then reload and try something else. Pick some other background (Extreme Personality is nice). I take Sold Your Soul because I like a particular NPC who doesn't join Good characters. (Persuasion Mastery negates this restriction, but by the time it's available, that NPC is about 10 levels weaker than me.)

Starmaker's advice is good, but some of it is a bit power-game-y (like stealing the ring with a Fate point). I personally love Arcanum for the role-playing possibilities, so I will often play sub-optimally on purpose, and I recommend that others do the same. Or at least not worry about whether or not they're playing sub-optimally. So if you won't want to be evil, don't take sold your soul; you'll still do fine, even if you don't take any special background at all.

Magic characters are generally pretty easy, so don't worry too much. You need higher Willpower to get higher-level spells. Each spell you buy will increase your magickal aptitude, which helps all your spells. Intelligence helps you keep several spells maintained at once, which is important for certain kinds of spells like stat boosts or summons but not important for single-use spells like attack spells or Unlocking Cantrip. Invest in some Intelligence if you find you like maintaining spells, don't if you don't. You probably don't need to bother with IN at the beginning.

Charisma is way more important than Beauty, as Starmaker said, so don't worry about Beauty. You'll definitely want high Charisma for smooth-talking, along with a high Persuasion skill. Your mage will not really need other skills since s/he will use spells for combat, but if enemies are getting close to you a lot you might want some Dodge. Dexterity helps you get more action points per turn (in turn-based combat) or act faster in real-time combat, which is useful for every character. Your mage can blast more spells with higher Dexterity.

I would say that early on you mostly want to think about Willpower, Charisma and Persuasion skill. Later you can start building Dexterity and Intelligence if you need them. You'll have plenty of character points free, so go ahead and get a lot of spells! It's expensive to get the really high level spells, but you can always branch out into many low-level spells without using too many points.

Of course, I've never actually played a mage myself, so take this with a grain of salt. Do others have better suggestions for the early levels?


EDIT: Whoops, ninja'd by Starmaker! A lot more specific advice in Starmaker's post.

Important note on skills:

Items and events may grant skill bonuses. One "plus" of skill bonuses is actually 1/4th of a skill rank, while a character point buys a full rank.

Skill training is available at 2, 10, and 18 points (or 0.5, 2.5, and 4.5 ranks) respectively, including bonuses. Training is permanent, but its effects only apply while you have at least the above # of ranks. (There are also stat minimums, which I forgot.)

However, Persuasion is an exception. To actually get the quest, you need the full 20 points / 5 ranks, otherwise the dialogue option won't appear. Once you have Persuasion Mastery training, its benefits apply normally at 4.5+ ranks.

More:
http://www.gog.com/forum/arcanum_of_steamworks_and_magick_obscura/arcanum_smoothtalking_and_being_a_first_time_player_advice_needed/post10

EDIT: Also, if you're buying up Mental for some reason (has no bearing on Persuasion-related quest options, just spells), Stun (level 2) is a handy spell that is not affected by Magickal Aptitude and almost always works.


EDIT 2: found a post on stats
http://www.gog.com/forum/arcanum_of_steamworks_and_magick_obscura/noob_questions_on_a_mage_build/post6

Whoa, thanks a lot guys! All this is really helpful :)

Ok, just a few more things. How bad is playing with 2 strength? The + 2 int and wp from sheltered childhood seems prettyy good. And how do followers level up? From what I noticed you don't get exp if they hit/kill your enemies.

2 str: dunno, never tried. Probably just inconvenient, since your followers will have to carry your loot, and trading items between characters in Arcanum isn't done well. The spell that adds to ST costs just one point and is stackable.

You get XP when you or your followers kill an enemy. Followers in your party level when you do (followers not in your party don't level at all). You ALSO get XP when you personally hit an enemy, so smaller parties level somewhat faster under normal conditions (everyone rushes forward and wails on monsters). However, even if you have an entourage of followers, you can still order them to back off (F5) and kill a monster on your own.

Disintegrate destroys loot (and costs a whole lot). Spamming harm while stacking Agility of Fire (+DX) seems more efficient.

Playing with 2 strength is really bad imo, because you won't be able to wear any armor or carry anything. But you can raise strength to 5 or so, and it should be good enough if you have an half-ogre follower to carry stuff, which means you'll still gain stats overall with this background.

Followers simply gain levels when you do. This means that early followers are better than later ones if you do lots of side quests early, because if you get a level 20 follower when you're level 40, he'll never be above level 30.
And while you only get bonus xp for hitting enemies yourself (and it's per hit, meaning a fast weapon is better than a slow one for xp), you do get xp for enemies they kill., otherwise pure diplomatic builds would be impossible to level.
That would be true, except that most hard enemies (like golems for instance) have no loot to destroy. And if you specialize in the energy, disintegration will only cost 25 fatigue, and becomes easily the most efficient spell in your arsenal against high level enemies with decent hp.

Not true, as of UAP'2008 (I think). From a certain UAP onwards, as the PC hits enough XP to gain "level 51", the XP track is reset back to level 50, and every follower in the party gains a level.
Specialization is a loooooooooooong way off. (Plus, the quest for Conveyance is more interesting.)

Well, it's true in the base game provided by GOG. What happens with mods or unofficial patches is irrelevant unless he has them installed.

UAP is mandatory for unmodded Arcanum. Inaccessible endings = doubleplusungood.

Speaking of which, I highly recommend the UAP! Check the sticky thread for details, if you're not using it already.