Howdy everyone, I'm a long-time Arcanum player and I have a somewhat unusual character sheet to share-- comments and feedback are welcome. This one was inspired a bit by puzzling over Victoria Warren's wacky non-combat leveling scheme in the Arcanum strategy guide, a thought which somehow combined itself with a need to forgo the more obvious "pure mage" spell college selections. On top of this I wanted the character to closely resemble a Malkavian from Vampire: Bloodlines-- perhaps an impossible task, due to differences in game design. The results of this unlikely mix are as follows, if you'll kindly observe the data points:

Race: Human
Background: Escaped Lunatic (+25% DR, FR, ER, PR. -25 Reaction, No Money)
Beginning Point Allocation: No starting equipment-- so 2 pts in melee, 2 pts in DX, and 1 pt in "Charm" (which undoes the negative storekeeper reaction).

Core Spell Colleges & A Tech Discipline!

Mental (4 pts)
Phantasm (5 pts)
Earth (2 pts)
Temporal (4 pts)
Herbology (2 pts)

Total Magic Aptitude: 63 (avoids hatred from tech shop owners)

Some interesting nuances behind these selections for the "unstable" character type:

- Stun and Nightmare can be used to escape random encounters
- Blur Sight allows for no shield / two-handed sword use
- Invisibility breaks enemies line of sight in combat (Don't use in encounters with dialog) and allows one to "skip" dungeons if so desired.
- Stone Throw does 17-35 damage at this aptitude, i.e. a decent replacement for Harm.
- Strength of Earth adds +8 ST with two casts

If this wasn't weird enough, we began to see this Malkavian as a recursive "flex build," giving different options to obtain similar results. For instance, the blur sight and ST buffs are not mandatory, nor is invisibility. 3 pts into Dodge would help when the Blur Sight is off. Statis uses spell slots to "lock down" individual enemies for backstabbing (Statis being a more potent option than Stun, but more costly in mana use). Congeal time also breaks LoS-- great against groups.

As for the Stat and Skill breakdown, it goes a little like this:

Willpower (10 pts)
Strength (3 pts + blessing?)
Dexterity (7 pts + blessing? + gloves of dexterity?)
Intelligence (4 pts) -> Three spell maintainence slots
Constitution (4 pts + Ring of Virility + Amulet of K'an-el)
Melee (4-5 pts)
Dodge (3 pts)
Backstab (3-5 pts)

Total cost: 55 pts minimum

The goal being something like ST 12, DX 18, CN 18, BE 8, WP 18, IN 12, PE 8, CH 8. Note that there's another 4 pts that could be added to IN and 2 to DX, but we wanted some cushion in place in case of god's quest or equipment-acquiring issues. Some variation is present as well, depending on whether you go with the 4 first circle blessings or go with Moordindal.

One fun thing is that this build should work with bad gear; such as robes, rusty pipes, and the like. Though you also have the option to carry around the Sword of Baltar or an Arcane Great Sword for insane moments of Strength buff transformations. You can flee, rage, or murder in a calculated fashion with this build!

Followers: Best if running solo-- though Raven's an interesting possibility, with her triple bow shots. Imagine "Invisibility" being applied to both of these characters.

I wonder too if this one would be more fun to play with special madness constraints, for instance throwing half of one's gold into the river at each new town, or only allowing the Strength buff every three days...

Playing Arcanum as a Malkavian? That's insane! *ba-dum-tssh!*

It's always interesting to see such a different and unusual perspective; thanks for sharing this.

As a vampire sort, wouldn't a Dark Sight or Night Mage background make similar sense as an Escaped Lunatic? Or are you emphasizing the insanity aspect here?

On that note, you may want to think about adding Z'an Al'urin to your party; her skewed perspective and odd insights sound like they would mesh well with your build. (Of course, she's mildly evil and doesn't play well with Raven, so there's that to consider.)

I was thinking more along the lines of bad reaction + mind control being an interesting combination; being a ragged, foaming at the mouth crazy who somehow manages to get by with their extra magical talents. It would've been nice to have a bandaged Mad Doctor variety, but the Heal skill is just way too costly (as opposed to gathering herbs like a Druid).

Your selections are good though if someone wanted to play a race other than human; maybe some of the phobia backgrounds would work well for roleplaying purposes too. It's too bad there's nothing as a strong as the Night Person trait from Fallout 1 though.

Admittedly Z'an Al'urin was my second choice; the only trouble is that Arcanum doesn't seem so great in terms of portraying mildly evil-- for some reason it always seems to slowly make your character good unless you're eating babies or defiling graves.

A new idea for combining lunatic whimsy with an excess of cash flow, call it an Arcanum challenge or constraint.

Orcish Affirmative Action

- Whenever you are stopped by Orc barbarians or Slum-dwellers, you must aid your green brothers by giving in to any demands for gold that they request.

True - most quests, if completed at all, shift you alignment towards good; there are some with evil options, sure, but usually the only definite way to stay evil is to use the Sold Your Soul background, otherwise you pretty much have to go out of your way to avoid helping people. Yeah, it's not like PS:T, where just demanding a reward is considered evil enough.

Crazy awesome! Mad props! Genius lunacy!