Are you playing with the unofficial patch?

Yeah Dexterity is useful for almost any build as it gives you more action points in combat. The only build you don't really need this for would be a diplomat-type character that would have an army of followers for fighting.

I believe I am. I know this copy is patched, and I know it's a popular patch which fixes bugs and doesn't significantly alter gameplay, story or images. That is, if I'm right, probably the UAP?

Oh I was asking if Rezard was using the UAP because being able to use int potions as a tech guy is huge. Im using the UAP and to test what he said I used a save with a tech guy who has 17 int and 100 percent tech and used an int potion and it took me to 20. Thats pretty awesome. The haste potion worked on me too. I always figured since health and fatigue potions didn't work on me the others wouldn't either. Thats about 10 saved character points on my next tech character.

Sorry, I have a busy day job so I'm slow to respond. But yes, I use the UAP, and yes, I thought it was pretty awesome (or broken) too when I first found out.

I'm playing a tech character as I love tech-stuff in real-life too and adore steampunk. I read that gunsmith is useless which means I blew 3 character points, but oh well, live and learn. I find as a tech character things can be a bit harder, as I blow a lot of money on bullets for my guns as I use firearms as my weapons, and I have to pretty much heal myself with herb skills as Virgil's heal-magic stopped working awhile ago when my tech-leanings got way too strong for magic to work on me well. Hearing about this medical robo-spider piques my interest and if anyone would care to share details about how to find and make one I would appreciate it. Of course, I'd have to spend points or money to gain the skills to make it...so goes life.

Medical spider = mundane spider (Mechanics 7) + Wonder Drug (Herbology 6). The schematic, plus the arachnid itself, are a reward for a really easy quest in Caladon (about 3/5 into the game).

I quite lack the skills in mechanics and won't be getting there...so sigh.

You might consider getting a different NPC than Virgil. He does have a story to him, which can be interesting to pursue, but as a tech character his healing will stop working for you so it's better to collect a tech NPC follower. You can find one who makes tech healing salves which could be useful.

Also gunsmithing isn't useless, just not as useful as it might appear at first. You can find most of the guns that you build with gunsmithing, but you can often build them sooner than you could find them (unless you really know where to look, and don't mind stealing them from people). Also, gunsmithing is useful for making the combo guns that you'll find schematics for. You can make those without gunsmithing skill by buying lots of tech manuals, but if you already have the skill it's cheaper.

Not so. You get one free spider for doing the quest in Caladon Starmaker mentioned.

Do I now? Well all right!

I wanted to try at least one Tech character with a legitimately huge Intelligence score, something that just isn't the same without spending the points on it. My next Tech build will have a little more freedom in that regard, for a couple of reasons.
Had I been warned Technology is ungodly expensive, I probably wouldn't have changed anything, except possibly investing a bit in Haggle. That'll be easier with future builds. Honestly, though, it is nice playing through at least once with far too much intelligence.

The real challenge will be playing a character with far too much intelligence and far too little charisma. :D

Money for a real tech guy is a complete non issue because you can stuff the stuff you build to any junk merchant (like the guy in tarant by the docks). Some of the stuff you can make sells for insane amounts of money vs cost of production. For example stun grenades sell for around 200 and frag grenades sell for around 300. Shocking staffs and those vision goggles sell for around 800. Theres alot of other examples but once you have 2 or more tech trees maxed out out youll find you can hit up all the shops in tarant make a bunch of items and be a couple thousand coins richer.

Tech is really slow to start but once you figure out how to do it and get your character built up it quickly becomes silly how easy it is.

Partially optimizing around very poor stats, it seems the tech trees I'd chosen are, in fact, rather expensive. My character nearly died in childhood, granting large boosts to mental stats at a significant expense to physicals. Ideally, I wanted to become quite proficient at boosting those stats across the board.
While it's not optimal, it's quite fun to go through dungeons thoroughly drugged and remarkably competent.