I've been reading around, and I think I would like to start my first arcanum game with a warriormage. I like characters who can fight without being stupid. 1. What would be a good starting race, background, points allocation? 2. What should I max out? From reading the forums, I gather melee. dodge, temporal and convayance. What other skills should I learn? 3. Whats a good stat allocation? Max str, dex, what about intelligence, will and con? TIA
A good battlemage? Go half-ogre. Starting out you get a generous bonus to strength, but a hit to your intelligence. You can increase your strength and dex, and also beef up your intelligence to allow more running spells at a time, and then increase willpower for greater fatigue. Go heavy into melee and dodge. Keep constitution relatively high, a 14 or 15. Ignore any other stats. As far as spells go, learn spells that'll bolster your defense and damage ability. Temporal is a major step towards that goal. Force would be another, because one of its spells is a field of force that absorbs damage.
Successful battlemage? Easy. Elf, Half-Elf or Gnome, take the "Ran Away With the Circus" background, or if you just don't give a damn about followers, go "Only Child". WP up to 18, ST and DX maxed (an elf with "only child" will need to increase his strength through magick means to reach 20 though). Melee and Dodge should be mastered. If you feel you can spare the points, backstab is terrific in turnbased combat (you need to be an expert before you can use it with swords and axes though). You will want to max Temporal. Force is great for Shield of Protection, and can be useful if you're surrounded. White Necromancy if you don't have a healer, and summoning if you want some extra help in combat.
I've found that mages who concentrate solely on combat aid/support spells that augment their offensive abilities are really fun to play. Temporal is a great school for this, as well as the first ranks of Fire, Force, and Necromantic white (healing is always good). And the good thing about support skills is they generally either work 100% or they do not work at all. This means that a high MA isn't always required to get the full benefit. The downside to this is that your intelligence will have to be higher to support that many fatigue-draining spells going at once. Half-orc might be a better racial choice in this case. You can counter the skills requirements by going with melee/dodge and it's accompanying Dex/Str enhancements FIRST. That way, you have a stable offensive base in place that you can then augment with cool support spells.
Yes, you can add you own portraits to the game. Files and instructions on how to do so are located in the downloads section.
Yeah...the only way to change that would be to undat Arcanum, make a few thousand sprites for the half ogre's full range of motion, and replace all of the originals with your creations.
