Fear and Loathing in Tarant
I've entered into a rhythm that has given me quite a bit of coin to spare: I check all the sellers for saltpeter to help me make gunpowder, and glasses and pocketwatch parts to make the lucrative mechanical goggles (which rope more than a thousand a piece on resale), and I check trash bins for flintlock pistol parts (combined with the rare small metal tube it gives me a huge return on my investment in time) and rags for cheap bombs (I boosted my skills to be able to make a lot of fuel, so I don't even have to buy that anymore). If missions paid in components instead of parts I'd already be in the tens of thousands :)
Last night I ran into some seriously difficult critters, and on replay lucked out on how to stop them all. Only after I checked someone's hut again did I realize that I'd missed the object that would have clued me in on what to do. Felt a bit of pride in that, but this was after I gave up
Arcanum, for all its innovation, is decidedly old-school. Very brutal combat, decisions that may wreck hours of work, lots of eccentricities. But viewed through that lens I find it hard to condemn it too much. I DON'T consider Troika games' short-lived production line to be part of the old-school era per se, but it wound up throwing a lot of
I'm beginning to wonder if I didn't just run into the wrong enemies before. There seems to be an INCREMENTAL decrease in my ability to use firearms if I boost magic, but not so dramatic as I initially thought. I still think the engine could have approached the magic/tech problem better, but I'm pretty sure my initial impression was based on my first encounter with a tech-resistant creature.
Tech resistant creatures, however, is an issue I continue to have. I vaguely remember Arbitrary Water talking about this, but I don't want to go back and read his thoughts until I've completed the game or given up. There are a LOT of creatures with technology resistance, which basically decreases your chance to hit with a weapon (and I think it increases your chance to critically fail, which can cause all kinds of "fun" problems). Simple undead tend not to be a problem, but the stronger ones tend also have such a high technology resistance that I wind up spamming them with fire bombs, hoping my two buddies can chop it to bits before it tears me apart. Since so many have tech-resistance, it makes me feel like the entire technology side of the character spectrum is a bit more isolated than it should be, bringing me back to my fundamental criticism of the dichotomy, I guess. It really doesn't have to be this way. It could still have a strong thematic presence but have other manifestations...
How Another RPG System Deals with the Issue of Varying Abilities
Here's an analogy for the RPG-savvy out there. Wizards are basically artillery in old Dungeons and Dragons, and the way their effectiveness is balanced is to give them the crappiest amount of hit points, and an inability to use most armor and weapons. This has been mitigated somewhat in later editions, but they still make it harder for a wizard to tank up than other classes to keep it from being too powerful. One way they changed this a bit in Icewind Dale 2, still one of my favorite late-era computer RPGs for its beautiful engine and flexibility, was to allow wizards to learn how to use armor if they wanted, but when wearing armor they risked miscasting their spells (pretty devastating when you memorize spells; if you cast it and it fails, it's gone for the day. It's not like spell point reservoir systems that let you pick the same spell again). This miscasting percentage could be dropped incrementally through feats (read: bonus abilities), but all the feats you spent on THAT could have been spent making you a more effective spellcaster.
Add to that the much easier dual/multi class system from third-edition. In earlier editions of D&D you tended to need ability scores that were pretty high in order to start leveling in a new class. You could level as a wizard for a while, then start taking levels in another class. For humans this was super easy, and other races were given classes they preferred to multiclass in, with experience point penalties for stepping outside that grouping too far (I've never liked how races are handled in D&D, but that's me). A Wizard who wanted to automatically get the armor-use and the higher hit points of another class could get it fairly easily this way, though when casting spells the above miscasting percentages were still possible.
I say all this because Dungeons and Dragons, despite it being a fairly rigid system with its classes, levels, and you-have-it-or-you-don't skills and abilities, still managed in later incarnations to be more and more flexible, but it still kept its own engine's preference for certain paths at the forefront.
When compared to the Arcanum system, it seems initially that Arcanum's flexibility easily squishes D&D flat, and in many ways it TOTALLY does when you look at the types of spells and specializations you can begin with. But it also has a fairly rigid class system hiding behind this multi-faceted engine, making a lot of choices a recipe for mediocrity or even failure. At least with Dungeons and Dragons the rails were right there, and you could try your best to have a pretty worthless character, but you had to try pretty hard. Arcanum makes failure easy, by comparison, because it has rails, but only shows you where they were when you've jumped the tracks.
I think the moderation that Icewind Dale 2 used to balance classes could be incorporated into a similar Arcanum-style world and make those who want some tech/magic compatibility problems to still make sense, but also to give players making characters a chance to prepare for and react to those issues without being completely ineffectual during some battles because a target's resistance is too high.
I don't dare refer to Dungeons and Dragons all the time as a paragon of design; that monster's been all kinds of flawed from the beginning. But it manages to include everyone around the table: the warrior distracts the big monster, the wizard gears up her artillery, the cleric defends and strengthens the group, the thief sticks a knife in the baddy's back. Sometimes some characters WOULD be weaker against a threat, definitely (spell resistances, weapon-type resistances, that sort of thing). But it seems that Arcanum more makes that the rule, with a sliding scale of effectiveness based on what character you've been building, not what weapon or spell you happen to be using. When you have a main character who is all but excluded from combat (yet still the primary focus of the AI's attacks), despite this character basically being the best at combat, it leads to some frustrating situations that basically tell you you gathered the wrong party, or even built the wrong character.
I've managed to compensate pretty well for this system's problems. Other than switching it to Easy I've come to be intimate friends with molotov cocktails, using them to scatter badguys and give me a chance to heal and fire wildly at the weakest of the bunch. The pistol is still damned effective when it manages to hit, at least most of the time, and I have two sidekicks, Virgil and Magnus, who run interference when they can. I also defiantly keep using a spell that is actually really effective: Disarm. It sadly doesn't rip their arms out of their sockets (maybe that would be called De-arm), but if they have a troublesome weapon I can knock it to the ground with satisfying frequency. I'm not sure how much longer this will be effective if I continue to boost my character's firearms skill, though.
All of this is to say, basically, that I find myself afraid to skill my character up because I don't know what the consequences will be down the road. I'm not sure if I'll reach a point where my character will be even worse off in those magic-resistance scenarios and have to depend completely on her companions for support. I'm set to boost Firearms to the next grade but I'm not sure I should.
I'm betting some of this uncertainty would be weaker if I knew how the engine actually reacted to these changes. If it was a completely open system, telling me the consequences, short term and long term, for every character point I spend, I'd be more willing to make certain sacrifices to get the character I wanted. At least with Dungeons and Dragons shows you immediately what the effect is. Despite Arcanum's system being super open on the surface, it's got a lot of machine-bits underneath that aren't quite apparent. I'd rather not read up on technical spoilers, but I can see why some people might want to.
Anyway
All that said, I'm still enjoying myself. I've even reached a point now where I think the story of the clashes between the fantasy races is clearer to me, and I don't feel as strongly about my initial impressions of them feeling superfluous. Some of them still DO feel superfluous, but you get a good feel for elves, orcs and dwarves. The story in general is interesting, and there's a lot of sentiment in the game, despite it having this very cynical and morally gray quest system where nothing is completely tidy. I like it, I've always wanted to see a game that can get your hands this dirty, yet I find that I'm often reluctant to make any choice in the game for fear of it exploding in my face. If I didn't give a damn if the city guards attacked me I'd just choose what I want and enjoy the surprises, but I prefer to be able to craft and explore in peace. Thankfully there have been instances where I was able to salvage the situation, or I just loaded an earlier save and tried something else (I get the feeling the designers actively anticipated the player's ability to do this, moreso than most RPGs I've played, which is sure interesting).
My character's at level 30 (having read that the cap is 50 (I think) has made me slow down and consider what I'm doing with my skill increases now), and has some basic chemistry and herbology to complement her explosives and gunsmithy expertise. I'm keeping her spell spheres at low level, although I'm still going to tinker with expanding this to more low-level abilities to see if I can increase her versatility. If not, I'll just take lockpicking and go completely over to the Tech-side of the force. Virgil has no such machine abilities, obviously, but his healing spells still work on my main (more than half the time, at least), and I look forward to when he'll be able to resurrect (if that's something that the NPC can figure out. Guess I'll see). Magnus has constructed a very light axe which makes him a very effective melee fighter, and his construction abilities in general have made this little venture turn a tidy profit.
There have been a few quests that ended weirdly. I hope this was on purpose, since I like the ambiguity but I also wonder if I just did them wrong or still have to figure out some secret that wasn't apparent. I've moved the main quest forward a notch, burned a few bridges, built a few more. Such is life in the world of Arcanum.
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