What's a good Gunslinger Build?

[61braces61]

I'm completely new to playing Arcanum but I always liked the idea of being a freelance gum shoe/detective gunslinger in a Steampunk world (even made a character concept for D&D 5e), I've heard Melee and magic builds are easier but I'm way more interested in doing a technology based run.

Any good character creations tips and tips and tricks for being a Gunslinger type character? Like what background to pick and what stats to prioritize and what race to pick (though I'm prolly gonna choose Half-Elf for roleplay reasons)

Thanks!

[Crawling Chaos]

Choose any background that gives you a bonus to intellegence and/or perception. However some backgrounds give you very noticable penalties so I would personally choose Raised by monks because +1 to perception is rather good and money in the beginning of the game is not that important.
Race is not really important unless you choose an elf because elfs are not so good with technology. But half-elf is a good choise.
You have to invest in your perception and firearms to shoot better, intellegence, gun smithy, mechanical, electricity, and one point in herbology. Also you may want to increase your charisma and speech because speech is always a very useful trait in RPGs.
Gun smithy allows you to craft guns, however to craft some aweome guns you firstly have to buy/find a blueprint, electicity and mechanical have some very good things too (for example tesla rod, really powerful weapon which can be transformed into tesla gun). 1 point in herbology to craft healing salves because Virgil won't be able to heal you if you are a technologist.
And don't forget to buy ammo, it is very unpleasant when you run out of ammo in the middle of a battle.

[SouP]

Someone who has played firearm builds quite a bit chipping in:

I personally find that the Bandit background is a better introduction as you get a decent gun that will matter more that stats early on until you can use a fate point to get a really good gun. Once you're more familiar with building characters, I'd say give the more quirky ones a go.

Race is mostly flavour as said, tech aptitude only really makes a difference in certain tech equipment's stat thresholds and your own ability to resist magick, which isn't used against you very often- not nearly as useful as Magick Aptitude is for spellcasters, where it dictates the potency of spells.

Perception is needed to increase your firearms skill, unfortunately- you can actually get it to 17 and hold off getting it to 20 for mastery until you get a goggled helmet, which will temporarily give you 20 so long as you wear it, which qualifies for the mastery (it doesn't go away once acquired, even if you don't have 20 anymore).

If you want to play your numbers even more rough, you can max it at 15 with a goggled helmet for 3 and a special blessing that happens to increase your perception by 2- the reason I say this is because the perception stat only has three uses:

1. How far you can scroll the screen away from your character, which helps ranged characters engage from a distance or anyone to see what's up ahead (try editing your PE to 1 to see the opposite).
2. True Sight at Perception 20 (not as useful as it sounds).
3. Putting points into skills (firearms in our case).

Getting Firearms as high as you can is important, but the stat that *directly* contributes the most to your combat ability is Dexterity. In both Real-Time and Turn-Based, it amounts to better speed, and more actions per second/turn. Besides that, Strength is needed to even use some guns.

The other big consideration you have to make is that you cannot use Magick and firearms* (there are exceptions, esoteric ones) without blowing your own head off, spectacularly. So you might as well remain Magick/Tech neutral, or just go full blown tech so you can get the most out of tech goodies.

There are a couple of skills you should prioritise to have an easier time of it: Firearms, obviously, and Electricity Tech 2. You get the ability to make charged rings, which are an easy +2 Dexterity once you have two, and fairly easy to get made pretty early. The aforementioned goggles require a bit of a splash with high-ish mechanics if I recall correctly.

You can also get away without crafting guns for most of the game due to there being a few "obtainable" guns that will get you through a lot of the content, but the best stuff is obviously crafted. Jayna is a companion that can be picked up early from Cumbria who can make items for healing you if you get too apt at tech for Virgil to heal you, without having to spend the point in Herbalism yourself.

[rompier02]

Hi. For me ' Bandit " is excellent background for gunslingers. This is more helpful if your character is a human. You can become an expert in firearms once you & Virgil reached the first village. Provided you have the money for the required fee.

[Salutations]

^ rompier02 is correct. not sure if i chose bandit exactly ( i think i had a different background as i remember i did somethings a little differently ) but by the time you get to the first village you can become an expert ( or shortly thereafter ). makes a massive difference early on.

[61braces61]

Thanks for the tips y'all