[X] My Assistant

[X-Kalibur]

The balance issues for Arcanum I don't think ever got really ironed out, although some modders worked really hard on it. ToEE on the other hand got totally fixed.

[Iduno]

Arcanum was full of great ideas that didn't work so well in practice. I don't remember any of the tech building skills that were worth getting more than a few levels in (best gun you could make was probably the 3rd or 4th skill level). Magic got insane at the max level, as it always does. The brain damaged half-orc was a hilarious powerhouse character who was so stupid that s/he was bad at talking (and writing journal entries) to the point the devs had to create new lines. Mine became a "thiefy-type guy." It was worth playing around with, but the bugs and lack of balance made the game tiring after a bit.

Fallout I and II were probably the isometric games I got the most enjoyment out of. Planescape:Torment was up there too, but there was just too much of a feeling of a "right way" to do things.

[X-Kalibur]

You didn't even need max level spells - just the harm spell from dark necromancy, the very first spell... and maybe later disintegrate from force for dealing with golems and whatnot.

[MADness]

There are a couple of fan mods for Arcanum. Try CARcanum, it's the hard type mods, and fixed the harm/darkhelm style trickery. Part of the issue with magic is that cost decreases while aptitude increased. So you could spam Harm to a ludicrous degree with a capped Magic aptitude. And the gun and smithyb schools both had some solid high level schematics, not tobmention what you can find. If you play

[hyzmarca]

Using negative numbers in a game system like that just isn't good. AD&D had a lot of good mechanics, but I'm not convinced THAC0 was one of them." So, if I need a 5 to hit AC 0, then I need a 10 to hit AC -5" That is more complicated than "I need a 10 to hit a 10 and a 15 to hit a 15" and accomplishes the same thing.

Technically, it would be "add AC to your roll. If it's over 5 you hit."

[ShadowDragon8685]

If you're going to play NWN... Keep a firm leash on any henchmen who cast spells. They have no sanity filtering whatsoever for spells they cast, and will gladly spam negative energy spells on the undead, throw a Cure Critical Wounds on you after you get a papercut, will spam AoE attacks on an enemy you're kicking in the crotch and nuke you in the process, and so forth and so on.

As an aside, my advice would be to skip the original NWN campaign and the Hordes of the Underdark campaign, and play Shadows of the Undrentide. It was the only one I didn't get terminally bored/frustrated/annoyed with, and could actually play through to the end. The original NWN has too much Ten Bear Asses shit going on, and Hordes of the Underdark has too much blatant railroading going on. Which is kind of an odd thing to complain about in a computer RPG, but you'll see what I mean if you try it out. Especially odious is stealing any gear you might have imported along with your NWN or SotN character at the beginning, utterly shafting any gear-dependant characters and making them rely on cheap crap.