Your player characters are the essence of fantasy role playing. Through their eyes and actions, you will discover corridors, creatures and lands long since forgotten by all but time. And you will delight in their achievements as they uncover the secrets of Lost Guardia and advance from novices to masters of their trade.
Just as you have a certain level of strength and intelligence, so too do your player characters. Each player character is composed of eight base statistics and eight secondary statistics.
Base statistics generally influence the way a character acts and reacts within Wizardry. An intelligence of 17, for example, would indicate an extremely smart character. If that number were 3, the character may have trouble distinguishing between a door and a fountain.
STRENGTH (STR): Affects any maneuver which requires physical strength. Everything from hurting an opponent to forcing a door off its hinges requires strength. Strength also affects carrying capacity and stamina.
INTELLIGENCE (INT): Affects a character's ability to cast and learn spells, determine traps on treasure chests and any other task which requires mental mettle. Intelligence also affects a character's ability to learn new skills.
PIETY (PIE): The character's overall devotion to a subject or a field of study, and affects the ability to develop skills and to learn new spells. Piety also affects the amount of spell power a character gets when he or she gains experience levels, and further affects how quickly spell power is recouped. Sometimes, in spite of a low intelligence, an extremely devoted and persevering character can learn subjects just as quickly as his or her whip-smart friends.
VITALITY (VIT): A character's life force, it affects the amount of hit points and stamina a character receives. Vitality also affects the ability to heal and be resurrected, and helps to protect characters from the effects of poison, disease, paralysis and death. Some of these maladies in turn affect vitality. For example, each time your character is cured of stoning or death, he or she loses a point of vitality. When a character's vitality reaches zero, he or she cannot be resurrected at all.
DEXTERITY (DEX): The ability to dodge a missile, pop a trap on a treasure chest and avoid a lance. Overall, it is the ability to move the body, hands and feet in response to any situation. Since dexterity is so important to movement, it is directly related to the character's natural armor class (the ability to dodge a monster's hit). In combat, dexterity affects the amount of times a character can hit a monster within a single attack.
SPEED (SPD): Is the length of time a character needs to perform any given action. The higher the speed, the faster he or she moves or accomplishes a task. In combat, speed determines how many times a character can attack a monster in one round. Because speed is important to movement, like dexterity, it also directly affects the character's natural armor class.
PERSONALITY (PER): The friendliness of a character, it affects the way he or she interacts with NPCs. Characters with high personality tend to be extroverted and charismatic. Low personality characters are more introverted, laid back and shy. A good blend of personalities will help your party to get along with the many different creatures within Wizardry; while some NPCs are candid and prone to shaking hands, others are more reserved and will appreciate those with similar attitudes.
KARMA (KAR): Affects everything your character does and acts as a sort of ethical meter. While its effects are somewhat mysterious, Karma is, in general, the belief that what goes around comes around (or follows you around). Characters with high karma are generally happy-go-lucky. Characters with low karma tend to be less care free, through no fault of their own. In fact, a blend of karmas is useful for a party. NPCs with high karmas tend to like characters also highly inclined. Characters with low karma tend to appreciate their low-karma kin, and might even go so far as to help them.
Aside from a character's base statistics, many other facets weave together to make your character whole. Determining how far she can travel before resting or how much damage he can endure before death, your character's secondary attributes are directly related to and affected by your character's base statistics.
HIT POINTS (HP): Hit points represent the amount of damage your character can endure before death. For example, let's say your character has 10 hit points when in full health. In combat, a monster bashes the character and causes eight points of damage! Your character's hit points would now show 2/10, the "2" reflecting the amount of damage the character can now endure before death, and the "10" to remind you of the character's hit points when he or she is in full health. Hit points are represented by the red bar in your character's icon.
STAMINA (STM): Stamina is a measurement of your characters' endurance. They can only walk so far or fight so much, before they fall flat on their faces from exhaustion - and that's what happens if stamina reaches zero. A fully rested character can fight harder and hit for more damage than a tired character. When any character's stamina becomes low, it's time for a rest. Stamina is represented by the yellow bar in your character's icon.
EXPERIENCE POINTS (EXP): As your characters slay monsters and perform special tasks, they become more experienced in their trade and their art. To reflect this experience, Wizardry awards experience points. As these experience points build up, your characters will gain experience levels (LVL).
LEVEL (LVL): Learning the ways of Wizardry, your character becomes more experienced. To reflect this experience, the character earns experience levels which in turn give him or her greater powers and abilities.
RANK (RNK): As your character becomes more experienced, he or she will earn ranks within his or her profession. The rank serves as a title of sorts, and helps to identify the character as an outstanding member of the profession.
MONSTER KILL STATISTIC (MKS): For the hack-slasher, this is the all important statistic. The number you see represents the number of monsters you have sent to the Grim Reaper.
GOLD PIECES (GP): Gold is the medium of exchange for the world of Lost Guardia and allows you to trade with NPCs, buying or selling items, treasure or information.
THE CANDLE OF LIFE: The sun sets and the moon rises; your characters grow a day older. When they first begin Wizardry, your characters will be young and full of vigor, and the candle to the right of your character's portrait will burn bright and its wick will be long. However, each occasion your characters "Rest," they get a bit older (only by 8 hours). Eventually, their vitality may lessen and they may, in general, start to show signs of their age. Death will also affect a character's candle; when a character dies, he or she loses a point of vitality. However, since Wizardry characters begin their adventure young, they typically have a long life ahead of them.
Clicking on the Candle of Life also shows you three additional, secondary statistics:
CARRYING CAPACITY (CC): All characters have a limited amount of weight they can successfully carry without encumbrance. If characters carry too much weight, they are typically easier for the monsters to hit, will have trouble fighting, and will use lots of stamina just to move their girth around. When your character is encumbered in such a way, Wizardry will let you know. In the character's review screen you will see Carrying Capacity's color has changed to:
The suit of armor on the right side of a character's review screen shows you how well protected he or she is against a physical or magical attack. This protection is known generally as armor class (AC).
There are three different armor classes: Body, Natural and Modifier. Armor classes range from a +10 (naked and vulnerable to attack) to a -10 (covered with enough plate mail to construct a small building). The lower your character's armor class, the better.
BODY AC: Each part of a character's body has its own armor class: head, chest, hands, legs and feet. These armor classes show you how well a particular body part is protected against penetration by a monster's weapon once the character has already been hit. Even if a monster hits your character, its weapon might not penetrate the armor on that body part.
NATURAL AC: Shows the character's ability to avoid being hit by a monster. Races such as the Faerie, whose small size and lightning movements make it difficult to target, have a naturally low armor class. Other races who are fast and dexterous share a similar ability. Characters who are skilled in Ninjutsu also have a naturally low armor class.
AC MODIFIER: Offsets the Natural AC and is consulted by Wizardry each time your character is hit. There are three parts to the AC modifier.
ENCUMBRANCE PENALTY: If your character's carrying capacity (CC) is overloaded from hauling 40 potions, 10 shields and a pack full of helms around, he's not going to move too well, and therefore he's easier to hit. In this case, you will see a positive number showing an increase in AC.
SHIELD BONUS: When characters protect themselves from a blow by using a shield, they are harder for monsters to hit. Characters who use a shield in battle will see a negative number reflecting a decrease in AC.
MAGICAL PENALTY/BONUS: Some magical items within Wizardry have the power to lower a character's overall armor class. Others can raise it. Magical modifiers cover the entire body.
Should your character be both encumbered and wearing a shield, Wizardry would display the average of the two. It's a good bet to periodically check the modifiers individually, just to make certain they aren't overloaded or otherwise encumbered.
When Wizardry needs information on your character's overall armor class (natural plus or minus any modifications), it adds the number in parentheses to the natural armor class to get an overall picture of how well protected the character is. In the case of a negative number, it's subtracted.
For information on equipping your characters, see the Player Character Possessions section of this manual.
Normally, a character will be "OK," suffering from no illnesses and generally healthy. However, your character may at some point become less than healthy, and fall prey to one or more of the illnesses common on Lost Guardia.
In general, these illnesses have three affects: the character will not perform as well, the character will be easier to hit, and more damage will be done if the character's armor is penetrated (your health insurance may increase as well). Some illnesses, however, have their own special side-effects. For all of these illnesses, except stoning, disease and death, resting may eventually remedy the condition. Sometimes, in spite of rest, magical intervention is useful or required.
AFRAID: Afraid characters will quake with fear at the sight of monsters, making such characters less capable and confident. Afraid characters may even try to run away from the party! If a character is scared enough, a tiny field mouse will start to look like a huge, fire-breathing dragon with grimacing teeth.
ASLEEP: Sleeping characters are incredibly easy to hit because they are unable to avoid being struck. If hit, a sleeping character will take up to double damage, but will wake up immediately. Of course, a sleeping character cannot participate in combat.
BLINDNESS: A blind character can't see what's going on and is more susceptible to a hit because of this. In physical combat, it's not likely he or she will hit a monster without some luck, and magicians' spells could be wildly off target.
POISONED: As the poison seeps through the bloodstream, a character becomes sicker and sicker. Eventually, without an antidote or some rest, the character will die. Sometimes poison is so potent, resting will not cure it quickly enough and the character will die before it clears his or her system. In such situations, an antidote is absolutely necessary.
STONED: Since your character is a statue, he or she can't do anything but stand there and collect bird droppings. Stoned characters are easy to hit, but it's difficult to penetrate their stone. Stoning, in fact, might be worse than death. Stoned characters lose a point of vitality, and when cured of the stoning, they may be dead. When you resurrect dead characters, they lose yet another point of vitality.
INSANITY: An insane character is, at least for the time being, absolutely nuts. For magical reasons, his brain has been scrambled like an egg missing its side order of bacon. You will have no control over the character, and may find yourself protecting other members of the party from him!
DEAD: A dead character is exactly that - dead. He or she must be resurrected by magical means, and when death comes a knockin', a point of vitality is lost.
NAUSEA: A nauseated character may (ahem) choke and gag and be helpless for the remainder of the round. Should this happen, he or she will be an exceptionally easy target.
PARALYZED: Since the character can't move, even to fight, he or she is very easy to hit and can take up to double damage. There is a small chance, however, that the hit might just be enough to jolt the character's system back into action.
IRRITATION: Like that scratch you can never seem to reach, your characters will become preoccupied trying to quell an irritating itch, and they won't fight as well while trying to reach it.
DISEASE: At first, a diseased character will appear and act healthy (you will see they are diseased, however). In fact, besides general fatigue, he or she will feel just fine. However, as time passes, disease begins to ravage the character. Paralysis may set in. He or she may become blind or incapacitated. Their energy and their very life force (vitality) may be drained from them. If disease is not cured quickly, the character will soon erode to nothingness. If not cured before death, you will likely resurrect a character who will just die again.
WEBBED: Some of your enemy can throw Web Spell at your party. Webbed character cannot move, although he or she can try to rip off web.