User Guide

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.
Illnesses
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 effects: 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 these illnesses, excepting 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.
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Crusaders of the Dark Savant