Characters
Players create characters who possess skills that describe abilities on a 100-point scale. Cunning affects a character's life expectancy and the odds of evading an attack, tricking or surprising monsters, and opening boxes and chests. Piety affects the success of prayers and some non-battle spells. Wizardry determines which spells can be used and their odds of success. Valor affects what weapons can be used, as well as reducing damage received in combat and affecting success in attacking monsters.
In Moria, character generation is automatic. A player chooses from among four possible skill combinations, each totaling to the same amount. The game does not enforce a rigid notion of character class; characters may use any weapon or spell as their individual skill levels permit.
A character's Vitality level combines the concepts of character level, hit points, and endurance. A character's vitality level determines chances of success or cost of actions such as fighting or fleeing a monster and spell-casting. Performing actions, sustaining damage, or depleting food and water supplies consumes Vitality. Each turn a character rests while stocked with food and water restores Vitality. Should Vitality drop to zero, the character dies.
Score points are given for defeating monsters.
Read more about this topic: Moria (PLATO), Gameplay
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“The naturalistic literature of this country has reached such a state that no family of characters is considered true to life which does not include at least two hypochondriacs, one sadist, and one old man who spills food down the front of his vest.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“Of all the characters I have known, perhaps Walden wears best, and best preserves its purity. Many men have been likened to it, but few deserve that honor. Though the woodchoppers have laid bare first this shore and then that, and the Irish have built their sties by it, and the railroad has infringed on its border, and the ice-men have skimmed it once, it is itself unchanged, the same water which my youthful eyes fell on; all the change is in me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Unresolved dissonances between the characters and dispositions of the parents continue to reverberate in the nature of the child and make up the history of its inner sufferings.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)