Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar/Companions

The attributes

 * ''See also Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar (NES)/Companions

Main attributes:
 * Dexterity is probably the most important attribute: it rules the probability of hitting enemies, the probability of avoiding traps and perhaps the probability of dodging enemy attacks.
 * Strength comes second: if the enemy is hit (and that depends on Dexterity), Strength determines the amount of damage dealt.
 * Intelligence rules the amount of magic points (MP) that a character has, but the magic abilites in this video game are actually ruled by the amount of gold the player can spend on magic reagents. Therefore, Intelligence is probably the less important of the three attributes.

Other attibutes:
 *  Health points (HP): The amount of hits the character can sustain before dying. Health can be replenished using healing spells or resting. Their maximum depends directly on the level, i.e. Max HP = 100 times the level.
 *  Magic points (MP): Every spell cast consumes some MP, that are replenished by walking. The maximum MP depend on Intelligence and profession, as per the table in the next section.
 *  Experience: It is gained by defeating enemies, it is halved whenever the Stranger is knocked out. At set amounts, the character gains a level, as per the table below.
 *  Level: It rules the maximum health points as well as the number of companions in your party. Whenever a character advances in level, his/her attributes are increased by a random amount, between 0 and 7.

The Stranger always starts the game at level a level from 1 to 3, depending on the starting class.

Creating the Stranger from Another World
At the beginning of the game, you'll have to answer seven questions to create the Stranger. Every question implies a choice between two virtues. Whenever you choose a virtue, the character gains a specific bonus in his attributes, and the other virtue is "discarded", i.e. it will not appear in subsequent questions. Depending on the game versions, some virtues can give a different bonus. Before the casting, all attributes of the Stranger are equal to 15.

The seventh (and last) question determines the class of the character.

In the dungeons that correspond to each virtue there are Magic Spheres that when touched increase the attributes which are related to the virtue (i.e. Covetous = Sacrifice = +5 to STR, DEX). They do 200/400/800 points of damage depending on how many attributes are increased (1 or 2 or 3). The spheres respawn each time you re-enter the dungeon. Thus, any character you choose can get each attribute to maximum, that is 50.

Companions
In the course of the game, the Stranger will have to recruit the characters who embody every one of the eight virtues, but he cannot recruit the character with his same profession.


 * Legend:
 * A/ST: sprite for the Amiga and Atari ST ports
 * SMS: sprite for the Sega Master System port
 * NES: sprite for the Nintendo Entertainment System port

For a quick reference, the eight professions can be summarized in the diagram below (based on the NES port).

The only differences between original and NES port are: (1) in the NES port Julia the Tinker is replaced by Julius, although their attributes are the same; (2) in the NES (and SMS) port the abbreviations of Dexterity and Intelligence are swapped.