Dragon Warrior III/Personality

Personalities are a game mechanic added to the remakes of Dragon Quest III which effect character stat growth. The Hero is assigned one of 30 personalities through a test at the beginning of the game and recruited members are assigned a personality based on their starting stats. Personalities can be changed throughout the game with the use of book items and by equipping certain pieces of equipment. There are a total of 45 possible personalities. Note that in most Dragon Quest games, stats are determined randomly at level up, or according to a specific distribution of growth.

In the sections below, the names of personalities from the Game Boy Color version of Dragon Quest III are used. These are the only 'official' names for personalities as the Super Nintendo version of the game was never officially translated. However, most fan translation names are similar to the ones used in the Game Boy Color version.

Analysis
The sexy personality is often regarded as the best due to its +70% composite stat bonus. For this reason, choosing female characters is often preferred since males cannot have the sexy personality. Personality does not effect anything significant in the game other than stats, so it does not benefit the player to have any character with a personality that results in a negative overall composite total. Certain personalities are better for specific classes. For example, a male fighter that has a lucky personality will keep his traditionally high agility and add a high amount of luck. This allows him to cause even more critical hits.

Hero Personality Quiz
At the start of a new game, the hero is asked a series of questions by an unknown source. These questions determine the hero's starting personality. It is later revealed that the questioner is actually Divinegon, boss of the first bonus dungeon. The player is asked to enter their real name and birth date, however these inputs have no effect on the resulting personality test. The first question is randomly chosen from the 5 possible starting questions. Any of the 29 possible personalities can be obtained from any of the 5 starting questions. In total, there are 43 different questions that can be asked, including 1 question which can be asked twice.

At the end of each possible question chain is an imaginary scenario in which the hero must decide what to do. These scenarios determine the final personality. There are 8 different scenarios that can be played depending on the player's answers to the questions. Some scenarios have up to 5 possible personality results depending on the actions of the hero during the scenario.

The 29 possible starting personalities for a hero are:
 * Alert
 * Bully
 * Carefree
 * Careless
 * Cowardly
 * Defiant
 * Diligent
 * Eager
 * Fearless
 * Foolish
 * Happy
 * Helpless
 * Honest
 * Kindly
 * Lazy
 * Lewd
 * Logical
 * Lonesome
 * Macho
 * Naive
 * Romantic
 * Selfish
 * Silly
 * Solitary
 * Stubborn
 * Timid
 * Tough
 * Vain
 * Valiant
 * Weepy

The 16 personalities which the hero cannot start with are:
 * Agile
 * Amazon
 * Eager
 * Ironman
 * Jock
 * Ladylike
 * Lucky
 * Meddler
 * Ordinary
 * Quick
 * Sexy
 * Sharp
 * Smart
 * Tomboy
 * Twisted
 * Unique

Recruitable member personality
Characters which are created and recruited at Luisa's Place have different mechanism to determine their personality. Each character class has its own set of base statistics.

As each character is created, the player is given the opportunity to use five seeds to further raise the character's stats. Each seed will increase the single stat by 1-3 points. The seeds can be distributed manually or randomly by the computer if the player chooses that option. After the final starting stats have been determined, a calculation is performed to determine the personality.

The base values from the above table are subtracted from the final starting stats to get the "bonus" values, i.e. the amount by which each stat exceeds the base value for the character's gender and class. The five stats are ranked from highest to lowest bonus. If two stats have an equal bonus, the base stat value is used to break the tie. Finally, a personality is chosen based on the class, the highest bonus, the value of that bonus, the second-highest bonus in some cases, and random chance.

How to get the personality that you want
When recruiting party members the best thing to do is to save between making party members. Choose the class you will be recruiting, then choose a fully positive personality for the class that you are recruiting, for example, the Honest personality for Priests/Clerics (which is primarily Str, Vit, and Int focused). Some personalities are better for building a particular stat and are meant for advanced progression strategies (e.g. focusing on a personality that gives the highest bonus for a particular stat).

After you've chosen the personality that you want, look in the above tables to see which primary stat needs to be given seeds in order to get it. Although the requirements for getting the personality you want may result in skewed starting stats, that is a minor inconvenience. Now, if you have a Priest/Cleric that you want to have, for example, the personality type of Honest, you have to make sure the following conditions are met (this is also outlined in the tables, above):
 * 1) STR must be the stat with the highest bonus from applying seeds. Make sure you do not add more than 6 points to STR.
 * 2) Neither VIT nor INT can have the second highest bonus from applying seeds.

The easiest way to make sure the second condition is met is by not spending any points in it. A better way is to make sure STR has 3-6 points (1-3 seeds) in it, then add 2-5 points (1-2 seeds) to another stat that doesn't affect personality (in this case AGI and LUK). The final seed can then, probably, be safely be added to INT or VIT (in some cases the final seed will apply 2 points and mess the whole thing up).

The result is a slightly skewed set of stats, but after a couple of levels they will be on track again.

Altering Personality
Personality can be altered during the game in two ways: a character can equip a piece of equipment which forces a specific personality, or a book item can be used which changes the character's base personality. Book items can be found throughout the game, with many hidden in bookcases and pots in towns. The most highly valued book is the sexy book which is obtainable through one of the wishes Divinegon grants.

SNES to GBC Personality Translations
The following table shows the different translations of the personality names in the SNES and GBC versions of Dragon Quest III. Note that this table uses the DQ translations English patch.

Books
In the World you will find Books. By reading it the Personality of the Reader will change.