The plus is not for hitting

What a player saw

Every weapon, bow, suit of armour and shield in Phantasie III has a point value, the number the armoury shows beside it under "Pt Val". Some items have a plus in their name: Club +1, Leather +1, Sword +4, Halberd +6. If you came to the game from other role-playing games, you might expect a +1 sword to be a sword that hits a little more often and a little harder than its plain twin.

In the picture at the top of this page, Xarn of my own party is in the armoury of Sciattica. The Staff and the Club +2 both have point value 5. The Staff costs 30 gold. The Club +2 costs 3543. Nothing on the screen says what the extra 3513 gold buys.

What the game knows about an item

The program keeps three numbers for each piece of equipment, each in its own table: the point value, the requirement and the price. The plus is only part of the name. Nothing I have found in the program asks whether an item has a plus.

The point value is the item. For a hand weapon, the plus is already counted in it: a Sword is worth 9, a Sword +1 10, a Sword +4 13 and a Sword +10 19, and a Spear is worth 8 and a Spear +1 9. When a battle starts, the game turns each hero's readied weapon into a die of that many sides, and every blow rolls it. A bow's die is its point value times 2, plus 4. Whether a blow lands comes from the hero's Attack skill, not from the weapon at all.

So a Spear +1 and a plain Sword, both worth 9, roll the same die on every blow. A Sword +4 hits harder than a Sword, but only because it is worth 13, and a plain Pike, also worth 13, hits just as hard. Armour works the same way: its point value is all that counts, and in a fight it costs the wearer defence (see Heavy armour makes you easier to hit), a +1 armour exactly as much as a plain one of the same value.

What the plus buys

The difference is the requirement, how strong a hero must be before the game will ready the item for him. For a hand weapon it is measured against twice his Strength plus his Dexterity. For armour and shields it is his Strength, and for bows his Strength plus his Dexterity. The armoury writes "N/A" beside anything the shopper cannot use.

The twenty plain hand weapons need 3, 6, 9 and so on, up to 60 for the Halberd. The twenty + weapons climb the same ladder, 3 up to 60, but their point values start higher. So a + weapon needs far less than a plain weapon of the same value:

Armour is the same. Hard Leather and Leather +1 are both worth 4; Hard Leather needs Strength 8, Leather +1 needs 2. Splint Mail and Chain Mail +1 are both worth 8, and need 16 and 10.

Bows and shields have no such break. A bow needs twice its point value less 2, and a shield needs its point value, plus or no plus. A Self Bow +1 is simply the next bow up from a Self Bow, and is priced like one.

Take a hero with Strength 8 and Dexterity 14, a wizard perhaps. Twice 8 plus 14 is 30. Among the plain weapons, the best he can ready is the Spear, worth 8. Among the + weapons he can ready the Sword +4, worth 13.

The price

That is what you pay for. Every armoury price is a list price times the town's own percentage. The Club +2's list price is 2881 gold and the Staff's is 25. A Spear +1 lists at 4206 and a Sword at 205, so in Pendragon, which charges half again, they would cost 6309 and 307. Plain and + bows and shields are priced along one smooth scale.

Selling is the other side. The Distribute screen pays three quarters of the town's price, so a Club +2 found on the road fetches 2657 gold in Sciattica.

So what is a plus worth?

A + weapon or + armour is worth buying for a hero who is not strong enough for the plain item of the same value, a wizard, a priest or a thief. It lets him fight with a better weapon, or wear better armour, than his Strength allows. For a strong fighter who can already ready the plain item, the plus adds nothing, and a + item he finds is worth more as gold. A + bow or + shield is just the next one up the list.

The manual tells you the important half. Its armoury section says "Magic Armour and Weapons have lower requirements.", and that is exactly right. It never says what the plus does in a fight, and the answer is nothing that the point value does not already say.