In video games what are Vitality and Intelligence? What exactly am I doing to the character when I use an Item to increase vitality or intelligence?
Wouldn’t that be specific to the game?
Generally vitality is like, more hitpoints. Intelligence sometimes increases spellpower or mana. If there are skill points intelligence might increase the rate of learning skills.
The statistic/attribute system comes from tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons, but it will vary with the game. Some games will have stat rolls which means you have to have so many points in a stat to do something like get past a trap.
~Max
Agreed with both answers above. It’s game dependent but, in general, I’d expect Vitality to affect hitpoints/health and maybe things like poison resistance. I’d expect Intelligence to affect mana/mind points/spell power and maybe things like skill points or select skill checks (scribing spells, hacking computers, etc)
In Diablo III, for example, every point of intelligence increases spell damage by like 1% and every 10 points of intelligence increases your resistance to elemental attacks by one point. And every point in vitality increases your HP on a sliding scale, from +10 HP for the first few levels, then +11, +12, up to +35 HP per point IIRC.
~Max
Diablo III maybe isn’t the best example, because there, Intelligence and Strength work in exactly the same way, and Agility is nearly the same as well. Every class has one of those three as their “mainstat”, and mainstat always increases damage, in the exact same way. And while Intelligence’s effect is called “elemental resistance” and Strength’s effect is called “armor”, they’re functionally identical, and both apply to all the same attacks.
I’m just trying to think of another game I played that has Vitality by that name…
Final Fantasy may have had it… not sure. I’ve only played FFIV and I’m pretty sure it just had HP or Stamina, plus you wouldn’t choose where to put stats.
~Max