One rather curious feature of the early Wizardry games, one that didn't make it to any of the console ports, is the option to set a password for your characters. Without the password, you can't add the character to your party, and you can't delete or change the character in the Training Grounds. This, to me, felt like a useless feature that was risky, as if you forgot your password (or if it changed as a result of the identify glitch), the character would become unusable unless you sent the disk in to Sir-Tech (and payed a fee) or used a save editor like WizPlus.

Has anybody found a use for this feature? Has anybody actually set a password on their characters?

I actually did think of a reason to set a password:

In the Apple 2 version of Wizardry 1, the identify glitch can set certain variables to 1, but only if they are even. Since one of the variables is the length of the character's password, if you give a character a 1 character password (make sure to remember it), you can protect yourself from that particular effect of the glitch; useful if you are seeing what other effects the glitch may have (the password length is one variable that can be changed).

On the other hand, has anybody actually used the password feature for other purposes?

I think the password feature was mainly meant for protecting your characters from meddlesome friends and family members.

Solution: Hide the disk with your characters on it.

If anybody else wants to play, make them their own scenario disk. (Only the boot disk, and for 3, the master scenario disk (which must be write protected IIRC) are copy protected for the Apple 2 versions.)

Empty disks were still fairly expensive in the early-to-mid 80's, trying to cram as much data as possible on every disk was a genuine concern for many people back then.

I have heard that, back in the 80s, people used to play Wizardry on school's computer. This may prevent others from using your characters.

Except that, back then, computers didn't come with hard drives, so the characters would be stored on floppy disks. I would imagine that people would take their own floppy disks with them, rather than leaving them by the computer.

You are right. Then I don't really know what this is for....