Their strength and inventiveness make them one of the best survivors. Never lacking in aggression, they can handle themselves in just about any adverse setting.

Fair of hair and skin, the Elves are slightly taller, faster, and more agile than humans. Although weaker, they make up for this by being more skilled in magical arts and war strategies.

Stout and short, these people are amazingly strong and healthy. Brightness, however, is not a shining attribute of theirs.

The Hobbit is deft and clever, which are ideal traits for thieving. Their favorite boast is "A locked door is soon no more."

The result of an Elf and Human friendship, Half-Elves acquire their fair hair and light skin from Elves, and their physical bulk from Humans.

Orcs are the henchmen of evil wizards who are capable of little more than following orders for physical dirty work. Half-Orcs are tempered with Human blood, so while they're still dangerous, they aren't completely mindless drones forever in search of necks to wrench.

Gnomes are much like Dwarfs, but a little more anti-social due to a deficit in beauty. Because they've spent so much time studying alone, Gnomes have developed a certain flair for magic.

Nobody really wishes to be light on might, but strength is especially important to fighters.

If you don't have brawn, then you better have brains. Magicians get bonus spell points for high intelligence scores.

This helps determine how fleet of feet and nimble of hand you'll be. A high score makes you harder to hit and helps you land the first blow. For Rogues, the higher this value, the less likely they'll get their fingers snapped off in traps.

This represents your overall health. The higher this is, the more damage your opponent must inflict on you before you need to start thinking about death. Should you be blessed with strong constitution, you will get bonus hit points.

Luck is ambiguous and unpredictable; you never know what alliance it has made with fate. One thing is known about luck: lucky souls are more likely to resist evil magic and avoid traps.

This is the level of protection that a character has against physical attack. For a totally unprotected character whose dexterity is low - which is about as bad as it gets - armor class is about ten. As a character's armor class improves, the number gets lower. There are also spells, songs, and items that you can use to lower armor class.

Hit points represent the amount of damage a character can take before dying. This number represents the character's potential at full health.

This is the character's total points for his or her current condition. Compare this value to hit points to determine what condition your character is in. For instance, if hit points is 20, and condition is 17, then you're in good shape because your actual health is close to your potential health. However, if your condition is 5, then you're much closer to death than to life.

This is the number of spell points that a magic user has left. When it's down to zero, the magic user can't cast any more spells. Pray no monsters come your way...

The more fights you get into (and live through) the more experience you'll gain. When you acquire enough experience points, you can move up a level. How many experience points you need depends on your class. The Old Man in the Review Board will let you know if you have enough, and if not, how much more you need.

The more the merrier. You acquire gold by killing your enemies and cleaning out their pockets. Gold lets you pay the Old Man his fee for giving you spells, bribe folks for clues, buy drinks, and do a number of other useful things. Don't worry about buying equipment - you can't. (Tarjan doesn't believe in free enterprise so he put Garth's Equipment Shoppe out of business with an awesome incendiary spell.) You'll start out with the weapon and armor that you need. Whatever else you want, you'll have to find.

The higher the value, the better your character will perform in his or her role. All newly-made characters start out as level 1. As you gain more experience, you can advance in levels.

This category only pertains to those who cast spells. It shows the most spell points you can ever have, or your spell point potential. Compare the SpPt value on the Onscreen Statistics against this to see how you're doing. For instance, if you have 20 spell points, and the SpPt value is 18, then you have almost all of your maximum spell points. If, however, you're down to 3 SpPt, then you're almost out of power to cast spells. You'll have to wait until they regenerate. To regenerate spell points, you have to be under the healing rays of the sun. They don't regenerate at night, so cut back on unnecessary spell activity during this time. They also won't regenerate in dungeons unless you stand on a magic square, use a spell-regenerating magic item, or play a spell-regenerating Bard's song.