=== Creating a Character ===

Unangband is a roleplaying game, in which you, the player, control a character
in the world of Unangband.  Perhaps the most important thing you control is the
birth of your character, in which you choose or allow to be chosen various
attributes that will affect the future life of your character.

Character creation, or birth, is controlled through a variety of choices
as to constraints on the type of character you wish to play, followed by
a series of random calculations to generate ("roll up") a random character
matching the appropriate constraints.

Once your character has been generated, you will be given the choice to
generate a new character obeying the same constraints, and once you have
generated more than one character, you can switch back and forth between
the two most recent characters, until you are presented with a personality
that you feel comfortable with.

You may start the entire process over at any time.

Once you have accepted a character you will asked to provide a name for the
character.  In general, the actual choice of a name is not important, but do
keep in mind that it may have some effect on the game itself.  For example,
on some machines, the character name determines the filename that will be
used to save the character to disk.  On others, the character name specifies
special "pref" files.  And the character name is used on the high score list.


=== Character Characteristics ===

Each character has three primary attributes, sex, race, and class, that
are chosen before the character is generated, and which will stay fixed
for the entire life of that character.  These attributes have many effects,
which will be mentioned as they come up.

Each character has a few secondary attributes, height, weight, social class,
and background history, which are randomly determined, but which are affected
by the sex and race and size of the character.  In general, these attributes
are only used to provide "flavor" to the character, to assist in the role
playing, but they do have a few minor effects on the game.  For example,
background history affects social class, which affects the starting money.
(Not a lot, in the case of some races, particular the more monstrous ones.) 

Each character also has eight primary "stats", strength, intelligence,
wisdom, dexterity, constitution, charisma, agility and size which modify the
abilities of the character in a variety of ways.  Every stat has a numerical
value, ranging from a minimum of 3, up to a normal maximum of 18, and even
higher, into the "percentile" range, represented as "18/01" through "18/100"
or more: this is the maximum that can be achieved intrinsically, for any
given stat. 

Equipment may add bonuses or penalties to this, and raise the player's stats
beyond the normal intrinsic limits: the stats may go as high as they like,
with the right choice of equipment, but the effects of having higher stats
largely stop at 18/200.

For details on how the stats affect game-play, read the stats.txt helpfile.

Each character also has several primary "skills", disarming, magic devices,
saving throws, stealth, searching ability, fighting skill, shooting skill and
thrown weapons skill which are derived from the character's race, class, level,
stats, and current equipment.  These skills have rather obvious effects, but
will be described more completely below.

Each character may have one or more "racially intrinsic skills", based on
the race of the character.  These may include special resistances, or even
abilities such as infravision.

Each character has experience, which increases as the character becomes more
experienced, and a level, which is based on experience, and also on race and
class.  As the experience rises, so does the level, and as the level rises,
certain other abilities and characteristics rise as well.  Deep down inside,
the real objective of the game is to increase your experience, and certain
other characteristics, and also to collect useful items, to give you a decent
chance against Morgoth.  Certain monsters can "drain" your experience, and
thus your level, which will cause you to lose all of the effects of the higher
level.  Luckily, you can restore drained experience through magical means, or
by simply regaining the experience all over again.

Each character has some gold, which can be used to buy items from the shops
in the town, and which can be obtained not only from selling items to the
shops, but also by taking it from dead monsters and by finding it hidden in
the dungeon.  Each character starts out with some gold, the amount of which
is based on the characters social class (higher is better), charisma (higher
is better), and other stats (less powerful characters start with more gold).  
Each character also starts out with a few useful items, which may be kept, 
or sold to a shop-keeper for more gold. However, especially valuable items
will never sell for the full price, as each shopkeeper has a maximum that 
he is prepared to pay for any item. The more generous shopkeepers may buy 
your items for up to 30,000 gold pieces: but some are really stingy, and 
will pay no more than 5,000.

Each character has an armor class, representing how well the character can
avoid damage.  The armor class is affected by dexterity and the equipment. 
Armor class on equipment is always denoted in [square brackets], usually as 
a figure of [X,+Y] where X is the intrinsic AC of the armor in question, and 
Y is the magical bonus to armor class provided by that item.

Each character has hit points, representing how much damage the character can
sustain before he dies.  How many hit points a character has is determined by
level, size and constitution.  A character with high size or constitution will
get a flat bonus of a certain number of hit points per level (recalculated
right back to level 1: if you gain an extra hit point per level, and you are
42nd level, you will suddenly be 42 hit points better off.)

Each character has spell points, or mana, which represents how many spells
(or prayers) a character can cast (or pray).  The maximum number of spell
points is derived from your class, level, constitution and the a class
dependent spell-casting stat, which for all classes except bards is wisdom.
You can never have more spell points than the maximum.  Spell points may be
regained by resting, or by magical means.  Warriors, thieves and archers
never have any spell points unless they have the magic books or prayer books
speciality.  If a character gains enough wisdom or constitution to get more
spell points, the result is calculated right back to first level, just as
with hit points.
