A list of the races can be found in the ADOM manual. It also gives a bit of background about each, much of which is flavor and irrelevant in terms of gameplay.
Each race has unique characteristics including initial alignment, trained skills and modifiers to attributes. Skills in ADOM vary in terms of availability. All PCs are born with Climbing, First Aid, Haggling and Listening. All PCs other than Beastfighters and Barbarians with a Learning score of 10 or greater are born with Literacy. Many skills can be taught or trained by various NPCs during the game. Other skills are much more difficult to obtain if the PC is not born with them. Skills other than Alertness and Healing can be wished for. Any skill can be obtained from a potion of education, but this is a matter of random chance and cannot be counted on. Skills available only from wishes or potions of education are referred to as "Nonguaranteed Skills" for the sake of the tables below. The first table shows the starting alignment and trained skills that each race is born with.
Race | Initial alignment | Guaranteed or NPC-available Skills | Nonguaranteed Skills |
---|---|---|---|
Drakeling | Neutral | Swimming | Alertness, Food Preservation, Music |
Dwarf | Lawful | Climbing, Detect Traps, Smithing | Metallurgy, Mining |
Dark Elf | Chaotic | Climbing, Stealth | Alertness, Find Weakness |
Gray Elf | Neutral | Listening, Literacy, Stealth | Dodge |
High Elf | Lawful | Listening, Literacy, Stealth | Dodge |
Gnome | Neutral | Listening, Pick Pockets | Gemology, Mining, Ventriloquism |
Human | Neutral | Climbing, Haggling, Swimming | Food Preservation |
Hurthling | Lawful | Stealth | Archery, Cooking, Food Preservation, Gardening |
Orc | Chaotic | Backstabbing, Climbing | Find Weakness, Metallurgy, Mining |
Troll | Chaotic | Bridge Building | Athletics, Food Preservation, Gemology, Mining |
The ADOM manual also contains a list of the classes along with their characteristics and class powers. A table similar to that above showing the trained skills each class is born with:
Class | Guaranteed or NPC-available Skills | Nonguaranteed Skills | |
---|---|---|---|
Archer | Climbing, Listening, Stealth | Alertness, Archery, Concentration, Dodge, Fletchery | |
Assassin | Backstabbing, Climbing, Detect Traps, Pick Locks, Stealth, Two Weapon Combat | Alchemy, Alertness, Archery, Dodge, Find Weakness | |
Barbarian | Climbing, First Aid, Herbalism, Stealth, Swimming, Two Weapon Combat | Athletics, Dodge, Survival, Woodcraft | |
Bard | None guaranteed | Music | |
Beastfighter | Climbing, Healing, Herbalism, Listening, Stealth, Swimming | Athletics, Dodge, Survival | |
Druid | Climbing, First Aid, Healing, Herbalism, Listening, Literacy, Swimming | Concentration, Survival, Woodcraft | |
Elementalist | Climbing, Healing, Listening, Literacy, Swimming | Concentration, Gemology, Metallurgy | |
Farmer | Bridge Building, First Aid, Haggling, Herbalism, Smithing, Stealth | Archery, Cooking, Fletchery, Food Preservation, Gardening, Survival, Woodcraft | |
Fighter | Stealth, Two Weapon Combat | Athletics, Archery, Dodge, Find Weakness, Metallurgy | |
Healer | First Aid, Healing, Herbalism, Literacy | Alertness, Concentration, Cooking, Find Weakness | |
Merchant | Haggling, Herbalism, Literacy, Pick Pockets | Appraising, Detect Item Status, Gemology, Metallurgy, Survival (Merchants who specialize in magical potions also receive Alchemy) | |
Mindcrafter | Haggling, Herbalism, Literacy, Stealth | Concentration, Find Weakness, Gemology, Music | |
Monk | Healing, Literacy, Stealth | Alertness, Athletics, Concentration, Dodge, Find Weakness | |
Necromancer | Herbalism, Literacy, Stealth | Alchemy, Appraising, Concentration, Find Weakness, Food Preservation, Necromancy | |
Paladin | Healing, Law (if lawful initially), Literacy, Stealth, Swimming, Two Weapon Combat | Athletics, Concentration, Dodge | |
Priest | First Aid, Healing, Herbalism, Literacy | Concentration, Detect Item Status, Music | |
Ranger | Climbing, Healing, Herbalism, Swimming, Two Weapon Combat | Alertness, Archery, Athletics, Dodge, Food Preservation, Survival, Woodcraft | |
Thief | Backstabbing, Climbing, Detect Traps, Disarm Traps, Listening, Pick Locks, Pick Pockets, Stealth | Alertness, Appraising | |
Weaponsmith | Detect Traps, Haggling, Smithing | Appraising, Athletics, Concentration, Find Weakness, Metallurgy | |
Wizard | Healing, Herbalism, Literacy, Stealth | Alchemy, Concentration, Find Weakness, Ventriloquism |
There are definite effects on gameplay depending on the alignment, skills and birthsign the PC is born with. Note that none of the races is born with the Healing skill; it is entirely class-dependent. Nine classes are born with Healing. It is essential to obtain this skill. This means that those without it *must* choose Rynt's quest as opposed to Guth'Alak's in Terinyo, whether they intend to actually obtain the skill from Jharod or Kranf Niest. This puts restrictions on the game right away, since the Keethrax quest and thus a guaranteed artifact and potion of cure corruption are forfeited before the game even starts. Further, three races start with chaotic alignment. If the PC wants to receive Healing from Jharod, thus avoiding Kranf Niest's stat drains, alignment must be changed to neutral (or lawful).
Note also that no race starts with Herbalism, the other skill available through a Terinyo quest. If the player wants maximum flexibility - to do either Rynt's or Guth'Alak's quest, or neither (in the case of a minimalist challenge game) - choose a class that starts with Healing, Herbalism, or ideally both, such as a Beastfighter, Druid, Healer, Priest, Ranger or Wizard.
If there is a skill that is difficult to obtain that you cannot live without, such as Alertness, play a dark elf or drakeling, or choose a class that is born with it - Archers, Healers, Monks, Rangers and Thieves all start with this skill. Many players feel similarly about Detect Item Status - play Priests or a Merchant for a challenge.
A PC that trains a given skill due to both race and class will be especially proficient with that skill. This makes certain combinations especially powerful. Dwarven Weaponsmiths (doubly trained Metallurgy and Smithing), Hurthling Archers (doubly trained Archery), Hurthling Farmers (doubly trained Archery, Cooking, Food Preservation, Gardening, Stealth) and Dark Elven Rangers (doubly trained Alertness and Climbing) are examples.
The following table was taken from TB's web pages concerning the ADOM pencil and paper RPG. It gives a general idea of which races receive bonuses or penalties to each attribute at the start of the game:
Race modifiers to the starting characteristics: ---------------------------------------------- St Le Wi Dx To Ch Ap Pe Ma Drakeling +1 -3 0 -2 +4 -1 -2 0 -4 Dwarf +2 -2 +3 -2 +3 -3 -2 -1 -8 Dark Elf -3 +4 -1 +4 -5 -4 +4 +2 +6 Gray Elf -1 +3 -3 +4 -4 -3 +6 +3 +4 High Elf 0 +1 -2 +3 -2 0 +4 +2 +2 Gnome -1 +3 -1 +1 0 +1 -1 +1 +3 Human 0 +2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Hurthling -5 0 -1 +4 +3 +2 +1 +1 -4 Orc +3 -3 -1 0 +1 -5 -7 -2 -3 Troll +9 -8 -5 -5 +8 -10 -8 -6 -7Alex Wilkins has done some statistical analysis using 5000 (!!) characters created in gamma 14 to test the validity of this table. The results were similar, but not identical to this table.
The ADOM manual gives some hints about race/class combinations. For instance, the manual identifies trolls as the strongest, toughest and stupidest race in the game and suggests that they make good fighters (because of their strength and toughness) and lousy magicians (because of their low learning and mana). This is true as far as it goes, but trollish wizards can be a viable combination if they are played more as fighters to start and later develop their magical talents. Elves make fantastic wizards (due to their high learning and mana) once they gain some experience, but are difficult to keep alive in the early game because of their low toughness. Humans are a jack of all trades race and can be used with all classes. Some combinations favored by newsgroup readers:
Trollish beastfighters and barbarians - brute force fighters
Gnomish elementalists - magic users with more toughness than elves
Elven archers - natural talent with bows
Elven wizards - high mana and learning
Dwarven weaponsmiths - natural smithing talent
Hurthling archers - natural talent with thrown rocks
Classes and combinations that are regarded as difficult:
Farmers
Merchants, especially dark elven merchants because of their low charisma and toughness
Necromancers in general are very difficult to keep alive at low levels
0.1.2 Special considerations
Dark Elves - Dark Elves receive very low offers and high prices in Waldenbrook's Dwarftown shop. Dark Elven Necromancers are very Chaotic. It takes some work to get them to Neutral alignment to receive Healing from Jharod, for instance, if that is desired. Dark elves are unique in that spider corpses are nutritious for them. Poison resistance can still be gained from spider corpses.
Drakelings - Drakelings face special problems in the ToEF (see section 2.19) and D: 49 (see section 3.12). Drakelings who are unlucky enough to find a greater white dragon vault will also face speed problems.
Druids - All Druids start at some flavor of neutral alignment.
Elves - All elves, High, Gray, or Dark, have very long lifespans. This is worth considering since several of the high level monsters encountered in ADOM have an aging attack. Ghost Lords, for instance, may well age a human, dwarf or troll to death in one or two hits, since these PCs have a life span of 100 years or so at most. Elven PCs do not need to worry about this, since they live for at least 1000 years. In gammas before 1.0.0, elven lifespans as long as 3500 years have been observed. The upper limit is not known in ADOM 1.0.0. Balancing this is the fact that they are more fragile than other races in terms of toughness in the early game.
Hurthlings - Hurthlings start the game with the Thrown Rocks missile weapon skill at level four. They also start the game wearing a cursed ring, unfortunately. Hurthlings also have a racial dislike for shoes, which causes a loss of dexterity when Hurthlings don footwear in ADOM.
Hurthlings also have an advantage over other races when training the slings and thrown rocks missile weapon skills: they require only two thirds of the marks other races do in order to advance a skill level.
Merchants - Merchants always specialize in a certain item: potions, rings, scrolls, or wands. This specialization allows them to identify any item in that category on sight.
Trolls - Trolls advance in experience level very slowly relative to other races. Trolls start the game with the Twohanded Weapons melee skill at level two. Do not pay any attention to this if you are playing a trollish beastfighter. Drop that club and fight unarmed.