Good starter characters?

[Grey]

Drakeling anything - spit through anything that gets in your way, and use missiles on anything that's immune. Even farmers work well with this, though I'd personally advise priests for a mix of magic and good melee.

Dwarven paladins are pretty amazing too, but if you're trouble is around the forest then I imagine you're surviving the early game well enough not to need them. More likely you need herbs and a more versatile character, like a wizard. Gnomish wizards are pretty good.

[Ferret]

I vote for Drakling monks being one of the easiest.

The synergy with their spit and food consuption is amazing. Also D50 can be done in record time with the "swiching with hostile monsters" power they get later on.

[Grey]

For starter characters I wouldn't recommend monks - they begin very weak, usually with little or no PV. The lesser food consumption isn't really much of an issue when herbs and cooked lizards come into play. Further to that many newer (and even experienced) players fall into the trap of trying to play monks as monks - stay unburdened, wear light armour, don't wear shields, fight unarmed, etc. Blindly following these can easily get you killed.

[modular]

Try drakeling ranger if you haven't already,

They have decent toughness, acid spit, decent melee, can use missiles and they tend to find good weapons. They have food preservation witch is very useful, and both the healing and herbalism skill.

Find herbs, get stoma and morga.

[spectre]

I always thought Priests and Paladins are teh shite for starting players, and I am kinda surprised they aren't mentioned more.
Priests have a very, very convenient skillset (Herbalism, Healing and Music, the last one I like mostly for dealing with cats). Also, let's not forget Detect Item Status, which total to a very beginner-friendly setup. What's more, Priests are very good with spells and melee (depending on the racial flavor, special attention given to the races that give Find Weakness).

Orcs bring Find Weakness and very good starting stuff (everburning torch and good armor), dark elves are cool for similar reasons (and Alertness). Drakelings and Dwarves should also work. I think this is the perfect char to "learn the ropes", cause there's just so many options available to you.
Then I recommend halfling to people who have problems with finding food - Food Preservation and Cooking. Stats are pretty bad, but their high skill in rocks and dex are a decent redeeming quality (and so is faster levelling).

I tend to favor Archers for more advanced tutorial characters. They teach you to play cautiously quite effectively, while still giving you the option to try magic later on.

By the way, cheers to all of you guys, I haven't been around for some time.

[CorpseShredder18]

thanks for the input, ill probably get around to all the chars mentioned but next few chars probably going to be drake healer or de archer

[spectre]

Be careful with DE archer, though. Nice skillset, but pitiful number of missles (even though elven quarrels may be v. good they perish quite fast), which means you have to look for replacements from the very start.

[garyd]

And they aren't easy to come by. Not sure whether or not hurthling bolts are interchageable or not...

[Soirana]

dwarven wizard by a mile.

Don't listen to grey inexperienced player+drake+ToEF = guaranteed death.

[Grey]

I've never heard of anyone going to the ToEF with a drakeling and unaware of the consequences. Overall the Tower is far easier with a drakeling then with any other race. But anyway, this is supposed to be starter advises - the Tower isn't a factor just yet.