Race/Class combo

[koctyxa]

ADOM has two kinds of fight: melee and ranged. If you want to stay alive long enough, you should train both types, and don't be afraid of it. For ranged attack it's best to have one of: speed, Archery (for the sake of Lightning Shot) or Concentration. Speed comes to: Archer, Barbarian, Beastfighter, Monk, Ranger. Archery: Archer, Assassin, Farmer, Fighter, Healer, Ranger (and Hurthling). And these classes should be chosen by weakling races, because later in game they will be able to avoid hand-to-hand combat with baddies, and earlier they need better toughness, training in melee, better gear and so on.

Concentration comes to: Archer, Druid, Elementalist, Mindcrafter, Healer, Monk, Necromancer, Priest, Weaponsmith, Wizard (and with a Charged talent Dark Elf can be considered a mana battery) and these are classes to be chosen by stronger races, because they need firepower for the later stage of the game and in the beginning their HP is high enough to not be killed by a door.

So what I'm trying to say is that I strongly discourage playing elven magicians or orcish fighters.

[Dudley]

I disagree, you completely forget magic in this. A good magician will be able to survive solely on his spells. Acid balls fucks the world HARD.
Furthermore, the following classes do not NEED ranged attacks, as i recall doing them following the adley code of conduct :
-Healer
-Beastfighter
-Barbarians
-Fighter (although that one should use missile weapons if you're a coward)
-Wizards
-Paladins
-Assassins
-Monk
-Mindcrafter...

[zsomkovacs]

My only char who really used missiles (other's just a !ofBlindness on ACW or something like this) was my HE archer. But at Level 30 she easily cleared a giant greater vault in melee, so ranged attacks really don't neccessary. For example, you play a barbarian and got Vanquisher at the crowning. Will you still trying to hit sy with a (+0; 1d6) bow when you can put a stone on the left arrow and clear the whole dungeon level?

And for example elven magicians won't die in a door trap if you play them carefully. A bit of ID and you will have a lot of spells, including Knock, which solves that problem. Or you can go training to BUGWIL, you can advance to L12-14 in about 6-700 turns. Then go for CoC, and get those morgias from the Big Room!

[Dudley]

or do bugs then id.

[Silfir]

You can do everything with melee, but you should train both melee and ranged. There's tons of things you "should" do though, you don't have to do them all to win.

[Toan]

While you CAN have a balance, it's a whole lot cooler to have a GE Wiz. Also, early on, door traps are rarely the type which is "Do you want to open? BOOM" (Trap activate on trying to open.), so if it's locked, try again. Alternative is Elementalist's Earthquake. BugWil is scummy by some people's definitions, but it's easy and works. I guess what i'm saying is that you can't really make concrete statements about how "X should be played or Y shouldn't be".

[novapsyche]

I disagree, you completely forget magic in this. A good magician will be able to survive solely on his spells. Acid balls fucks the world HARD.

Yes, indeed. Except when it comes to diamond golems, which my gnomish wizard recently encountered in the Library. Any missile of construct slaying would have been my best friend, had I any. :\ (My wizard did manage to survive. But not by magical means.)

As for the broader discussion, I too have been interested in race/class combos, but I've been focusing on the ones that would give me the most copious skill sets. I believe that would lead to dwarven thieves (although I don't know how that would work out, given the alignment problem), HE/GE farmers, dwarven healers, etc. I think I had a drakeling elementalist at one time, which had Swimming as the only skill overlap; however, he kept dying at one point, just fatally flawed.

[minchazo]

As for the broader discussion, I too have been interested in race/class combos, but I've been focusing on the ones that would give me the most copious skill sets. I believe that would lead to dwarven thieves (although I don't know how that would work out, given the alignment problem), HE/GE farmers, dwarven healers, etc. I think I had a drakeling elementalist at one time, which had Swimming as the only skill overlap; however, he kept dying at one point, just fatally flawed.

If you're looking strictly for skill sets, you'd do best with a gnome farmer/ranger, a hurthling merchant, or really any farmer: they get the most non-guaranteed skills available. I actually have an entire spreadsheet worked out, giving the non-guaranteed skills more weight than the guaranteed skills. Thieves are just a bad idea for this since anyone can get a thief's signature skills. The gnome farmer gets the most skills (19), followed by the gnome ranger and orc farmer (18), followed by all other farmers, orc ranger, and halfling merchant (17).

I'm purposefully omitting bard from my numbers.

[JellySlayer]

Magic missile > diamond golems.

If you like skills, you should play assassins or monks. While they may not as many non-guaranteed skills, they get all the right ones.

[gut]

monks/assasins/healers for skillz. Drakes rule skillz.

Skill rankings
1. healing/herbalism
2. food pres
3. concentration
4. find weaky
5. alertness
6. archery
7. athletics
8. dodge
9. alchemy
10. stealth
11. detect traps
12. disarm traps
13. detect item status
14. alchemy
15. gemology
16. swimming
17. ventriloquism
18. appraising
19. first aid
20. mining
21. music
22. haggling
23. a bunch of ones too cruddy to mention... metallurgy

Well, there is a bunch of class specific ones like
gardening, necromancy, fletchery, pick locks,
that really can't be ranked in general. I didn't
know what to do with ones like literacy/tactics.