The World
Your class decides how you solve a room; your race decides what you can take and what you can see. Both are chosen at character creation and both are permanent, so it is worth a minute's thought.
Lethal with a blade and any armor, relying on strength and endurance instead of magic. The biggest chest in the realms and the deepest reserves to swing with, and every level gives more of both.
The recommended start. A Human Warrior has the biggest health pool in the game and the most forgiving playstyle.
Fights at the distance it chooses. A bow opens an exchange before anything else in the realms can answer, and a ranger who lets the range collapse has already given away what they came with.
The only class that starts with a bow and the arrows for it. Rewards keeping your footing and spending actions on ground rather than on damage.
Goes to war in the heaviest armor anybody will sell them and takes the blows meant for somebody else. Strength, constitution and an unwillingness to move.
Wins by attrition rather than by cleverness, and is still standing at the end of fights nobody else survived.
Fights with speed and leverage rather than force, taking the opening an opponent did not mean to give. The quickest character in the realms, with the deepest well of stamina to spend on being quick.
For players who would rather be somewhere else by the time it matters.
Refuses the choice between the blade and the book. Wears what a soldier wears, carries a sword, and keeps a reserve nobody swinging one has any business keeping.
Not the best at either half, and a battle mage who forgets it is fighting a warrior's fight with a warrior's hit points missing.
Gets further on nerve and a good story than on anything they are carrying. Travels light, fights with a knife when it must, and spends the rest of the time being the reason a room is willing to listen.
Built around charisma, which in the realms is what a merchant's price is argued down with.
Trades armor and endurance for the only magic in the realms. Magic missile is the whole of it and it never quite misses, so an arcanist is a player who makes one spell count.
Everything costs mana, and an arcanist who runs out is in real trouble. Rewards watching your resources and picking your fights.
Arrives with nothing, and that is the point. The open hand is a weapon class like any other in the realms, so every swing trains the one thing a monk can never be relieved of.
The only class that starts with no weapon at all. Fast, hard to pin down, and patient with a fight in a way nobody carrying a sword can afford to be.
Race bonuses are applied once, at creation. They are not re-applied later, so a race is a decision about the character you are making rather than a running modifier. The wiki lists each one's attribute bonuses, maxima and resistances.
Stout mountain folk of iron will and iron beards. Emberhold is theirs, and they mean to keep it. Born underground, and it shows in what they can take - and in being able to see without a light source.
Graceful and long-lived, drawn to the vale's woods and its old stories. Sees in the dark.
Adaptable settlers, found wherever there is trade to be done and trouble to be had. No weaknesses to plan around, which is exactly why they are the easiest first character.