CHARACTER CREATION AND DEVELOPMENT
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You will have the opportunity to create a new character each time you
start up omega. A random selection of statistics will be generated.
To discourage sitting around trying to get an "optimal" character,
you can only "reroll" 9 times before having to reload the game. Since
your statistics tend to go up as you play, it isn't fatal to
have low statistics when you start out. On the other hand, high stats
don't hurt, either....

Each statistic is very important, but depending what sort of character
you wish to play, different statistics will stand out. Combat is
helped by Strength and Dexterity, Magic-use is aided by Intelligence
and Power. Agility helps you avoid getting hit and avoid traps, while
Constitution determines how many hits you can take before dying.

A new option for omega is to "play yourself". By answering a sequence
of personal questions, omega arrives at what your personal statistics
should be. It is in seriously bad taste to lie.... Only the character
you create in this mode can be saved to the omegarc. The questions are
set up so that a "renaissance man" type of person will probably have
stats generally around 14-15. The rest of us will stay around 9-12 on
average. If you are really impressively good at something you can
start out with a stat of up to 18, but this is pretty unlikely for
most of us.

As you continue to play, you will hopefully accumulate experience and
treasure. You can gain skills and abilities through various means,
the most important being training in one of the Rampart establishments
devoted to self-improvement. Thus, you can choose to work out at the
gym, study at the Collegium Magii, meditate at a Temple, and
so on. Certain skills and abilities may only be gained through
adventuring, and others are mutually exclusive. For example, you can
only be a priest of one particular deity. One of the appeals of
omega is the variety of different types of characters you can play,
each with its own set of goals and benefits.

Another aspect of your character is alignment. Characters are aligned
towards the primal forces of Chaos and Law, or they can be neutral.
Various actions affect this factor; killing peaceful monsters, or
committing burgalry, for example, are chaotic acts.  Alignment
determines which guilds will let you in, the behavior of some
artifacts and monsters, as well as much else.

Your character will gain various statuses, abilities, immunities,
etc., both harmful and beneficial. Most of the time these are kept
hidden from you, but there are various ways of discovering the truth
-- self-knowledge is very useful in omega. Remember, the oracle
knows all, sees all....

Experience is accrued for skillful actions in the game. As in rogue,
one of the main methods of acquiring experience is defeating monsters.
You need not kill an opponent to defeat it (you can use the 'threaten'
option of the 't' command, sometimes).  There are many other ways of
gaining experience, though, including learning spells, deactivating
traps, using artifacts correctly, etc. 

Experience goes towards two kinds of character development. First,
in the bizarre tradition of role-playing games like * & *, hit
points and combat capabilities go up as experience is gained.

Secondly, experience gained is shared out to each of the guilds,
priesthoods, etc. that the character belongs to. The more guilds
the character is a member of, the slower promotion will be
(except in the City Nobility, and among the Gladiators, where
promotion is not based on experience, but on quests and combats,
respectively). Regardless of the number of guilds the character
is a member of, overall character level, the first type of
experience will not be adversely affected.