Starting kit

Nobody sets out empty-handed. A new character starts with a kit that comes from who they are: what their class carries, then a few things of their race. The summary at the end of character creation lists it item by item. From the first turn it is in your inventory and on the equipment screen: weapons in hand, armour on, missiles quivered, a dwarf’s pick-axe ready in the Tool slot.

Kits are not fair, and are not meant to be.

• The aristocrat sets out with a fine rapier, an heirloom ring, furs, a jewel, and a heavy purse.
• The merchant has goods to sell and gems to trade.
• The commoner has a stick, two turnips, and a heel of bread.
• Warriors and paladins wear hardened leather and an iron helm, a paladin gauntlets besides.
• Every elf carries a bow of hardwood and arrows: a long war bow for elves, a short bow for half-elves.
• Every drow carries a crossbow with steel-headed bolts.
• A halfling has a sling and stones.
• A dwarf goes in good steel: a steel pick-axe and hand axe, steel gauntlets, a steel helm, steel-shod boots, a hardened leather jerkin, and a crossbow, where the class gave none of those. A duergar goes the same way in plain iron, with a war hammer for the axe and no crossbow.
• An elf and a drow carry a potion of healing, and wear fine silk and soft boots under a cloak.

Elves, half-elves, drow, and halflings also start trained in the weapon their race gives them (see Races).

Everyone sets out dressed: something on the body and shoes on the feet, if only clothing (no Defence and no Protection). A class with a garb of its own wears it: the wizard’s robe and slippers, the priest’s habit and sandals, the aristocrat’s doublet, gown, or houppelande. Everyone else wears what their folk wear: a human’s tunic or kirtle and shoes, a dwarf’s leather jerkin and iron-shod boots, a kobold’s patched smock and footwraps. Halflings go barefoot: nobody’s kit puts anything on their feet.

What each class starts with

What each race adds

How it works

• Wielded and worn. What the kit wields or wears goes into the first free slot it fits, as if you had put it on yourself. A second light weapon goes to your off hand (see Fighting styles). What finds no free slot stays in your pack. Your class’s things come first. So an elven ranger readies the ranger’s short bow and carries the elven long bow.
• If the slot is free. Some of a race’s things, its clothes and shoes above all, come only if nothing else of the kit went there (“if the slot is free” in the tables). A dwarven paladin wears the order’s gauntlets and helm and leaves the steel ones at home, and a dwarven wizard wears the robe and slippers, not the jerkin and the boots.
• It follows your training. Some things come only with a weapon skill or fighting style your class trained you in. A berserker who learned axes carries a great axe, and one who learned great blades a great sword. A thief of Twin Blades wields two daggers; a Duelist wields one, with a stiletto up the sleeve.
• One of a few. Where a kit says “one of”, one of them is picked when your character is made, as your stats are rolled. The same character in the same run always gets the same.
• Magic. A few kits hold something that may be magic (“perhaps magic”), or surely is (“magic or rare”). Like anything you find, it is unidentified until you learn what it does (see Magic items). You can tell its rarity at once.
• Random scrolls. The casters set out with a few more spell scrolls, drawn at random when your character is made: a wizard or a witch 1d3, a priest, druid, or ranger 1d2, a bard 1d4 (the table above says the same). Each is the scroll of a spell of spell level 0 to 9, every such spell as likely as any other, so two may be the same. Read one to cast its spell.
• Grimoires. Every spell scroll your kit gives you, a fixed one or a random one, is that spell’s grimoire instead one time in ten, scroll by scroll. Read it to learn the spell for good.
• Scrolls and potions you know. You know every scroll, potion, wand, and rod you set out with, whatever you start with, by its true name from the first turn (“a scroll of magic missile”, never an unknown label). So you know every other of its kind you find, too.
• Food is fresh when you set out (see Food).
• Weight. Nobody starts strained under their kit. An ordinary character starts unburdened, except for wealth and armour. A weak aristocrat may stagger under that purse, a small merchant under their wares, and a small or frail (elf, drow) warrior or paladin under their armour; drop what you can spare. The weakest of any race or class may start burdened. See Burden.
• Your birth sign gives nothing yet.

Scenarios

Every run you start from New run gives you your kit and nothing else. The Ascmearc’s start adds nothing on top. The summary lists it all before you start.

See also: Classes, Equipment, and Objects and your pack.