Arcanum has no formal classes. Instead, characters are defined by their races and by their skills. The game includes humans plus a variety of familiar fantasy races such as elves, orcs, ogres, gnomes et al. Aside from humans, each of the others has inherent positive and negative qualities that are reflected as bonuses and penalties to various stats. Each character can also be give a history that confers additional bonuses and penalties.
Characters advance by gaining experience ad attaining levels.
They then receive character points that can be spent to increase primary or secondary stats as well as magic, tech or basic skills. In addition, there are three levels of training in various skills, with each level having more difficult requirements. Becoming a Beginner may only cost money while attaining Expert and Master status will require more effort. In the latter case, completion of quests may be necessary, and some of these may be mutually exclusive. For example completing a quest that requires you to kill the Melee Master will mean never attaining melee mastery.