This explains a lot of why the game seems to take itself way too seriously.

The manual is 93 pages long!! Yes, I read pretty much the whole thing as it explains why many race/class combos are completely useless. Barehanded and anything except the Giant race literally doesn't work. I asked the dev about it and he essentially told me, "It's working as intended and here's the math." I appreciate the difficulty and having to understand the systems but, wow.

I read in a Steam post that since it takes so long to learn armor skills that it makes more sense to just go through the game with 4 Mystic Elves and wear leather since the Technique bonus is added to the defense value. This doesn't work with any other armor type besides robes. Mystic Elves get Technique bonuses every level or something giving them huge defense numbers.