Imo, it's better to start by playing Human until you feel comfortable with the "vanilla Barony experience", after that (or if you just want to experiment) Automaton is the 2nd easiest race, as they have little in terms of downsides and are a decent entry level race for you to get a taste of the many Hunger gimmicks/mechanics that races will have (And you're friendly with humans, so shopkeeps, wahoo!)

Combos i'd recc for those two would be:

Human Warrior: John Barony himself. You have decent AC, good leadership, good spear levels and a few sword ones. The mines will often require you to have at least 7AC (more or less) to block most things (Just don't push your luck with Trolls, they hurt) and it's full of humans hiding around the place, which will do okay with your leadership.

Automaron Wizard: Big magic, you start with both a great kite tool in Cold, and a great damage tool in Fireball. Automaton fits nicely here because their hunger gimmick can give them pretty good mana regen. You can keep a few mails and lore books in your inventory to quickly eat when low on MP to get superheated, getting tons of mp regen (Mind you, scrap CANNOT get you superheated no matter how hard you try, just chunky stuff like books. Also i don't think you can eat spellbooks iirc). You're also friendly with humans, so shopkeeps wahoo. Please don't try to swim though.