Your starting Class in Demon's Souls is not a straitjacket. The term used in character creation is your "Origin", and it determines your initial attribute allocations (starting stats), your starting Soul Level, and your initial equipment.
You can eventually upgrade your stats in such a way that you are able to use any type of weapon, armor, or magic, but this will be many hours into your first character. Go with a character that has stats and equipment that lean naturally towards how you are interested in playing right from the beginning of the game and upgrade your stats to support that role.
The character classes:
| Class | Vit | Will | End | Str | Dex | Magic | Faith | Luck | Starting Soul Level |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Knight | 10 | 11 | 11 | 14 | 10 | 10 | 11 | 7 | 4 |
| Priest | 13 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 8 | 8 | 13 | 8 | 6 |
| Thief | 10 | 13 | 10 | 9 | 14 | 10 | 8 | 15 | 9 |
| Magician | 9 | 15 | 10 | 9 | 11 | 15 | 6 | 11 | 6 |
| Temple Knight | 11 | 8 | 13 | 14 | 12 | 6 | 13 | 7 | 4 |
| Soldier | 14 | 9 | 12 | 12 | 11 | 8 | 10 | 10 | 6 |
| Wanderer | 10 | 10 | 11 | 11 | 15 | 9 | 7 | 13 | 6 |
| Barbarian | 15 | 7 | 13 | 15 | 9 | 11 | 8 | 11 | 9 |
| Royal (Royalty) | 8 | 12 | 8 | 9 | 12 | 13 | 12 | 7 | 1 |
| Hunter | 12 | 10 | 13 | 11 | 12 | 8 | 8 | 12 | 6 |
Stats:
* Vitality - Raises Maximum HP and Maximum Carrying Weight
* Will - Raises Maximum MP and number of Magic memorization slots
* Endurance - Raises Maximum Stamina, Maximum Equipped Weight, and Fire, Poison, and Bleed Resistance
* Strength - Increases Physical Damage, required for many weapons and shields
* Dexterity - Increases Physical Damage, increases 'safe landing' (reduces falling damage), required for many weapons
* Magic - Increases Magic power, required for some weapons
* Faith - Increases Miracle power, and number of Miracle memorization slots, Magic Damage resistance, required for some weapons
* Luck - Increases Item drop rates and Disease Resistance
*To prevent unbalanced characters, every stat increase also increases physical defense equally. In effect, as your soul level increases, so does your physical defense, regardless of how the character develops.
Note: "Soul Level" is your "Experience Level".
Each time you increase a stat you gain a Soul level. The higher your Soul Level, the more each stat point costs from the Maiden in Black. Each Soul Level in the chart at the following link shows how many souls it will cost to increase any stat based on your current Soul Level. The maximum value for any stat is 99, which shows that the maximum possible Soul Level is 712 (8 stats all increased to 99 = 792, minus the implied 80 free starting stat points).
Chart of Soul Levels and soul costs to upgrade.
Each "Origin" starts with 80 points total in stats plus the equivalent of their Soul level in extra pre-allocated stat increases to get the starting stats and starting soul level you see in the above chart. For example, a Royal starts with 81 total stats points, a Knight with 84 total stats points, and a Thief with 89 total stats points. The Royal origin starts at level 1 with less total stats, but minimum souls cost to start increasing. Meanwhile, a Thief starts at level 9, with 8 more starting stat points, but the next point increase costs about 4x as much as a Royal's, because of that headstart.
