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Here is "Real Beginner Strategy", a thread from the forum. It was written by NeilStevens. Almost all comments by others from the original thread have been deleted. (We have permission from LD.)
Text of the Thread
If you're new to ToME, understand that your characters are going to die a lot. Be prepared for that. In fact, take advantage of it by using the various characters you run to experiment and learn the game's various facets.
Try a warrior. A Dunadan Swordmaster is an excellent combination of race and class.
Try a priest. A Rohan Knight Paladin gives you some magic to go with strong combat, but your terrible stealth will give you a tougher time in some respects.
Try an archer. A Wood-elf Archer will have fewer hitpoints than you're used to, but lets you use excellent ranged combat instead. Also note how your higher stealth wakes up fewer monsters, letting you fight them more on your own terms.
Try a mage. A Dark-elf Mage lets you keep using weapons, while getting a taste of the various magic schools. You have even fewer hitpoints, though, so beware.
Try another mage. A Hobbit Sorceror is a fun character, but the hitpoint penalties make you need to be very careful. You get high-powered magic, though, to more than make up for it.
Try a Loremaster. Summoners, Possessors, and other exotic classes are drastically different from the usual Angband classes. Once you know how the game works, you can use them to their fullest.
And make sure to read the parchment you start the game with!
After you've played the game a bit, and gotten familiar with the world of ToME, it becomes time to learn more about your own character. Press C to get to the character screen.
Your characters six statistics get the most attention:
Strength affects carrying capacity, digging ability, melee combat damage, and number of weapon blows, and more.
Intelligence affects Spell Points, magic failure rates, magic-device failure rates, and more.
Wisdom can also affect Spell Points (the higher of Int and Wis takes effect), prayer failure rates, saving throw, and more.
Dexterity affects armor class, disarming ability, number of weapon blows, and more.
Constitution affects Hit Points, poison resiliency, and more.
Charisma affects bard spells, shop prices, and probably more.
These are important, but not everything. The abilities are important, too:
Saving Throw affects how monster spells that target you will take effect. Whether you be blinded, confused, paralyzed, or damaged is affected by this. Note that it doesn't affect damage from magic bolts or balls or breaths. It only affects the spells that monsters point at you and curse to cast (causing wounds is how it appears in the monster memory).
Stealth affects how easily you will wake up sleeping monsters by walking through the dungeon. A few types of monsters are always awake (Zephyr hounds are most notable in that department), but many sleep a lot (including Dragons).
These two abilities are largely affected by your class and race, but can also be affected by skills (Spirituality and Stealth respectively) and tactics. Tactics are available on the C screen. Press t and e repeatedly, and see what happens.
One big question a beginner is faced with is: How many (random) optional quests to choose?
I think this is another area where the beginner should mix it up. The early items from princesses are a great benefit to beginners, but coming to rely on those can be a problem when it comes time to enter Angband and the real nasty quests begin.
Also, high counts, especially, 98 quests can be very frustrating for a beginner when it puts an especially difficult quest on level 1 or 2. Wormtongue at level 1 is pretty mcuh instant death for many classes.
Comment by Lord Dimwit:
I would just add that for those who get frustrated in the early levels and want to run a more powerful character that I think the three easiest combinations are probably the Zombie RohanKnight Unbeliever, the Thunderlord (or Vampire Half-Ogre) Sorceror, and the High-Elf (or Deathmold if you can figure it out) Possessor. Also might want to try a priest of Eru or Tulkas. Most of these have low stealth, but should be pretty easy to play up to around level 30. And they offer an attractive range of experiences for the new player.
[Comment advising race with higher hit dice for beginning sorcerors, deleted.]
They're going to die no matter what combo they use. But notice the progression I used: I started with lots of hit points, and gradually decreased them. Playing a few hobbit sorcerors wouldn't hurt them.
I think playing an occasional low-HP character will probably improve one's gameplay. Teaching caution and tactics out of necessity instead of just running out and hacking things to bits.
[Comment that some races get better stealth, deleted.]
Maybe it is, but I said rohan knight specifically so the beginner would get a taste of POOR stealth.
[Comment on save-file scumming, deleted.]
If you're going to cheat, be honest about it and turn on the cheat options in the options, please.
It's just a game, so cheating is no crime. That's why those perfectly honest cheat options exist. 
Chatter
Suggestion: Some of the posts should also be merged with GeneralDiscussion/What is a good starting character?
MayLith: There are three places on the wiki that have similiar content:
- this thread
Merging/munging/refining some or all of it makes sense. How much of it should actually go into Documentation, I'm not sure.
(Actually, there's a 4th place: LD's advanced strategy guide, but that is completely spoily and should, imho, be left out of any of this.)
....later.... I just copied a fair amount of this over to the FAQ.