By default, Dead Souls uses body characteristics of different races
(e.g. ogres, deer, fish, human) to calculate all sorts of things...
combat effectiveness, learning proficiency, etc. Some of these
characteristics are "stats", like strength or intelligence.

For example, orcs can be formidable warriors because their
starting strength stats tend to be very high. In addition, 
strength is high in importance to the orc body...its "stat class",
or how important it is, is 1, which is the highest level of
importance. This means that orc players increase the strength
stat by one point every time they are promoted one player level.

Therefore an orc player who started with a strength stat of 40
would have a strength stat of 50 upon reaching level 11.

Humans, however, have a low starting strength and the human
stat class for strength is 3, meaning that human players get a
strength point added every 3 level promotions. A human with
a starting strength stat of 15 would, upon reaching level 11,
have reached a strength stat of 18.

This can seem a little unfair to a person that wants to play
a human warrior...and in a way it *is* somewhat unfair, since it's
entirely possible for there to be freakishly strong humans or
humans who devote themselves to becoming very very strong.

One way to make up for this is to use "customization points".
They allow you to add a small number of stat points to the
stats you feel are most important. But you only get 15 customization
points ever, and they go quick. And even if you use all of them
to jack up a stat...if that stat has a low stat class you'll
always be lagging behind.

For example, if our human warrior jacks up her strength from
15 to 30 by using up all her customization points in that stat,
she'll still be struggling somewhat against physically stronger
races of her same player level.

Similarly, orcs tend to have low starting intelligence and
a dismal intelligence stat class. This makes playing an orc
mage a torturous experience, such that it would be quite
rare to ever see a player choose that race and class combination.
But orc mages do exist in some settings, and making it practically
impossible seems a bit unfair.

Stat deviation is a way of helping make it possible to have
these unusual class and race combinations without torturing
players unnecessarily for them. Stat deviation is an alteration
of a player's stat class which allows them to gain stat points
more quickly than her racial defaults normally would allow. This
alteration comes at the cost of a percentage of experience points 
gained while so deviated.

For example, our human warrior princess could choose to deviate
her stat class from the default of 3 to a more favorable 2, 
allowing her to gain a strength point every other level, rather than
every third level.

Each deviation point comes at a 22% cost of XP gained, meaning that
once she deviates by one point, killing a monster that would normally
earn her 1000 XP now earns her 780 XP. If she wants to max out on 
the strength stat class and use 2 deviations on it, it'll cost her
44% of the XP she gains from then on, meaning a 1000 XP monster 
for her is now just worth 560 XP.

Clearly deviations are severely expensive, and will tend to slow
down a player's overall advancement, but they do offer the possibility
of playing the kind of race with the kind of class you prefer, facing
opponents with a more class appropriate set of attributes. Rather
than it being, for example, practically impossible to reach level
20 as an orc mage, and being nearly useless as an orc mage even at
that level, deviating right would actually *allow* you to reasonably
hope you could get to that level one day, and that at that level you
would actually be able to stand up to nearly-level-appropriate opponents.

Since deviation is something that involves your character's devotion
to improving herself and doing things in a way that is different from
others of her race, it makes sense that there is a cost (XP) but
also that it cannot be revoked. Once you deviate, you're a deviant
forever, so think long and hard before using the "deviate" command.
You may not miss the XP now, but you might miss them later, when you're
a mighty player and that 22% is now thousands of XP.

See also: deviate, customize, stat, score
