Gaining HP per level depends upon sublevels
 

After numerous restarts, I've confirmed this idea.

Say you're a warrior who has no mental skill he can gain experience on, and all you do is level up using physical exp. Chances are, despite your constitution, you'll gain about 8-10 HP per level. However, if you have a nifty mental exp you can gain experience on, such as woodlore, or writing, and you use it in moderation with another skill such as physique, then you can gain a lot more HP like 10-13.

So try and level up on a 1:1 ratio with your other skill for the first few levels if you want lots of HP

Erm, you can gain levels in your skills like Mental, Wisdom, Magic, Agility, etc... and Also in general which is all of them added to gether. So you can be level 4 in every thing, and be a level 6 in total from all the exp in each catagory.

When you level up you get a random ammount of experience added to your character. When you level up a particular type of experience, sometimes you will get a benifit from it (more SP, lower WC, etc.).

Where the experience goes after killing something depends on which skill you have readied (which means, for example, that sorcerers can cast a spell, turn on their sword, and get physique experience). Say /skills to see your list of skills.

So if I was skilled enough, I could fire an arrow at an already badly wounded skelenton, (bind find traps to, I dunno, 7) press 7 and then get dexterity exp...

Exactaly, or join a party and keep that skill activated or... use icestorm (don't ask me why) and kill things. After you cast bind a skill and you will gain exp in those areas

(this might work for buring hands since it works the same way (not sure though))

oh and I haven't tested this in a while, but give it a shot :P