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 I like that idea!  That way characters can start out with a little food, clothing, etc.
 I think it would also be nice to have a wildcard value (like 0?) for the race and class, so that if an item is in the starting_items table with a race of 0, all new characters of the given class would get the item.  The SQL would look something like
 
 select item_id from starting_items where (class = <actual class> or class=0) and (race = <actual race> or race=0);
 
 That might help keep the table a little easier to manage.
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