By that logic, I should use Shalore for Dexterity-based characters and Thalore for Willpower-based characters, which to me is kind of ass-backwards since I am used to picking a race based on their stat bonuses and not their racial abilities. You can blame Dungeons and Dragons and that glorious bastard Gary Gygax for that. My apologies, it's just that I tend to be a creature of habit.
Any race can do any class decently well (well, except undead and wilders unless you muck around with the code a bit), but yeah, the racial stats outside of XP penalty and life rating are pretty much irrelevant past level one or two, frankly. Most of the racial stat modifiers are less than what you'd get from a middling ego. They're there, but the difference in the long run is maybe a point or two of foopower or something. Not much.
Thalore actually are one of the go-to willpower class races, though. Shalore make fine anything, really, and of the dex based ones the only one that
maybe isn't benefited whole heartedly by their talents is bulwark. 10% passive crit chance boost, timeless, and a nice global buff make everything better, heh. Downside being if you go AM with a shalore you lose out on timeless (and the first tier, I guess), iirc, which... yeah, less than optimal.
Doable, but less than optimal.
To be honest with you I don't see that as a reason to make my characters short, hairy manic-depressive alcoholics that for the most part hate arcane magicks and aren't waifu material.
Dwarves are actually kinda' okay (comparatively, anyway) with magic in T4, and in general aren't really much like DF dwarves (outside of the digging too deep part). No opinion on the waifu part, all @s look the same to me
I don't mind squishy characters to begin with because I've grown accustomed to playing such a character. Therefore I usually ignore the Life attribute when making a choice of what race to use for my characters.
Yeah, once you get used to playing low health races, it's not that bad. That said, life rating makes pretty noticeable difference. Hundred+ extra HP by the end game can mean you didn't get one-shot, heh.