Welcome to the forums! The character looks the same because all of the sprites are hand-drawn, rather than generated by 3d polygons that can be glued together. They did managed to get the weapon swing animations to use a staff/sword/axe/mace as appropriate (dagger and polearms got some custom animations!) since those just appear at the end of the arm for one particular move, but trying to change swing weapon/use wand/walk/eat/drink/etc while trying to put a Coat of Tweed (or One Armed Leather Jacket!) in front of the chest but behind the arms...would be a lot more work. It's better than using a @ for the character and d for diggle
Yeah, it's an enormous amount of work with little pay-off or benefit. It's why we don't even have two sets of skill icons (one for males, one for females).
