what in the world is lore? and how come it varies so much on all my characters?

Exactly what its sounds like. Knowledge about different things.
Acctually, the only thing it does is enabling you to identify items without using the spell. For us lazy people [img]smile.gif[/img]

It varies because different classes gets different amount of lore (I mean, how the hell can a barbarian know how the STaff of >Magi works). Wisadom and Inteelignce also affects your lore

Wisdom give greater bonuses to lore than intelligence. Bards have the highest lore of all the characters, with mages (I think) coming in second. The higher your lore the better chance you have of identifying stuff. This is nice b/c you don't have to waste spell slots on identify spells or carry around scrolls, but you can use the stuff you find right away.

lore bonuses are the same for both intelligence and wisdom, bards gain 5 lore per level (to represent their listening in taverns and other information gathering techniques); mages read alot and do quite a bit of research for various spells, so they get 3 per level; thieves also get 3 per level due to their strong desire, not only to know how everything works, but to better understand and evade traps of a magical nature; whereas priests and fighters only get 1 per level: fighters (to include paladins and rangers) are more interested in honing their physical abilities than learning how magic works; and priests tend towards(not in all cases of course) teaching commoners and converting them to the belief of their god, not listening to folk lore about "the magick sword of cutchamuch that beheaded 3 goblins in one swing."