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Does this actually bear any resemblance to how you dream up characters in D&D by the way? All I seem to remember when my brother and his mates played it was much dice rolling and reference to books with monsters on the covers.
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The book you would use is the Player's Guide. It has all the information about alignments, races, classes, abilities, weapons, armor, etc. The Monster Manual has all the info about various creatures in the game, from regular animals to Zombies. When making a character, you pick race, ONE class, and the alignment, then you start coming up with the stats.
Alignments sometimes must be decided by class or race. Elves have a natural leaning towards being chaotic. Dwarves are distinctly Lawful. Druids must be Neutral in at least one alignment. Paladins are almost always Lawful Good. Half orcs tend to lean towards Evil, but not necessarily so. Clerics must be the same alignment as their deity.
Your basic stats go to Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. These are decided by rolling a d20 (20 sided die) 9 times, and then removing the lowest three. (Depending the DM, and what the character is for- I recently made a one time use level 20 character for a solo campaign, so had a little extra leeway with my dice rolls.) Then you assign the rolls to where you think you'll need them.
Examples: Bards require high charisma scores, mages require high intellegence and wisdom scores, clerics need high wisdom, fighters need high strentgh and constitution, rogues and theives need high dexterity, etc.
Also, certain races get bonuses and penalties to these stats. Half orcs get bonuses to strength, but penalties to dexterity, gnomes get bonuses to intelligence, but penalties to strength, etc.
You also have a skill set hat needs choosing, and a certain ammount of points you can ascribe to each skill. Some skills are Search, Look, Listen, Persuasion, Knowledge (Particular field), Ride, Climb, Swim, etc... Some are class skills, like Animal Empathy is a Druidic class skill. Also, certain races get bonuses to these. Elves and half-elves get bonuses to Look, Search and Spot. (Comes in handy when looking for hidden doors in a dungeon.)
Then, of course, comes armor. Heavy armor comes with panalties to dexterity, but has the obvious plus of being impenetrable. Your armor type may depend on your class. For example, Clerics don't need to move alot, they just need to stand there, cast spells and heal everybody. So, the heavier that armor for them, the better. Druids are forbidden from using worked metal in anything, so they have to use light armor. Rogues and thieves obviously don't want heavy armor, and may opt for the protection of medium armor.
Weapons also have certain advantages and disadvantages. If you give your character two weapons, they must be Ambidextrous (a Feat, which is in a whole other category.) Or the could have a weapon and a sheild. Some weapons, like the quater staff require two hands.
Basically, there are many different combinations to think about when creating a character. The dice rolls are a very small part of it. There is endless possibilty for making a truly unique character, and infinite room to go about problems and tasks in anyway you want. It's a game about improvising solutions and strategies, which is why it has such a big appeal to "nerds" (ie, intellectual types).