A couple rules clarifications?
 

Hi, all. Just got the basic Munchkin (2010)! Reading through the rules, I'm confused about a couple of things I hope someone can clear up for me...

1. When a character dies, the rules say to lay out all your cards except active race and class (indicating your new character will start looking like your old one), to let the other players loot from you. Then discard all the rest.
Then it says when it's your next turn and you draw your 4 and 4, you can play any class and race cards.
Now, since you can play any class and race cards on your turn anyway, is this implying that your last race and class cards were discarded after the looting with everything else?

2. In the combat example in the rules, one of the cards the warrior discarded during Berzerk was a wandering monster card. I thought no card can be discarded from your hand. Does that mean he'd had the wandering monster card "in play" on the table (but turned sideways)?
Or can you discard anything from your hand?

Thanks for any help! :)

Re: A couple rules clarifications?
 

It's just making it clear that you can do those things at that time, if you choose to. If you like your Class or Race and want to keep what you have, you can. If you get something better that you like, you can replace what you have with the new stuff.

The rules say what cards you can discard to power a Class ability:

The Wizard must discard his entire hand (minimum 3 cards) in order to use his charm spell, and a Cleric must discard cards from his hand in order to resurrect, but in the general case (e.g., Wizard using flight spell, Warrior berserking, Cleric turning or Thief using theft or backstab), a player can discard cards from his hand or from those he has in play to power those abilities.

You can also not play cards like Wandering Monster to the table sideways. The only cards you can keep in play are Race, Class, Items and other cards which specifically say they may be kept in play. There are other cards that get to stay in play (handled under rules from expansions or other core sets) but Wandering Monster is not one of these.