>What are the major pros and of each and which is better for a
>beginner?

Don't look at it as casters vs melee, look at it as wand users, empowerment characters and non-empowerment/non-wand users.

Wand users are meant to be semi-scarce, so to be balanced you really need to obtain some combination of wands to compete. They can be difficult to survive with for a newbie. This is meant to keep the number of magi down, it's not a very good newbie class because of this except for transmuters and good-aligned conjurers and some shapeshifters who can get by without wands and are more newbie friendly. That being said, wand users have a lot of upper end power and survivability and typically don't require as much gear.

Empowerment characters require empowerment, which can be a nuisance (my last char waited on empowerment for 40 hours, sent notes, no response, etc). That being said, once you're empowered life is much easier as you're somewhere in between a non-empowerment char and a mage in terms of power/convenience.

Other characters like thieves, rangers, warriors, orcs, etc. are easy in the sense that they require very little in the means of prep and don't require any empowerment but they do rely on skill practice and gear more than priests (empowerment) and magi.

For a complete beginner, non-caster/non-empowerment is recommended, then empowerment, then magi.