Experience

Experience (EXP, XP) is part of the character progression system and a reward for Adventurers for completing objectives and achieving special conditions. Adventurers have certain properties that govern Experience and progression: XP, XP to level and Level.

When an Adventurer gains enough XP to meet or exceed their XP to level, the Adventurer's Level increments by 1 and the Adventurer gains a certain amount of Progression Points they can use to improve other areas of their build. Experience beyond the amount needed to level is carried over to the progress of the next level.

Glossary

Level
The Adventurer's character level, starts at 1, important value for determining the Adventurer's power.

XP to level
Defaulted to 1000, the Adventurer levels up when their XP meets or exceeds this number.

XP
This number increases when the Adventurer is rewarded for their efforts in a campaign. XP is subtracted by XP to level when the Adventurer levels up.

Starting level

If a Campaign starts at Level 1
All Adventurers should gain 10 Progression-Points, unless you intend to use the Scale by P-Points rule instead of Scale by Experience, in which case Adventurers will gain different amounts of P-Points based on their Race.

When a campaign begins and the starting level is NOT 1
Take the intended Level you wish to start all Adventurers (ex. 5), multiply by 1000 (5000). (All adventurers own at least one level regardless). This remains true regardless of which progress scaling rule is used. Due to the way different characters having different XP-to-level amounts, they may accrue more (in smaller races) or less (for larger races) levels than a Medium adventurer.

Experience to level by Size

When a Campaign is set to Scale by Experience, instead of modifying the number of Progression Points granted per level up, the amount of experience required to level up is raised or lowered instead. Typically, for every Size-Rating beyond 1, experience to level is increased by 100, until Huge-size, which then it increases by an additional 50 per rating. For Small and Tiny size, specific reductions are used instead. The chart below denotes the typical values used:

     Size             |   EXP to level
Medium* (Size 1)      |        1000
                      |
    Small             |        850
Tiny (or smaller)     |        600
                      |
 Large (Size 2)       |        1200
  Huge (Size 4)       |        1400
Gargantuan (Size 8)   |        1600
Colossal (Size 16+)   |        2000
Titanic (32+)         |        2800

All Adventurers are treated as 'Medium' for EXP multiplier when 'Scale by P-Points' is used instead of 'Scale by Experience'.

Experience Reward Examples

Session Attendance

• Reward: Very small (50 - 200)
• As long as a session is fun and productive, adding a small fixed experience bonus for each session will be helpful for letting characters continue progressing even if they are unable to gain other experience rewards.

Quest Complete

• Reward: Very Large
• Adventurers are granted a large chunk of experience upon completion of an important quest or story event. Considering the amount of time and effort one would have to do to complete such an objective, the best time to grant enough experience to give levels would be after a great effort.

Combat Concluded

• Reward: Variable, per unit, by encounter
• When Adventurers have engaged in combat, they are granted experience relative to the difficulty and outcome of that battle. Adventurers will often earn the most experience by surviving or defeating all opponents in a combat scenario.

Skill check

• Reward: Small
• Adventurers succeeding in difficult and unlikely skill checks that benefit them, their group and the story can be rewarded with small amounts of experience, up to a certain extent. At the GM's discretion.

Good Roleplay

• Reward: Small
• Adventurers may be rewarded a small amount of experience for making a good, concerted effort to roleplay their character in a campaign. As this is also at the GM's discretion, it is best to roleplay for roleplay-sake, rather than chase rewards.

Rules & Guidelines

GM's Discretion, Rule 0

• Experience rewards, both in the amounts and the timing, are decided by the GM at all times. While there are objective milestones such as the completion of a quest or concluding a battle, just because rewards such as 'Skill checks' and 'Good roleplay' exist does not meant the GM is duty-bound to provide. The GM can simply tell players when their character levels up and to what level they become, forgoing experience entirely.

Level Cap 20

• The current design of the game allows Adventurers to reach a Level of 20, it is the GM's discretion to whether an Adventurer can exceed Level 20 or not.

Scale by Experience vs. Scale by P-Points

• Scaling Experience gains changes the rate in which differently sized Adventurers will level up, whereas scaling by P-Points changes how impactful those level-ups are when they occur. Both, one or no rules may be enforced in a campaign, there is very little data to determine which policies are more fun or more effective, so do experiment!