Experience Points (Rules) (GM Core)

As characters adventure, they earn Experience Points (XP). These awards come from achieving goals, completing social encounters, exploring new places, fighting monsters, overcoming hazards, and other deeds. You have a great deal of control over when the characters gain XP, though the following guidelines are what you're expected to give out in a standard campaign. Normally, when a player character reaches 1,000 XP or more, they level up, reduce their XP by 1,000, and start progressing toward the next level, though you can choose to advance your players more quickly or slowly if it suits your group. These other means of advancement are noted in the Advancement Speeds sidebar below. Advancement Speeds By varying the amount of XP it takes to gain a level, you can change how quickly characters gain power. The game rules assume a group playing with standard advancement. Fast advancement works best when you know you won't be playing a very long campaign and want to accomplish as much as possible quickly; slow advancement works best for a gritty campaign where all progress is hard-won. You can alter XP from one adventure to the next to get a different feel. During a street-level murder mystery and travel through a haunted skyscraper, you might use slow advancement. When the PCs reach the dungeon, you might switch to standard or fast advancement. The values below are just examples. You can use values even higher or lower. Advancement Speed XP to Level Up Fast 800 XP Standard 1,000 XP Slow 1,200 XP Story-Based Leveling If you don't want to deal with managing and handing out XP, or if you want to have progression based solely on events in the story, you can ignore the XP process entirely and instead simply have the characters level up at storyappropriate moments. Generally, the characters should gain a level every three to four game sessions, just after the most appropriate big event that happens during that time, such as defeating a significant villain or achieving a major goal.