Experience points (XP) are designed to represent how the players experiences improve their characters. That being said, the traditional Fantasy RPG really encourages players to murder everything and steal anything not nailed down for its gold value. These “Murder Hobos” are missing out on the rewards of good game play.
Players gain experience for the flowing.
Killing Things – each monster has a listed XP value. This doesn’t include treasure.
Avoiding Unnecessary Violence – resolving an encounter without killing yields the same XP.
Treasure – characters get 1 XP for each 1 Gold Piece value of non-magical treasure that they recover.
Great Role playing – reward players with 100 XP when they add to the role playing experience in character.
For successfully executing a plan, like locating and disarming traps, executing an ambush, or creating a diversion: 250 XP per player
For failing to execute a plan, 100 XP per player
Experience for an encounter (battle or otherwise) is divided evenly amongst the whole party.
Note: hirelings do not gain experience. They are rewarded with a salary and/or a share of the treasure.
Dungeon Masters should give out Heroic Points as rewards for good role playing.
One Level at a Time
A character cannot gain more than one level of experience in one adventure. Beware if this occurs; it is a sign that you are giving out far too much treasure. In the event that this happens, the character in question would gain just enough experience to not exceed the requirement for the next level.
You Leveled Up, Now What?
Once a character has collected enough experience points to advance to the next level, referencing the character’s class page. Leveling up will open new options for players, more hit points, better skills, more mana, and an improved ability focus.
Each character class page has a call-out to their advancement changes for the first few levels.
At each new level, a character gains 1 additional hit dice of hit points (plus their constitution bonus). Each class description lists the hit die to roll.
For example: A Barbarian with a Constitution of +3 would roll 1d12 +3 each time they go up a level and add it to their total hit points.
