Echeladder Rungs
Players gain experience points (XP) as they go through their adventures, tracked over the course of the session. At specific increments of XP they progress to the next level.
Whenever you gain a level, you move onto the next echeladder rung:
Take your hit die average and add it to your hit dice column. Your current and max HP goes up by this. If your Constitution goes up, it retroactively increases all previous hit dice additions too.
You gain a sum of boondollars (check the table in the next section).
At levels 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 20, you gain 2 stat points and 3 skill points you can distribute wherever you wish. No stat can be raised above 20, and no skill can be raised above its stat mod.
At every even level, starting at 2, you gain one Step from Pillars and Paths.
If you are a psion or hybrid, or you have certain specs/Steps, you might learn additional abilitechs and/or subpowers. See those relevant sections for more info.
At levels 3, 7, 9, 13, and 15, you gain one Decor.
At levels 3, 9, and 15, you gain a Stage, which lets you augment your skills further with Expertise (hone a single skill) or Polymath (gain extra skill points).
At levels 5, 10, 15, and 20, your Proficiency bonus is increased by 1.
At levels 5, 11, 17, and 19, you gain a Specialization.
Player Tier and Session Length
Player tier is a rough grouping of levels based on what tier alchemy the player can expect to have at any given level. This is typically used by SMs when assigning EXP, among other uses.
Players don’t have a use for player tier per se, except when it comes to Session Length.
Session length represents the expected levels at which the session expects to start its endgame.
| Character Experience Thresholds | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Level | XP need | XP total | Tier | BDs | Level | XP need | XP total | Tier | BDs |
| 1 | 30 | 30 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 1595 | 5235 | 3 | 15950 |
| 2 | 100 | 130 | 1 | 800 | 12 | 1885 | 7120 | 3 | 18850 |
| 3 | 120 | 250 | 1 | 1200 | 13 | 2030 | 9150 | 3 | 21750 |
| 4 | 140 | 390 | 1 | 1600 | 14 | 2700 | 11850 | 4 | 24300 |
| 5 | 300 | 690 | 1/2 | 2400 | 15 | 2970 | 14820 | 4 | 29700 |
| 6 | 330 | 1020 | 2 | 3000 | 16 | 3510 | 18330 | 4 | 35100 |
| 7 | 360 | 1380 | 2 | 3600 | 17 | 3780 | 22110 | 4 | 40500 |
| 8 | 390 | 1770 | 2 | 4200 | 18 | 11200 | 33310 | 5 | 56000 |
| 9 | 420 | 2190 | 2 | 4800 | 19 | 14000 | 47310 | 5 | 84000 |
| 10 | 1450 | 3640 | 3 | 13050 | 20 | n/a | n/a | 5 | 112000 |
For example, if a session is advertised as being length 1, it expects players to get to level 4 by the time it begins to end. It’s not exact, there are length 1 sessions that end at level 6, or a length 3 that ends at 12. It’s a loose approximation.
That said, for players that like to plan their builds, session length helps frame how many Steps they should expect, and the like.