Character Growth,
or
Spending Experience Points
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Life experiences shape and change a character in many ways -- one of those ways is by sharpening their skills and honing their abilities. The longer a character is played, the more powerful they will get (unless they suffer losses such as permanent injury or magical afflictions). One of the downfalls of having a system of character growth is that many role-players then become focused only on advancing their character, and because many systems award experience points (the currency of growth) based on killing things, a predictable result ensues.
First let's outline the basic manner in which a character grows in Caradorian Role Playing.
Characters gain experience points through role-playing. This is the 'currency' the character will spend to advance.
These experience points can be spent on adding to the character through a few different ways.
Characters can advance up a level. This is a broad-brushed way of giving your character overall growth, because it advances a character's skills and abilities in moderate steps and keeps growth consistent on all fronts.
Characters can also advance up a rank on a specific skill. This allows a character to specialize and advance quickly in one or more areas.
Characters can purchase Special Skills to give them unusual but useful abilities. You can learn about Special Skills under Skills.
Characters can spend experience points to go up in one or more of their ability statistic scores or rolled and compiled statistic scores.
The ST will award experience points based on your interaction with the world. In other words, if you arrive at a village and walk through it without saying a word to anyone, you'll gain little experience, but if you talk to people, get into a fight, save someone, or solve a mystery, you'll be doing a lot more interacting, and thus gain more experience. This does not mean that you have to get involved with everything that comes your way - just that as a character, you're going to have the most fun, learn the most, and gain the most experience if you interact with your environment.
Go ahead and use the links at the top of the page to spend your experience points. Or save them for future use. Remember that you can also buy skill slots with experience points -- you can learn about that in Skills.
Now your character is done. All you need is a name (if you want some examples, you can look in the Storytelling Compendium where you'll find some name lists.) Then, get ready for adventure! Your ST will be crafting some amazing stories which will host you as the central character. And take time to write us and tell us how you like the role-playing system, and tell us about your adventures! If it's going to be some time before the ST is ready to start you adventuring, explore the site and learn more about the lands, creatures, and magics of Carador.