Character advancement is the process whereby a character, particularly a player character, increases in skill and ability. Advancement is a game mechanical process, divided into two types: an increase in the width of a character's capability (by gaining new traits or abilities), and an increase in the depth of a character's capability (improving the traits they already have, usually by increasing the numbers of their statistics).
Character advancement is one of the main ways of ensuring that the play experience for a specific character remains novel for that character's player, with new rules and play styles unlocked only after the player has had a chance to interact with the character's existing rules. As such, games usually use some means of pacing character advancement. Historically, the most common of these pacing mechanisms is the accumulation of experience points (either by the character, the player, or the group as a whole), but other pacing mechanisms including milestones and per session (or equivalent) increases are also used. Many traditional role-playing games had characters each advancing at their own rate (e.g. collecting experience points based on their individual actions), but increasingly games have character advancing at the same or similar paces in order to prevent any specific players from having un-fun experiences if they fall behind (or get too far ahead).
Examples[]
Some ways that characters can advance in role-playing games include:
- Gaining a level
- Spending character points
- Spending skill points
- Testing for increases in skills used in tests