

By gaining a level, a character's abilities or stats will increase, making the character stronger and able to accomplish more difficult tasks, including safely battling stronger enemies, gaining access to more powerful abilities (such as spells or combat techniques), and to make, fix or disable more complex mechanical devices, or resolve increasingly difficult social challenges. To "level" or "level up" means to gain enough XP to reach the next level. In games derived from Dungeons & Dragons ( D&D), an accumulation of a sufficient number of experience points (XP) increases a character's "level", a number that represents a character's overall skill and experience. Not to be confused with Level (video gaming). Thus, as the player character strengthens from gaining experience, they are encouraged to accept new tasks that are commensurate with their improved abilities in order to advance. Alternatively, some games keep the number of experience points per level constant but progressively lower the experience gained for the same tasks as the character's level increases. As players gain more experience points, the amount of experience needed to gain abilities typically increases. In most games, as the difficulty of the challenge increases, the experience rewarded for overcoming it also increases. In some role-playing games, particularly those derived from Dungeons & Dragons, experience points are used to improve characters in discrete experience levels in other games, such as GURPS and the World of Darkness games, experience points are spent on specific abilities or attributes chosen by the player. Levelling up may also give the character access to more challenging areas or items. Such an event usually increases the character's statistics, such as maximum health, magic and strength, and may permit the character to acquire new abilities or improve existing ones. When a sufficient amount of experience is obtained, the character "levels up", achieving the next stage of character development.


In many RPGs, characters start as fairly weak and untrained. Experience points are generally awarded for the completion of missions, overcoming obstacles and opponents, and successful role-playing. A character in the roleplaying video game Legend of Grimrock who has 23373 experience points: they need 71006 points to reach the next levelĪn experience point (often abbreviated as exp or XP) is a unit of measurement used in some tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) and role-playing video games to quantify a player character's life experience and progression through the game.
