Praise and tangible rewards are two tried and true payoffs of the role-playing experience. The third is experience points, or XP. 

Experience is earned in four major ways in The Broken Hourglass:

-    Completing quests, or a portion of a quest
-    Defeating opponents in combat
-    Listening to dialogue
-    Exploring areas

Under the standard rules in The Broken Hourglass, when characters reach certain experience point thresholds, they become eligible to level up. The process is similar to the concepts of "classes" or "levels" in other systems, but with a twist reflecting the point-buy underpinnings of the system.

Advancement is managed with level "paths." These paths represent a template of study, behavior, or personal focus roughly analogous to a character "class." Paths include the Scout, the Diplomat, the Marauder, and the Soldier. Paths automatically buy traits and points in primarily attributes and secondary skills to reflect the priorities expressed by the path--for instance, characters following a Diplomat path invest heavily in social skills. The player character may employ any path the player wishes to follow (or no path at all--see below for more details).

Joinable NPCs, on the other hand, have certain preferences and opinions about the way they should manage their personal development. Halima, who has devoted most of her young life to the study and advancement of her magical talents, will not consent to follow the Soldier path--it is simply too far from her interests. Meanwhile, Nekos the gladiator has little interest in becoming a spellcaster. Some NPCs can be convinced to explore different paths as you get to know them and they see new opportunities for themselves, however.

Here's how a level path works:

-    A chime and text alert goes off when a character crosses an XP threshold to the next level.
-    The player may change the path the character will follow at this time, or at any time during play.
-    The player clicks the "Level Up" button.
-    At this time, the level path takes over. Level paths divide the available total experience into three pools: a trait pool, an attribute pool, and a free-spend pool. The percentage shares of each of these pools varies from path to path. Typically, the trait and attribute pools add up to somewhere between 65 and 80 percent of total XP.
-    First, the path buys traits. Each path has a list of traits associated with that path, and the path attempts to buy them in order. For instance, the Diplomat path will first attempt to buy the Knowledge Seeker trait, which provides a bonus to experience earned from exploration and dialogue. Next on the list is the Street Smarts trait, which improves survivability in urban areas. If a character already has a trait (from a previous purchase), the path moves along to the next trait.
-    When no more trait experience can be spent, either because the trait pool has been depleted or there are no more traits left to buy with a small enough cost, the remaining experience in the trait pool, if any, is added to the attribute pool.
-    The path now spends experience from the attribute pool to buy points in attributes and skills. Each path has a list of attributes, along with a "weight" or "share" associated with each. A simplified example is below:

Simple Fighter Path
Strength: 50%
Health: 25%
Sword Precision: 25%

-    In that example, the fighter leveling up would spend one point on Health and one point on Sword Precision for every two points spent on Strength. So the character automatically spends experience in each category relevant to his or her development path, using a weighted formula.
-    After this step, the player may now freely spend the remaining experience points in free point buy mode. Remember, paths will typically leave at least 20% of the available experience points for free spend, plus any points which are not spent on attributes from the attribute pool due to rounding. In this way, even strong-minded NPCs can be nudged to suit your playing style, if you really believe Halima needs to know how to throw a better uppercut. Or you can use free-spend to further strengthen the core focus of the path. The choice is yours.
-    One special path is not actually a path at all because it spends no points--the "freeform" or "pure point buy" setting. This setting is appropriate for players who want ultimate personal control over the development of a character. The player character (protagonist) is the only character eligible to use freeform development, since the protagonist character should be allowed to reflect the player's own preferences whenever possible.

The Broken Hourglass level path system provides a careful balance of point-buy flexibility and character class convenience, preserving the best characteristics of each. There will be over 20 paths to choose from in the game, offering a variety of customization options for each NPC and a host of choices and development opportunities for the player character. Note that you may change paths at every level-up if you so wish (there is no "multiclassing penalty") and the player character may elect to use freeform development and paths interchangeably.

Next week, in our Inside the Engine column, we will continue discussing level paths and demonstrate how to create a new level path and introduce it into the game using the game's built-in functions.