Experience points are essentially a numerical value placed upon what you've learned. The most common ways to get exp. are to overcome encounters (not necessarily via combat), completing tasks and quests, and by role playing your character well. Now, if you look at the basic information page for the guild you joined, you'll notice a chart in the upper-right. This is the experience table. Once you've acumulated enough experience to attain the next level, you're allowed to train. Let's take an example of a Thief, for continuity's sake. For a Thief to get to level 2, he'd need 225 exp. Now, after a long journey, the GM awards everyone their experience points, and our thief winds up getting 200 exp. He's just *barely* short of that level, so he talks the GM into running a small side adventure to get the last little bit of exp. Nothing much, just going out and "acquiring" the money he'd need to gain his level. You see, he wound up a little short in the coin department as well. And so, our thief has begun wandering the streets, looking as normal as possible while practicing his profession all the while. After a little bit, he acquires a bit of extra cash, and the GM decides that he earned the 25 exp he needed to gain that level. And so, off he goes to his guild to train. To train to level 2 costs him 22 Gold, and 5 Silver, which he managed to get from his travels, as well as his little side quest. This training period is also refered to as an "experience soak". And so, to represent what he learned while training, as well as from his adventures, he takes a look at the section on the guild sheet labeled Perks. On there it says that he gets 4 points added to his max Thief skill, 2 to his Accuracy, 4 to Dodge, and 2 to Diplomacy. he also gets an additional 1D60 HP, and a +2 to his equipment level. This last one lets him wear better armor without incurring penalties. For more about equipment level, take a look at this page. As if all of this weren't enough, any time a character gains a level, they gain 5 base stat points, and a number of skill points equal to the level they just reached. So, our thief has 5 more points to put twards his base stats, perhaps purchasing a new Character Trait, or even improving a pre-existing one. Because some traits that are allowed to be taken cost more than 5 points, you ARE allowed to save your points, but you're only allowed to spend them during a soak.
Note: You don't have to be gaining a level to soak exp. It's essentially a dead time during the game where players get to level up their characters if necessary, or simply take a small break from adventuring. All a soak does is take your unspent exp., and make it official as part of your total exp. with a certian guild. Also, you cannot gain two levels in the same guild at once. When soaking, you may place no more experience in a guild than one point short of a second level. Again, you don't have to gain a level evey time you soak in your exp. so you're welcome to come as close as you want to that second level, so long as you don't actually get it. you are, however, permitted to gain one level in multiple guilds at once. When you do so, you get the base skill bonuses, the base stat points, and the skill points of all of the guilds you level up in, but only the HP, SP, and equipment level bonuses from your highest one. If it's a tie, than chose one.
Back to our thief, he chose to put his 5 base stat points into his dexterity, which also changes the numbers that some of his base skills are figured off of. thus, he gets to add a couple of points to the maximums of any of the base skills that are influenced by dexterity. A shorthand rule is this: every 5 points a stat goes up is 2½ points for the coresponding base skills. He also found that his Pick Pocket skill was lacking a bit, so he focused on improving it in training, and thus put both of his skill points twards it, improving it by 10%, since it's a General Skill. Since he's still relatively inexperienced, he's focusing on the basics of his job, saving the branching out for later levels, when he'll have the skill points to do so.
The idea of starting with a higher leveled character may be appealing, but it can also be much more difficult in the short term. There's a lot of math involved. Reguardless... the first thing to do is determine what the starting exp. will be. A flat level won't do, because the different guilds have different experience progression charts. Also, it allows characters to take levels in other guilds, wether it just be adventurer, or if they start with the money to join a third guild. Another benefit is that you get to choose the exact progression that your character took, and thus almost custom-pick your HP, SP, and equipment level bonuses from leveling. Furthermore, you get to spend all of the character points and skill points as if you always had them, thus allowing you to create a better character than you could if you progressed him normally. Of course, you miss out on some of the possible finds you could have had on the journey, but there's always got to be a tradeoff, right? Besides, your GM might give you a few goodies to simulate stuff you've found on the adventures your character had beforehand. Or, maybe just ease up a bit on the Heirloom restrictions, and not force them to be inherited, but rather, treasures that were found. One way or the other, many choices open up that weren't easily there before.
