Leveling Up

The world of Pathfinder is a dangerous place, and your character will face terrifying beasts and deadly traps on their journey into legend. With each challenge resolved, a character earns Experience Points (XP) that allow them to increase in level. Each level grants greater skill, increased resiliency, and new capabilities, allowing your character to face even greater challenges and go on to earn even more impressive rewards.

Each time your character reaches 1,000 Experience Points, their level increases by 1. On your character sheet, indicate your character’s new level beside the name of their class, and deduct 1,000 XP from their XP total. If you have any Experience Points left after this, record them—they count toward your next level, so your character is already on their way to advancing yet again!

Next, return to your character’s class entry. Increase your character’s total Hit Points by the number indicated for your class. Then, take a look at the class advancement table and find the row for your character’s new level. Your character gains all the abilities listed for that level, including new abilities specific to your class and additional benefits all characters gain as they level up. For example, all characters gain four ability boosts at 5th level and every 5 levels thereafter.

You can find all the new abilities specific to your class, including class feats, right in your class entry, though you can also use class feats to take an archetype (page 219). Your character’s class entry also explains how to apply any ability boosts and skill increases your character gains. If they gain an ancestry feat, head back to the entry for your character’s ancestry in Chapter 2 and select another ancestry feat from the list of options. If they gain a skill increase, refer to Chapter 4 when deciding which skill to apply it to. If they gain a general feat or a skill feat, you can choose from the feats listed in Chapter 5. If they can cast spells, see the class entry for details on adding spell slots and spells. It’s also a good idea to review your character’s spells in Chapter 7 and see if there are heightened versions they can now cast.

Once you’ve made all your choices for your character’s new level, be sure to go over your character sheet and adjust any values that have changed. At a bare minimum, your proficiency bonuses all increase by 1 because you’ve gained a level, so your AC, attack rolls, Perception, saving throws, skill modifiers, spell attack rolls, and class DC all increase by at least 1. You might need to change other values because of skill increases, ability boosts, or class features that either increase your proficiency rank or increase other statistics at certain levels. If an ability boost increases your character’s Constitution modifier, recalculate their maximum Hit Points using their new Constitution modifier (typically this adds 1 Hit Point per level). If an ability boost increases your character’s Intelligence modifier, they become trained in an additional skill and language. Some feats grant a benefit based on your level, such as Toughness, and these benefits are adjusted whenever you gain a level as well.

You can perform the steps in the leveling-up process in whichever order you want. For example, if you wanted to take the skill feat Intimidating Prowess as your skill feat at 10th level, but your character’s Strength score was only 14, you could first increase their Strength score to 16 using the ability boosts gained at 10th level, and then take Intimidating Prowess as a skill feat at the same level.

Leveling-Up Checklist

Every time you gain a level, make sure you do each of the following:

• Increase your level by 1 and subtract 1,000 XP from your XP total.
• Increase your maximum Hit Points by the amount listed in your class entry in Chapter 3.
• Add class features from your class advancement table, including ability boosts and skill increases.
• Select feats as indicated on your class advancement table. For ancestry feats, see Chapter 2. For class feats, see your class entry in Chapter 3. For general feats and skill feats, see Chapter 5.
• Add spells and spell slots if your class grants spellcasting. See Chapter 7 for spells.
• Increase all of your proficiency bonuses by 1 from your new level, and make other increases to your proficiency bonuses as necessary from skill increases or other class features. Increase any other statistics that changed as a result of ability boosts or other abilities.
• Adjust bonuses from feats and other abilities that are based on your level.

Chapter 2: Ancestries & Backgrounds

Your character’s ancestry determines which people they call their own, whether it’s diverse and ambitious humans, insular but vivacious elves, traditionalist and family-focused dwarves, or any of the other folk who call Golarion home. A character’s ancestry and their experiences prior to their life as an adventurer—represented by a background—might be key parts of their identity, shape how they see the world, and help them find their place in it.

A character has one ancestry and one background, both of which you select during character creation. You’ll also select a number of languages for your character. Once chosen, your ancestry and background can’t be changed.

This chapter is divided into three parts:

• Ancestries express the culture your character hails from. Within many ancestries are heritages— subgroups that each have their own characteristics.

An ancestry provides ability boosts (and perhaps ability flaws), Hit Points, ancestry feats, and sometimes additional abilities.

• Backgrounds, starting on page 60, describe training or environments your character experienced before becoming an adventurer. Your character’s background provides ability boosts, skill training, and a skill feat.
• Languages, starting on page 65, let your character communicate with the wonderful and weird people and creatures of the world.

Ancestry Entries

Each entry includes details about the ancestry and presents the rules elements described below (all of these but heritages and ancestry feats are listed in a sidebar).

Hit Points

This tells you how many Hit Points your character gains from their ancestry at 1st level. You’ll add the Hit Points from your character’s class (including their Constitution modifier) to this number. For more on calculating Hit Points, see Step 7: Record Class Details, on page 25.

Size

This tells you the physical size of members of the ancestry. Medium corresponds roughly to the height and weight range of a human adult, and Small is roughly half that.

Speed

This entry lists how far a member of the ancestry can move each time they spend an action (such as Stride) to do so.

Ability Boosts

This lists the ability scores you apply ability boosts to when creating a character of this ancestry. Most ancestries provide ability boosts to two specified ability scores, plus a free ability boost that you can apply to any other score of your choice. For more about ability boosts, see page 20.

Ability Flaw

This lists the ability score to which you apply an ability flaw when creating a character of this ancestry. Most ancestries, with the exception of humans, include an ability flaw. For more about applying ability flaws, see page 20.

Languages

This tells you the languages that members of the ancestry speak at 1st level. If your Intelligence modifier is +1 or higher, you can select more languages from a list given here. More about languages can be found on page 65.

Traits

These descriptors have no mechanical benefit, but they’re important for determining how certain spells, effects, and other aspects of the game interact with your character.

Special Abilities

Any other entries in the sidebar represent abilities, senses, and other qualities all members of the ancestry manifest. These are omitted for ancestries with no special rules.

Heritages

You select a heritage at 1st level to reflect abilities passed down to you from your ancestors or common among those of your ancestry in the environment where you were born or grew up. You have only one heritage and can’t change it later. A heritage is not the same as a culture or ethnicity, though some cultures or ethnicities might have more or fewer members from a particular heritage.

Ancestry Feats

This section presents ancestry feats, which allow you to customize your character. You gain your first ancestry feat at 1st level, and you gain another at 5th level, 9th level, 13th level, and 17th level, as indicated in the class advancement table in the descriptions of each class.

Ancestry feats are organized by level. As a starting character, you can choose from only 1st-level ancestry feats, but later choices can be made from any feat of your level or lower. These feats also sometimes list prerequisites—requirements that your character must fulfill to select that feat.