Progression
Progression covers how characters grow, including experience, levels, feat tiers, feat choices, mastery bonuses, and attribute improvements.
Leveling up
Your character level rises as you accumulate experience points, and 20 is the highest level you can reach. Levels beyond 20 belong to legendary and divine beings alone.
Experience is earned through:
- Skill checks, which pay whether they succeed or fail, and pay more against harder difficulties, as described on Dice rolls
- Combat victories, where elites and bosses are worth far more than ordinary foes
- Completing major story milestones
- Certain item consumption and crafting actions
Experience from a kill is never split with your party, so you earn the full amount even when a companion lands the killing blow. Party members earn their own full share on top of yours, while followers who accompany you without joining the party earn half, and either only while they are close enough to take part, as described on Party.
When you level up, you receive attribute improvement points at specific levels, feat choices from your class and skill trees, and potential access to new subclass options. Your level also opens the rarity of gear the world will hand you and the belt slots you can fill, as described on Equipment.
Feat tiers
Feats are organized into seven tiers, from weakest to strongest:
- Initiate
- Novice
- Adept
- Expert
- Master
- Legendary
- Mythic
Not all feats in a tier are equal for every use, since a Mythic defensive feat might be weaker in offense than an Expert offensive feat, so choose based on your playstyle rather than purely by tier.
Class feats and skill feats
Class feats are unlocked through your class progression tree and are often tied to your class role. Some are granted automatically at certain levels, while others are presented as choices from a pool filtered by your class and subclass. Every subclass offers a choice of three Expert feats at character level 9.
Skill feats are unlocked by leveling specific skills, so when your Stealth skill reaches level 2 you unlock a choice from the Novice tier Stealth feat pool, and at skill level 10 you choose from that skill's Expert pool. Skill feats enhance that specific skill's capabilities.
Both types show up in the Feats section under the Skills tab in game, organized by source and tier.
Granted feats
Some feats arrive on their own when you reach the level that carries them, with nothing to pick:
- Feats tied to your class or subclass appear in the feat tree as owned nodes marked "Auto".
- Foundational class feats land at set levels and form the backbone of the class, and every character of that class gets them whatever subclass they take.
Everything else is a choice, and you pick one from the pool your class, skill, or subclass allows. Feat choices are permanent once confirmed.
Mastery bonuses
At certain skill levels you receive a mastery bonus, a raw numerical bonus added to dice rolls using that skill. These are separate from the attribute modifier bonus and compound as you level the skill further.
Attribute improvements
At certain character levels you receive attribute improvement points, and you can allocate them as either:
- +1 to two different attributes, or
- +2 to a single attribute
Subclasses
Once you reach the appropriate level, each class branches into specialized subclasses. Subclasses unlock unique feat pools that are only available to that specialization. You choose your subclass from the Skills section when it becomes available, and the choice is permanent.