As with many games, your character in Pathways gains skills and abilities by earning Experience. However, unlike other games which give you experience based on a "kill count", in Pathways you earn experience by attending events, helping your local chapter, or other specific activities.

At each activity you attend, you will receive a designated number of "XP Chits", which take the form of a tag put on your Player Ring (see the tags section). The combined total of your XP Chits on your Player Ring tells you how many Skill Points (SP) you have.

Skill Points are the fundamental building blocks of a character. Each character starts of with 15 skill points, and more are earned with each activity attended. You can spend any Skill Points earned on Skills for your character. The ability to purchase skills depends on your class, race, number of SP left, and whether the desired skill has any prerequisites. For example, many skills require a Weapon Skill before you can learn them.

Skill points are not "lost" when spent, they are only "used". For example, if you have a character with 25 skill points, and they have "used" 13 of them, they are considered to have the full 25 for any purposes when the number of Skill Points is checked against something (levels, for example).

Levels are figured out by simply removing the last digit of your current number of Skill Points. For example, 15-19 SP is 1st Level, 20-29 SP is 2nd level, etc.

Hit Points are factored by taking your Level and Class, and comparing it to the Hit Point Chart. Some Races, Skills or abilities may affect the number of Hit Points, but they are factored after getting the results of the chart.

The following table lists the Skill Points received for each number of XP Chits.

After a character has reached 16th level, they gain one SP per XP Chit for every XP Chit over 82