A new year, a new level! (Cheers to the several people who contacted me asking when this year's post would be up—it's heartwarming to see this becoming a beloved annual tradition for so many!)
You can choose any class to gain a level in, and you gain the benefits of that level for yourself in real life. What would you choose?
Rules
Before posting, please consult the spreadsheet to double-check whether you have any other levels already! If you participated in this exercise in previous years, you keep the level(s) you had before, meaning you may now be as high as level 9! Those levels are all locked in as of now. However, if you didn't post in the thread that year, you did not level up.
Use 3.5e or Pathfinder, whichever you're most familiar with. 3.5e includes Dragon Magazine and official web enhancements. By popular demand, 3rd party material (for either edition) is allowed and counts as a separate, third category. If you're familiar with multiple editions, you can do all of them individually if you like, and have two or three different versions of your build, all of which will be the same level.
As part of gaining your first level, you gain your choice of the nonelite array (13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8) or the standard array (11, 11, 11, 10, 10, 10), arranged as you like. These scores control your "game" attributes such as spellcasting and skill points, and the associated modifiers will be layered over your real-life abilities to make you stronger or weaker in that stat, as appropriate.
Similarly, any skills and other abilities that you gain from your class levels will be layered on top of whatever you can already do. If you get a bonus to something, you will become that much better at that thing, and if you get a penalty, you'll become that much worse. For example, whatever languages you already speak would be your automatic languages, and if you gain a bonus language due to your Intelligence score, you can learn a new one. If you take the Murky-Eyed flaw in order to gain Endurance as a bonus feat, you'll be a better athlete, but you'll be wanting a new pair of eyeglasses.
As a human, you gain the normal benefits of being a human. In Pathfinder, that includes the ability score bonus, and you can choose variant traits if it suits you. In 3.5e, you can still get the +2 ability bonus to one score by trading away your bonus feat and skill points via the Complacent Human variant. Aging modifiers apply as normal.
The reason we're doing it one level at a time is because part of the fun of the exercise is seeing the gradual payoff of your choices and maybe even changing your mind about some of them and going in a new direction. It also makes it into a fun annual tradition as well.
Bonus points if you stat out a whole character sheet!
Previous threads
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
FAQ
Q: Do I model my abilities after my abilities IRL?
A: No. Arrange your ability scores however you like according to one of the arrays given above. You will then become stronger or weaker or smarter or dumber accordingly.
Q: Do magic abilities work? I mean, magic isn't real, right?
A: Yes, magic abilities work. Rumors that Earth is a dead magic zone have apparently been grossly exaggerated.
Q: Are other people in the world leveling up too?
A: Only the people who have posted in this thread.
Q: Will I be leveling up again in the future? If so, when?
A: Maybe you will and maybe you won't. I guess it depends on whether you post in the thread each year!
Q: Is retraining allowed?
A: Yes. Use the normal rules for it under your chosen system.
Q: What about rebuilding?
A: Pathfinder rules allow for rebuilds; 3.5e rules do not.
Q: Am I going to lose any of the skills and abilities I already have and replace them with game statistics?
A: No. The level you gain is layered on top of everything you can already do, and any modifiers apply to your existing skills as a baseline. You can think of it as a gestalt build if that helps, with your "real" stats on one side and your "game" stats on the other.
Q: Can we assume that reality operates under D&D rules? Like, if I put ranks in Diplomacy, can I now roll a DC whatever check to turn someone Helpful?
A: No. This is a case of "The map is not the territory." D&D rules are ultimately an abstraction for how things "actually" work in the game world. Real life still plays by real-life rules. More skill points and higher ability scores means you are better at whatever that number represents, but you aren't actually making skill checks, or taking immediate actions, or consulting a table to determine your carrying capacity based on your Strength score. Humans in the game all have a speed of 30 feet, but your actual speed will exhibit the normal amount of variance. In D&D 3.5e, drinking a vial of arsenic will deal you between 0 and 9 points of Constitution damage over the course of 1 minute, and then you're fine—but if you drink a vial of arsenic in real life, you die. And so on.
Q: How do gp costs work?
A: They use up money or material wealth at a reasonable exchange rate. Specifics aren't important; we're not here to do math. For those of you who do want to do the math, you can instead give yourself standard WBL for your level and use that as a budget for gp costs. And if you want to use something like Craft or Profession to generate income, see the previous answer about reality operating under D&D rules—no, you will not automatically earn half your Profession check in gold pieces for a week's work, because that's just an abstraction to smooth out gameplay, not an accurate reflection of the game world's economy.
Q: How do xp costs work?
A: You accumulate xp over time by literally accumulating experiences. Over the course of one year, you can earn xp equal to your level x 1000 at a fairly constant rate of about 20 xp per level per week, provided you spend time living your life and doing meaningful things. You do not gain xp in any other way. The amount of xp you can hold at a time is limited to your level x 1000. (This is based on the xp a character of your level could have in-game.) This is only used for xp costs, not for leveling up; to level up, xp total doesn't matter, you just post in the yearly thread and that's it.
Q: What counts as a meaningful life experience for earning xp?
A: As long as you're not in a coma, or mindlessly watching TV all day, or whatever, you can expect to get your xp. There is one exception: you cannot earn xp on any day that you spend xp. Activities like crafting will temporarily pause your xp gain until they are completed.
Q: I get that I have to be a human, but can I take a template?
A: Template classes are fair game as long as you have at least one real class level first. Use savage progression rules for them, even if the template class wouldn't normally work that way. Any template that can't be taken as a template class is probably going to be unavailable, unless you can somehow gain it via class features. For 3.5 characters, you can take UA bloodline levels as if they were a template class: taking 1 bloodline level unlocks the benefit of a minor bloodline, and subsequent bloodline levels upgrade it to the next category up.
Q: What about setting-specific material, or regional requirements?
A: Assume they are adapted to another, similar requirement that makes sense in our world. Specifics aren't important.
Q: What about inherited powers? Can I take Draconic Heritage even though I'm not descended from dragons?
A: Much like how you can take sorcerer levels without worrying about your ancestry, any sort of bloodline-related power works fine even if you don't actually have an ancestor who was a dragon, or a fey, or a member of a dragonmarked bloodline, etc. As in the game world, these effects are usually inherited but can also represent spontaneously gaining powers due to magical influences.
Q: Is 3.0 material available?
A: 3.0 psionics is unavailable, as the system for it is defunct. Most other unupdated 3.0 material is probably okay, but may not work as expected due to the changes inherent in the revision. Use it at your own risk.
Q: I have a question about how a particular rules interaction would work under this model.
A: You can ask in the thread, but here are two general rules of thumb. First, most things work the way they'd be expected to work in an actual fantasy world, so if one interpretation of a rule would conflict with established D&D canon if it were true, and another wouldn't, the latter one is probably correct. (This ties into that "The map is not the territory" principle from a previous answer.) Second, if you would normally have to consult with your DM about how it works, you can assume you don't know the answer as you make your decision—you'd have to try the interaction and find out for yourself. For the purpose of this exercise, I'll act as the referee for such things and adjudicate what would happen.
Q: If I take crafting feats, what items can I craft?
A: As long as you have the prerequisites, you can craft any existing, published magic item, or combinations thereof (at the appropriate price modifiers). You cannot invent a custom item unless you are a 3PP build. Items can be combined with one another according to the normal rules for your edition (in 3.5, see MIC p233), and you have some leeway as to their exact appearance (for example, a head slot item could be any headgear of your choice). For 3.5 builds, don't forget that you can give your crafting feats signature traits, per DMG2 p230!
Q: What about custom prestige race alterations?
A: Eh, sure, subject to the same limits on magic items. It has to be based on an existing magic item, and you'll pay 40% of the item's market price in xp. Just arrange them into a focus path of up to four alterations that are thematically cohesive with one another. You can have up to two such custom foci.
Q: If I take Leadership, how does my cohort work?
A: Much like in the game, a cohort has to be an existing character. So, for our purposes, you choose one of your real-life cohorts, and that person gains as many class levels as a cohort would have based on your level and leadership score, and levels up along with you as you post each year. It's up to the cohort to decide what levels to take; you don't decide for them. You can also designate followers according to your leadership score; only NPC class levels are available to followers. If you want to take Dragon Cohort but you don't have any dragon friends in real life (and you can't cast lesser dragon ally to call one), I will allow it to be applied to a reptilian pet, which then gains draconic powers.
Q: I'm an artificer. Can I cherry-pick the lowest-level version of every spell to make items more cheaply?
A: You can only draw from the spell lists of base classes and domains, or, for a psionic artificer, from the power lists of base classes, mantles, and disciplines. (Psionic artificers cannot convert spells to powers; that's an erudite ability only.) You can also draw from any spell list that is called out specifically in the spell's description (e.g. exalted spells, or spells exclusive to Initiate feats). Prestige class spell lists are not available (unless the prestige class is called out in the spell description, as seen with the assassin and blackguard spells in Spell Compendium). This applies to the artificer as well as the chameleon and other, similar abilities.
Q: Can I research spells?
A: Sure. If you're a wizard or erudite, this is probably how you'll be learning a lot of your spells. Use the rules in the DMG (or whatever the PF equivalent is). Tell me what you're trying to research and your rationale for why it should be possible for your class at the level you want it, and I'll adjudicate the result. You still pay the cost regardless of whether your research succeeds or fails. If the spell is on your class spell list at that level already—for example, if you're a wizard and you're researching an existing 1st-level wizard spell—you succeed automatically.
Q: How exactly does this world work? Is the timeline altered by our previous levels? Do we know about other players? Are we making decisions for ourselves, or are these benefits applied to parallel universe version of ourselves? Etc.
A: I think it's fine to envision it however you like, but I bet that parallel timeline idea would make for some cool fanfiction. If you'd like to share your idea of what the last year would have been like for the leveled-up version of you, please do! Heck, I've written some of my own fanfiction based on a similar premise.