Line #145 Main/LeakedExperience


1	%%%
2	%%
3	%% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order. Thanks!
4	%%
5	%%%
6	Many games adjust the level of a newly recruited character to match that of the lead character, in an attempt to make that character immediately useful. In other situations, it is the responsibility of the player to level them up, usually putting them in dangerous fights but protected by the stronger characters to level quickly. This strategy is known as "{{twinking}}", "babysitting" or "piggybacking", and is frequently used in online games to get new characters to your level so you can play fairly together. Games which do not take this trope into consideration may end up with a player leveling his first character to the maximum level through {{Level Grinding}}, and then all subsequent characters will join up also at maximum level, saving a lot of time gaining experience for side characters.
7
8	Some games will give unused party members a fraction of the experience points gained in fights, but many will just [[LetsSplitUpGang force you to use those characters once in a while]] to make sure they don’t get too weak. Games allowing you to switch out characters at any times are appreciated for this reason.
9
10	The ability to switch members of your party in battle at any time may have been popularized by ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'', although some games predate this usage. ''Franchise/BreathOfFire'' had this in its [[VideoGame/BreathOfFireI first game]], only to drop it for the [[VideoGame/BreathOfFireII next]] [[VideoGame/BreathOfFireIII two]]. And made its return in the [[VideoGame/BreathOfFireIV fourth game]].
11
12	This is a form of GameplayAndStorySegregation; but a [[AcceptableBreakFromReality highly acceptable one]].
13
14	Used to fight the CantCatchUp phenomenon. A good way to get the MagikarpPower. Compare ExperienceBooster.
15	----
16	!!Examples:
17	[[foldercontrol]]
18
19	[[folder:Action-Adventure]]
20	* In ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaPortraitOfRuin'', the only ''Castlevania'' game where you control a pair of characters together, [[BlackMagicianGirl Charlotte]] and Jonathan, in addition to sharing Life and {{Mana}} meters, level in tandem, whether both of them are there or not.
21	* After plowing through 11 missions as Nero in ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry4'', you are given control of Dante, and with him, the exact same amount of [[TechPoints Proud Souls]] Nero managed to accumulate, allowing you to immediately unlock a bunch of Dante's abilities. This applies as well to other circumstances such as the last few missions where the control is given back to Nero, to replayed missions or NewGamePlus playthroughs, and whenever you switch characters in the Bloody Palace mode; generally, if one character manages to get some Proud Souls, the other will receive the same amount. In the ''Special Edition'', the same principle also applies to Lady and Trish in their combined mode.
22	[[/folder]]
23
24	[[folder:Dungeon Crawlers]]
25	* ''VideoGame/{{Quester}}'' has the Live Camera accessory. When equipped upon a member of your active party, it broadcasts a video of your battles back to all of your Questers who are back at your base, enabling them to learn from watching your fights.
26	[[/folder]]
27
28	[[folder:Fighting Games]]
29	* In ''VideoGame/JumpForce'', any companions that you take into battle earn the same experience your character does for completing missions. All other unused characters earn a smaller portion of that experience to prevent them from being stuck at level 1 forever.
30	[[/folder]]
31
32	[[folder:Hack-and-Slash]]
33	* In ''VideoGame/PathOfExile'', all players gain experience from enemies as long as they are within vicinity of it (about 1-2 screens away) when it dies. "XP Leeching" is a common player service: having more party members increases enemy HP and the amount of items they drop, so they use it to their advantage. The high-level player solos the entire map and collects all the dropped loot while the lower-level players just hang back while avoiding getting killed to gather XP.
34	[[/folder]]
35
36	[[folder:[=MMORPGs=]]]
37	* ''VideoGame/AtlanticaOnline'' is weird in that regard.
38	** Being in a group with other players causes Leaked Experience over all fighters, but mercenaries not participating in the battle don't gain any, and all new mercenaries you hire, no matter what level you need to have to recruit them, start at level 1 (or Level 10 in some cases, but that requires you to find a wandering NPC of that class and recruit them for a lot of cash). This also perfectly illustrates why this trope is common, leveling up a new mercenary from scratch is painful as all hell.
39	** Another variation of Leaked Experience comes with the guild/town system. If your guild controls a town, every resident that is persuaded to settle down in that town gives bonus experience for everyone in that guild.
40	** Finally, there are ways to acquire Experience Books which any character can read to boost their experience.
41	** You also get from being in a party with another player's group and to a lesser degree if they are not in the same battle as you are which led to a form of partying called LDP (long-distance partying) which is partying with other players just for the sake of the leaked exp.
42	** High level quests, however, are notably one of the best ways to level a new mercenary as the experienced gained from quest is fixed proportionate to the game phase. While this gives a decent some for high level mercenaries, this potentially gives enough experience to be able to level up many times (you can only level up once per experience gain instance)
43	* In ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'', a lower-level character can "sidekick" (for heroes) or "lackey" (for villains) to a higher-level character, temporarily becoming the equivalent of one level lower than their mentor as long as they're within 200 yards of the latter. More directly, almost all experience earned by any character on a team will also be gained by each of the team's other members, as long as they're already roughly the same level.
44	** Issue 13, takes this a step further with a sort of permanent sidekicking ability: two players become, essentially, a duo, and they are always getting experience. If one character is logged out for three months, during which the other character gains twenty levels, then the first character comes back to find they've gained twenty levels. However, not leveling together means that the duo earns ''half'' as much XP as a normal solo character, meaning this is not for powerlevelling.
45	** Issue 16 takes it even '''further'''. One of the biggest features in it is "Super-[=SideKicking=]", which means that ''everyone'' on the team is Sidekicked to either the team leader or the mission holder.
46	** Near the end of the game, it might even be considered either an inversion or a distillation - if a higher-level player joins a lower-level group, they earn experience proportionate to their level -- and retain some of their higher-level skills (and almost ALL of their enhancements) to compensate for the power drop. If a lower-level player joins a higher-level group, though, they're likely to still be startlingly ineffective in comparison to the rest. The obvious solution, disregarding [[LevelGrinding specially-crafted missions,]] is to [[{{Munchkin}} join lower-level groups to... er...]] [[BlatantLies help new players.]]
47	* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI'': XP in Vana'diel averts this; any level spread larger than two in a party severely lowers XP to the point of uselessness.
48	** Eventually, a "Level Sync" feature was added, which temporarily reduced everyone's level to a designated party member's level, allowing a high-level character to XP grind alongside a level 10+.
49	** Then Abyssea came out, which introduced XP ''alliances'' (7-18 players as opposed to the former standard of 6), and level 30+ characters coming to an alliance to "leech" XP became widespread, due to a different XP formula being used in Abyssea (the more monsters of a particular family you kill in a row, the more XP you will get from them, regardless of level; allowing a patient level 30 character to eventually rack up 500XP+ per kill after several hours). Instead of assisting with the fighting, "leeches" run the alliance (by directing others what to fight, and keeping the alliance full of replacements for members who have to leave), spend their Forbidden Keys to open treasure chests that drop from XP monsters so the high-levels don't have to, or simply sit in the alliance soaking up XP while others do all the work for it (trading off sessions is standard etiquette between friends; doing this without explicit permission is considered extremely rude and will get you booted from the alliance).
50	* ''VideoGame/GranadoEspada[=/=]Sword of the New World'' lets you ''control'' LeakedExperience via "Experience Cards". While completing a quest in most [=MMOs=] gives you direct EXP gain, ''GE'' instead gives you consumable items which grant experience to whichever characters you feed them to. Yes, character'''s''': this game lets you own up to 6 characters and deploy up to 3 of them in your active party. But your LazyBackup do not accrue normal-style LeakedExperience, so at that point it's your decision whether to use the Cards to catch them up, or just keep power-leveling your main party.
51	* Unusual variation is met in ''Videogame/SpiralKnights'': character level is mostly defined by his/her [[ClothesMakeTheSuperman equipment]], so instead of gaining experience yourself, you "heat up" your weapons and armor. Heat gained is distributed between all items you wear, no matter how much they have been used during the level.
52	* You wouldn't expect this trope to show up in an MMORPG, but a new ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' recruitment deal lets you level up your lower-level characters one level for every two levels your recruitee gains.
53	[[/folder]]
54
55	[[folder:Real-Time Strategy]]
56	* The British Army in the ''VideoGame/CompanyOfHeroes'' expansion ''Opposing Fronts'' relies exclusively on Leaked Experience. Their main-line combat units cannot accumulate experience in combat like the Americans, nor even buy it like the Wehrmacht; Instead the British have officers, who are rubbish at combat (and quite vulnerable to boot) but gain experience from being ''near'' combat. Eventually the officers go up in rank, and begin to radiate powerful auras that gives bonuses to any nearby friendly combat units.
57	* Present to a small extent in the ''VideoGame/DawnOfWar II'' campaign, with characters who don't fight earning less experience than if they had.
58	* The ''VideoGame/MentalOmega'' mod implements a downplayed variant: no-one gains experience solely from being ''near'' combat, but mind-controlling units gain experience when the units they mind-control gain experience, allowing mind-controllers to gain veterancy despite usually not having a direct attack option.
59	[[/folder]]
60
61	[[folder:Rhythm]]
62	* As of ''VideoGame/CytusII''[='s=] 3.0 update, if you play a song in one of the three main characters' (PAFF, NEKO#ΦωΦ, ROBO_Head) folders, the other two characters will also gain half as much EXP each, allowing players who purchased the game later to catch up to the story's GrandFinale.
63	[[/folder]]
64
65	[[folder:Roguelike]]
66	* ''VideoGame/DungeonCrawl'', being a single player game, plays this trope in a rather unusual way - everything your summons, minions or followers kill, grant only one half XP to you. Summoned creatures return back where they came from after a handful of turns, and undead minions don't last long enough - but orcish followers of a priest of Beogh apparently take some part of the leaked XP and become stronger, so if you care about a lowly orc long enough, he can raise in ranks all the way up to a rather fearsome orc warlord.
67	* ''VideoGame/PokemonMysteryDungeonGatesToInfinity'' makes using a variety of Pokémon much easier then its predecessors, as every single Pokémon you've recruited receives 100% of the EXP your active party gains. They need to be brought into a dungeon before they'll actually level up from the accumulated EXP, however.
68	* In ''VideoGame/PokemonMysteryDungeonRescueTeamDX'', all recruited Pokémon receive any EXP that the active party gains.
69	[[/folder]]
70
71	[[folder:Role-Playing Games]]
72	* ''VideoGame/AbyssCrossing'': The player initially starts with two party members, but two more join before the first Astra dungeon in order to form a full party of four. Once they get on the boat to Black Island, four more party members will join, bringing the headcount to eight. Fortunately, the game gives full EXP to all reserve party members.
73	* ''VideoGame/AgarestSenki 2'' plays this trope straight. Party members who leave you (usually the non last generation protagonist and [[LoveInterest his love interests]] won't be at your level, but they can catch up pretty quickly anyway. Same thing with ''VideoGame/CrossEdge''.
74	* This trope seems to be part of Creator/BioWare's [[StrictlyFormula patented RPG formula]]:
75	** In the ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'' series, characters would join at a level similar to yours, but would gain no experience if you removed them from the party and came back later. There are several possible levels for every character, the highest one that is under your level is the one chosen upon recruitment.
76	** ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'' plays the modern incarnation of this trope straight, by enforcing that the companions are never more than one level below the PlayerCharacter: whenever you level up, any companion who is now two or more levels below you gains a level for free the next time you return to the camp, regardless of whether they have ever been in your active party.
77	** All companions in ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII'' gain experience at the same time, even ones not currently in the party at the time. Some have lower initial XP when they join the party, but most of the time everyone will be at the same level.
78	** The entire ''Franchise/MassEffect'' series has only one character level for the entire player squad, meaning that any characters you decide to use later or haven't used while you gained levels merely need to have their talents chosen, assuming you didn't choose the computer to allocate points automatically. Also, all squad members act as if they've been with you all along, talking about events as though they were present at the time, even though they clearly were not--having your entire party around would really have helped in a lot of situations.
79	** ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights'' and its expansions used a variant of this trope. If you leave a party member behind and come back later they will still be at their old level, but talking to them gives you an option to let them "catch up".
80	** This system is featured in ''VideoGame/SonicChronicles'' as well, but the catch is that characters don't actually level up until you put them in the party. This is due to the level-up system, where you distribute bonus stat and skill points each time a character's level increases.
81	** ''VideoGame/StarWarsTheOldRepublic'' has a single level progression for the PlayerCharacter and every NonPlayerCompanion following them, meaning that your companions are always the same level as you, even if they stay on the ship the whole time. This leads to some bad FridgeLogic late in the game, when new characters join your crew at a near-endgame level, even though [[GameplayAndStorySegregation story-wise, they are fresh out of the basic training]] (the Sith Inquisitor, for instance, completes his/her trials at level 10, tops, but his/her companion Xalek, who joins immediately after beating the very same trials, starts off at level 47+).
82	** ''VideoGame/StarWarsKnightsOfTheOldRepublic'' was were especially kind in this regard. All characters gained experience equally, regardless of whom you took along on missions. The player just had a backlog of skill points to use up every time when they swapped in a new character. This also applied to newly recruited characters, who had all of the skill points they would have had if they'd been with you from the start.
83	* The ''VideoGame/BoxxyQuest'' series: Different in each game:
84	** ''VideoGame/BoxxyQuestTheShiftedSpires'': Everyone in the party get full experience points, even if they're not the four who fought.
85	** ''VideoGame/BoxxyQuestTheGatheringStorm'': The four party members present at the end of a battle get full experience points. Everyone else in the party gets half, even if some of them participated earlier in the fight.
86	* All party members in ''VideoGame/ChildOfLight'' will receive experience points after a battle. They do not seem to get any experience penalty either.
87	* In ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'', all party members gain experience (even those which are not in your party, but rather waiting for you in the [[PlaceBeyondTime End of Time]]), but only "in play" characters get tech points; also, a given pair or trio of characters must fight a combat scene together at least once, after all the relevant individual Techs are unlocked, to use a new [[CombinationAttack Combo Tech]].
88	* ''VideoGame/CthulhuSavesTheWorld'' gives equal experience bonus to all party members, whether they particitaped in a battle or not. This means you don't need to fiddle with your party setup until you really need it.
89	* In the DS ''VideoGame/DigimonWorld'' games, your party is composed of three frontline digimon and three support digimon that don't attack and can't be attacked unless switched to the frontline. However, after every battle the exp provided by the enemies is applied for everyone, even the support party. Due to the stat raising mechanics, you can convert an Agumon, leave it on the support line and let it become a maxed Black War Greymon even if it never actually attacks anyone. Weird, if you think about it for a moment.
90	* ''VideoGame/DigitalDevilSaga'' partially uses this. Inactive characters automatically gain skill points, but not experience. This actually isn't too bad, as skill points are far more annoying to farm and there's a fairly easily unlocked skill that grants half XP when sidelined. New characters are also equal to the average level of the current party when they first join.
91	* ''VideoGame/DivinityOriginalSinII'': {{Exaggerated\|Trope}}. The default player characters are Godwoken, champions [[PatronGod empowered and sponsored by a deity]] to master Source Magic and ascend to godhood. Not only do the Godwoken outside the PlayerParty keep up with the party's level, so do the generic mercenaries you can recruit in their place. (Of course, [[ImprobablePowerDiscrepancy so do random street vendors in the final level]]...)
92	* The ''[[VideoGame/DotHackGUGames .hack//]]'' games also use this, as characters you don't play with for a while gain levels to close to your new level. Justified as the other characters are people playing an MMORPG, and presumably, they still play the MMO when not in your party. Absent party members that aren't currently playing the game in story however (typically people who are comatose, or Mistral when she stops playing in Vol 3 and most of Vol 4 due to her real life situation) won't level.
93	* ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIV'' [=DS=] has both character swapping and leaked experience.
94	** In ''VideoGame/DragonQuestVI'', characters in the wagon still gain experience, even if your active party is somewhere the wagon can't even enter.
95	** Played straight in ''VideoGame/DragonQuestVII'' when one of your party members leaves [[spoiler:to care for her sick father]]. When she returns to the party later in the game she is still at the same level she was when she left while the rest of the party is a good 10-12 levels ahead of her by now. This is made especially annoying since you are almost immediately forced to fight the [[ThatOneBoss The Fire Elemental]] afterwards.
96	** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIX'' averts this by distributing a bigger share of the experience to the highest level characters, a method inherently biased against classes that require more experience to level up.
97	** In ''VideoGame/DragonQuestMonstersJoker'', your active party gets full experience, and not only does your backup party gets a portion as leaked experience, but so does every monster you have in storage.
98	* ''VideoGame/DyztopiaPostHumanRPG'': Inactive and knocked out party members get full experience. Due to hard mode's headcount limitation and the hype battle mechanic, this is a necessary feature.
99	* Every surviving character in the ''VideoGame/EpicBattleFantasy'' series gains experience from battle. Even if he or she is switched out, in the fourth installment.
100	* ''VideoGame/EternalSonata'' has unused party members gain a fraction of experience gained by active party members. Also, in the [[BonusDungeon Mysterious Unison]]? Yeah, you'll probably be babysitting [[spoiler:Claves]] a lot if you want [[spoiler:her]] to be useful.
101	* Characters in ''VideoGame/EtrianOdysseyIIITheDrownedCity'' can learn the "Combat Study" Common Skill, which gives benched characters EXP from the main party's battles (to the tune of 1% per skill level, up to 10% at [=Lv10=]). You can also use your backup party to turn in completed Quests and Missions, netting them the reward without actually contributing to the effort.
102	* In ''VideoGame/ExistArchive'', you can choose up to three characters besides the main character to take into the field out of eleven[[spoiler: fourteen in NewGamePlus]] characters. Thankfully, characters that you don't bring with you will gain at least enough experience back at base to keep up the party, if not as much as the characters you bring with you.
103	* Ignored, played with, averted, and then played straight throughout the ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' series:
104	** Companions in ''VideoGame/Fallout1'' don't level up, period.
105	** ''VideoGame/Fallout2'' and ''VideoGame/{{Fallout Tactics\|BrotherhoodOfSteel}}'' simply apply the listed experience to each member of the party. There is no penalty to the player's earned XP for sharing it with others. Characters will only level up when in the player's active party, but the companions in ''Fallout 2'' actually use a smaller, truncated level system than the player--each companion only has four or five "levels," and both a sound and some floating dialogue will indicate when a companion has leveled up. They don't get Perks like the player does, but gain bonuses to the SPECIAL (primary stats) instead.
106	** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout Tactics\|BrotherhoodOfSteel}}'' averts this trope. While it applies XP like the previous title, all companions are fully customizable and do not level up from their spawn stats except by being active in the player's party.
107	** ''VideoGame/Fallout3'' and ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' play this trope completely straight. A companion's level is directly tied to the player's, regardless of whether they've been best friends since level 5, are only just meeting at level 30, or haven't been seen for 10 levels. A few companions did not originally work this way, but have been patched.
108	*** The exceptions being [[GeniusBruiser Fawkes]], [[RobotBuddy RL-3]], and [[TeamPet Dogmeat]] with the ''Fallout 3'' add-on ''Broken Steel''. The game classifies them as creatures instead of people, and some GoodBadBugs moved the decimal point, making them ''ten times'' the player's level at all times.
109	* ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'':
110	** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'', the main character is reset to level 1 once he reconsiders some important life decisions. However, the main character is usually nearly as strong after the reset as he is before, even though he loses levels, and he gains his first few levels quickly. Once he's been through a few battles, it's actually a common strategy to solo him-- almost everything in the area is weak to the element of his new sword after the level drop-- both because it's easy levels and because of leaked experience. New party members have a set level, but ones that leave and return gain the same experience the main character does while out of the party. This benefits Rosa, Rydia, Kain, Yang, and (in versions where you can switch party members) Edward. [[note]]But not Edge, Cid, or Fusoya, who haven't joined yet (not that Fusoya cares much; most of his stats are static); nor Palom, Porom, or Tellah, who must be KO'd in order to do this (though in versions of the game where you can't switch party members, Palom and Porom won't be around long anyway, and Tellah care about his level only slightly more than Fusoya.)[[/note]]
111	** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'':
112	*** Use of this trope can actually turn into a DiscOneNuke. Spending a little bit of extra time as soon as you get control of Terra in the Narshe Mines will level her up a good bit. As you get the next 4 or 5 characters over the course of the next 45 minutes of game time, they will always be one level ahead of your main character, meaning if you level Terra up to 15, Locke will be 16, Edgar 17, etc.
113	*** A bigger DiscOneNuke that doesn't require active grinding is just have a "turbo"-type controller (which will repeatedly press a button) and you can put your party in a big loop during the river escape from the Returner's Hideout. You have Banon along, who has a free, full-party heal. Run through once so the memory pointer defaults to the right place, turn on the turbo, and walk away.
114	*** However, a bug prevents Celes from learning Muddle in most player's games. It just so happens that the conditions under which this happens (Celes rejoins your party between levels 32 and 39 due to Leaked Experience) are commonly met when Celes rejoins your party [[spoiler:after running off at the Magitek Factory]]. Most players don't even know she naturally learns Muddle.
115	** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'', characters out of the party get experience leak even if they're dead; dead in-party characters, however, get none. This actually makes sense in-game - after you reach the overworld for the first time, your party (five at the time) splits into two, with provided cell phones allowing you to switch members in and out. The conceit is that while [[CantDropTheHero Cloud]] and his chosen two teammates are levelling up during the main quest, the other party members are off having their own battles and gaining (slightly less) experience.
116	** Playable characters in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIIRemake'' always gain EXP from combat regardless of whether or not they're actually in the party. This helps significantly since the game enforces the same ArbitraryHeadcountLimit as the original and characters who aren't Cloud (and even Cloud himself) will often be out of the party for long stretches of gameplay.
117	** Zig-zagged somewhat in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII''. There's no leaked experience, but levelling up is a minor part of your characters' power anyway. A bigger impact is made by 'Junctioning', using Guardian Forces and magic spells to boost stats, and the [=GFs=] and magic can be transferred to any character.
118	** Averted in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX'', where you actively have to use the characters in combat to level them up. This becomes extremely irritating when you get Freya, Steiner and Quina back in Disk 3, they can be almost ''ten levels'' behind Zidane, requiring you to spend some additional time training them. Similarly, players who never trained Quina got an especially nasty surprise in Disk 3, where they are required to use him/her as the only other character besides Zidane in a major boss fight, which means the fight will basically be one-on-one if you didn't raise Quina.
119	** Cleverly applied in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'', where every party member can get experience in a battle, provided that they actually do something during the fight and survive it. Even if you rotate them in for only one turn and have them just Defend, they'll still get experience.
120	** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'' handles this in two ways:
121	*** When characters first join your party they're generally around your level. This can lead to a DiscOneNuke if you level Vaan fairly high before anyone else joins.
122	*** Characters in "reserve" don't gain experience, but do gain points for the license board.
123	** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'', once crystal points become available, at the end of every battle every character, whether or not they were alive at the end of the battle, in the battle, or even introduced yet they received the same amount crystal points. This made it so characters like Snow, who is absent from play for 4 or 5 chapters, rejoin the team with a huge amount of crystal points.
124	* In ''VideoGame/FossilFighters'', you can carry five vivosaurs at a time, but only use three at a time in battle. All of them still gain experience regardless of whether they were used in the battle, which is very useful for levelling up weaker vivosaurs.
125	* ''VideoGame/GoldenSun: The Lost Age'' gives the lion's share to the active party, but the inactive characters still get half experience.
126	** This format is continued in ''VideoGame/GoldenSunDarkDawn''. Characters quickly catch up if they join at a lower level.
127	* ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'' also uses the "one experience progression" idea, since party adjustment is limited to swapping out either Donald or Goofy for a world-specific guest character. In ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII'', [[spoiler:the game begins with the player controlling Roxas, whose acquired levels, abilities, and equipment are then passed on to Sora.]]
128	** In [[VideoGame/KingdomHeartsI the first game]], the fastest way to reach the level cap was to fight [[{{Superboss}} Sephiroth]] over and over. Even though only Sora fought in the fight, Donald and Goofy leveled too.
129	** Characters who are knocked out in combat don't gain experience in the first game. Oddly, this meant that on the hard difficulty, it was actually easier for a good portion of the game to level GlassCannon Donald up by leaving him out of the party.
130	* ''VideoGame/KnightBewitched2'': Reserve party members get full EXP. However, characters leave the party for plot reasons don't get any EXP, though they do return at a reasonable level for the current challenges.
131	* In ''VideoGame/TheLastRemnant'', characters gain exp both for levels (which raises their stats) and the individual skills/arts they use. Team members (except for generic soldiers) that participate in a battle only gain exp for the arts they used in that battle, but benched party members gain exp in whatever arts that the main character Rush used in the battle. Thus, the fastest way to raise your team's skill levels is to have Rush fight battles on his own. However, this only affects the abilities they can use, and doesn't work for raising a character's stats.
132	* In ''VideoGame/LastScenario'', party members that didn't take part in a battle get experience with a penalty so little it would take lots of grinding to see them lag behind.
133	* ''VideoGame/TheLastStory'' averts this, resulting in characters that are absent from the party for a while ending up as much as fifteen levels behind when they rejoin. Fortunately, the game's focus on tactical combat and Zael's key skill of [[DrawAggro forcing enemy attention onto him]] make it easy to train up the difference.
134	* Non-party characters in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfDragoon'' gain half the experience each party member gains[[labelnote:*]]If an enemy killed grants three thousand exp and two party members are alive when it's defeated, they gain one and a half thousand each and non-party characters gain seven hundred fifty each[[/labelnote]]. What they don't get is the attack experience or spirit points needed to level up your [[ActionCommands Additions]] and [[SuperMode Dragoon levels]] respectively.
135	* An accessory in ''VideoGame/LegendOfMana'' grants you the ability to share experience gained when equipped. You can also craft the effect onto weapons or armor, but [[GuideDangIt good luck figuring out how to do that]].
136	* Averted in ''VideoGame/LostOdyssey''. Characters not in the active party receive no experience or any other character advancement in the form of Skill Points. Due to a heavy dose of LetsSplitUpGang, this can make certain parts of the game brutally difficult, if not almost impossible. Oddly enough, the game also tries to avoid CantCatchUp syndrome; characters that are in use level up in very few fights, sometimes leveling up every single battle for a while up to an arbitrary maximum determined by the area you're in, at which point all experience gains quickly dwindle to near nothing. For characters who are level dependent on their skills, this allows fairly quick catching up. For other characters reliant on other ways to advance, it's still just down to LevelGrinding.
137	* Anyone recruited party members not active in your nine-person party in ''VideoGame/LufiaTheLegendReturns'' still gain experience, albeit at a reduced rate.
138	** Inactive characters in ''VideoGame/LufiaCurseOfTheSinistrals'' gain 50% experience. Dekar can gain a Title that gives him 100% experience even when he is not the active character.
139	* ''VideoGame/{{Lunarosse}}'' gives somewhere around 75% EXP to reserve members. As a result, [[CantDropTheHero Channing]] will hit Lv. 99 well before anyone else.
140	* Averted in one character's case in ''VideoGame/MegaManXCommandMission''. When Steel Massimo joins your party (which would have been between Level 5-10 by now), he's at Level 1. Justified as [[spoiler: he's basically a inexperienced newbie wearing the real Steel Massimo's armor.]]
141	** The same goes for Cinnamon, who also starts at Level 1, but has never fought a day in her life. Thankfully, she levels up quick hanging in reserve.
142	* ''VideoGame/MountAndBlade'' has a skill called Training, where experience is leaked to all lower-level characters at the end of each day. If enough people in the party possess this skill, one can raise a very competent army out of nothing in barely half a week.
143	* Creator/{{Obsidian\|Entertainment}}'s ''VideoGame/StarWarsKnightsOfTheOldRepublic II'' and ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights2'' followed the same convention as the original ''KOTOR''.
144	* ''VideoGame/PennyArcadeAdventures'' will grant experience to anyone not in the party or even those who were knocked out in combat.
145	* ''Franchise/{{Persona}}'':
146	** In the original ''VideoGame/Persona1'', characters rejoined the party after the prologue at the main character's level, making it much more efficient to concentrate on leveling him up before returning to the school and starting the game proper.
147	** In ''VideoGame/Persona5'', unused party members don't get experience, at least at the start. However, ranking up Mishima's Confidant allows them to get a fraction of the experience gained. At max rank, it allows everyone in the party to get the same amount of experience.
148	* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarIV'' would leak experience to all characters that have been in, but since left, the party equal to the amount of experience each in-party character received. So if one in-party character dies, not only do the in-party characters get more experience, but the out of party characters get more experience as well.[[labelnote:Example]]With a five character party (having met four other party members previously) finishing a battle that earns a total of 500 XP, each in-party character gets 500/5=100 XP, and all out of party characters get 100 XP as well. 100* 4=400 XP leaked, total earned real+ leaked 500+ 400=900 XP. If one character dies and instead you earn 500/4=125 XP for each living character, each out of party character will get 125 XP. 125* 4=500 XP leaked, total earned real+ leaked 500+ 500=1000 XP. So you can earn more total XP if some of the active characters are dead. No, it doesn't make sense.[[/labelnote]] There is one point in the game were the main character, Chaz, temporarily goes through a short dungeon alone. This makes an excellent place to level up because not only does Chaz get a ton of experience from fighting alone, but each member of the rest of the party gets the same amount of XP from just standing around doing nothing at the dungeon entrance.
149	* In ''VideoGame/PlanetAlcatraz'', every single point of experience gained is given to all members currently in the team. Also, when you find team members, they will be automatically scaled to 1-3 levels lower than Boar (the main protagonist).
150	* In the ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' series, any Pokémon sent out into battle receives a share of Exp regardless of whether they participate further. Placing a low-level Pokémon on the front line and swapping it out for a stronger one is a known strategy called "switch training", although it costs the player one turn to do so.
151	** The first generation had the "Exp.All" key item that split half the battle experience between all party Pokémon. ''VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver'' swapped it for the "Exp. Share" hold item, which is equipped on a single Pokémon and gives them (and only them) half the battle's experience, should they not participate. This remained until ''VideoGame/PokemonXAndY'', where every Pokémon that participates in a battle gets full experience; Exp. Share also became a key item once again, giving every Pokémon that doesn't participate in battle half of the experience received and making the aforementioned turn-wasting method unnecessary outside of a SelfImposedChallenge. And come ''VideoGame/PokemonLetsGoPikachuAndLetsGoEevee'' and ''VideoGame/PokemonSwordAndShield'', "Exp. Share" no longer existed as an item; the aforementioned system became an ingrained game mechanic that couldn't be toggled on or off.
152	** With the advent of Double Battles, a specific strategy involves having a high-level Pokémon use [[ActionBomb Explosion]] while the low-level teammate uses Protect to evade all attacks -- for any opponent that gets KOed on that turn, the low-level teammate receives ''all'' the experience.
153	* ''VideoGame/PrayerOfTheFaithless'': When there are more than three party members, the three that are in the active party at the end of battle get full EXP while the reserve members get half EXP. However, the player spends most of the game controlling two three-person parties separately, so this feature isn't used until the endgame [[spoiler:when they have to fight Gauron's first form. In the Tired and Judged routes, the party consists of the five surviving characters, meaning the player will be able to continue using this feature in the Tower of Sinners. In contrast, the Resolve and Love routes, only have Aeyr and Mia in the party, leaving this feature unused for the Tower of Sinners.]]
154	* ''VideoGame/RadiantArc'': Reserve party members get full EXP, which is fortunate because there are 12 playable characters and 6 party member slots.
155	* ''VideoGame/RadiantHistoria'' is weird about this. New characters join at reasonable levels. Characters in the party but not actually fighting get a sizable fraction of the experience. But characters that are out of the party entirely for plot reasons get ''nothing''. So a character that joins the party and then gets separated for a while ends up significantly below everyone else.
156	* ''VideoGame/RakenzarnFrontierStory'' grants full XP to all party members regardless if they're in combat or not. Handy for building-up low level classes. New recruits will also join at the same level as Makoto, but only at the level of his currently equipped Primary Class, so hope you don't trigger a recruitment cutscene while you were building up that class you forgot about.
157	* ''VideoGame/RakenzarnTales'' initially only gave 50% EXP to reserve party members, but that was later bumped up to 100%, most likely to avoid the sheer tedium of leveling every single one of the ninety planned party members. Version 3 of the game also implemented the "new recruit is the same level as the lead" system to further help this along.
158	* ''VideoGame/RogueGalaxy'' plays it straight, with inactive party members getting a sizable percentage of the XP the active party gets.
159	* ''VideoGame/RuinaFairyTaleOfTheForgottenRuins'': Only EXP from events are leaked to inactive party members, but EXP from the battles themselves aren't.
160	* In ''VideoGame/SaveTheLight'' and ''VideoGame/UnleashTheLight'', party members in waiting still gain XP even when not battling, but will level up slower than your active members. When you switch them in, they'll have accumulated Skill Points for you to use on stat upgrades.
161	* ''VideoGame/SepterraCore'' has perhaps the nicest possible iteration of this. Not only does everyone share experience equally, regardless of who is being used (mercifully, since only three people fight at a time, and one has to be Maya), but "everyone" also includes those whom you haven't recruited yet. In a sense, the entire party has one experience progression (though characters level at different rates).
162	** For clarity, the total experience is a value that is tracked for the party. Every character has the exact same number of experience points no matter what. However, each character has a different amount of experience points needed to reach each level, so the characters are going to level at different rates despite having the exact same total number of experience points.
163	* In the ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'' series, the skill Watchful (as well as its counterpart Growth in the ''Franchise/{{Persona}}'' series) allows any demon/persona that have it to gain partial EXP even when not in battle.
164	** Some games in the series also have the skill Vigilant, which is basically an upgrade of Watchful, giving the demon/persona even more leaked experience.
165	** ''VideoGame/DevilSurvivor2'' addressed a common complaint of the original game in which non-used party leaders would not gain experience and thus grow useless very quick, unless you'd take the time to grind. Now, non-used party leaders gain 80 percent of the experience the main character receives, which helps them stay useful throughout the game. This mechanic was then implemented in the UpdatedRerelease of the original, ''[[VideoGame/DevilSurvivor Devil Survivor Overclocked]]''.
166	* Averted in ''VideoGame/StarOceanTillTheEndOfTime'', to the point where characters can end up so far behind the main party they are more or less useless. This is implemented so you can send two (or three, if you recruited her) level 1 characters out against the final boss for a BraggingRightsReward. It's very annoying otherwise, of course, since levels go up to 255.
167	** Keep in mind there is a reward for gaining 20 levels in a single fight. The experience scale is set so that you need 10 XP to get to level 2, hundreds of thousands nearing 100, and millions per level in the upper 100s.
168	* ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'':
169	** ''VideoGame/SuperMarioRPG'' gives everyone experience for a battle, regardless of whether or not they participated or even ''survived''. Truly a sign of a more entry-level RPG. However, your party members are always a set level and have a set number of experience points when they join. With some fine-tuning, you can set it up so that everyone has the same amount of experience points and levels up at the same time.
170	** Also used at the beginning of ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiPartnersInTime''. It doesn't usually apply, but the baby Mario Bros will have their experience, and therefore level, set to be equal to Mario's when they become playable on the Koopa Cruiser. There's a catch, though: They still have their level 1 stats, so it's best to keep Mario at Level 2 until you meet them.
171	* Done in the ''VideoGame/TalesSeries'', with a catch: "bonus" experience achieved due to using certain moves will not be carried over to your non-active party members, and their abilities' usage (which needs to be at a set amount in order to unlock stronger/different abilities) will obviously not be affected.
172	** In ''VideoGame/TalesOfPhantasia'' you start with a character, Chester, which will be lost for a long time afterwards. When you finally meet him again, you other team members will be way ahead of him and he is pretty useless. To make up for it, he gains Level at an incredible rate, making him level about two or three times as fast as the others. This way he can quite easily reach the highest ranks, while the others fall behind. And in remake versions, you'll occasionally get cutscenes in which he trains himself while everyone else is sleeping, catching his levels up to the rest of the party.
173	*** The remake also features an OptionalPartyMember, Suzu, that can gain a lot of experience to catch up to the rest of the party through an only mildly difficult "trial".
174	** ''VideoGame/TalesOfSymphonia'' plays this straight, but its sequel, ''[[VideoGame/TalesOfSymphoniaDawnOfTheNewWorld Dawn of the New World]]'', throws it all out the window. Characters from the previous game appear at a fixed level and do not gain experience. The monsters you capture, however, always start at level 1 (no matter how high level they were in the fight!) but level ridiculously quickly compared to human characters.. but then when they evolve, back to level 1. Though they retain a percentage of the stats they had in their last evolution, and evolution lines loop; so by continually leveling and evolving a critter, it became stronger and stronger and stronger.
175	** In ''VideoGame/TalesOfTheAbyss'', non-active characters gain ''ONE'' experience point after each battle. Makes you wonder why they even bothered.
176	** ''VideoGame/TalesOfGraces'' gives non-combatants 60% EXP from battles, and this can be increased with skills. This becomes unintentionally hilarious when it turns out the max bonus increase for every character (save one) is +50 percentage points. That's right: It's possible for characters not fighting to gain ''more EXP than the characters who are!''
177	** ''VideoGame/TalesOfXillia'' has a strange example that's [[GoodBadBugs probably a bug.]] During Solo Challenges in the Arena, the other party members are still considered "active" despite the fact they don't show up in the fight, so they receive full Exp. This can be abused for [[PeninsulaOfPowerLeveling easy grinding]] by equipping all the "inactive" members with Dark Seals, which double Exp gain at the cost of inflicting massive stat penalties... which doesn't mean anything to characters who aren't actually fighting. (Dark Seals normally won't work unless the holder participates fully in battle, but [[LoopholeAbuse since non-participants are still considered "active" in the Arena...]])
178	* ''VideoGame/ThisWayMadnessLies'' goes around needing to try to keep everyone's Levels equal by EXP going to the entire party instead.
179	* In the ''VideoGame/TrailsSeries'', the higher the level a character is at, the less experience they receive, making it very difficult to obtain in later parts of the games. However, this results in members who’re severely lacking to catch up to the lead, with all members eventually having equal levels all around. It was designed in a way where players wouldn’t feel the need to grind.
180	* ''VideoGame/ValkyrieProfile'' does it both ways, depending on the difficulty level. On easy or normal, new party members are scaled to your level. On hard, everyone starts at level 1.
181	** Except Freya, who starts at level 2. And whose stats mirror those of her Easy/Normal self. Because she's Freya.
182	** Ironically, [[NonIndicativeDifficulty on Hard you can make people much stronger]], due to skills. Funny how that works.
183	** There's also the EXP Orb, which lets you pool Story Experience to redistribute however you want among the characters, which helps if some of them miss out on a big EXP boost that, say, a boss fight will bring about.
184	* ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles'':
185	** ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1'' has inactive characters gain 90% of the XP, AP, and SP the main party earn from battle. There are skills that can be learned to remove these penalties.
186	** ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles2'' simply grants the full sum of EXP, WP and SP from battle to all party members regardless of participation.
187	** ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles3'' doesn't need this for the main party, who are all active and present at all times, but gives [[GuestStarPartyMember Heroes]] a full allocation of EXP (the only form of progression they even need) while they're not in the party. This doesn't make a lot of sense and sticks out in a game otherwise obsessed with GameplayAndStoryIntegration, but it's [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality pretty much the only way]] to keep Heroes relevant.
188	* ''VideoGame/{{Xenogears}}'' features it, so if you do need to use [[TheScrappy Chu-Chu]], she's more or less same level as everyone else. Deathblows, however, aren't scaled to match the characters that ''are'' in use, making Gear battles with them a pain.
189	* ''VideoGame/{{Xenosaga}}'' gives the inactive members slightly less EXP and points than the active party. There's a certain party member in Episode I that leaves your party temporarily, and when you get them back, they're still at the same level while the rest of the characters are several levels up. Only Episode III actually shows how much EXP every character got after the battle (the other games just show how much the active party got).
190	* ''VideoGame/XMenLegends'':
191	** The game does this, because it would be flat-out impossible if they didn't; there are enough characters that it would suck the fun right out if you had to level them all individually, and there are many times when a certain character is needed over others, often right after they're introduced.
192	** The second game nearly fully averts this though. There are still leak, but only very little, result in inactive character being many levels behind. GuideDangIt for someone who didn't get characters that has might, levitate, bridge building.
193	[[/folder]]
194
195	[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
196	* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons''. In early editions, going up a level took double the ExperiencePoints required to reach the previous level, and total experience gained was divided between all the party members. As a result, when a low level {{PC}} in a high level party survived an adventure they usually gained enough experience points to reach a level just beneath the rest of the {{PC}}s.
197	** The 3rd-edition rules have a slightly different approach. Experience requirements go up exponentially, and a mixed-level party would gain different amounts -- specifically, a lower-level character gets more XP for each encounter. Over the long run, this would close the level gap (or, at least, make it a lot smaller).
198	** 4th edition doesn't have any particular rules to address this; the amount of experience gained during a certain adventure is split evenly between all present adventurers regardless of level. While neither linear nor strictly exponential, the amount of XP between levels does climb higher and higher, so a common house rule is "The party all have the same XP total, all the time".
199	* In Fate-based games all the way back to ''TabletopGame/SpiritOfTheCentury'', player characters are created as peers and advance all at the same time when it comes; there is no experience point system as such, nor any rewards for individual achievements. In theory a player might miss a chance for advancement by not being there for the session in which it happens, but that would run kind of counter to the spirit of the rules and in fact gets called out as impolite at least in ''Spirit of the Century'' itself.
200	[[/folder]]
201
202	[[folder:Turn-Based Strategy]]
203	* ''Franchise/{{Disgaea}}'':
204	** One particular mission in ''Disgaea'' pits you against ten level 75 monsters in a HopelessBossFight that ends in a BigDamnHeroes moment. The vassals that come to support you are all more than capable of defeating the monsters on their own, but with a bit of luck you can bring in a Warrior or Brawler to steal a killing blow and rack up about ten levels. Subsequent attempts at that mission replace the monsters with a single level 40 Fafnir, which is actually easily doable at that point and is good for power-leveling using combo attacks.
205	*** An even earlier mission covers the whole area in an invincibility [[GeoEffects Geo Effect]] save one square. In ''Disgaea'' you can [[FastballSpecial throw monsters into each other]], which stacks their levels. The monsters in that area can be combined into a single, level 117 monster. Repeat - there is ''one square'' in the whole map that does not have a permanent invincibility effect...
206	** The same goes for most other Creator/NipponIchi games, particularly stack-attacking in ''VideoGame/{{Disgaea 2\|CursedMemories}}'', which let you split the experience ten ways.
207	** ''VideoGame/Disgaea6DefianceOfDestiny'' gives everyone who was deployed in the battle experience. Some characters are given awards for that battle for random things, such as most damage or throwing done, that give additional EXP. It also has the Juice Bar, which is used to distribute extra EXP or Mana from battles to any character, for a fee. The stored EXP can also be used to increase stats, level Class Masteries, or increase Squad levels.
208	* At the end of every battle in ''Farland Saga'', you get a bonus pile of EXP that can be distributed among your party members as you wish.
209	* In ''VideoGame/FellSealArbitersMark'', units that don’t participate in a battle will still gain some AP for their current class (and any other class that they’ve unlocked) as long as another unit of the same class took part in the battle. Lower-level units also gain significantly more experience when using actions on higher-level ones during battle.
210	* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTacticsA2'' has new members always around the average level of the clan. Ironically, perfectionists aim to get them at a low level so that they have more control over their stat development. After they join, they only get exp if they participate actively in battle, but lower level characters tend to get much more exp.
211	** Mostly correct, but random unit recruits cap at Level 30. Unique characters are not restricted by this.
212	** This system is actually improved over the first game, where characters got exp based on the actions they did. A2 gives all characters an amount of EXP simply for being in the battle (with a penalty if they are overleveled), with extra EXP based on how much they actually contributed.
213	** Also, everyone in your party gets the same amount of AP (points toward mastering the skill tied to the currently carried items) even if they weren't in battle at all.
214	* Likewise in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTactics'', characters not in a battle don't get XP, and new characters join at preset levels (Not to bad with most, but [[spoiler: Cloud]] and anyone hired from the soldier office will join at level 1 regardless of where you are in the game. And that secret characters joins at the very end.) Leaked experience comes from Job Points (Used to learn new abilities), however. Whenever a character gains JP in battle, all characters in battle gain 25% of the JP themselves for that job. This can be rather useful for when you have a character first obtain a job that another character has been using for a while to find there's 1000 extra JP waiting for him.
215	* In ''VideoGame/FireEmblem'', characters gain more experience if the enemy's level is higher than theirs. Therefore, a key strategy is to have stronger characters weaken, but not kill, an enemy, then let the weak character get the kill (and the lion's share of the experience). There is usually one character per game that has fantastic growth rates, but requires mucho babysitting to be a useful character.
216	** ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemGaiden Gaiden]]'' and ''[[VideoGameRemake Echoes: Shadow of Valentia]]'' are the only games where any units that participate in a battle will receive bonus experience based on a pool. The pool is accumulated based on how many times the unit entered combat and deal damage and the experience will be added to each unit at the end of battle.
217	** ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemPathOfRadiance Path of Radiance]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemRadiantDawn Radiant Dawn]]'' have Bonus EXP that is awarded after battle for completing a map quickly, surviving {{NPC}}s and other stuff. You can award it to any of your characters however you see fit and even keep it for later.
218	*** It is worth noting, however, that in ''Radiant Dawn'' Bonus EXP is limited in its uses. Characters who use it to level up will gain exactly three stat increases per level, unless they've already maxed out so many stats that increasing three is impossible. Depending on how many stats the character in question has already capped, using bonus EXP can either be a huge boon or a handicap. Given that most low-level characters wind up much better if you level them the old fashioned way instead of Bonus EXP'ing them to a high level, this isn't a true replacement for babysitting. (None of this applies to ''Path of Radiance'', where Bonus EXP is equally as effective as regular combat EXP.)
219	*** However, using this as LeakedExperience for your Laguz characters in ''Radiant Dawn'' is an excellent strategy. Because their stat caps are so low (Laguz stats double while transformed), feeding almost any Laguz character a healthy diet of Bonus XP is practically guaranteed to max all their stats. Laguz XP gains in combat are poor compared to Beorc, especially in the beginning, making this at least one case where the leaked experience is ''superior'' to the regular kind.
220	** In ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening Awakening]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemFates Fates]]'', if a Pair-Up team attacks and lands a hit on an enemy, both characters gain EXP, with the lead character gaining the full amount and the partner earning a smaller portion as long as the enemy wasn't defeated before they have a chance to do their follow-up attack.
221	* ''VideoGame/{{Gladius}}'' gives the lion's share of XP to the team members who actually took part in a battle, but also awards a fraction of the XP to the others, meaning that even if you don't actively use a member they will be slowly gaining levels in the background, to ensure that you're not caught out in some of the more draconian entry requirements.
222	* Characters earn experience in ''VideoGame/JeanneDArc'' with each action they execute during battle, as long as it hits. Afterwards, a hefty bonus is awarded to everyone in the roster, allowing the benchwarmers to catch up (albeit very very slowly.) Characters can even level up merely from this bonus, and it's not uncommon to have an active participant level up twice --once in battle, and again through the battle rewards. This also allows some of the benchwarmer characters to be used during parts of the game in which some characters who are universally "A team" characters are unavailable and the benchwarmers would be feasible substitutes
223	* In ''VideoGame/LaPucelle: Tactics'', a way to level up weak allies is to make a combo attack with a high-level character. If the said high-level character has a sufficiently high Speed stat, it will attack first, kill the enemy, and share the experience with as many as three adjacent allies, making it possible for a character to gain dozens of levels by observation.
224	* The ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWars'' franchise has a unique variation on this, where upgrades will transfer from a character's robot to their MidSeasonUpgrade (for example, Anime/MazingerZ's upgrades will transfer to Anime/Mazinkaiser while [[Anime/MobileSuitGundam the original Gundam]]'s will transfer to the [[Anime/MobileSuitGundamCharsCounterattack Nu Gundam]]) so the player doesn't have to spend all their money getting it to the same level. Sometimes upgrades will transfer to tangentially related machines and secret units as well.
225	* In ''VideoGame/TacticsOgre'' and ''[[VideoGame/TacticsOgreTheKnightOfLodis Knight of Lodis]]'', each character actually has their own experience set, but the enemies that are often recruitable by Persuasion are set so that they are around the leader's level, and bosses are set so that they actually are a few levels higher than the leader in Knight of Lodis.
226	** Better still - characters recruited by Persuasion are considered to have been in their current class for their entire careers, whereas your characters have to start in basic "Soldier" or "Amazon" classes which have lower stat growth. In the ''very'' long run, not a major issue, but right around the time when you're starting to convert your characters from the basic classes to the more complex ones, picking up a character who has five levels of the stat growth of a wizard versus training a newbie to go through five levels of fighter first ''before'' becoming a wizard can make a significant difference.
227	** In the PSP remake, class levels are separate from characters: IE the party has soldier levels, wizard levels, etc, that go up if you use that class in battle. If the party soldier level is 15, then any character you change to soldier and any soldier you recruit or persuade will be level 15, even if they were originally higher level. This has the annoying side effect when you get to recruit a character in the same battle that their class is unlocked for you: they join you, their class level resets to 1, and suddenly they can't wear the equipment they were just using in battle.
228	*** At the same time, characters have skill points which are earned like experience and are used to by skills and buffs. These skill points are not leaked at all, however, so a newly hired wizard (for example) will be woefully weak in comparison to the wizard you've had since the beginning: despite being the same level, the veteran will likely have buffs that significantly improve their stats.
229	[[/folder]]
230
231	[[folder:Vehicular Combat]]
232	* Rather oddly for the type of game it is, ''VideoGame/WorldOfTanks'' implements this - five percent's worth of a battle's earned experience goes into the players "Free XP" pool, which can be used on any vehicle in the game - either to unlock said vehicle, or unlock modules. In addition, the crew receives the same amount of XP as the tank does, though there is a penalty for anyone wounded or killed in action. A vehicle that has been fully researched (or bought with no research to do) can turn on "accelerated crew training" that gives the least competent crew member twice the normal amount of XP, essentially transferring XP from the tank to the crewman.
233	** ''VideoGame/WarThunder'' an air combat game from a different company with similar concept has the same feature, which instead is applied to the progress in a chosen nation - however, the player is required to [[BribingYourWayToVictory spend special gold points bought with real money]] to use it.
234	[[/folder]]
235
236	!!Non-Video Game Examples
237
238	[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
239	* The ''Yggdrasil'' video game in ''Literature/{{Overlord\|2012}}'' let players gain extra experience points for helping stronger players. Ainz suspects that the gods the Slane Theocracy worships might be ''Yggdrasil'' players [[TrappedInAnotherWorld transported to the New World]] and the citizens might be leveling up faster by helping their gods.
240	* ''Manga/SleepyPrincessInTheDemonCastle'': One chapter involves the demons realizing that the Princess is inexplicably of a much higher level than she should be and trying to figure out how she managed to become so powerful when she spends most of her time sleeping. It turns out to be due to this trope; she's registered as a party member of the hero who's coming to rescue her, meaning as he and his team level up, she gets a free power boost.
241	[[/folder]]
242
243	[[folder:Literature]]
244	* ''Literature/ChrysalisRinoZ'': The Dungeon operates on strict "[[KillSteal last hit gets all the experience]]" rules, so it's fairly common for wealthy individuals to pay for soldiers to accompany them into the Dungeon, incapacitate monsters, and then let the client finish them off.
245	** Anthony makes this standard procedure in the Colony, with new hatchlings being accompanied through the monster farms to safely gain experience and biomass until they're sufficiently evolved to stand on their own. (It works extremely well, churning out thousands upon thousands of [[EliteMooks tier-three and tier-four ants]], instead of the usual ant strategy of [[ZergRush flooding an enemy with cannon fodder]].)
246	** He also arranges for the Colony to start providing this service to a nearby human village, so that the humans will become self-sufficient and not need constant protection. The humans, mostly farmers and blacksmiths and similar non-combat classes, are overjoyed at the opportunity for serious level advancement.
247	* ''Literature/DungeonCrawlerCarl'': Merely being in a party together causes experience share; if a party member is nearby but doesn't do anything, they get twenty percent experience. Being too far away means you don't get anything, which is why Katia transfers from Brinhild's Daughters to the Royal Court when a random teleport puts her on the other side of the map.
248	* In ''Literature/TheFallenWorld'' essence will spill out when a person or monster is killed and get absorbed by those around it, even if that person did nothing or had viewed the victim as an ally. While it lacks hard levels, the essence will allow the person to grow stronger.
249	* ''Literature/HaremInTheLabyrinthOfAnotherWorld'':
250	** Nobles commonly abuse this system by having their children join parties but then keep them behind in safety while the rest of their party deals with a labyrinth.
251	** Michio exploits it by stacking the bonuses he and his harem members get from their jobs. This causes them to level grind at a very fast pace, accomplishing in days what other parties would need months or even years.
252	[[/folder]]
253
254	[[folder:Webcomics]]
255	* ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'': {{Parodied\|Trope}} by the RPGMechanicsVerse. Haley Starshine's ArchEnemy Crystal automatically [[https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0581.html levels up]] alongside her so that their confrontation will be [[RuleOfDrama suitably dramatic]] instead of a case of VillainForgotToLevelGrind.
256	-->'''Crystal:''' ''(playing a game of cards)'' Sweet! Starshine gained another level!\
257	'''Jenny:''' Damn it! I really need to pick a fight with a [[PlayerCharacter PC]] one of these days...
258	[[/folder]]

Context Main / LeakedExperience