Excerpt from my Rule Book:
All characters and creatures in these rules are built up using a point based system, starting with a base 40 points. For ease, we call them experience points (xp). The base 40 starting points do not count towards your xp total. Experience is used to buy everything, including your attribute scores.
Prerequisites - A prerequisite must be obtained before purchasing anything. For an XP prerequisite, that means that much XP has to have been already spent before you can buy something. For example, you need 27 XP to buy a technique with a prerequisite of 25 XP - 25 spent as the prerequisite and 2 more to afford the technique. For example, a person with an experience total of 28 could only have one talent with a prerequisite of 25 xp, as they only have 3 xp over the prerequisite of 25, and each technique costs 2 xp.
Attribute Scores – All humans of adult age start with a base of 0 in each of their attributes. This can be raised to a maximum of 8. Most humans have at least a 1 in each score (A 0 indicates a serious problem). Raising an attribute by 1 point is 2 experience. The maximum of a statistic may be changed by age, race, or even some talents.
Feats – Each feat you choose costs 1 experience point. You cannot normally choose a feat more than once. See Feats (Page 9) for more information.
Techniques – Each talent (Page 15) you choose costs 3 experience points. You may also choose talents from one (And only one) Prestige Technique Group (Page 23) you qualify for. Certain feats or techniques may allow you to chose from other Prestige Technique Groups. You cannot normally choose a technique more than once.
Hero Dice – Each Hero Die costs 1 xp. See Hero Dice (Page 48) for more information. Your total number of Hero Dice may not exceed twice your Wisdom attribute.
Starting Equipment – A new character will typically start with 600 silver to buy equipment. Ten silver is equal to one gold and one silver is equal to ten coppers. See Equipment (Page 30) for more information.
Starting Experience – A new character will typically start with an experience total of 30. This does not include racial bonuses nor the 40 free points a character has to start with.
Starting Age - There are several age categories that one may fall into. A normal adventurer is a human in the Adult age category (15 to 32 years old). See the aging effects rules on this page for more information.