The purpose of LP is to moderate the actual in-game effects of your character's backstory, or of the choices they make between campaigns. It would hardly be fair to allow one player to say their character is a simple peasant inspired to leave home and try adventuring, while another player writes a backstory of an incredibly wealthy noble who happens to have connections in every city (oh, and is also good friends with every prominent leader in every realm). Thanks to LP, the GM doesn't have to rely solely on their own judgment to subjectively balance everyone's PCs. Players can come up with whatever kind of backstory makes any kind of sense, but they will not receive any benefits (or drawbacks) during the actual campaign unless they spend the LP to have them. To use the above example of the wealthy noble, it's possible that he did indeed have a lot of wealth and connections. But unless his player chooses to spend LP on such things, it might have been so long ago that it's no longer relevant or helpful.

    The options you spend LP on are called LP Elements. Unless stated otherwise, all LP Elements can be taken more than once.

    Some LP Elements actually give you LP instead of costing LP; these are negative sides of your character's history that might introduce difficulties during the campaign. 

    When in doubt about how to describe any LP Element in the context of your character, read the World Lore chapters or ask your GM for help!  

    Upon creating a new character, you receive 15 LP. This is true regardless of whether you have created a particularly young or old character. This is not only to be fair to other players, but also reflects a reality in Lur-Asko: characters who only start adventuring late in life usually do so in response to tragedy or loss. It's rare for an older character with a happy life and many useful past successes to turn to such a dangerous profession as adventuring.

    Before perusing the full list of LP options in this chapter, it is strongly recommended that you choose your starting Study first. Some Study Backgrounds require LP in order to obtain them, and these are usually the most cost-effective expenditures of LP.

    After making sure you don't need LP for your starting Study Background, you still may not want to immediately return to this chapter if this is your first Legends campaign. If you are new to the game, your GM will probably allow you to hold LP for later use. For example, you may want to hold LP in case you need an expensive Background in whatever your second Study turns out to be. You may not yet be familiar with the world of Lur-Asko, and may want a few sessions to think further about your character's past.

    If your GM is doing an advanced start, you are a veteran player, or you simply have a clear idea of the character you want to play, proceed on through this chapter with any LP remaining after choosing your starting Background.

    Your character gains 1 LP at the end of a campaign, and continues to accumulate LP at a rate of 2 per year between campaigns (unless they are imprisoned, indentured, or otherwise deprived of normal living). Spending this LP upon beginning the next campaign reflects how your character has been spending each half-year of time.

    If 5 years have passed without the start of a new campaign, the LP rate slows to 1 per year. Once 9 years have passed (and you have gained 14 LP, plus the 1 from the campaign ending), LP stops entirely. This is for a reason similar to the limit of 15 on starting characters: characters with a decade or more of normal life between adventures tend to only resume as a result of tragedy. Even if this is not the case, non-adventuring characters tend to eventually start spending their time and resources on mundane, happy parts of life that aren't as potentially useful to their next adventure. Characters who are truly ambitious with their adventuring life tend to not let 9 or even 5 years pass between adventures.

    LP produced between campaigns cannot be "held." Instead, you can partially pay for the LP element you are trying for next. This may be an interesting development in your character's life story - for example, if you have partially paid for a Culture Background, perhaps the start of the new campaign interrupts your schooling.

    Although LP is mechanically gained at a set rate per year, you are not required to precisely tie this to the chronology of your character's story. For example, if you spend 2 LP on Trauma Recovery and several more LP on other Elements, you are not obligated to say "my character spends 1 year in counseling for trauma, then moves on to ____." If it makes more sense (or is a better story), you might say that your character is working through their trauma while doing ____, perhaps a bit more slowly than if they didn't have to. You may still arrange your LP expenditures in whatever order you like for rules purposes (for example, obtaining an Investments Element before some Coins Elements).

    As mentioned, some Elements give you LP rather than costing LP. However, you cannot gain LP from Elements in an amount greater than 50% of the LP you gain normally. In other words, if you gain 15 LP to start or between campaigns, you can gain a maximum of 7 LP from Elements.

    Much like how the party's best-laid plans might fail during the actual campaign, the GM is never obligated to allow you to access the perks of LP Elements which do not have specific rule mechanics. Likewise, the GM is not obligated to confront you with difficulties from Elements that gave you LP. They are always encouraged to do so, in order to provide your LP Elements with genuine benefits and consequences. Still, always remember that the story and events of the campaign take priority over those of your backstory and its LP Elements. The campaign is the story of your party's adventures, not your own character's past. You might spend LP to have a safehouse in a city, but that safehouse is not magically protected if your GM's storyline happens to involve that city being invaded or destroyed, nor is the campaign mandated to take place in that city. The GM will do their best to include the party's LP Elements, but they are juggling a lot of other plot elements as well - be kind and allow them to have the final say.

    On a similar note, you will not have LP refunded if any particular element is "expended" in some way by the events of the campaign. It might be the above example of your safehouse being destroyed. Or maybe someone spent LP on a contact, and the party's actions during the campaign got that contact killed. Maybe you just spent all of the coin from your LP Elements on grenade launcher ammunition, and shot all of it off during the campaign's battles. LP Elements can put you in a better position at the start of the campaign, but once the campaign begins, all bets are off.

    Finally, LP is not the only way to obtain the things described by LP Elements. Once again, campaign events take center stage: in the course of the party's story, you may pick up a huge benefit (or a huge setback) that would require a hefty load of LP to produce from your backstory. LP Elements are behind-the-scenes developments you can easily bring about, but you should expect the events of the campaign to overshadow them. Adventuring, by definition, is interesting, and it "moves faster" than the mundane years before and between campaigns.

    For all these reasons, try not to fret about your LP choices too much. They are an important part of the world, but not a main focus of Legends. Pick what sounds interesting and makes for a backstory that you like, but save your blood, sweat, and tears for choosing Abilities - nothing except your character's death can take those away.