From Lotro-Wiki.com

Class is a fundamental choice of a player character for Lord of the Rings Online which determines your skills and abilities throughout your adventuring career, and also profoundly affects your stats, deeds, and the equipment available to you. Choosing a class can be constrained by the choice of race and gender.

There is a limit of 5 characters per realm, on a per-account basis.

Levels

Level reflects the experience of a player character, and is currently limited to a maximum of 50, which is commonly called the "level cap". With the future release of the Mines of Moria expansion, players will be able to level their characters up to 60. Each level begins and ends at fixed amount of experience points, regardless of race or class. A character's level does not usually reflect the actual experience of the player, since some players may be more skilled at the game and have a greater understanding of their class than others, and because many players have several different characters at various levels.

Stats

Character stats are values that determine how effective your character is at dealing and defending against damage, resisting negative effects, healing, and much more. They are influenced by a character's equipment, their traits and their level, and can also be increased or decreased by buffs and debuffs respectively.

See Character Stats for more details

Starting Stats

See Starting Stats

Equipment Slots

All characters have the same equipment slots, but due to proficiency limitations may not be able to use them all.

Bio

This is a tab on the Character Journal page in game. It allows you to set up a biography about your character, including a description and a family tree.

To create a familial relation, you can target another player character and use the /adopt command. This makes them your offspring, assuming your generation is a higher number than theirs. Being in a familial relation grants both character a new title. For example: Mother of (name) & Son of (name).

The War

This is a tab on the Character Journal page in game. These are your character's statistics in Monster Play, also known as PvMP. The following stats are tracked on this page:

• Rank
• Rating
• Total Renown
• Progress to Next Rank
• Kills
• Deaths
• Kills/Deaths
• Killing Blows
• Kills above Rating
• Kills below Rating
• Highest Rating Defeated

Destiny Points

Destiny Points are a type of game "currency" that can be used to buy temporary buffs or to enhance a monster play character. Points can be earned by completing quests or defeating Monster Players in the Ettenmoors PvP region.

You also earn 200 destiny points for every level your character gains after level 9.

Character Levels and Experience Points

A character's level is determined by the total amount of Experience Points (abbreviated XP) which that character has gained over his or her lifetime. In general, each level will grant higher morale and power, and unlock new skills for the character to purchase at a trainer. Many levels also unlock slots for traits that can be adjusted by visiting a bard. The use of Weapons, Armour, and many other items is tied to the character level.

XP is granted for defeating enemies and for completing quests, according to the difficulty of the task that was completed, relative to the current level of the character.

Enemies have a designated level (which can be seen by clicking on the enemy). This level determines their health and strength, and helps the player recognize enemies that are appropriate opponents for him. A more detailed explanation of enemy levels and the challenges they present can be found at [Difficulty indicators|here]. Enemies who are nine or more levels beneath you will not grant any XP, even if they are Elite or Master Elite enemies.

Similarly, quests have designated levels (seen in the Quest Log) which indicate to the player how difficult they will be for his character to complete. For example, a level 10 character will receive a great deal of XP for completing a level 15 quest (if indeed he can manage to do so), while the same character, upon completing a level 5 quest, will receive barely any XP at all.

The following chart illustrates the point at which the character will gain each level and the increase in XP needed from the previous level to achieve this. For instance, the character will gain level 5 at 1,700 XP, which is a gain of 850 XP from when she hit level 4.