Non combat experience points

Went looking for how NPCs get their experience points.
Like, there are NPCs ranging from first to fifth level, standard sort of people.
okay, does that mean four levels of them did a bunch of fighting? can you level in a library?

Have not found an answer yet... partly because I keep finding people saying they plain don't give xp for non combat encounters, or call it a house rule.
not a house rule, right there in core rulebook, roleplaying encounters are usually Average Party Level.

now I want more than a sentence on what that *means*, but so far am finding people who just like lalala the very idea.

Pathfinder is not the right system for doing diplomacy.
... but I want to fix Golarion with diplomacy.



I have been figuring out this levels bit though, with the help of the Inner Sea World Guide.
Like, level 16 to 20 is Legendary and anyone that level has a significant lot of Story because getting there involves Doing Deeds.
There are a handful of people in a nation that are levels 11-16, and Legendary levels are only there at all to drive the plot.
It doesn't get more precise than handful.

But when I was figuring out from the wiki who in Magnimar can cast Ressurection, as one wonders, then it seems to be only the high priest of the cathedral of Abadar. Not even the other high priests. Several churches represented, but they're not usually high enough levels.

So buying your healing isn't just gold and diamonds, it's a significant chunk of travel to find someone fancy enough to cast.

Raise Dead needs only a 9th level cleric so more people could do ot, but in Magnimar temples are led by lower level clerics than that. Calistria cleric 7, Iomedae cleric 7 Paladin 2, Pharasma cleric 7, Erastil cleric 5, Desna a cleric 10 but they're only sometimes there. Only Abadar cleric 13.

Adventurers are rare sorts, if they can be more powerful than people running cathedrals.

Though level type power obviously isn't the only sort.




... also followed a link to http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/587/roleplaying-games/dd-calibrating-your-expectations-2 explaining Einstein is a 5th level NPC, who can take 10 on his checks to answer DC 25 questions, among the hardest known to man, and have a 75% chance of answering DC30. Huh. So anyone higher level than that as wants to knowledge focus like Einstein could, you know, be Einstein???

So why do Adventurers need so many skill ranks?

... because when they need to answer DC25 questions they can't usually spare the time to take ten. Unless they're a bard.



It's like my Diplomacy Bard where I have a theoretical 35 without rolling.
Why would I need it? ... possibly occult rituals, or changing the minds of people who really hate me, in a hurry, ie to call truce and end a combat. there's feats and such.



But with all the looking around I don't know where to look for better advice as would tell me, is xp even meant for the kind of thing that can't kill you back? Are NPC levels meant to express surviving deasly danger? Because there's a level 2 Expert sailor in the examples on the website, and I guess he survived storms, but how many to level up?

So now I'm wondering if every manager in Golarion has been in combat.

It's a puzzler.