Shattered Kingdoms

I've got a character with maxed cha (24), and I've had a problem levelling, too. Places where I feel I should be getting more exp for being anti-aura (like the Haven), it feels like I get jack squat for exp these days.

If its been a while since you've leveled a character in the haven, then you probably missed the changes there recently. Everything in the haven has been drastically wimped, unfortunatly.

Truthfully, I believe dwarves are just the slowest leveling race out there.
For instance, I took a centaur merc level 1 into the zakami beastie area (lower fields) and can kill one beastie, and get a tick. Take a dwarf merc level 1 into the same area, and I had to kill three to four beasties to get a tick. Now you could argue that the centaur is larger, so hits harder, but since they are both killing the same creature they should be getting nearly the same amount of xp per kill.

Just messing around at work when bored, I was able to level a centaur merc to over level 11 in less than an hour.
Tried it with a dwarf, and Id be lucky to reach the same level in three hours. (in both cases I did it completely alone, no mentoring, no hand outs, etc.)

Races that live longer level slower than races that live less.

A dwarf, and an elf/delf as well, will need a lot more effort to GM compared to a giant or a griffon. And since most dwarven chars don't need CHA(for their class) it's hard to GM them(compared to the usually high, if not maxed, elven or delven PCs).

Did you make both character with the exact alignment?

Yeh, remember when characters actually meant something to level?