Do you want to Ask the Angry GM a question? It’s easy to do. Just e-mail your BRIEF question to TheAngryGameMaster@gmail.com and put ASK ANGRY in the subject. And include your name so I can use your proper appellation when making fun of your question, your inability to proofread, your poor understanding of brevity, your name, your personal habits, or your failings as a game master, be they real, imagined, or invented for the express purpose of having something to make fun of. And yes, you should consider that a warning. If you want politeness, go ask the Hippie-Dippie-Sunshine-and-Rainbows-and-Bunny-Farts-GM. If you want the best damned advice about gaming anywhere on the Internet for free, well, you’d better be able to take a few punches. Oh, and remember, this column is written at least two weeks in advance and can only address a fraction of the questions it receives. So, if you have an emergency and you’re under a time constraint, go on Twitter and ask Perkins or Crawford to s$&% something out for you. If you ain’t paying for it, you can have either quality or speed, but you can’t have both. And I only offer quality.

Now, on with this week’s question(s).

Friend of the Site @NanbanJim asks:

Since people complain about the 15-minute work day and there being no mechanical reason to NOT take a Long Rest, I was wondering: what if the Long Rest cost a certain amount of XP? It SEEMS like it might give reason to keep pushing.

First, that is NOT a typo. I can count off on one hand the people who I would legitimately credit as a “friend of the site.” That is, someone whose actions – and in some cases, their mere existence – have had a direct, positive impact on my ability to churn out content on a regular basis. @NanabanJim is one of those people. If you like the fact that this site exists, you should probably thank him for his unspecified contribution to my continued mental well-being. You should also note that he knows how to ask a goddamned question. Succinct, interesting, and requiring no editing.

For those of you who don’t know, the 15-minute work-day is a very OLD criticism about D&D. See, the primary driver source of mechanical challenge and tension in D&D is daily resource attrition. No one, single combat can take out any party worth their salt. Instead, over the course of a day of adventure, characters gradually get worn down by numerous combats. Meanwhile, most of the character’s combat resources are on a daily cooldown. That is, all the most powerful resources can only be used once or twice or whatever per day. At the end of each day, the party gets to take a Long Rest. They get all their hit points and resources back and they are reset to fresh as a daisy and raring to go. This is all because Dungeons & Dragons has its roots in the idea of daily forays into a hostile dungeon. The basic structure of the game is that the party would wake up in the morning, head into the dungeon, and start hacking until their resources were expended and they were just about dead. Then they would retreat from the dungeon and rest so the spellcasters could recover their spells.

The problem is there is absolutely no good reason – within the system – for the heroes to push as far as they can in any one day. In fact, the optimal strategy is to take on precisely one encounter each day, then retreat, recover, and take on the next. By taking on only one encounter a day, the party is never in any real danger and they have all of their most powerful abilities to deal with every encounter. Now, note before you comment, that I said, “no good reason WITHIN THE SYSTEM.” Yes, GMs can create time constraints when they design their own adventures to discourage such behavior. And yes, the actual, in-game behavior would involve the party sitting around for many, many useless hours doing nothing, waiting until nightfall, sleeping, and then fighting for fifteen minutes before they sit around for another fourteen hours waiting for nightfall again. But, that first bit is not part of the system. It is instead something the GM has to FIX because the system DIDN’T. And that second is not technically a limitation because time passes at the speed of narration and, just because the characters might get bored doing that doesn’t mean the players will be.

The 15-minute workday has been a problem of the game’s structure for a long time. It’s a consequence of the attrition-based model and the daily replenishment of resources. But, it is also a problem that isn’t as serious as it used to be. It just doesn’t come up that often. And frankly, it really doesn’t BREAK anything. Honestly, these days, more GMs complain about the fact that it’s very difficult to create a single encounter that challenges the party in the same way that an entire day does because lots of GMs want to focus less on combat encounters. But the 15-minute workday was actually a significant problem as late as the mid-2000’s that the creators of 4th edition devoted significant design resources to solve it. And it still rears its head at some tables. Especially those focused heavily on dungeon crawling. Lots of groups – and I include some of my own among them – are a bit “rest happy” and don’t really push themselves too hard to get in as much adventure as possible during an adventuring day.

So, that’s the context. Now, what about Jim’s idea?

Obviously, if you want players to change their behavior, you need to create an incentive. Or a disincentive. That is to say, you need a carrot or a stick. Or both. In fact, 4th Edition D&D tried to do exactly that. With a carrot, not a stick. Every two encounters the party completed without resting would reward them with a milestone benefit. Usually, the milestone was in the form of an action point – basically, 4E’s version of Inspiration – but other rewards were possible as well. Except the mechanic was never really used to any great degree. And, honestly, it was often forgotten. Players didn’t even notice it and, just like with Inspiration, frequently forgot to spend their action points. But given that 4E included lots of resources that recovered on an encounter basis, the 15-minute workday problem wasn’t as serious as in other editions.

But what you’re proposing, Jim, is a stick. A punishment. If you take a Long Rest, you have to pay for it. And you have to pay for it with character advancement. From a pure perspective of incentives, it certainly would do the job in my view. Assuming the XP cost was high enough. I mean, imagine if the cost was about the equivalent of one encounter. That would mean that if the party only took on ONE combat encounter in a day and then took a Long Rest, they’d get no XP for that day’s adventure. And if they tried to do that every day, they’d never gain a level. They’d never advance. Take on two encounters in a day and you only earn half the XP for that day. Take on three, now you get to keep 66% of your XP. And so on.

But there are issues. Big issues. First, the problem with anything that f$&%s with the advancement rate of the PCs is that it just doesn’t mean a whole lot anymore. I mean, do you expect the GM to keep leveling up the encounters at a consistent rate whether the PCs keep up or not? Will the next session be a 3rd-level adventure even if the party hasn’t earned 3rd-level? Most GMs don’t do that. I mean, yes, the players will feel the punishment of not gaining levels. But it’ll be entirely in their heads. It’ll just be the frustration of not advancing. It won’t make the game any harder to play. And if it did, it’d quickly become a death spiral. Once the players lose too much advancement ground, they’d probably never be able to catch up.

Second, as noted, a lot of games aren’t structured on the idea of an adventuring day anymore. Hell, my games tend to go back and forth. Some days involve three or four or six challenges. Some days involve only one. Some are more story heavy. Unless you’re separating the idea of a Long Rest from the idea of sleeping – which is fine – you’re making it impossible to have any structure in your game other than the standard adventuring day. I like more flexibility, not less.

Third, I’m not a big fan – personally – of weirdly abstract systems. Frankly, I don’t even like the idea of being able to fly into a murderous rage only three times per day for some ridiculously arbitrary reason. The idea of “spending XP” as currency before you’re allowed to benefit from a restful night’s sleep is a bit bizarre for my tastes. If the party doesn’t spend the XP, what happens in the world? Are they not allowed to sleep? Or do they just not benefit from their natural recuperative abilities when they sleep? If the party never spends any XP to rest – or if they somehow never earn any – would they just rot away despite sleeping and eating like any normal group of people? I’m just not a big fan of arbitrary game mechanics that can’t be explained sensibly in the world that the game represents.

But let’s put aside that objection. I’m sure someone will scream something like “it’s fantasy” or “you accept hit points and those are just as stupid” because people are not just stupid, they are predictably stupid. Here’s the real reason I don’t like it: it’s overly punitive. And players don’t like overly punitive things. And while I am the first one to say that players do need to be saved from themselves and they won’t like everything that makes a good game experience, the players do have to play the game and have fun.

Frankly, I don’t like to deny my players a Long Rest when they actually need one. The thing is, those Long Rests are there to keep them from running out of resources and killing themselves. Sure, they should only NEED one every six encounters or so, but that assumes they – and I – handle everything perfectly. If we don’t, they may need a rest sooner. Sometimes they will miscalculate. Or the dice turn against them. A few bad crits in a row can decimate a fresh party. Which is cool and all. But do you really want to be the GM who tells their players that they have to ride their characters to death because “it’s too soon to take a Long Rest.” “Sorry guys, I know you can’t get through six encounters today, but you’re going to have to go as far as you can before you all die because that’s the way the game is paced”?

That’s the other side of the whole “how do I stop my players from taking rests too often” question, by the way. That’s what you’re doing as a GM every time you create situations in which your party can’t rest. You may be just riding those horses to death. You monster.

Now, you can argue that the XP Cost isn’t FORCING them to ride themselves to death, but any sufficiently costly punishment is basically coercion. And XP is pretty much the costliest thing you can take away from the PCs. That’s why the XP costs attached to creating magic items and casting certain powerful spells in 3E was so unpopular and was eventually dropped. But perhaps there’s a way to turn the whole thing around. Because every stick can be turned into a carrot.

For example, when World of Warcraft – the online fantasy addiction – was first released, it included an anti poop-socking mechanic based on XP penalties. Basically, the longer you played the game, the less XP you earned for everything you did. If you played for more than 2 hours, you only earned half the normal allotment of XP for completing quests and killing monsters. And players hated it. They felt like they were being punished for playing the game rather than being encouraged to take a break every couple of hours.

And so, the creators of WoW turned the stick into a carrot. They created the “Rested” condition. When you first logged into World of Warcraft, you had this buff called “Rested.” While the buff was active, you earned TWICE as much XP from completing quests and killing monsters. After about two hours, the condition went away. If you wanted it back, you could log out and then log back in after a certain period of time. The creators then adjusted all of the monster and quest XP to compensate. The end result was that, numerically, the mechanic was doing exactly the same thing. But it was a REWARD for doing the right thing, not a PUNISHMENT for doing the wrong thing.

So, to your question, I’ll counter with this: what if the PCs gain increased XP for every encounter they take on in a given day? Victories build on victories, right? And momentum is an important aspect of human behavior. Once you build up a head of steam, you tend to keep going. Let the XP mechanic mirror that sort of behavior. If you never get past one encounter in a day, you advance at a normal rate. But if you take on two or three or four, you gain more XP per encounter. You build up a multiplier.

Just as with slow advancement, from a pure numbers perspective, it wouldn’t mean anything. PCs can only advance between sessions or adventures. And the adventures are always going to keep pace with their levels. So, mechanically, it’s still meaningless. But that sweet bonus experience is going to be pretty enticing. It might even encourage players to seek non-combat ways to resolve encounters – like deception and stealth and evasion – so they can earn extra XP by overcoming more encounters without expending resources like HP and spells. And games that aren’t structured regularly around the adventuring day won’t get broken by the mechanic.

So, that’s what I do.

Of course, the real way to get rid of the 15-minute workday is to just drop the focus on daily resource attrition to begin with. But that would only be useful if you were writing a game from the ground up.

Giiuy asks:

I’m terrible at keeping things succinct, so I’ll just split this into two sections: the question and “unnecessary details:”

Okay. Stop, stop, stop. I’ve gotten a bunch of e-mails that do this bulls$&%. They think that if they flag part of the e-mail as “unnecessary details” and then apologize for including them, that somehow will make me forget that I have specified, repeatedly, that I will answer brief, succinct questions. But Giiuy, you earn some extra moron points for that remark about being “terrible at keeping things succinct.” Yes, you are. Because you’re too stupid to do the third step of a three-step process. You recognized that you had a pile of unnecessary details. You separated them from the rest of the details. ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS THEN NOT TYPE THOSE DETAILS. OR, IF YOU REALLY HAD TO TYPE THEM, HIGHLIGHT THAT F$&%ING BLOCK OF TEXT AND HIT DELETE! HOLY MOTHER OF F$&%.

If you – and this goes for anyone who ever e-mails me again – can tell the difference between your unnecessary details and your actual question and you include the unnecessary ones anyway, I get to punch you in the throat if I ever meet you in real life. Convention, on the street, game store, whatever. I don’t care. You are legally obligated to identify yourself to me and tell me that I owe you a punch in the throat. And you will stand there and take it. I can’t think of any other way to handle this level of stupid at this point.

On to the question.

Question: how would you recommend designing unique magical items for party members which grow in power as the party levels up? Would you recommend using a straightforward system based on the number of kills a weapon had or would you tie the item increases to plot progression elements? Or is there another, better option that my mere mortal DMing mind can’t even conceive of without your divine assistance? Or would you just not bother with such a terrible, stupid idea which would never work in a million years?

I can understand why you might doubt the quality of your ideas considering you can’t figure out how to NOT TYPE things you know you’re not supposed to type, but calm your tits there, Giiuy. It’s a fine idea. Actually, it’s a really good idea and something that D&D is sorely lacking. In general, D&D has a real problem with how to handle advancement other than “turn in your XP for another class ability.” Equipment upgrading is a fine, upstanding tradition in the sci-fi, fantasy, and adventure milieu. And that’s all you’re really talking about here.

See, the big secret is that gold is – or rather, it SHOULD be – just another form of advancement, just like XP. Except instead of buying character abilities, it should be used to buy better equipment and tools and things. Idiots prattle on about the “D&D economy,” and never understand that the reason gold is meaningless is because the D&D designers are too dumb to recognize that it isn’t an economy, it’s an advancement scheme. At least, it is in every other game ever.

By the way, crafting is just another advancement scheme too. If only people understood that…

But you’re not just talking about buying a better bow or sword or suit of armor periodically, are you? Or making bows out of dragon sinew and armor out of umber hulk shells. You’re talking about equipment that grows as the characters grow. Magically. Or whatever. Of course, you and I both know it’s all the same thing. It’s just a matter of figuring out two things: the upgrades themselves and how the upgrades get upgraded.

Now, D&D and Pathfinder have pretty straightforward magic item progressions already built in. Unfortunately, in all of your unnecessary blathering, you didn’t mention once the system you were using. Or maybe you did and I didn’t see it because I got bored reading unnecessary blather. And even 5E has some general recommendations for what items should be available at what levels. So, it’s reasonable enough to go from a +1 sword to a +2 sword to a +1 flaming sword to a +2 flaming burst sword or whatever. You can find a series of magical items that can easily morph from one to another. Alternatively, you can pick out the most powerful item and then figure out the steps that will add up to that item.

But if you want to do something more complex, you can create a sort of “progression tree” for a magic item. For example, a magic sword could go from +1 to +2 to EITHER flaming or freezing or lightning-ing or whatever and then it can progress to flaming burst or freezing burst or lightning-ing and thundering-ing. It depends on how much work you want to do. But that sort of thing can be very cool.

Either way, I’d recommend that you look over all of the available magical items for your system of choice, break them down by the level at which characters should have access to them, and use them to build the progressions for each item.

As for how each item levels up, well, it also depends on how much work you want to do and how much you want to keep track of. The simplest thing to do is just tie the weapon’s advancement to the character’s advancement. When the character hits level 2, their weapon gains its +1 to attack. At level 3, it gains +1 to damage as well. At level 5, it deals +1d6 fire damage. At level 6, +2 to attack. And so on.

That’s easy to keep track of and to balance. But it doesn’t quite create the sense that it’s the ITEM that’s leveling up. Rather, it creates a thematic sense that the item is an extension of the character and their will. Even if it isn’t, that’s what it’s going to FEEL like. If you care about story bulls$&% like themes and feels.

Alternatively, you can certainly allow the magical items to gain some kind of points and then decide what, exactly, gives a magic item points. For a magical weapon, delivering killing blows certainly makes sense. For a suit of armor, taking hits might do it. For a staff or wand, casting spells might be the thing to empower it. Honestly, it might be cool for each magical item to have its own special method of gaining “points” to level up. The players might actually go out of their way to make sure their items are gaining “points.” Think how differently you’d behave if you had a magical item that was charged by getting killing blows as opposed to damaging uninjured foes.

Of course, whatever your items do to gain “points,” that’s something that’s going to have to be tracked. And that means you’re adding paperwork to the game. Who is tracking this s$&%? You? The players? Both? Whoever is tracking it, you want to balance the thematic element – that is, what the item gets “points” for – against the need for paperwork. Tracking kill-counts is one thing. Tracking every HP of damage done by a magic weapon or every missed attack that would have been a hit if not for a magical shield? That’s a pain in the a$&.

For that reason, you might consider placing a limit on these items that prevents a character from having more than one. The item, for example, might have to be synched to the character’s personal aura or whatever. That means, they can only have one. And that opens up the possibility that the item might simply share the character’s XP. Maybe the item gains a number of “points” based on the number of XP the character gains. I wouldn’t necessarily have it get a share of the XP, though. Players hate losing XP to anything. Even cool items. Unless, of course, the system is about spending your XP on different benefits. That is, if you can choose between leveling up your item or gaining a new spell, that might be cool.

Depending on how much of a focus you want these artifacts of power to be – and you could certainly focus your campaign story around them – you could even level them up based on specific criteria. Even quests. A necromantic blooddrinker sword might only level up after it has been used to slay 10 undead creatures. Or it might have to slay a specific creature. A named NPC even. You can tie these things to events that will likely happen during the course of your adventures pretty much automatically or stuff that will happen during the course of the adventure if the party works at it or things that the party has to go out of their way to do. And that depends on whether you want the magic items to be a bonus or a necessity. If the items are an exceptional reward for the party’s good play, for example, the blooddrinker sword might have to deliver the killing blow to ten corporeal undead in an adventure that only features two or three encounters with such undead. If the items are just an assumed part of advancement, the adventure could include dozens of undead. And if the items are part of the story of the campaign, then the sword will have to be used to kill a specific vampire as part of a quest.

And that’s ultimately the thing: a neat idea is cool and all, but the execution requires you to sit and really hammer out what the idea is supposed to do for your game. Magic items that level? Neat idea. But are they exceptional rewards or just part of the normal game progression? What makes them level? Thematically, what works? Mechanically, what do you want to keep track of? And what do they get out of leveling?

The thing is, Giiuy, I can’t help you answer those questions. I can only tell you what questions to answer and then give you some pointers on the mechanics those answers will lead to. But what you’ll find is, when you’re hammering out the answers, the mechanical bits will tend to connect themselves. Especially if you take some time to look at what’s ALREADY in the system. Don’t invent magical items whole cloth. That’s a lot of work. Instead, like I said, look at what’s in the system and figure out how to stitch them together. That will also help the mechanical bits join up in your head.

Of course, I have every confidence in your ability to slam out the work. After all, you can’t stop typing even when you f$&%ing admit that you should have stopped. Maybe channel that into executing your ideas instead of e-mailing me three paragraphs of useless context I didn’t read.