Dungeons & Dragons Has Done Away With the Adventuring Day

Adventuring days are no more, at least not in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide. The new 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide contains a streamlined guide to combat encounter planning, with a simplified set of instructions on how to build an appropriate encounter for any set of characters. The new rules are pretty basic - the DM determines an XP budget based on the difficulty level they're aiming for (with choices of low, moderate, or high, which is a change from the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide) and the level of the characters in a party. They then spend that budget on creatures to actually craft the encounter. Missing from the 2024 encounter building is applying an encounter multiplier based on the number of creatures and the number of party members, although the book still warns that more creatures adds the potential for more complications as an encounter is playing out.

What's really interesting about the new encounter building rules in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide is that there's no longer any mention of the "adventuring day," nor is there any recommendation about how many encounters players should have in between long rests. The 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide contained a recommendation that players should have 6 to 8 medium or hard encounters per adventuring day. The 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide instead opts to discuss encounter pace and how to balance player desire to take frequent Short Rests with ratcheting up tension within the adventure.

The 6-8 encounters per day guideline was always controversial and at least in my experience rarely followed even in official D&D adventures. The new 2024 encounter building guidelines are not only more streamlined, but they also seem to embrace a more common sense approach to DM prep and planning.

The 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide for Dungeons & Dragons will be released on November 12th.

 

[Oofta]

The "requirement" for 6-8 encounters was always overblown, it was just used as a general guideline to what a party can handle.

Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer.​

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I do sometimes hit that number of encounters, but I also use the gritty rest rules where a short rest is overnight and a long rest is several days. For the most part I do it that way because I tend to do more urban adventures, investigations and so on. It just works better for pacing for me.

But it's always been about XP budget, so this is nothing new.

 

[DarkCrisis]

So um... How have they changed to offset the removal? Wotc has long waffled between expressly admitting that things were designed with the expectation and that the game was not designed to expect it. We have the new PHB (complete with some near identical monsters) where there's no drastic overhaul on that end of the things assumed & mapped to the 6-8, simply removing the words without restructuring the monster design leaves the big question of how the encounter building itself was restructured on a mechanical level.

DM: So, lets see here. 2-3 Fights. So... every encounter needs to be Deadly. Well that really didn't change much from 2014.

 

[payn]

I agree, Parmandur, that rephrasing and revision in presentation can help. The notion of the "adventuring day" seemed so clunky and disruptive of the diagetic experience. I will not be missing it. I am hoping the revised DMG is good!

I think thats largely up to interpretation. Some may see an adventuring day as a single cinematic scene, in which case yes it doesnt seem to fit. Others might see an adventuring day as the entire episode. For a good portion of D&D history, the adventuring day was the pacing mechanic.

What I am hoping is the pacing presentation allows for running a game in both those and more types of expectations. Dare I say modular?

 

[MatthewJHanson]

So um... How have they changed to offset the removal?

Yeah, that's what I'm wondering too. A fight where spellcasters can nova and one where they are down half their spells are to very different fights even when they're against the same enemies. From what I see in the PHB, none of that has changed.

Are we still going to get new DMs asking, "Why are the PCs curbstomping all my 'difficult' encounters?"

I'll have to look at the details, but my first instinct is that making the guidelines simpler without fundamentally changing the game is just going to lead to more confusion.

 

[TwoSix]

So um... How have they changed to offset the removal? Wotc has long waffled between expressly admitting that things were designed with the expectation and that the game was not designed to expect it. We have the new PHB (complete with some near identical monsters) where there's no drastic overhaul on that end of the things assumed & mapped to the 6-8, simply removing the words without restructuring the monster design leaves the big question of how the encounter building itself was restructured on a mechanical level.

They haven’t. It’s basically a shrug that the resource attrition part of the game is primarily for the “D&D feel”. Intra-character balance is a task for DM adjudication.

 

[Charlaquin]

Nobody ran 8 encounters thst were combat heavy per day with wizards in the party else the adventuring party runs out of spells too fast.

Hi, nice to meet you, I’m nobody.

 

[Charlaquin]

I am really hoping this leads to running the game better for a lot of folks. Though, im worried that simply not saying adventure day is just trying to avoid a controversial term and folks will still need/want more guidance on how the game is designed to work from the DMG. I am curious to see the pacing section though I must say.

Very much this. The game is designed around daily resource attrition, whether the designers acknowledge that fact or not. I predict that leaving out discussion of combats per adventuring day in 2024 is going to have similar effects as leaving out magic item prices in 2014. Just because you don’t talk about it doesn’t mean people will magically stop needing that information.

 

[Blue]

This is only for the worst. Like, seriously. It's enabling horrible DMing inherent in the math.

There are two aspects for encounters. Challenge is one of them. You can make an encounter more challenging, there isn't question about that.

The other is balance between the classes. And the Adventuring Day length directly addresses the balance between an at-will primary class (like a rogue or an EB focused warlock) and a long-rest-recovery primary class (like a pure caster).

Basically, high level spell slots do more in one action than an at-will is. If you gave casters unlimited spell slots, they would easily outshine the at-will classes.

On the other hand, due to class features from Extra Attack and Sneak Attack to EB Invocations, at-will classes do more than cantrips. If alternately you took away all slots, then the at-will classes would be supreme over the cantrip-only casters.

But let's dial this back from the absurd. A first step is picture a really long adventuring day. Say 50 rounds of combat broken over 12 encounters. Casters long out of slots, separate encounters so durations expire, it should be pretty clear that rogue who hits hard every attack will be more effective.

How about the other side - a single encounter day, tough so maybe 6-7 rounds long. Casters nova, get good use out of things with durations, and that rogue with the steady output is the one who is outshined.

These converge, to a place where over the adventuring day, both the at-will classes and the long-rest recovery classes balance against each other.

This is inherent in the math of how the classes are designed. It is true regardless if they speak of it.

Striping the concept of an adventuring day from the DMG, giving no recommendation for the math, is a horrendous choice. Bad DMs will use it as an enabler, and new DMs won't even know critical information is missing.

This is an actively harmful change to Dungeon Mastering guidance.

 

[payn]

Very much this. The game is designed around daily resource attrition, whether the designers acknowledge that fact or not. I predict that leaving out discussion of combats per adventuring day in 2024 is going to have similar effects as leaving out magic item prices in 2014. Just because you don’t talk about it doesn’t mean people will magically stop needing that information.

Right, that places a large burden on the "pacing" instruction. It could be detailed and allow folks to finally tailor to their expectations. Or it could simply be a single paragraph saying "you'll figure it out." I dont know what it looks like, so I dont know if it will be more useful, or just rearranging the silverware.

 

[the Jester]

Nobody ran 8 encounters thst were combat heavy per day with wizards in the party else the adventuring party runs out of spells too fast.

Nonsense. I had plenty of 8 (or more) encounter days. The fact that cantrips never run out means that the casters are still punching at their weight even with no slots to use.