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.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Are short rest actual sleep sessions?

I meant for long rests. Which also helps to space out short rests. Don't want to blow everything before noon.

 

[abirdcall]

Given that more and more people come to D&D through actual play shows, it makes sense that the rules better reflect the D&D folks are actually seeing: more RP, fewer but more impactful encounters.

One thing I often see come up in these conversations is the assumption that the adventuring day is per game session not per long rest.

At my table we play 3 hour sessions and average 1 long rest every 2 sessions.

So just because we have many encounters per long rest doesn't mean we aren't also spending a lot of time doing social interaction.

 

[Parmandur]

I'm confused about what has changed. Because based on what Christian has shared here, something fundamental has to have changed, right?

No, not necessarily. Just because the DMG has rephrase how to pave and budget doesn't mean the game expectations are any different at their mechanical core. All this report says is that the Adventuring Day guidance is gone, but it says there is pacing suggestions still. It probavly washes out to the same thing, from the math point of view.

 

[Parmandur]

One thing I often see come up in these conversations is the assumption that the adventuring day is per game session not per long rest.

At my table we play 3 hour sessions and average 1 long rest every 2 sessions.

So just because we have many encounters per long rest doesn't mean we aren't also spending a lot of time doing social interaction.

I'm also not sure why people say that the published Campaigns don't follow the guidelines: they have published a ton of Dungeons with 5-8 Medium Encoutners, they do it fairly constantly in fact.

 

[abirdcall]

I'm also not sure why people saybthe published Campaigns don't follow the guidelines: they have published a ton of Dungeons with 5-8 Medium Encoutners, they do it fairly constantly in fact.

Yeah I only play published adventures and with the exception of overland travel they all follow the guidelines.

In most cases they even spell out what happens if the party takes a long rest in the middle of the adventure (usually either failing the objective or it gets interrupted).

 

[Oofta]

Yeah I only play published adventures and with the exception of overland travel they all follow the guidelines.

In most cases they even spell out what happens if the party takes a long rest in the middle of the adventure (usually either failing the objective or it gets interrupted).

It's also interesting that they made it far, far easier to interrupt a long rest. It's now interrupted any time you roll initiative during the rest.

 

[abirdcall]

It's also interesting that they made it far, far easier to interrupt a long rest. It's now interrupted any time you roll initiative during the rest.

They also spell out now that a long rest can only be taken 16 hours after the previous long rest.

(A party might say they wait 16 hours to enter the dungeon but that is really stretching things.)

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah I only play published adventures and with the exception of overland travel they all follow the guidelines.

In most cases they even spell out what happens if the party takes a long rest in the middle of the adventure (usually either failing the objective or it gets interrupted).

That's a big part of why I am certain the new guidelines will work in the same underlying math...because WotC has not changed their Advebture building approach, and have published a lot juat this calendar year that still fits.

 

[Parmandur]

It's also interesting that they made it far, far easier to interrupt a long rest. It's now interrupted any time you roll initiative during the rest.

They also spell out now that a long rest can only be taken 16 hours after the previous long rest.

(A party might say they wait 16 hours to enter the dungeon but that is really stretching things.)

Big tools for a DM to get proper momentum and pacing, for sure.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Well, you need 6-8 medium encounters.

I mean that's what the book says, but I have hard time believing that except at low levels that would be a challenge, given how easy medium encounters are. Granted, I'm not sure I've ever had more than five + couple of traps and other challenges that burned resources (and most of those encounters were definitely not medium, but quite a bit harder.) So eight, maybe? But eight pushover encounters seems like an utterly miserable experience to me, so it is not something I would ever want even to try.

And none of the individual encounters will be particularly challenging; the challenge will be in managing your resources well enough to make it through all 6-8 of them without having to retreat and take a long rest. That’s the point, it’s shifting the core challenge from
“survive all the encounters” to “manage your resources well enough to get through the whole day.” Survival is basically not in question after around 3rd or 4th level when you’re no longer at risk of dying to a random critical hit. The question is, will you be able to get done everything you need to get done before your resources run too low to continue safely. This is also one of the reasons time pressure is important.

Obviously, all of this assumes a particular style of gameplay. If you’re not interested in that attrition-based macro challenge, you can try to design your encounters differently. The system just won’t be doing you any favors. And it’s a shame the DMG isn’t explicit about this, because it’s kind of important to understand that if you’re not looking for this attrition macro challenge type of gameplay, you’ll be fighting against the game’s systems instead of working with them.

Indeed, and at that point, individual encounters will be challenging on their own. The core gameplay challenge will no longer be a macro challenge of managing your resources effectively across many micro challenges or being forced to retreat. It will instead be a gauntlet of individual challenges you must survive each of or die.

Well, no, not quite. The attrition still plays a part, it is just that it is over say four rather than six encounters. Granted, there is a higher risk of defeat on individual encounters as well, which makes them more exciting. But I feel you can go significantly above deadly and the risk of total defeat is still pretty minimal, it just might not seem utterly impossible even in theory.

I just don’t think that’s really what the system is designed for. To me this comes across as asking for instructions on how to use your screwdriver to hammer nails.

Given that overwhelming majority of the users of the product will use it to hammer nails, this seems like a rather significant design issue!