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.

 

[payn]

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.

Be interesting to see how many folks think it works so much better even though its exactly the same.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

So I actually do not use published adventures, so I don't know, but is there usually something that prevents the characters from just retreating for a bit and camping for a night and then returning to finish the dungeon?

 

[Quickleaf]

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.

I’m not sure I follow you. How does it wash out?

If 6 x100 (or 3 x200) exhausts a party’s resources.

And then we throw away the 6 and the 3

Are we still defining an encounter as 100 or 200.

You see what I mean?

 

[Charlaquin]

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.)

Before you could only benefit from one long rest every 24 hours. Since a long rest is 8 hours and 8+16=24, this is only a change for elves.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

So I actually do not use published adventures, so I don't know, but is there usually something that prevents the characters from just retreating for a bit and camping for a night and then returning to finish the dungeon?

I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything like that. I’ve seen occasional “after three days this happens”.

 

[Parmandur]

Be interesting to see how many folks think it works so much better even though its exactly the same.

I mean...that happens a lot with design. Find what works but is clunky for people, make it work better for users even if the underlying functionality is unchanged.

 

[Parmandur]

So I actually do not use published adventures, so I don't know, but is there usually something that prevents the characters from just retreating for a bit and camping for a night and then returning to finish the dungeon?

Yes, as stated there are usually plot reasons that prevent that, and the DM is not at the mercy of the players cheering.

 

[Parmandur]

I’m not sure I follow you. How does it wash out?

If 6 x100 (or 3 x200) exhausts a party’s resources.

And then we throw away the 6 and the 3

Are we still defining an encounter as 100 or 200.

You see what I mean?

It is moving from "you will want 6-8 Medium Encounters or equivalent per Long rest, with 2 Short Redts, and that is called an adventure Day" to an XP budgeting system thst will recommend a couple Short Rests, which will no doubt shake out to...6-8 Encoutners of what the 2014 book would call an "Medoum Challenge".

So, changing the presentation, but the results should be the same.

 

[Parmandur]

I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything like that. I’ve seen occasional “after three days this happens”.

I mean, thwt should be enough for most people in my experience?

 

[MichaelSomething]

All hail thr return of the five minute adventuring day!