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]

It is up to each setting to add new mechanics to tailor the experience to the mood and tropes of the setting.

Because 2024 is moving away from a "default setting", and relying on the DM to pick a specific setting, the setting choices make 5e become "modular".

Each setting is a separate tool in the 5e swiss army knife.

Yeah, that is modular in a very unsatisfying sense of what was discussed in NEXT. Now, if the setting delivered the modular space that radically adjusted the game, that would be cool. We have seen nothing of the sort.

 

[Quickleaf]

He says there are Encounter budgets and pacing suggestions. Given that WotC has not changed how they build Adventures in the past 12 months nor how PCs or Monsters are built, I have zero doubt what the result of following the budgeting and pacing suggestions bear out, i.e., basically the same, even if the phrase "Adventure Day" and "6-8 Encounters" isn't used specifically.

I see. Yeah, we are reading Christian’s news very differently!

I think you’re reading that bit about “no mention of the adventuring day” as pure semantics & that with the “pacing” advice there is effectively no substantive change here.

Whereas I’m seeing the “creature budget” approach being focused on the encounter-scale without regards for party resources compared to Long Rests.

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…

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 Guidecontained 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.

 

[Oofta]

Right. But still way harder than what suggested, mostly above deadly. Which is what I said is needed. You're doing the same thing than I am.


You literally have. You explained yourself how you've done it. Not using the multiplier but still constantly using multiple monsters Sometimes they are, sometimes their a little above deadly. I've never thrown a double or triple deadly fight if I expected the entire encounter to be

Sometimes the calculation ends up deadly, sometimes not. I'm looking at one right now that I threw last session and it calculates as hard using both calculations. Even when the default calculations show deadly, it's just barely deadly and nowhere near double or triple. When I've double checked, it's pretty close to the XGtE calculations.

So stop twisting my words unless you can show me the math where what I'm doing will make many of the encounters double or triple deadly.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yeah, that is modular in a very unsatisfying sense of what was discussed in NEXT. Now, if the setting delivered the modular space that radically adjusted the game, that would be cool. We have seen nothing of the sort.

They never promised radically modular design.

Most part it's the optional rules no one uses and the various archetypes. If you like simple you pick sorcerer or champion. Complex battlemaster or Warlock.

People heard what they wanted to hear and ran with it.

 

[Yaarel]

Yeah, that is modular in a very unsatisfying sense of what was discussed in NEXT.

Because there is less of a sense of a "default" setting, the new settings that 2024 makes possible will be more like the modularity of NEXT.

For example, if players want a grid-based combat game, chess-like with counting squares and so on, the rules for this are in the setting for it.

Oppositely, if players want a more purist theater-of-the-mind, without any grid, the rules for how narrative combat works are in the setting for it.

Most settings will be minor tweaks somewhere in between for the sake of plot-protecting certain tropes.

A setting that emphasizes old school simplicity and lethality is a setting with rules to make this happen. The LevelUp products are a kind of setting, in this sense, with mechanics for advanced character building tools.

With 2024, modularity is now even more the thing.

 

[payn]

They never promised radically modular design.

Most part it's the optional rules no one uses and the various archetypes. If you like simple you pick sorcerer or champion. Complex battlemaster or Warlock.

People heard what they wanted to hear and ran with it.

Careful now, I never said WotC promised it, I just said they discussed deigning it. Some of the topics were tactical combat, alignment, etc.. Not using feats or simple subclasses are the bare minimum. Im not denying they are modular, just that they are not to the level some folks hoped to see.

 

[payn]

Because there is less of a sense of a "default" setting, the new settings that 2024 makes possible will be more like the modularity of NEXT.

For example, if players want a grid-based combat game, chess-like with counting squares and so on, the rules for this are in the setting for it.

Oppositely, if players want a more purist theater-of-the-mind, without any grid, the rules for how narrative combat works are in the setting for it.

Most settings will be minor tweaks somewhere in between for the sake of plot-protecting certain tropes.

Likewise, a setting that emphasizes old school simplicity and lethality is a setting with rules to make this happen. Indeed, the LevelUp products are a kind of setting, in this sense, with mechanics for advanced character building tools.

With 2024, modularity is now even more the thing.

I guess I need to see it. Which setting(s) are these tactical combat rules in?

 

[abirdcall]

People got hung up on the word 'deadly' too so makes sense to remove it.

All it used to mean was that there was a chance of character death. It didn't actually mean deadly I'm the sense that most people use the term.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Because there is less of a sense of a "default" setting, the new settings that 2024 makes possible will be more like the modularity of NEXT.

For example, if players want a grid-based combat game, chess-like with counting squares and so on, the rules for this are in the setting for it.

Oppositely, if players want a more purist theater-of-the-mind, without any grid, the rules for how narrative combat works are in the setting for it.

Most settings will be minor tweaks somewhere in between for the sake of plot-protecting certain tropes.

A setting that emphasizes old school simplicity and lethality is a setting with rules to make this happen. The LevelUp products are a kind of setting, in this sense, with mechanics for advanced character building tools.

With 2024, modularity is now even more the thing.

Do you have any evidence of your assertions here? You say all this as if this is just how it is now, no room for disagreement.

 

[Yaarel]

I guess I need to see it. Which setting(s) are these tactical combat rules in?

Even as a DM, you can homebrew your setting while borrowing grid based mechanics from elsewhere.

For example, your setting can have its own spells whose designs are more mechanical like 4e, with the "flavor" little more than a "flavor text" box being the first sentence, which players can easily rewrite.

If DMs want to collaborate with each other, they can create products in the DMs Guild, under the name of a specific setting that emphasizes grid combat.