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.

 

[Yaarel]

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.

Because in principle it is simple to do. Simple but not easy.

The trick is, if you want it, you have to do it yourself. It takes alot of work. It is wrong (ethically) to expect WotC to do it for you.

If you want it, make it. If you want to collaborate with others, do something thru DMs Guild. Or do it thru Enworld!

Indeed, LevelUp is also an example of a 5e "module", to make a setting with its own bespoke mechanics.

The beauty of 2024 is, there is less entangling default stuff to get in ones way.

 

[Parmandur]

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 key sentence, IMO, is "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." I do believe the difference between "6-8 Medium-Hard Encounters is the maximum for an Adventure Day" and the suggested pace in the new DMG is semantics, when we get a chance to look at the actual math. Since WotC has shown no indication of changing their internal math.

 

[payn]

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.

Oh, I see what you did there. Yeah we are not in the same ball park. Not even the same state.

 

[Yaarel]

Oh, I see what you did there. Yeah we are not in the same ball park. Not even the same state.

Out of curiosity, what kind of "modularity" are you looking for, specifically?

 

[Stormonu]

If they deliver on this, great!
The 6-8 encounters works mostly for dungeon delving, but in the case of overland adventures you have to get tricky or inventive to make attrition work (or just use a different rest scale than the typical dungeon).

I find it currently difficult to build adventures with multiple encounters and then a "boss" endgame that hits appropriately. I find myself usually going the safe route of building a really tough encounter but allowing some sort of rest just prior so the characters have their full suite that I can account for.

In the end, while D&D has always been an attrition-based game, I find I actually enjoy players having a small but constant suite is more fun - with an ability to "ramp up" interesting extra abilities if the group is on a roll, rather than starting strong and weakening over time.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Because in principle it is simple to do. Simple but not easy.

The trick is, if you want it, you have to do it yourself. It takes alot of work. It is wrong (ethically) to expect WotC to do it for you.

If you want it, make it. If you want to collaborate with others, do something thru DMs Guild. Or do it thru Enworld!

Indeed, LevelUp is also an example of a 5e "module", to make a setting with its own bespoke mechanics.

The beauty of 2024 is, there is less entangling default stuff to get in ones way.

I agree that you should do your own work if you want it. My issue is the certitude of your claim that optional rules are just going to appear in future WotC-produced setting products. Where's the evidence that anything of the sort will happen?

 

[Sword of Spirit]

While I find the 2014 6 to 8 encounter recommendation a bit high, people often forget that the term "encounters" includes things like social encounters, hazards, traps, puzzles, exploration challenges, etc.

Sure, as long as they have attrition similar to a combat encounter. A social encounter that costs no resources isn't part of that equation regardless of how fun it is or how much it advances the story.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

I didn't say that. I said you make encounters about twice as hard as suggested, which not using the multiplier for several foes, yet using several foes does. Difficulty multiplier for several foes ranges from x1.5 (two enemies) to x4 (more than 14.)

For example seven (CR 1/2) orcs is 700 XP encounter by your math, a hard encounter (600 XP) for four level two characters, but according to actual rules, it is 1750 XP encounter, which is over twice the deadly encounter (800 XP) for such a party! By actual rules three orcs would be a hard encounter for such a party.

So yes, I am not surprised if characters feel somewhat challenged by your encounters!

 

[Yaarel]

I agree that you should do your own work if you want it. My issue is the certitude of your claim that optional rules are just going to appear in future WotC-produced setting products. Where's the evidence that anything of the sort will happen?

I dont "expect" WotC to create new modules. Their business goal is to make the most people as happy as possible.

The result is actually fantastic for a game engine. 5e tends to be blandly "vanilla" and remarkably mechanically robust.

It is a perfect engine to modify via a modular setting. The setting can add specific mechanics, while the robustness of 5e can normally handle the mechanical wear-and-tear.

I expect indy publishers (including homebrewing DMs in Enworld and DMs Guild) to supply the modular settings.

What 2024 does is provide all the core mechanics in one book, the Players Handbook, in a way that friendly to DMs who want to tweak it or even a setting that dramatically overhauls it.

 

[payn]

If they deliver on this, great!
The 6-8 encounters works mostly for dungeon delving, but in the case of overland adventures you have to get tricky or inventive to make attrition work (or just use a different rest scale than the typical dungeon).

I find it currently difficult to build adventures with multiple encounters and then a "boss" endgame that hits appropriately. I find myself usually going the safe route of building a really tough encounter but allowing some sort of rest just prior so the characters have their full suite that I can account for.

In the end, while D&D has always been an attrition-based game, I find I actually enjoy players having a small but constant suite is more fun - with an ability to "ramp up" interesting extra abilities if the group is on a roll, rather than starting strong and weakening over time.

Part of the head butting is old school dungeon delving and nu skool adventuring. The delve was more of a challenge in it's entirety. Some encounters were meant to be bypassed, at least by smart players. Others had short cuts, or ways players could tilt the battle decidedly in their favor. You had a package of resources that you had to use wisely to get through this adventure day. Modern play has gone into more expected encounters with set piece battles fully intended to be encountered. Combat is much more nuanced and part of the experience itself.

So, how do you have a system that is pace of story and/or one thats pace of challenge? I was asked what I meant by modularity and this is one place I think it would help. Digging in deeper on crafting a good adventure day vs crafting an attrition model that works by pace of group or even encounters based itself.