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.

 

[Parmandur]

but instead of the book telling us that, each DM now has to arrive there through trial and error. Not sure how that is an improvement

Well, we don't know what it says yet.

 

[M_Natas]

A lot of people feel that giving no advice is better than giving what they feel is actively bad advice.

But the adventuring day is not ...
Like ... the whole balance hinges on the adventuring day.
Telling new DMs that is necessary. Leaving it out is ... just mean.
"DMs, when 5e was created, we balanced the classes around 6 to 8 medium encounters or 3 deadly encounter between two long rests (or 2 encountes, short rest, two encounter, short rest, 2 encounters long rest). If you have less encounters, it can probably happen that the battles will feel to easy, if you have more, it can lead to TPK. A fully healed partt can probably win a double deadly encounter, if it is the only encounter for that day ...)."

That's like necessary for DMs to know.

 

[Vaalingrade]

But the adventuring day is not ...

It pretty much is.

You tell a lot of people 'you need 6 to 8 encounters a day' and either they're going to try to do that--which a lot of people do not enjoy going through--or just ignore it.

They're restructured something (we don't have actual information as to how) about the pace, but we at least know it's not the 6-8 encounter expectation, which to some is cause for celebration.

It's like knowing Palpatine is dead, but not knowing who's in charge now.

 

[TwoSix]

But the adventuring day is not ...
Like ... the whole balance hinges on the adventuring day.
Telling new DMs that is necessary. Leaving it out is ... just mean.
"DMs, when 5e was created, we balanced the classes around 6 to 8 medium encounters or 3 deadly encounter between two long rests (or 2 encountes, short rest, two encounter, short rest, 2 encounters long rest). If you have less encounters, it can probably happen that the battles will feel to easy, if you have more, it can lead to TPK. A fully healed partt can probably win a double deadly encounter, if it is the only encounter for that day ...)."

That's like necessary for DMs to know.

I wouldn't say it's necessary. I know and play with plenty of DMs who are perfectly fine doing 1-2 hard encounters per long rest, and happily ignoring or accepting that inter-PC balance is thrown off.

The amount of players that are pretty much immune to balance concerns is not at all small.

 

[mamba]

It's an improvement because books can't teach people how to DM so they're saving text space. A true DM learns by doing. A few TPKs are a small price to pay to enpower the DM!

by that logic, why would I bother with the DMG at all

 

[mamba]

A lot of people feel that giving no advice is better than giving what they feel is actively bad advice.

I would agree with that, but if you want to sell me a ‘how to be a DM’ book by advertising it as containing no useful advice, you have quite an uphill battle ahead of you

 

[Micah Sweet]

by that logic, why would I bother with the DMG at all

The list of slightly-changed magic items I mentioned a while back?

 

[mamba]

The list of slightly-changed magic items I mentioned a while back?

not enough of a selling point imo

 

[Vaalingrade]

I would agree with that, but if you want to sell me a ‘how to be a DM’ book by advertising it as containing no useful advice, you have quite an uphill battle ahead of you

Wasn't trying to sell you on it.

I personally would have a how to DM book and fill it with advice and explanations and ideas instead of a campaign setting and manual of the planes. Player facing stuff like bastions and magic items should also be in the player book, IMO.

I think a world building book is something that deserves it's own book because that's advanced stuff to be honest.

 

[CreamCloud0]

i wonder how many less issues it would've caused if they'd just originally named it 'the adventuring week'