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.

 

[Minigiant]

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

It's 2014 All over again.

 

[Vaalingrade]

It's 2014 All over again.

If you want to know how to DM when you're a brand new DM and the first in your group? Ask your DM.

 

[Older Beholder]

My group does all it's adventuring at night, that way we avoid all those encounters per adventuring day.
That was a joke, I'm holding off forming an opinion on any changes in the new DMG until I get a chance to read them for myself.

 

[Oofta]

... I'm holding off forming an opinion on any changes in the new DMG until I get a chance to read them for myself.

Wait ... we're allowed to do that?

 

[Maxperson]

So um... How have they changed to offset the removal? Wotc has long waffled between expressly admitting that things were designed with the expectation and that the game was not designed to expect it. We have the new PHB (complete with some near identical monsters) where there's no drastic overhaul on that end of the things assumed & mapped to the 6-8, simply removing the words without restructuring the monster design leaves the big question of how the encounter building itself was restructured on a mechanical level.

They didn't make drastic enough changes to alter the resource attrition portion of the game. They couldn't and have it still remain backwards compatible. All they really did was remove what little guidance there was. Now new DMs won't even have that much to go on in order to challenge the group.

 

[SkidAce]

Re: Adventuring Day.

Real life: Get up, go to work, get tired, go to sleep, repeat. (work day)
Adventuring life: Get up, go adventuring, get tired, go to sleep, repeat. (adventuring day)

Long rest gets you ready for next day*.

Had this standard since early 80s, not gonna change it. If you had a travel day with only one encounter (not that you knew it would only be one ) you were lucky and survived to adventure more. If you had an adventuring day in a dangerous environment/location you may have many encounters. Be careful.



*granted, injuries should be a thing but hey....

 

[grimmgoose]

The longer I play 5E, the more I rely on the Adventuring Day. Not saying I like it - I don't - but in my experience most issues involving spells, features, etc. are a simple fact of Sleepover Parties (ie, 5E tables that do one fight per Long Rest).

Having more encounters per Long Rest especially at higher tiers feels like it needs to at least be a discussion in the DMG, and I think it's bad on WOTC if it's not there.

Like, most of the time the issue isn't the class feature, or the spell. It's the fact that you are only setting up a single encounter per Long Rest. 5E is an attrition-based game; pretending it isn't doesn't help anybody.

 

[Stalker0]

Having more encounters per Long Rest especially at higher tiers feels like it needs to at least be a discussion in the DMG, and I think it's bad on WOTC if it's not there.

I'll be curious how much guidance there is for dming high level dnd in the book. As I think its an area even highly veteran dms can struggle with.

 

[abirdcall]

Re: Adventuring Day.

Real life: Get up, go to work, get tired, go to sleep, repeat. (work day)
Adventuring life: Get up, go adventuring, get tired, go to sleep, repeat. (adventuring day)

Long rest gets you ready for next day*.

Had this standard since early 80s, not gonna change it. If you had a travel day with only one encounter (not that you knew it would only be one ) you were lucky and survived to adventure more. If you had an adventuring day in a dangerous environment/location you may have many encounters. Be careful.



*granted, injuries should be a thing but hey....

When I run campaigns where overland travel is dangerous and important I use the rule of only being able to long rest at a friendly settlement (or similar situation).

I think it fits with your analogy.

I go to work all day then I rest in the safety of my own bed.

If I go on a multi-day wilderness exploration I'm not going to be fully refreshed each day. The opposite will be true for me, I will be getting progressively more tired until returning home.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

The point is that if you tell them, they can make an informed decision on whether to follow it or not. If you leave it out you're punking new DMs who will have no idea that the game is balanced around attrition over several encounters. They're going to stumble about trying to figure out what's wrong and some may end up leaving the game over the frustration.