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.

 

[Maxperson]

With regard to the game math, it is more helpful to refer the "adventure" or the "adventure phase", rather than the adventure "day".

Each level-up is a major accomplishment of an adventure, at least in terms of personal growth.

That's semantics. "adventure," adventuring phase," and "adventuring day" are all the same thing. 6-8 medium to hard encounters before the next long rest.

 

[Yaarel]

That's semantics. "adventure," adventuring phase," and "adventuring day" are all the same thing. 6-8 medium to hard encounters before the next long rest.

It is very rare to actually have about 7 or 8 combats in a single day.

Thus, the word "day" is almost always wrong, when referring to the math for class balance.

It becomes necessary to decouple the "Long Rest" from the "day".

 

[Maxperson]

It is very rare to actually have about 7 or 8 combats in a single day.

Thus, the word "day" is almost always wrong, when referring to the math for class balance.

It becomes necessary to decouple the "Long Rest" from the "day".

You know that, and I know that, but the rules aren't telling the DM that. I doubt that the PHB is going to tell players that they don't get a long rest until after X encounters, or per week, or whatever. The long rest is still going to happen once per day.

Since they didn't rebalance monsters and the PC classes to get rid of the resource attrition model, you will still have to have those 6-8 encounters before the next long rest. Except the DMG is getting rid of that information for the DMs and letting the new DMs to the game twist in the wind.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

you will still have to have those 6-8 encounters before the next long rest

It’s been demonstrated many times that practically no one plays that way, and yet 5e is still the most popular version of D&D, so it’s obvious you don’t “have” to have that.

I expect the new advice will be for the party to take a long rest whenever they run low on resources , irrespective of if that’s after a hard encounter, or an easy encounter that went pear-shaped.

D&D combat is more like Snakes and Ladders than chess - it’s mostly a matter of luck.

 

[Yaarel]

You know that, and I know that, but the rules aren't telling the DM that.

Yes. Altho.

By removing the explicit reference to "6 to 8 adventures per day", the DM is more free to balance encounters around "two Long Rests per level".

I doubt that the PHB is going to tell players that they don't get a long rest until after X encounters, or per week, or whatever. The long rest is still going to happen once per day.

Even in 2014, the DMs Guide had alternative systems for Long Rest and Short Rest.

I consider the "two Long Rests per level" to be this kind of alternative. It is the Rest system I use in my own settings. Every rest is a Short Rest, regardless of time resting. However, twice per level, a player can choose to gain the benefit of Long Rest instead.

Since they didn't rebalance monsters and the PC classes to get rid of the resource attrition model, you will still have to have those 6-8 encounters before the next long rest. Except the DMG is getting rid of that information for the DMs and letting the new DMs to the game twist in the wind.

It seems the math for levels 1 thru 8 is the same. We need more info about how the math for the higher tiers work out, in terms of how many standard encounters there will be per level.

 

[Parmandur]

It’s been demonstrated many times that practically no one plays that way, and yet 5e is still the most popular version of D&D, so it’s obvious you don’t “have” to have that.

I expect the new advice will be for the party to take a long rest whenever they run low on resources , irrespective of if that’s after a hard encounter, or an easy encounter that went pear-shaped.

D&D combat is more like Snakes and Ladders than chess - it’s mostly a matter of luck.

I think it is also apparent plenty of people do play that way. But being able to understood the maximum is a strength of the system: players will ne more challenged if pushed to their limits, yeah, but they can have fun not being pushed

 

[Micah Sweet]

Of course we won't know exactly and the entirety of what's in the book until it's released, but when previews and snippets and sections of the book are released ahead of the book, why do some folks expect people to NOT talk about it?

The whole reason companies release previews are so people will get talking about the product.
I get that we don't have the whole picture, but only having part of the puzzle doesn't mean that people aren't going to try to solve it with the pieces provided to them...

Perhaps they only expect people to talk about it positively.

 

[Maxperson]

It’s been demonstrated many times that practically no one plays that way, and yet 5e is still the most popular version of D&D, so it’s obvious you don’t “have” to have that.

Balance doesn't mean much to a lot of folks. They don't mind the PCs just blowing through encounters without much challenge. Those aren't the people that I'm talking about. I'm talking about the lot of folks who do want balance and challenge. THEY are going to have troubles.

And of course the new DMs are being denied the ability to even make an informed decision.

I expect the new advice will be for the party to take a long rest whenever they run low on resources , irrespective of if that’s after a hard encounter, or an easy encounter that went pear-shaped.

I seriously doubt that. I think the long rest will still default to daily.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think it is also apparent plenty of people do play that way. But being able to understood the maximum is a strength of the system: players will ne more challenged if pushed to their limits, yeah, but they can have fun not being pushed

Polls uniformly suggest a couple of %. Insignificant.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Balance doesn't mean much to a lot of folks. They don't mind the PCs just blowing through encounters without much challenge

True. And those are WotC’s core market. They don’t care about a handful of number crunchers - they are not significant.