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.

 

[Vaalingrade]

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.

We were well on the way to punking new DMs when we went back to CR.

 

[FallenRX]

That's their line to us, yes, but it's very clearly false. The party can't be fresh for every encounter, so if they are building monsters to challenge fresh parries, than a party that isn't fresh would lose PCs or TPK when they are down resources and get into a fight.

Not true exactly, thats just managing is just damage taken/damage output, for example a hard encounter assumes the party on average will lose a bit under half of the total party health pet encounter, even if not shooting at your best, between 4 targets, spells and more, you will not tpk, medium encounters assume about 25-30%so even less likely.

This is only very likely for deadly encounters which assume 70-75% will be gone average.

 

[Lanefan]

6-8 encounter were never the requirement and measurement. Encounter Balancing in DMG 2014 worked with an exp budget over a day.

So instead of hoping the CR is truly representative of the actual challenge a creature presents in play (a la 3e-4e) you're now hoping the provided xp value is truly representative of the actual challenge a creature presents.

I suppose the advantage is that using xp gave far more potential granularity for fine-tuning different degrees of challenge.

That said, the whole concept of "budgeting" sounds far too pre-packaged for my liking.

 

[Lanefan]

The math works out, so that each level has a certain number of standard encounters.

For example, for levels 5 thu 11, there are approximately 15 encounters per level.

So, the math assumes:
• Full hit points when gaining a new level
• 2 encounters
• Short Rest
• 2 encounters
• Short Rest
• 2 encounters
• LONG REST
• 2 encounters
• Short Rest
• 2 encounters
• Short Rest
• 2 encounters
• LONG REST
• 2 encounters
• Short Rest
• 2 encounters
• Full hit points when gaining a new level

In other words, the math only allows upto two Long Rests per level.

Gaining a level resets you to full hit points?

Even without that, if a long rest is (as is typical) assumed to mean an overnight sleep, that's a level every three in-game days.

Am I the only one who thinks that's crazy-stupid fast?

 

[Lanefan]

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

Well, Snakes and Ladders but with almost all of the snakes removed from the board...

 

[payn]

The math works out, so that each level has a certain number of standard encounters.

For example, for levels 5 thu 11, there are approximately 15 encounters per level.

So, the math assumes:
• Full hit points when gaining a new level
• 2 encounters
• Short Rest
• 2 encounters
• Short Rest
• 2 encounters
• LONG REST
• 2 encounters
• Short Rest
• 2 encounters
• Short Rest
• 2 encounters
• LONG REST
• 2 encounters
• Short Rest
• 2 encounters

That seems like a good template for an adventure day.

• Full hit points when gaining a new level

In other words, the math only allows upto two Long Rests per level.

Um what?

Gaining a level resets you to full hit points?

Even without that, if a long rest is (as is typical) assumed to mean an overnight sleep, that's a level every three in-game days.

Am I the only one who thinks that's crazy-stupid fast?

I do, and am glad I dont use experience points any longer.

 

[BookTenTiger]

I actually think it's a good idea to drop the whole idea of the adventuring day. It's almost impossible to predict how many encounters the players will get through before they rest. D&D is full of powers and abilities to avoid encounters, and players often come up with creative solutions that don't use up resources or result in combat.

I think it's much more useful to focus on how to make encounters memorable and fun.

 

[tetrasodium]

I actually think it's a good idea to drop the whole idea of the adventuring day. It's almost impossible to predict how many encounters the players will get through before they rest. D&D is full of powers and abilities to avoid encounters, and players often come up with creative solutions that don't use up resources or result in combat.

I think it's much more useful to focus on how to make encounters memorable and fun.

It used to be fairly easy to predict. There were mechanical elements that strongly encouraged players to thread a fairly narrow needle worth of encounters & allowed the GM to make efforts to over use rests for a 5mwd slaughter bite the PCs in the rear in ways that were felt meaningfully

 

[SkidAce]

It's one thing to choose to ignore the guidelines and play an unbalanced game. It's another not to be informed of how the game is balanced and not have any idea of how to play a balanced version.

While many of your points make sense as far as educating new players today, I would like to point out that there were no "this is how to balance encounters" in AD&D that I am aware of, and we learned and continued to play the game.

 

[Maxperson]

While many of your points make sense as far as educating new players today, I would like to point out that there were no "this is how to balance encounters" in AD&D that I am aware of, and we learned and continued to play the game.

AD&D is a very different beast. It had save or die, save or suck, far lower hit point totals, etc. It wasn't at all balanced around resource attrition in order to challenge groups.

The way it balanced the game made it easier to challenge a group with one or two encounters.