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.

 

[Oofta]

Well I honestly do want to engage my players in entertaining adventures. And I do want my players to be able to make their own choices and do things their own way within the adventure. But I just feel that your character should be doing this in a way that makes sense. I mean these are often life and death situations for the characters, I don't see why characters would be goofing around doing random things for no reason when the stakes in the game world are so high.

As for their characters, they said they were adventurers seeking fame and fortune. Which is fine but I don't see how randomly killing defenseless animals in a forest is going to help you achieve either of those things?

I would just remind them that unlike a video game these kind of things have consequences. I wouldn't have even asked the other players - although I may have given them a chance to try and stop him. Then when he starts blasting birds out of the sky figure out appropriate consequences. It pisses off the elves, the bandits see a streak of fire, whatever makes sense.

I do have a strict no evil policy in my game as well. People can have their PC do whatever they want, but I'll let them know that if they cross the line too often or too far that their PC will become and NPC under my control. But I also explain this during a session 0. The game has to be fun for me as well and I accept that I am not the right DM for every player.

 

[AK_Ambrian]

I have no idea what their character would or wouldn't do. We haven't been told anything about that. I will repeat for the third time.

"Okay, but again, class/subclass don't tell you those things. Background and personality do."

Since we don't know what the character would or would not do, I can't say whether the DM questioning it is the right thing to do or not. So far I've brought it up twice and the poster hasn't responded with any sort of clarification about how the players set up their PCs to act.

He said his character was a noble and a wizard. Didn't mention anything specific about his personality apart from he was an adventurer seeking fame and fortune.

 

[AK_Ambrian]

The first thing I though of, this is the kind of thing some people do in a Computer RPG - just because they can and think it's amusing. From the reaction you described here, seems pretty similar. He did it because he could and thought it would be amusing.

Is this a continuing game? Or was it a one time/short term thing?

It was the first session of a continuing game. Although that particular player did not attend any of the subsequent sessions.

 

[Yaarel]

Rule 0 is the rule that lets you override, add, subtract or create new rules for the game. That's it's purpose. House ruling falls under that purpose.

That is how I see it too, houserules are a form of rule zero. Except, there is a blurry area in between where rules-as-written can introduce a customization of rules with a far reaching impact, such as creating a new background, feat, spell, magic item, or even a new species.

 

[Distracted DM]

I made the comparison to highlight the fact that player decisions about risk/reward drive the decision to long rest. As you mentioned, there is rarely consequence for long resting as much as you want in BG3 (if you have the resources) and yet when I played, I constantly pushed an adventuring day until I was completely out of resources.

On the flip side of that, there are players who if they are playing Red Hand of Doom, would want to rest after every encounter regardless of the in world fiction and pacing developed by the DM.

Ultimately, because rests are a Player side decision (they are in control of their characters) it is players who decide the length of the adventuring day. DMs should remember that, know their players, and design adventures with that in mind. And that's why the DMG, IMO, got rid of the 'Adventuring Day' in favor of advice to DMs on pacing and tighter single encounter rules.

I understand where you're coming from but my experience differs from yours.

The players decide when to rest , yes, but saying that some players would want to rest after every encounter regardless of whether they succeed or fail is.. I think it's actually giving players too little credit? It suggests that they'll refuse to adapt to situations, or they're antagonistically refusing to play the adventure that they've set out on.

What's the point of resting after every encounter if it guarantees your failure and likely death? Players rest after every encounter usually do so because they're, understandably, risk-averse. they want to go into every fight with every resource available. But if doing so means guaranteed failure, there's no point.

It's a skill of the GM to shape and mold expectations through example. A lot of my players started with the "rest as often as possible" mentality, but once you show them that the world continues and that they may fail their desired objective, or that there are other consequences for doing one fight and then wasting the rest of the day until nightfall so they can sleep again, every table I run has adapted to treating time as a precious thing.

 

[TwoSix]

The wizard seemed to be in his twenties, not sure of his exact age. The players didn't seem to mind that evil alignments were banned (if they did they didn't mention it to me).

I didn't react in a bad or upset way. I simply wanted to know why the characters wanted to do what they were doing. I was just confused. I mean you buy this expensive rulebook, you spend hours and hours learning the rules and spells and different class abilities, and this game allows you to simulate all kinds of epic adventures and you choose to just do random things for no discernable reason?

Yes? Sometimes doing something odd or incongruous for no reason at all is fun.

 

[tetrasodium]

I understand where you're coming from but my experience differs from yours.

The players decide when to rest , yes, but saying that some players would want to rest after every encounter regardless of whether they succeed or fail is.. I think it's actually giving players too little credit? It suggests that they'll refuse to adapt to situations, or they're antagonistically refusing to play the adventure that they've set out on.

What's the point of resting after every encounter if it guarantees your failure and likely death? Players rest after every encounter usually do so because they're, understandably, risk-averse. they want to go into every fight with every resource available. But if doing so means guaranteed failure, there's no point.

It's a skill of the GM to shape and mold expectations through example. A lot of my players started with the "rest as often as possible" mentality, but once you show them that the world continues and that they may fail their desired objective, or that there are other consequences for doing one fight and then wasting the rest of the day until nightfall so they can sleep again, every table I run has adapted to treating time as a precious thing.

I think that you might be give them too much credit and can explain why. Saying that it's "some players" suggests that it's a smaller minority, ime it's closer to a plurality. Beyond that there is the very real problem that comes in the fact that the other players have very little reason to say anything other than "sure" if even a single player wants to rest after every fight or so because it's almost always a win/win improvement for them to just go along as a rubber stamp rather than standing up to that player to be the bad guy saying no in order to force them into continuing without the rest.

 

[Zardnaar]

It was the first session of a continuing game. Although that particular player did not attend any of the subsequent sessions.

I would let it happen but there may be consequences. Eg offending the local elves/Druids.

That's more incompatible plsyers/DMs. I've had player turn up for one session, trash whatever then no show after that. Usually ones you meet in gamestores.

No evil PCs I acreasonable DM rule. That includes CN types who act evil.

Session 0. Don't be a jerk. Don't roleplay a jerk.

 

[Mort]

I think that you might be give them too much credit and can explain why. Saying that it's "some players" suggests that it's a smaller minority, ime it's closer to a plurality. Beyond that there is the very real problem that comes in the fact that the other players have very little reason to say anything other than "sure" if even a single player wants to rest after every fight or so because it's almost always a win/win improvement for them to just go along as a rubber stamp rather than standing up to that player to be the bad guy saying no in order to force them into continuing without the rest.

If there are never any negative consequences for Resting whenever they want, then, of course, the group will rest whenever they want.

Even more so if the "consequences" are actually positive. If the effect of resting whenever they want is being better prepared for encounters, being better able to overcome set challenges etc. Then of course they will rest when best for them.

On the other hand, if there are actual consequences for resting whenever they want? They get to the treasure hoard and find it emptied out. They get to the adventurer's hall and find all of the lucrative contracts have been handed out. They rest in enemy territory and get swarmed, etc. Maybe they will be a bit more judicious about resting?

It's only an out of game issue if the players are, for some reason, surly about not getting to rest their characters enough. Then it would merit an out of game discussion on campaign expectations etc.

 

[Yaarel]

Rather than policing when the players can rest ...

Have every rest during an adventure equal a Short Rest regardless of time spent.

Twice per level a player can choose to gain the benefit of a Long Rest instead.

Then let the story be whatever makes sense for the story.