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.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

What's AitAH?

I assume it stands for Am I the A-hole, reddit sub where people say their stories if they need second opinion on whenever they were at fault in a situation.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No, he wants the DM to respect the other players' desires and come to a compromise rather than leaning on Rule 0 to get everything they want.

If you're using Rule 0 just to resolve areas the rules don't cover or which yield illogical results, that shouldn't happen.

 

[OB1]

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.

Agree with all of this and this is my experience DMing as well. And none of that requires a WotC defined Adventuring Day with a set number of encounters to achieve, hence the change in the discussion to pacing. The pace will change based on a lot of factors. The only downside is that a DM might plan too many encounters for a single rest, but that is just as possible if you follow any guideline and the party happens to have bad luck.

 

[Vaalingrade]

If you're using Rule 0 just to resolve areas the rules don't cover or which yield illogical results, that shouldn't happen.

MY original post on the subject is that I'd love if it stopped there instead of where it so often goes, yes.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

MY original post on the subject is that I'd love if it stopped there instead of where it so often goes, yes.

Again, that is something that calls for session zero, not stripping GM from power but refusing to take responsibility that comes with it.

 

[ezo]

No, he wants the DM to respect the other players' desires and come to a compromise rather than leaning on Rule 0 to get everything they want.

Except when there is no compromise... and then it must be the DM's fault, right???

 

[Zardnaar]

What's AitAH?

Am I the A hole.

Dedicated sub reddit but you see it on forums and other sub reddits relevant to the topic.

 

[Zardnaar]

Except when there is no compromise... and then it must be the DM's fault, right???

Sone things can be compromised on others cant be.
Eg DM says I'm running 5E, at this location and at this time and I'm running XYZ. You can ask but I wouldn't expect a compromise on that. Running XYZ maybe.

If there's a massive list of requirements it's probably a red flag.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Except when there is no compromise... and then it must be the DM's fault, right???

Go on putting words in my mouth. I'll make some popcorn.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Go on putting words in my mouth. I'll make some popcorn.

You have put words in my moth, and then ignored me when I pointed it out, you know?