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.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

By rule the DM has all of the power people keep saying they don't have. The only limit on DM power is the tolerance of the most tolerant available players. And the lack of DMs lowers that bar significantly.

The answer to bad DMing is for players to leave games. The answer to bad players is to kick them from your games. But here we are on tyrannical DMs again.

 

[Vaalingrade]

By rule the DM has all of the power people keep saying they don't have.

That is why the rule is a problem, yes.

Other RPGs don't have to foster this kind of thing.

 

[ezo]

So far flight has never been a problem, but that is because many of us are terrified of its optimization possibilities, and mitigate it before it can be a problem.

Flight is not something that bothers me. I've allowed it IF I allow those particular races. Many times, I run games with restricted races due to my campaign world.

One of the rules we use with flight (including other creatures, not just humanoids!) is "taking off" requires the same speed as standing up: you will only move half your flying speed.

But I have had an earnest debate about cantrips. I as a player insist on cantrips − because I cant stand it when earlier editions forced a Wizard concept to shoot a crossbow or worse throw a dagger. It ruins the character concept of magic for me. One old school DM hated cantrips. During session zero while building the character, he and I worked out a compromise that both of us were pretty happy with.

Cantrips can be a tricky thing. I completely see both side of the debate. I am not a fan of the pew pew pew of spamming cantrips, but I also feel that resorting to crossbows, etc. is not great either.

I ended up creating an Elf Cleric who "reveres light". Because he was an Elf, he was proficient with the longbow. Because he was a Cleric of light, he could make it shoot beams of light. Mechanically the beam of light was identical to a mundane arrow, except I didnt need to "count arrows" and sometimes the fact it was radiant "sunlight" mattered. It felt sufficiently magical that I was happy with it for my character concept. It felt "old school" enough that the DM was happy with it.

Did your "light arrows" scale in damage like a cantrip?

Now, you are already an elf, so have longbows. Why is that not sufficient? You ARE an elf, after all. It might not feel "wizardy", but it is very "elfy".

Did you give up any cantrips for this feature?

 

[Micah Sweet]

What's unrealistic about a green cap?

Realistic as in, thing that is likely to happen at an actual table in a way that matters to the people involved.

 

[Maxperson]

You seem to miss the point that what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

The GM can tell me all they like that my sword has turned to butter, but if I keep declaring actions as if my sword is a sword than that is that.

Nothing can progress if everyone isn't on the same page as to what is happening in the fiction, and the GM has no unilateral power to establish that consensus. That's part of what it means for it to be a consensus!

If you turn yourself into a problem player by disrupting the game that way, expect to leave the game. You can stubbornly insist that green is blue or your butter is a sword, but if you become disruptive to the game doing it, you don't belong at that table.

The game will then progress without you. You can't stop the progression by imagining something different than the DM narrates.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That is why the rule is a problem, yes.

Other RPGs don't have to foster this kind of thing.

Other games play differently, yes. I fail to see the relevance of it though. Why should every game have the same distribution of authority?

 

[Maxperson]

And where does the GM get the authority to tell someone else to leave the game. I mean, I'm playing D&D at my friend's house - I'm the GM, he's a player. Do you really think I've got the authority to ask him to leave the game?

Yes. And then you play at your house or the local game store.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Other games play differently, yes. I fail to see the relevance of it though. Why should every game have the same distribution of authority?

It'd just be nice for D&D to jettison this antiquated version of it.

 

[Distracted DM]

So, does the book state how much time should pass between long ress?

We won't know til it's out... I hope they discuss that a long rest does not have to equal one night of sleep, that the dm can set whatever they like as a long rest: a couple days, a week, etc.

 

[tetrasodium]

We won't know til it's out... I hope they discuss that a long rest does not have to equal one night of sleep, that the dm can set whatever they like as a long rest: a couple days, a week, etc.

it very much sounds like we do know