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.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No. That's why I said, " I think the alternative resting variants will still be in the DMG."

It doesn't make sense to me that they would remove those variants. Too many tables use them.

Technically, and from their perspective, they wouldn't be removing them, because anything they don't publish is 5.5 can be used from 5.0.

 

[Maxperson]

Technically, and from their perspective, they wouldn't be removing them, because anything they don't publish is 5.5 can be used from 5.0.

So what you are saying is that I can use a 5e race and get the stat bonuses from race, and then tack on a 5.5e background and get more stat bonuses?! Sign me up!

More seriously, while the above is technically correct, a lot of tables won't allow older edition material, so 5e stuff cannot be assumed to be available.

 

[Maxperson]

I do not believe Rule Zero is useless. Instead, I think it reflects poor design on the designers' part to depend upon Rule Zero in order to do the basic things that the game is, supposedly, designed to do.

Rule Zero should be there for the bizarro edge cases. As an example, two general rules that almost always work fine on their own, but a special exception to one of them causes something obviously, unavoidably borked under just the right conditions. Something granting infinitely many attacks, for example. That's a clear case where the DM not only can and should, but (IMO) must step in and say, "This clearly isn't supposed to be happening, so let's make it make sense, even if that means openly defying the rules."

Rule 0 should also be there for purely design reasons. If a group wants rogues to be the bees knees of damage, Rule 0 is what allows the DM to double or triple the sneak attack damage dice that rogues get when leveling up. Now that's a bit extreme, but I think most of us have used Rule 0 to implement rule changes in our own games so that our D&D experience better fits our needs.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So what you are saying is that I can use a 5e race and get the stat bonuses from race, and then tack on a 5.5e background and get more stat bonuses?! Sign me up!

More seriously, while the above is technically correct, a lot of tables won't allow older edition material, so 5e stuff cannot be assumed to be available.

But that would be admitting 5.0 and 5.5 aren't the same edition! You know we can't do that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Rule 0 should also be there for purely design reasons. If a group wants rogues to be the bees knees of damage, Rule 0 is what allows the DM to double or triple the sneak attack damage dice that rogues get when leveling up. Now that's a bit extreme, but I think most of us have used Rule 0 to implement rule changes in our own games so that our D&D experience better fits our needs.

That's not Rule Zero (at least to me it isn't), that's homebrew. I agree with @EzekielRaiden : Rule Zero is for allowing the DM to resolve situations that either aren't covered by the rules or produce illogical results if followed. Ideally both circumstances should be quite rare.

 

[Oofta]

For me rule 0 is to introduce the restrictions (e.g. no evil PCs) and if I think any particular ruling isn't clear I clarify. Then we talk about what kind of game we want, the direction, what level of lethality the group wants and so on. The least of it is the handful of house rules.

 

[Lanefan]

No one is criticising Gygax’s design skills, but the concept of “balance” simply did not exist in the 70s and early 80s (unlike you, I was playing then), and Gygax was quite deliberately unfair.

I think you and @EzekielRaiden are both somewhat correct here: Gygax knew what he was doing and to a decent extent tried to balance most parts of the game as best he could given the limited data he had to work with; and at the same time he was also quite intentionally unfair in some ways and - again quite intentionally - left some things unbalanced..

 

[Lanefan]

Sure. But that's explicitly not what they were suggesting. It was you can say the death is possible even if it isn't.

And I totally get it. Players tend to like the excitement and the feeling of peril that the possibility of character death brings, but might not like the actual death that much. So leading them to believe their characters might die, but secretly fudging so that they actually don't, is an effective solution.

Until and unless the players call your bluff by almost daring you to kill a character; at which point you either have to make the threat real by killing one or two or lay your cards on the table and admit you were bluffing.

The latter option probably wrecks the game.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Until and unless the players call your bluff by almost daring you to kill a character; at which point you either have to make the threat real by killing one or two or lay your cards on the table and admit you were bluffing.

The latter option probably wrecks the game.

Well, it was not me suggesting it. But it is pretty common and I understand why people do it.

I remember one ancient game where I noticed the GM pulling their punches and trying to keep my character alive. I said nothing, but started to play more and more recklessly in order to see how far they would go. Quite far, I did not succeed at killing my character! (I obviously should have discussed it maturely instead, but it was a long time ago.)

 

[M_Natas]

Rule 0 should also be there for purely design reasons. If a group wants rogues to be the bees knees of damage, Rule 0 is what allows the DM to double or triple the sneak attack damage dice that rogues get when leveling up. Now that's a bit extreme, but I think most of us have used Rule 0 to implement rule changes in our own games so that our D&D experience better fits our needs.

Yeah, but without an understanding of the rules, the changing of rules trough "rule 0" becomes ... random and the results are likely worse.
Like, yeah, we can triple the sneak attack damage, bit that would likely lead to a game were nobody will have fun. Even the Rogue will stop having fun after all the other players quit the game...

Breaking or changing rules should come after understanding the rules.