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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Erechel" data-source="post: 7226557" data-attributes="member: 6784868">Except it does. One of the main complains in the prior editions was how much the combats last, and how much time resolving seemingly simple things consumed. And there was also the 5-minute adventuring day. This edition assumes that most encounters don't last as much and the resolution time is faster... except it doesn't a great job at this at higher levels, where the options' bloat and bookkeeping becomes more draggy.And that becomes a problem by itself. And that's why you are giving reason to me: you need a climax and resolution in a session, or else the game becomes stretched. A boss isn't a boss if you throw it at mid session, where adventurers have most of their resources (and they don't need to expend them all in a fight!! In a single fight a wizard exhausts 6 spells tops unless he is the only fighting!) Why throwing out a construct such as an adventuring day if you aren't going to tie it to some real experience, like the gaming session? And the truth is simple: it's easier to structure and tie one adventuring day bounded to a session. When I write an adventure I even calculate how much time an encounter should ideally last (of course, there is room for variation, I'm not stupid), and how much time it takes to resolve the whole adventure. It helps to build the pace of the adventure*. And the best part is that it works, specially for newbie GMs, as it helps them to have a better pace for their sessions. Adventuring days are a way to structure narrative, nothing else.And that becomes a bookkeeping drag. You have to keep note from the spells you expended in several sessions. This isn't as big as a problem for a fighter or a rogue, but it is for most spellcasters ("How many smites can I do? I don't remember how many spells I had"). Remember that D&D 5TH ED isn't a game of high stakes. It builds tension over the "adventuring day": that's to say, you don't risk everything in a single fight, but over the course of many encounters specially at high levels/I]. Unresolving tension and don't reaching any kind of climax exhaust the players and mess up the pace of a session. And a cliffhanger MUST be prepared in order to be effective. Cliffhangers that doesn't go anywhere ("Will the rogue get caught by the guards?" OF COURSE not. A Rogue is a specialist in infiltration, and guards haven't even a high Perception. Even if they caught the rogue he can kill them with ease) gets tiresome. I've a long experience in D&D. I've been playing it for more than 15 years. And I pretty much enjoy this edition. I'm not saying that you are wrong, what I say is that both views are complementary. I've prepped adventures with the "adventuring day" in mind (and they usually last several sessions). And I've also prepped them in a session-based structure, and I've found that the latter is much more satisfying (with several days pass in a single session included often). You cannot keep cliffhangers for everything, and you need to build tension somehow and resolve it somehow.  Of course, you could be the exception and never building up tension to be resolved in the same session; that could be strange, because the basics of narrative don't work like that, but if it work for you, great. And I'm not saying that most adventures should be one-shots, but I do see that most GMs prep their sessions with something of a number of encounters per session, and some kind of climatic resolution at the end of the session, and thrive to achieve it. Then they can "add a twist" and left the party in a cliffhanger, but with a session-resolution already made (it's even advised in the DMG).Ideally, I think that an "adventuring day"-no matter if you measure it in a week under the "gritty realism" structure or in the "superheroic" style- should be about 1 gaming session. Even maybe 2 adventuring days in a single session. This is a base to build on, an ideal measure that will contrast with the reality of the table. You could add some things and consequences (and 5th edition has them, like Exhaustion) that keep up for more than a single adventuring day. I'm not quite fond of, EG, the long rest total recovery. That would lead to more satisfying sessions.*And I don't think encounters as fights only. I'm aboard the Angry style of narration, where an encounter is a dramatic question to be resolved. A fight isn't an encounter by itself, it's a mean to resolve an encounter.</blockquote>

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