The Adventuring Day and You

[Parmandur]

That's certainly one problem, and IMO one that's at least somewhat unique to 5E (and maybe a few others (interesting fix btw, I like it). My issues with the idea are far more related to mechanical weight compared to gaming satisfaction.

The five minute work day was a 3.x thing. 5E has pretty good tools for dealing with it, actually, and I my experience it isn't hard to prevent.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

The core issue with 5e's adventuring day isn't that the math is broken; it’s that the math is deeply dependent on a specific narrative structure that many modern groups don't actually play. Modern D&D is mechanically engineered around tactical resource attribution over a prolonged period. When a table expects a narrative-first, fast-paced story but uses a high-crunch attrition engine, the game loop begins to tear at the seams. GMs are forced to either artificialize their storytelling to fit the encounter budget or watch their boss monsters get steamrolled in a single round because the party is fully rested.

When game designers calculate the balance of a system like 5e, they think purely in terms of the in-game calendar. They write down a number like 6 to 8 medium-to-hard encounters per "day." But at an actual table of human beings with jobs, families, and limited schedules, that "day" is a total fiction.

In D&D, exploration and social interaction are heavily promoted as core pillars, but mechanically, they rarely have an explicit, hard-coded fail state that threatens character existence.

If you fail a social check with a king, the narrative changes. Maybe you get thrown in a cell, or maybe you have to sneak out of the castle. The game doesn't end; it just takes a detour. But if your hit points hit zero and you fail your saves, that character is mechanically dead.

Because combat is the only pillar with a lethal mechanical cliff, the other two pillars are fundamentally used as delivery mechanisms for combat attrition. For example, an exploration hazard (like falling into a pit trap or breathing toxic gas) is usually just a disguised trap meant to steal 2d10 hit points or a 3rd-level spell slot (Lesser Restoration) before the party reaches the next room. Or a social failure often results in guards drawing swords, transforming a conversation into an initiative roll.

This logistical nightmare is exactly why games like 4th Edition, Pathfinder 2e, and many modern indie RPGs shifted toward encounter-based pacing.

If a system assumes that players regain their primary resources after an encounter (either automatically or through a short 10-minute focus/healing period), it completely solves the real-world scheduling problem. The GM can design a session knowing that whatever happens in Fight #1 will be cleared out by Fight #2. When the real-world clock hits 10:00 PM and everyone needs to go home, the GM can wrap up the current scene cleanly. Players can clear their temporary trackers and start the next session next week with a fresh slate.

Modern D&D's hybrid approach tries to bridge this gap by offering Short Rests (1 hour), but because certain classes rely on the 8-hour Long Rest to get anything back, it keeps the table chained to the macro-calendar.

The big trick for me wasn't about fixing the math, but fixing table logistics.
Leaving the game state 'hanging' between sessions was a huge momentum killer. To fix it, I avoided ending a session mid-fight or mid-scene; I planned or paced sessions so they wrapped up exactly on a rest or right before initiative is rolled.

To combat the bookkeeping burden (before online or digital character sheets and paywalls became a thing), I brought physical components to the table. I used custom spell slot cards that players flip over or return to a box when used, alongside colored tokens for tracking things like Hit Dice and Inspiration. It made the macro-resource loop visible to both the players and me at a glance, turning abstract math and spreadsheets into a tactile, shared survival game. It took the pressure off the bookkeeping and lets us focus on the play.

 

[payn]

The five minute work day was a 3.x thing. 5E has pretty good tools for dealing with it, actually, and I my experience it isn't hard to prevent.

It wasnt all that hard to prevent in 3E either. 3E was designed around the adventure day, but built in spell in a can jail breaks. I think the design was explicitly spelled out, but you can see the push pull of adventure day vs encounter focus even then.

5E has the unfortunate side effect of more expected encounters per day because of the hybrid approach with encounter powers and short resting. Its brought up constantly by folks that just dont want to follow those guidelines. That might be due to narrative desires, or simply a dislike of long adventure days mechanically.

 

[Parmandur]

It wasnt all that hard to prevent in 3E either. 3E was designed around the adventure day, but built in spell in a can jail breaks. I think the design was explicitly spelled out, but you can see the push pull of adventure day vs encounter focus even then.

5E has the unfortunate side effect of more expected encounters per day because of the hybrid approach with encounter powers and short resting. Its brought up constantly by folks that just dont want to follow those guidelines. That might be due to narrative desires, or simply a dislike of long adventure days mechanically.

The main point of tension seems to be people who want fights to be big setpieces, when 5E fights are quick and dirty by design, 2 round affairs meant to be strung together in rapid succession. It works well when payed that way, but not as well if a few big fights are desired. Also works with a few small fights, like what you see on a lot of streaming actual plays.

 

[billd91]

The adventuring day is a very strong concept that resonates well with players and is easy to grasp - you've got powers that effectively tire the PCs out and getting a reasonably effective sleep is a restorative. Virtually any resource recovery based on milestones or anything else other than time and rest feels artificial or contrived by comparison. So I think none of those other methods will ever really replace it in D&D. And I'm perfectly fine with that.
What I think D&D should then do is not just give to guidelines for how many encounters to have in one day, they should also give out some good guidelines for how to deviate from that, particularly for groups that tend to have fewer encounters/day. Or perhaps throttle more low-end powers for the daily resource hogs (spell casters mainly) that recharge on the short rest - such as maxing out at maybe only 2 spell slots at levels 1-2, 1 slot for 3-4, and allow those to recharge on a short rest, everything of higher level recharges on a long.

 

[Fenris-77]

I wasn't suggesting that it's hard to prevent, it's really not, but at the same time it continued to be an issue for all kind of reasons, prime among some very different GM vs player expectations at some tables. Even in 5E the short rest classes and long rest classes don't have the same impetus to engage with the mechanics at the same time, which is awkward (to me anyway). If everyone plays nice it's fine but that particular expectation can paper over a lot of holes in lots of systems and doesn't really speak to design.

 

[Piperken]

I agree - in all my time playing D&D 5e, the actual timeframe didn’t really matter. What mattered more in every adventure we played was what was happening in the moment, what pressures the PCs were under. Sometimes that could align with a nice pat 24 hour time span, but if we were playing an urban or overland adventure that spanned multiple days, tying the PCs abilities to a 24 hour clock didn’t make much sense.

A lot of what has been brought up has focused on the concept of the adventuring day as it is tied into per rest/per day mechanics and (typically combat) encounters.

Above comment is one point of friction that I've run into in more investigative or mystery situations set either in urban or wilderness spaces, esp. if one is running adventures that feature a main clock component i.e. if the players do nothing, or in four days time X happens, etc.

As adventures become more diverse, it's more common now to find these kinds of pressures present in them.

When investigating, there has to be limits of some kind, as it's not possible to do everything in one's day (don't we all know it!), unless some costs are imposed e.g. the party splits up, or interviewing this npc means not being able to pursue this other lead.

This friction tends to become rougher when you have markers for one set of activities (like downtime) that don't mesh with some of these other parts (a main clock for a mystery, the response a faction makes, etc.)

 

[Tigris]

I have seen the dynamic change a bit from at will abilities (usually a martial-based class) and daily limited resource pools (usually magic users) to abilities that are encounter-based. Also, those that reset on a separate time schedule then the original format. I have seen both the equity of resources across classes, and asymmetrical distribution as well. Id express the changes as daily focused, encounter focused, and hybrid focused. Daily is obviously older editions up to 3E (although 3E was where some experimentation with breaking the dynamic happened). 4E introduced a hybrid approach of resources, distributing them evenly across classes. 5E kept the hybrid approach, but went back to an asymmetrical distribution. PF2, designed by Paizo has experimented even further with a hybrid approach that appears to uphold the adventuring day dynamic, but actually looks a bit more like an encounter-based game thats veiled in its approach (likely due to legacy considerations of its fanbase).

In general I think the adventure day is a good concept when balancing RPGs and I think a lot about it. The problem I see is that its mostly a solved issue.

There are 2.5 ways to do it:

• The 4E way, where everyone has roughly the same number and power of daily ressources. Now you can have long adventure days, or short ones, but its always balanced between classes.
  • And having healing surges so total healing as a daily ressource is brilliant. This makes combats still matter even if you win them easily.
• The 13th age way. You have a completly fixed adventure "arc" (not day). You have always X encounters before a long rest. This allows for having many different asymmetric forms of ressources (and is a lot better example than PF2, which mainly has 2 structures). It even allows casters to decide themselves if they want per encounter or daily ressources!
  • As a slight variant of the above (which to some degree PF2 does), you can just have adventurers premade and linear and in them define when people can rest etc. so you can make sure its overall balanced. You then can have shorter and longer adventure days, but as soon as GMs do things on their own balance is no longer guaranteed

I think 5E by introducing another form of rest with the non automatic short rests, it made things just more complicated and harder to balance. I do not think this is a good design in any way. And IF you want to do it, I would more do it like Baldur's gate 3. You can do 2 short rests per day, and not having them time dependant. (Just make them short but limited).


I honestly would like to see some other good solutions to the adventure day "problem" ( just not caring for balance is for me not a solution, thats just bad or at least lazy gamedesign), but all other methods I have seen just fail / are worse than the 2 solutions presented above.


I prefer the 4E method overall, because I dont want to have a need for a specific adventure day in order to balance classes, because GMs will hardly really follow these instructions (having complicated and unrealistic ones like 5E does not help with its 6-8 battles with 2 1-hour short rests).

But I do like having different forms of ressources. Sure 4E still allows this to some degree (no encounter ressources to many encounter ressources, having points per encounter or fixed per encounter abilities (although the first one leads to spamming)), but overall 13th age is just more flexible in class structures.

When I design an encounter (and design is a strong word for the rough outline I throw together) I expect the PCs to go "all in."

Oh most of the tactical modern games do this to some degree! 4E, Beacon, 13th age and also PF2 expect players to go with full health into a combat. Some daily ressources may be missing, but its expected for the players to be in almost perfect condition. And these games do give mechanics to do this in the form of healing surges. (Only PF2 makes it more complicated by expecting free healing, but requiring players to find options to allow this)

One issue I have with the Adventuring Day is the assumption that the 'monsters' will cooperate in letting the PCs rest. Or if the PCs pull back to a safe spot that the monsters won't retake the ground the PC's just vacated. Monsters in this case could be monsters in a dungeon, the Thieves Guild in a city, or the town guard looking for the PCs after a rather destructive bar fight. I think it is fine to let the players sweat sometimes worrying if the rest period will be interrupted and the PCs will have to deal with an encounter with 50% resources left and several main abilities offline.

Well I don't think this is about the monsters, its more about the adventurers. Adventurers will get out of their way to make sure that they can get a good rest when they need it.

Narratively its the players trying to achieve more (not wasting time) when they don't long rest, and when they really can't they make sure to find a save resting place and waste maybe time doing so (going out of the dungeon, paying money for a good tavern etc.)

This works well in 13th age where its less about days and more about arcs, but of course it still needs buyin by players and GM as in narrating this in such a way.

Per-encounter abilities wreck my suspension of disbelief. Per-time-period is Ok, although if they're character abilities I my prefer them to be tied to, or cause, physical fatigue. That's a real thing, which can be thought about and mitigated using experience of the real world, rather than just game rules.

For me this makes a lot of sense, but I have actual experience with martial arts.
Its not uncommon for some trick to only work once in a combat/ you can only surprise an enemy once. Its also not uncommon to only being able to do some specific technique only once because it puts a strain on you and when you are tired chances for it to fail are too big.

Similar runners can only do normally 1 "end sprint" because its straining.

And the "once per encounter" is per time. Its just an easier way to do it. After a combat you take some 5 minute breather. And if you can't do that, then its just the same combat, where in the combat more enemies show up.


This is a lot easier to track than tracking ingame minutes and is not GM dependant, so everyone has the same experience.

The idea of recovering all your hit points after a long rest is ludicrous; if you have these inhuman levels of durability, you need some effort to recover them quickly.

This is just a matter in how you narrate hit points. And if you are in a world with magic, where things are more powerful, it makes sense that also bodies and their ability to recover are stronger.

 

[John Dallman]

For me this makes a lot of sense, but I have actual experience with martial arts.
Its not uncommon for some trick to only work once in a combat/ you can only surprise an enemy once. Its also not uncommon to only being able to do some specific technique only once because it puts a strain on you and when you are tired chances for it to fail are too big.

And if it was rationalised on that basis, for abilities where that makes sense, that might well improve matters. I gave away my D&D 4E rules in horror and disgust once I'd got about 10% of the way through the PHB, so I don't know if it ever did that.

And the "once per encounter" is per time. Its just an easier way to do it. After a combat you take some 5 minute breather. And if you can't do that, then its just the same combat, where in the combat more enemies show up.

How do the rules distinguish between these two situations?

1. The party has a combat, a breather, and then another combat.
2. The party spots an anticipated encounter some way ahead, backs off, take a breather and makes a plan, then sneaks up close and has a combat.

This is a lot easier to track than tracking ingame minutes and is not GM dependant, so everyone has the same experience.

I am entirely baffled as to why making the experience of play similar in different groups should be any kind of consideration? I run my games the way I and my players want to play, and I expect the GMs I play with to do the same.

 

[Tigris]

And if it was rationalised on that basis, for abilities where that makes sense, that might well improve matters. I gave away my D&D 4E rules in horror and disgust once I'd got about 10% of the way through the PHB, so I don't know if it ever did that.

I mean its the players /GMs jobs to fill in the flavour in a way to makes sense to them.

A big part of 4e was built up using sport terms (second wind, soccer terms).
So one should naturally think in that direction, but in the end different people have different knowledge and experiences and games want to not waste space telling obvious things, which for some people still will not work.


Especially since there are many more possible explanations which could work (for different people):

• These martial techniques require an enemy to have a specific position and this just happens rarely in combat. (This can really well be narrated!)
• The martial characters developed techniques where they can purposely release big bursts of Adrenalin and ATP in different parts of their bodies, but it takes some time until this is collected again.
• Martial characters harness the power of their body which is a different form of power than magic (like in 1000s of martial art movies and animes etc.) And use it for their strong techniques. And need time to restore/collect it again. ("Opening an inner gate" from naruto as one example which there also is not "magic" energie thats why Lee can do this even though he has no magic)
• Somehow martial characters when training a lot can under pressure do really amazing feats and techniques and no one knows why. (Similar to no one knows how magic exactly works)
• (As addendum to the last). After the goddess of magic was killed it took some while until magic came back, and it came back in a wierd way. (This happened in 4e). And somehow when magic came back it changed everyone not just magical casters, even sword fighters etc. Got affected by the event and since then...
• Martial characters practice martial practices, which are like martial rituals. By preparing their bodies with these rituals they can store parts of their power to be released at important times.
• Etc.

In the end "something breaks my verismilitude" is just the same as "I am not imaginative enough to explain this."

One example from me: For me OSR type games often make absolutely no sense. Basic attacks, improvised maneuvers, treasures in dungeons left for adventurers ro collect, wasting are magical ressources to create items which are cursed etc.


Now for me when I think about this games I just explain it to me as "The world was a long time ago cursed by the goddess of wisdom for unknown reason. No almost everything in this world lacks wisdom. Evolution produces badly adapted creatures, poison forgets to go bad, people build dungeons, kings dont ever come up with the idea to collect magic items etc."

And part of the cool thing in fantasy is to have worlds which are completely differenr rhan one would have imagined them!

How do the rules distinguish between these two situations?

1. The party has a combat, a breather, and then another combat.
2. The party spots an anticipated encounter some way ahead, backs off, take a breather and makes a plan, then sneaks up close and has a combat.

In the second part you can try to surprise the enemy and if you succeed get a surprise round. What other distinction do you need? Again its the job of the GM with the players to make the narrative work.


If the party gets surprised when they want to rest after 1 combat, you can really well do this narratively, and mechanically its just one encounter have more enemies arive after some time / after first enemies are defeated and are part of the encounter budget.

I am entirely baffled as to why making the experience of play similar in different groups should be any kind of consideration? I run my games the way I and my players want to play, and I expect the GMs I play with to do the same.

Because as a game designer you want to create the best possible experience for the players. Especially making sure that not GMs introduce things only fun for the GM making the experience for the other players worse, since in the end the GM is just 1 player out of 5. And this bad experiences from GMs might make players not like the game which is bad for the game.

Also as a player when you search for "I want to play D&D 6e" you want to know what that experience is, the more varied that experience the bigger the chance of wasting your time or dissapointment.


In an ideal world a game master is more like a game slave and brings exactly the experience designed by the game designer to the players and make sure the players have the optimal experience and adapt things according to democratic votes of all players (including the GM).