Adventuring Day

https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/dungeon-masters-only/99223-the-adventuring-day https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/building-combat-encounters

p. 84 DMG

http://dmsworkshop.com/2022/01/28/adventuring-day/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKz9IGvuc4o

1. Estimate it and call it a day (trivial, easy, medium, hard, deadly... p. 82)
2. Do the math (number of characters and CR of monsters)

Design an adventure to complete an adventure (the boss shouldn't necessarily be something that requires a long rest before the encounter..)

• Don't have adventuring days be too short (this makes encounters too easy)

If there's only 1 encounter per day, that encounter needs to be deadly.

How to calculate the adventuring day...

Use the table below

Example: 5 level 5 characters (17,500 xp)

• 10 hobgoblins (medium - 2,500 xp)
• 4 hobgoblin iron shadow, 1 hobgoblin devastator (deadly - 5,800 xp )
• 7 hobgoblins, 1 hobgoblin captain (medium - 3,500 xp)
• 5 hobgoblins, 1 hobgoblin warlord (deadly - 5,600 xp)

How to enforce the mechanic..

• The group can only long rest once every 24 hours
• If the party leaves the dungeon, enemies should... (leave the dungeon, reinforce the dungeon, mobilize the dungeon and go after the party) -- there should be consequences to rests <-- location based encounter

Objections...

• Don't want to have 6-8 encounters
  • You can reduce the number of encounters by increasing the difficulty
• You don't have to use these rules... the difficulty can be easy, it can be impossibly hard too

What is the Adventuring Day?

It assumes the party will take 2-3 short rests.

Encounters are intended to deplete resources -- drain spell slots, traits.

The adventuring day breaks down to a table that take's a player's level into account. The following table is adjusted for each character (not the party's total experience but the individual player), it also includes some contextual information about the experience it takes to level and the percent of the experience required to level (i.e. the number of days it takes to gain a level).

Note: XP per level is the amount of experience it takes to gain a level at that threshold, it is not the total amount of experience the player has. Tables in the Player's Handbook (PHB) and most sources online show the total experience point.

Using the adventuring day mechanics, a player should only take a long rest 1 or 2 times per level (rarely taking a third long rest). From a mechanical/narrative standpoint, characters level incredibly fast (about 40 days to go from level 1 to 20).

What does this mean?

Fifth Edition is designed for 6-8 encounters per long rest, with 1-2 short rests in between. This means a level 1 spell caster with 2 spell slots should be spending a spell slot every 3-4 encounters. Full casters shouldn't be casting a spell every encounter until levels 3 to 5.

It's not until 5th-7th level that a Paladin can expect to Divine Smite once per encounter.

When you break the 6-8 encounter pattern, a spellcaster's line of play acts as if it's playing at higher tiers -- a wizard casting 2 spells per combat is much different than a wizard casting a spell every other combat; at level 17, a wizard can cast ~3 spells per combat with 6-8 encounters per day and a comical ~7 spells per combat with 2-3 encounters per day.

Tips

Don't throw Hard/Deadly Encounters at the party to make the game harder.

This might be counter intuitive at first but the harder the encounter, the more resources a party will throw at the encounter -- so difficult encounters spend resources at a faster rate than easy encounters. The party will almost always want to rest after a hard/deadly encounter, so if a DM throws one of these encounters at the party early in the adventuring day they will need a narrative reason to stop resting. An example might be starting out with a difficult encounter and the dungeon starts to collapse as the encounter ends, forcing the party to escape quickly.

Separate Mechanics from the Narrative

Resting is a mechanic, it's not part of the narrative. Just because a character goes to sleep for 8 hours at night (narratively) doesn't necessarily mean they took a long rest (mechanically).

Downtime/Deadtime Breaks the Narrative

The concept of a job board (or any sort of side quests) can break the link between character progression and the adventuring day.

Just because you had the time to take a long rest from a time standpoint (i.e. a day passed in the game, so the character slept) doesn't necessarily mean they mechanically took a long rest. A night at the tavern might not allow the player to take a long rest because they had a poor night's sleep and they woke up with a hang over. Dungeons and Dragons tries to explain rules concepts using real world rules when it doesn't work.

Milestone Progression fixes some of this. Parts of the gritty realism optional rules might help, too. I'd look into making a long rest take somewhere between 8 hours and 3 days, given the severity of the rest. From a narrative standpoint, long resting during a dungeon crawl doesn't make sense even when it's "safe" to do so.

Gritty Realism... https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/dcsf78/why_you_should_be_using_gritty_realism_resting/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/33nv6e/gritty_realism_optional_rule/

I've spent some of today looking at the adventuring day guidelines and what it means for character progression... and it creates a lot of narrative vs mechanical problems in DnD. Basically, it takes ~40 adventuring days to go from level 1 to level 20.

We probably need to start thinking about the difference between mechanics and narrative, especially as we introduce side quests/sessions. Basically, even though there's a narrative of sleeping for the night that shouldn't mean that mechanically the party gets a long rest.

Last night is a good example, the scarecrow encounter was considered an easy encounter and ended in 3 turns (not even a round... the monster attacked and two players took a turn, the player that didn't get a turn technically used a reaction but that doesn't matter much). In that encounter, the party spend 2 spell slots and used class feature.

If I use the guidelines set out in the DMG about what an adventuring day is, the encounter was 1/10 of a day but the party basically expended 1/3 to 1/2 of its resources. So I think you can see how encounter balancing gets messed up.

https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/95688/how-can-i-stress-my-players-resources-while-making-the-stressors-feel-natural-w

If the pace in your campaign is such that a nominal days worth of encounters should take 3 days or a week or a month, then change the rests so that you can take a short rest once a day/every 2 days/once a week and a long rest every 3 days/once a week/once a month.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/95nm2r/i_think_my_players_blow_their_resources_early_and/

A character can't benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/95nm2r/comment/e3vdzcy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

This idea often gets downvoted, but I think it's great and can't help recommending it if given the chance. ;)

As a new DM, it's hard to understand the most important function of the rest system: control of the game's pacing. It's an artificial restraint on the recovery of the characters' limited resources. It makes the game challenging and rewarding. Control of the game's pacing is the DM's job, not the player's job. But D&D's approach to rest puts primary control of rest (i.e. pacing) in the players' hands. Whomever controls the pacing controls the difficulty and challenge of the game. You've figured that out and that's why you're here. ;)

A game based on 4e D&D called 13th Age offers a solution for this problem with its rule that the PCs gain the benefits of a long rest after every fourth encounter. The rule hedges its language a bit to say that the GM can decide to award a long rest after a series of three tough encounters or after the fifth encounter if the party has had an easy time of it. But, for the most part, it's four encounters.

We can adapt this rule for 5e by suggesting the following: After every two encounters, the party gets the benefit of a short rest. After their sixth encounter, they get the benefits of a long rest. So over the course of six encounters, the players will get two short rests and one long one. If they faced a really hard fight, you decide that long rest happens after the fifth encounter. If the players feel that they're too beat up then, at any point, they can just declare that they're taking a long rest. That's fine, but then you, as the DM, get to describe a significant setback they suffer. The monsters get tougher or find dangerous reinforcements. Maybe an enemy of theirs take a major step forward in their plans, putting the party further behind in their plan to stop the villain. But for the most part, this schedule is strict. Unless the players accept the big setback or the DM decides that the players have had bad dice luck (this should be a rare determination), the schedule doesn't change.

We sever the idea of in-game time and duration from a rest, which is where all of this trouble really springs from. A party that travels for three weeks across the wilderness and has two encounters will need to face two encounters in the dungeon before they get another short rest, and four encounters before the long rest. We no longer need to think about rests in terms of hours and days, so we're free to focus on how the adventurers are being tested by their enemies and the world.

---

I've got more than a year of experience using this rule in D&D and another couple using 13th Age, the game that I borrowed the rule from.

To clarify the rest pattern, it looks like this:

Two encounters -> short rest -> Two more encounters -> short rest -> Another two encounters -> long rest, restart the counter at zero.

So the game falls into the "natural" 6-8 encounter rhythm that the Dungeon Master's Guide famously suggests as ideal for play. For players who aren't used to this system, you can shorten it to 2, 2, 1. So they'd get the long rest after the fifth encounter, not the sixth. If there's a non-combat encounter where the players expend some resources (spells, usually), you might consider that an encounter, too. Look for opportunities to do this, but don't go too far out of your way.

The biggest changes for players to adapt to are the following:

    Although the schedule determines when the rests arrive, the players decide how much in-game time they take. It's up to them. If they want their short rest to take a minute in game, that's their call. If they want it to take 20 minutes, 1.5 hours, three days: it's their call. Same goes for a long rest. This is the biggest conceptual hurdle to get over, but once people get comfortable with it, it becomes the new normal.

    Rests can happen as soon as the DM declares that combat is over.

    Short rest characters aren't as overshadowed in play by long rest characters. Long rest characters have to play a bit smarter to conserve their resources. Spellcasters will lean on their cantrips more, just like melee classes primarily swing their weapons in most fights.

    The rules for spending Hit Dice to recover hp still apply. It can only happen during a short rest. So after the first and third encounter, players who feel low on hp need to use magical healing (spells, potions), an ability like Second Wind, or someone needs to use the Healer feat. Sometimes (the best times!), the players decide not to use any healing and just go into the next fight down 25-30% hp. That adds a little tension to the next fight and starts to train players to feel more comfortable going into fights when they aren't in perfect shape. It builds a little confidence and they start to act a little more heroic.

    Remind them that when they see "per day" in the PHB and other rules, that really means "per long rest." At the beginning, keep reminding them that although it's easiest to keep using the terms "short rest" and "long rest" as shorthand for their mechanical effects, there's no connection between "rest" and in-game time.

As the DM, you need to make a couple of changes:

    Now that you're strictly on WotC's 6-8 encounters per day, you need to start using Medium-strength encounters much more often. The current, common system of D&D rest and encounters leads to DMs creating massive, Deadly fights in order to challenge a party that only has 1-2 fights per adventuring day. Throwing a Deadly fight at a party under this rest system can really screw them over. It really can be deadly! Your mix of fights should be 75% Medium, 20% Hard, and 5% Deadly, and the players should have a chance to figure out that the Deadly fight is deadly before they get to it. If they do figure it out, they can plan to get to it when they're at full strength or have some other advantage.

    EDIT: At first, players will stick to their "natural" inclinations to stay in every fight until the enemy is dead. D&D's normal rest system trains them to know that they can take a short rest whenever they want in order to heal up from a tough fight. If they follow that instinct in this rest system, they're in for a bumpy ride. You'll need to encourage them to retreat if a fight starts to go against them. Most D&D players (and DMs) don't understand that the decision to retreat needs to be made once a character or two reaches 40-50% of their maximum hp. Players often wait until it's WAY too late to retreat, usually after one or more PCs have dropped to 0hp. Remember to gently suggest retreat if the dice turn agains them and refresh yourself on the DMG's chase rules before each session.

    Because you're relying mostly on Medium encounters now, the feel of battles will change. They'll be shorter and faster, because the monsters can't stick around as long. But the effects of those smaller, more frequent battles will add up. Depending on how the players manage their resources and dice luck, they could be heading into their fifth or sixth encounter at a modest disadvantage. Even if that encounter is Medium strength, they're naturally going to feel much more tension that if it was their first and they were at full strength. The group's going to be on the edges of their seats and you didn't have to lift a finger as the DM. The rest system did the work.

    Because the system imposes this tension, however, be sensitive and generous to the players' schemes when they're late into the schedule and low on resources. They'll be nervous and cautious, since they don't want to lose their characters. Give their crazy schemes a little more leeway and keep the DCs for skill checks a little lower than usual if they're trying to set up an ambush or clever plan. A hidden benefit of this rest system is that it subtly nudges the players to find creative (sometimes non-combat!) solutions to problems once their resources get low.

https://www.enworld.org/threads/resource-draining-model-d-d-doesnt-work-for-me.660789/

Pacing Problem https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/muky9m/5es_pacing_problem_what_it_is_why_it_matters_and/

Making Rests Work https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/x1d18m/a_way_to_make_rests_work_in_5e_that_i_wish_id/

Suggested Time Fixes...

• 1 minute = 1 encounter
• 10 minutes = 2-3 encounters
• 1 hour = until a short rest
• 8 hours = until a long rest

https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/44o15t/dm_cant_challenge_my_party_in_5e/

During a 24 hour period in 5e your group should have to face 6–8 hard encounters and take no more than 2 short and 1 long rests.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/881s06/players_lament_running_out_of_spell_slots_so/

How Treantmonk Calculates an Adventuring Day: Assume 8 encounter day, 1 short rest per day (each combat has 4 rounds)

For the adventuring day... "at dawn" should basically read "at the start of the adventuring day" (or "at the end of a long rest")