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DnD 5e’s difficulty/pacing issues come from the little-known “adventuring day” rules, which most people didn’t know existed. Also, WotC removed them in the 2024 rules 🫠
#dnd #2024dnd #dmadvice #dnd5e
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D and D 5e has a massive pacing problem
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that Wizards of the Coast has never even
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attempted to fix. We've had over a
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decade of fifth edition Dungeons and
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Dragons, and they have done exactly
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nothing to make this better. I'm going
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to ask you to peek into the 2014 Dungeon
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Masters Guide on page 80, where you'll
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find the rules for creating encounters.
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Flip to the next page, page 82, and
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you'll find a table, XP by character
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level. Look at that. Now, this is where
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we get the XP threshold for easy,
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medium, hard, and deadly encounters.
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It's based on the character's level and
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the number of characters in the party.
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Most dungeon masters stop there and
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don't think any further. And that is the
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reason why your pacing isn't working.
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That is the reason why your spellcasters
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are running away with the game. Because
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one encounter per long rest is not
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enough to challenge your party. You need
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to flip the page one more time to page
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84 where you'll find a section called
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the adventuring day. Not an encounter,
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the adventuring day. The adventuring day
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gives you an XP budget to distribute
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across multiple combat encounters based
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on a character's level. This is how much
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difficulty, how much fighting a single
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player character is expected to be able
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to do in a single adventuring day. So
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that's between long rests. And the
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expectation here is that they can handle
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six to eight encounters of roughly
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medium difficulty. Looking at the math
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for the XP budget, you can do three
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deadly encounters with two short rests
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or you could do like 10 easy encounters
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with two short rests and basically slide
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in between there. You can vary in
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difficulty and that lets you play with
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some hard encounters, some easy
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encounters, and kind of like scale that
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difficulty up and down throughout the
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day as needed or just to give players
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variation in the challenges that they
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face. All of these encounters are
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expected to consume resources, hit dice,
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spell slots, maneuver dice. Like even
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characters that reset on a short rest,
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they're still burning through limited
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resources. Most importantly, hit point
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dice. Fighting is supposed to be taxing.
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Players are expected to spend limited
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resources to get through fights, but
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they're also expected to have to ration
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those resources over an extended period.
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If players don't have to make those
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resource considerations, then they can
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just go nova in turn one of every single
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combat, and every combat is easy almost
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regardless of CR. But even in the 2024
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rules, this is still a big problem
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because they removed this section of the
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book. Literally, the 2024 rules have no
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guidance on pacing. So, we're basically
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left to guess how much players can
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actually handle in a single day. So, not
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only did Wizards of the Coast not try to
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make the pacing issues better, they
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basically abandoned the attempt
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entirely.
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