D&D Ditching Multiple Encounters Per Day Is A Terrible Idea (& I Can Prove It)

screenrant.com:

I knew the 2024 revisions to would bring changes to the game, but I am sad on behalf of all fans that the recommendation of multiple combat encounters per adventuring day seems to be disappearing from the recommendations in the new. The current, released in 2014, clearly recommends an adventuring day with six or more battles. I have confirmed from my DM experience, this is the only functional way to run 5e. The problem was not multiple combat encounters per day, but the lack of DM guidance on how to achieve that.

The 2024 jettisoned the adventuring day as a concept based on some truly bonkers logic, essentially concluding that because most groups were not following the six to eight battles per day the 2014 recommended, the idea should simply be tossed out. This fails to place blame where it is due, since the prior advised multiple encounters per adventuring day but offered new DMs no guidance on how to facilitate that actually happening within their stories. The did not illustrate how narratives with urgency and time-sensitive stakes make adventuring days with multiple battles flow smoothly through storytelling.

Mechanics like Short Rests are clarified in ’s 2024 , and they remain central to the balance of the game, along with Long Rests. By its design, 5e has a strange approach to class balancing and rest rules. The 3e rules had no Short Rest paradigm, so most abilities were either always available or had a number of daily uses. Fourth edition used a unified Power System across all classes, meaning every class benefited from both Short Rests and Long Rests. The current rules take a bizarre approach by having some classes that rely almost entirely on Short Rests.

One of the biggest differences when playing a warlock instead of a wizard is having spells that refresh based on Short Rests instead of Long Rests. There is some trade-off between those classes, just as there is between a fighter that refreshes Action Surge and Second Wind on a Short Rest, and a barbarian