D&D 5e 2014 Running the Game: DM Session Mechanics Guide

Introduction

Chapter 8 of the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide is the chapter you actually lean on once a campaign is running: how to call for a roll, set a DC, and adjudicate whatever happens next. It covers table rules and dice philosophy, ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws, exploration and social interaction, objects, combat mechanics like Initiative tracking and mobs, chases, siege equipment, and three optional stress systems - disease, poison, and madness - plus how experience points and milestones actually work at the table.

This guide walks through that chapter in the order a session actually uses it, from setting expectations before you sit down to awarding XP after the credits roll. For the raw session-prep tables (encounter budgets, DC bands at a glance, travel pace by map scale), keep the DM Quick Reference open next to this guide. For designing the adventure this chapter helps you run, see Creating Adventures. For the player-facing version of how a turn works, see the Basic Combat Flow section of the 2014 Beginner's Guide.

Session Zero

Before anyone builds a character or rolls a die, the DM and players can run a dedicated session - commonly called session zero - to set expectations, agree on a social contract, and share house rules. Problems caught in this one session are cheap to fix; the same problems left for mid-campaign rarely are.

Character and party creation. Encourage players to pick different classes so the party covers a range of abilities, though a themed party (an all-soldier squad, a troupe of entertainers) can work fine too. Each character's background comes with roleplaying hooks - ideals, bonds, and flaws - to fold into the campaign on purpose: a criminal background's "I'm paying off a debt to a generous benefactor" bond is an open invitation to decide who that benefactor is and build story around them. Help the party explain how their characters came together as well - whether they grew up together, united against a common foe, share a patron, or were brought together by a funeral, festival, or shared benefactor - and spend part of the session fleshing out whichever origin fits.

Social contract. D&D only works if everyone at the table is having fun, and session zero is the time to talk openly about the experience everyone wants, along with any topics, themes, or behavior that are off the table. A typical social contract covers mutual respect between DM and players, the DM's authority to direct the campaign and arbitrate rules, and the group's shared responsibility to protect the table's cohesion - with the understanding that repeated violations can mean asking someone to leave.

Hard and soft limits. A soft limit is a threshold worth thinking twice before crossing, since it risks real anxiety or discomfort; a hard limit should never be crossed at all. Every player has both, so make it easy to share them privately - written on an index card, or given to the DM to compile anonymously - rather than forcing anyone to announce personal limits out loud to the table. Revisit the list periodically, since limits can surface or change as a campaign goes on.

Game customization and house rules. Ask what pulls each player toward the game - which pillar of play (combat, exploration, roleplaying) they favor, how much humor and what level of technology they want, whether they enjoy puzzles, and whether they'd rather track XP or advance on your call. If you're planning to run any of the optional rules covered elsewhere in this hub's DM's Toolbox guide, or a house rule of your own, session zero is the time to introduce it - treat any house rule as an experiment you're free to revise or drop if it doesn't land well at the table.

Session zero naturally feeds into the shape of the campaign itself - see Creating Campaigns for turning what you learn about your players into an actual campaign structure. A Strixhaven campaign has one extra topic worth adding to this list: the setting's own student-life subsystem includes an explicitly opt-in Relationship rules layer, worth a direct yes-or-no with your table before session one.

Table Rules and Setting Expectations

Before the rules of the game matter, the table rules do. The DMG treats this as a real category worth deciding on purpose, not something that just sorts itself out.

Fundamentals worth deciding explicitly. Foster respect (don't let out-of-game conflict bleed into the session), avoid distractions, and settle who brings food and drink before the first session rather than during it.

Table talk. Make clear when a player is speaking in character versus out of it, decide how you feel about a player sharing information their character wouldn't know, and settle whether a player can retract something they just said their character did.

Dice rolling. Decide whether a die that lands on the floor counts or gets rerolled, and whether a die cocked against a book gets pulled out and read or rerolled clean. For your own rolls, rolling in the open shows the players you aren't fudging results; rolling behind a screen keeps them guessing about the real strength of the opposition and lets you soften a lethal streak of criticals if you want that option available. The DMG is blunt that overusing this trick reads as favoritism, so use it sparingly and don't advertise it.

Rules discussions. Some tables are fine pausing to hash out a rule; others want the DM to make a call and keep the action moving, with disputed calls revisited after the session. Pick one before it comes up mid-scene.

Metagame thinking. When a player reasons from outside the fiction ("the DM wouldn't throw something this tough at us"), the DMG's fix is a simple redirect: "What do your characters think?" Setting up situations that actually threaten the party also curbs this instinct, since players stop assuming safety once the fiction proves it isn't guaranteed.

Missing and new players. For an absent player's character, you can hand it to another player, run it yourself, invent a reason it's elsewhere in the story, or let it simply fade into the background with nothing acting on it or by it. For a new player joining an existing party, build their character at the lowest level currently in the party - unless they're brand new to the game entirely, in which case they start at 1st level, and a higher-level party might take a short break to run a level 1 arc together so the new player (and possibly a new DM) can learn the ropes. Integrating a new character mid-adventure works best with a concrete hook: a friend or relative who's been searching for the party, a rescued prisoner, or the sole survivor of another adventuring group.

Small groups. A short-handed table can double up characters per player, add PC followers, or lean on the optional healing surge rule. Don't force a reluctant player into running two characters, and don't play favorites by letting only one player do it.

The Role of Dice: Choosing Your Running Style

The DMG frames how much you lean on dice as a real style choice, not a fixed rule, and lays out three approaches.

Rolling with it. Call for a check and a DC almost every time a character attempts something risky, then commit to letting the dice actually decide the outcome instead of steering around a bad roll. This gives players a real sense that anything is possible, at the cost of roleplaying sometimes feeling secondary to what the dice say.

Ignoring the dice. Reserve rolls mostly for combat, and elsewhere judge success or failure by how well the players make their case - how thorough or creative their plan is. This rewards creativity and pulls players toward describing their approach instead of just naming a skill, but it puts a lot of weight on you staying neutral, and it can slow the game if you're waiting for one specific "correct" description before letting the party past an obstacle.

The middle path. Most DMs land somewhere between the two, letting some outcomes hinge on ability scores and others on how the players handle a scene. The DMG's own framing holds either way: dice are tools, not the game itself. You can rule an action automatically successful, grant advantage to soften a bad roll's consequences, or let a bad enough plan tip a check toward disadvantage regardless of what the character sheet says.

Ability Checks, Attack Rolls, and Saving Throws

Once you've decided a roll matters, the DMG gives you a short decision chain: is a roll even warranted, what kind of roll is it, and what's the DC.

Is a roll warranted? Ask two questions. Is the task so easy and free of stress that there's no real chance of failure? Is the task so inappropriate or physically impossible - hitting the moon with an arrow - that it can't succeed regardless of the roll? If both answers are no, call for a roll.

Ability checks test whether a character succeeds at something they've chosen to attempt. When failure only costs time rather than making the attempt flatly impossible, you can skip the roll and just narrate how long the task takes, or let one check stand for the whole effort. A character who fails a check can usually try again given enough time - as a shortcut, a character spending ten times the normal time on a task automatically succeeds - though no amount of retries turns an impossible task possible, and in some cases a failed check locks out trying the exact same approach again (a rogue's blown lie to a guard doesn't get a second try with the same guard).

A contest is an ability check pitted directly against another creature's check instead of a fixed DC - a creature trying to hide rolls Dexterity against a searcher's Wisdom, while two creatures arm wrestling both roll Strength.

Attack rolls apply when a character tries to hit a creature or object with an attack, especially when armor, a shield, or cover could foil it. You can also use an attack roll to resolve a noncombat contest like archery or darts.

Saving throws are a split-second response to a harmful effect rather than something a character actively attempts. Most of the time a spell, monster ability, or trap tells you which ability and DC to use; when a situation clearly calls for a save but nothing specifies one, the DMG's Saving Throws guidance maps each ability to its usual role - Strength resists being physically moved or bound, Dexterity dodges harm, Constitution endures disease, poison, or vitality drain, Intelligence resists illusions and logic-based mental assaults, Wisdom resists charm, fear, and willpower attacks, and Charisma withstands effects like possession that would overwrite a character's personality or hurl them to another plane.

Setting the DC

When a rule or adventure doesn't hand you a DC, pick one from the Typical DCs scale:

The DMG is explicit that you can run an entire game using only 10, 15, and 20. A DC 5 task should usually just succeed without a roll at all, and a DC 30 task is nearly impossible for most low-level characters - even a 20th-level character with proficiency and a 20 in the relevant ability still needs a 19 or 20 on the die to clear it. If flat DCs occasionally produce a result you find ridiculous (a fighter with 20 Strength repeatedly failing to kick in a door a rogue with 10 Strength opens on a lucky roll), the optional automatic success rule lets a character auto-succeed on any check with a DC at or below their relevant ability score minus 5, and a proficient character auto-succeeds at DC 10 or lower (DC 15 or lower at 11th level and up). This rule doesn't apply to contests, saving throws, or attack rolls, and it does make outcomes more predictable, since players will naturally match their strongest ability to whatever check comes up.

Advantage, Disadvantage, and Degrees of Outcome

Consider advantage when the environment favors the character, a player shows real creativity in describing their approach, or an earlier action already improved the odds. Consider disadvantage under the mirror-image circumstances. When both would apply, they cancel out entirely - there's no need to count how many sources sit on each side.

Beyond a flat pass or fail, the DMG offers a few ways to add texture:

• Success at a cost. A check that misses by only 1 or 2 can still succeed, with a complication attached - a blade gets past the guard but the wielder gets disarmed in the process, a dodged fireball still knocks the character prone.
• Degrees of failure. A trap-disarm attempt that misses by 5 or more might spring the trap outright, while a narrower miss does nothing worse than fail to disarm it.
• Critical success or failure. A natural 20 or 1 on an ability check or saving throw has no automatic special effect, but you can choose to amplify it - an extra clue on a critical Investigation check, or broken thieves' tools on a natural 1 while picking a lock.

Inspiration is one of the few rewards fully in your hands as DM. A character can hold only one inspiration at a time, and spending it grants advantage on one ability check, attack roll, or saving throw. The DMG frames award timing as a real style choice: rewarding roleplaying that's true to a character's trait, flaw, or bond covers most tables; rewarding bold, risky action fits swashbuckling campaigns; and rewarding the party collectively after a big win suits a more impartial DM style who'd rather let dice decide most outcomes. A reasonable pace is about once per session per character, adjusted to whatever keeps your specific table engaged.

Exploration

Exploration covers how you narrate and adjudicate travel, tracking, and visibility outside of combat and social scenes.

Maps and scale. A dungeon map shows rooms and passages, a settlement map adds terrain to streets and buildings, and a wilderness map shows roads, rivers, and terrain from a small glade up to a whole continent. The Player's Handbook's travel pace categories - slow, normal, and fast - scale down to minutes for a dungeon or up to full days for a long journey, and a character walking at a normal pace on foot covers about 24 miles in a day.

Special travel pace. A creature moving under a flying speed, or a speed granted by magic, an engine, or wind or current, doesn't tire the way a walking creature does. Convert that speed to distance directly: in one minute you cover speed times 10 feet, in one hour you cover speed divided by 10 miles, and for a full day of travel multiply the hourly rate by the hours actually traveled (typically 8). A fast pace bumps the daily rate up by a third; a slow pace cuts it to two-thirds.

Visibility. Outdoors on a clear day, characters can see about 2 miles in any direction, or further if elevated - up to 40 miles from a mountaintop or tall hill. Rain cuts that down to roughly 1 mile, and fog can shrink it to as little as 100 to 300 feet.

Noticing other creatures. If neither side is being stealthy, creatures automatically notice each other once within sight or hearing range. Otherwise, compare the hiding side's Dexterity (Stealth) results against the other side's passive Wisdom (Perception) scores.

Tracking. Following a trail calls for a Wisdom (Survival) check, with a fresh check required after a rest, when the trail crosses an obstacle like a river, or when weather or terrain shifts enough to make tracking harder. The DC scales with how well the ground holds a trail - no roll is needed for an army's tracks on a muddy road, while bare stone requires a much sharper check unless the tracked creature left something distinctive behind. Advantage applies when more than one set of tracks is being followed; disadvantage applies when the trail crosses a well-trafficked area. A failed check loses the trail but doesn't end the attempt - a careful search of the area (10 minutes indoors, an hour outdoors) can find it again.

Social Interaction

During a social interaction, the party is usually after something concrete - information, aid, trust, an escape from punishment, a negotiated deal - and whatever creature they're talking to has its own agenda. The DMG doesn't insist on one resolution style: some tables run interaction as pure free-form roleplaying with dice rarely touched, others lean heavily on Charisma checks, and most fall somewhere between the two, balancing player skill with character skill.

For a table that wants more structure, the DMG offers an optional four-step method meant to stay mostly invisible to the players:

1. Starting attitude. Every creature the party interacts with starts friendly, indifferent, or hostile. A friendly creature helps without a roll for anything low-risk, but a personal-risk request still needs a successful Charisma check. An indifferent creature needs a successful check for almost any request. A hostile creature needs one or more successful checks just to act on the party's behalf - and some hostile creatures are disposed badly enough that no check can move them at all.
2. Conversation. Let the party actually make their case, framing it in terms that matter to the creature. A creature's attitude can shift up to one step during a single interaction - hostile to indifferent, or indifferent to friendly - if the party appeals to something the creature actually cares about (an ideal, bond, or flaw), or shift the wrong direction on a misstep. Learning what a creature cares about in the first place can take its own Wisdom (Insight) check; badly failing that check by 10 or more risks feeding the party a false or inverted read on the creature's motivations.
3. Charisma check. Once the party reaches their actual ask, call for one Charisma check from whichever character actively participated in the conversation, applying Persuasion, Deception, or Intimidation as the scene warrants. The creature's current attitude sets the bar for what a given DC achieves - a friendly creature does as asked without risk on a DC 0 result but needs a DC 20 result to accept real personal risk, while a hostile creature at best offers no help and does no harm even on a DC 20 result. A character who meaningfully helped the conversation can grant the roller advantage; a character who said something counterproductive imposes disadvantage instead.
4. Repeat? Once a check is made, pushing further risks aggravating the creature and shifting its attitude toward hostile. Use judgment - sometimes a second character can smooth over an earlier misstep with a fresh, well-chosen Charisma check.

Portraying NPCs. Pick one or two adjectives that define a character and let their alignment inform how they act - showing a trait through behavior lands harder than stating it outright. Distinctive voices, consistent mannerisms, and a bit of physical performance (an expression, a gesture) all make an NPC memorable, and in a scene with several party members, keep NPCs talking mainly to the players rather than to each other.

Objects

The DMG's baseline rule for objects is simple: given enough time and the right tool, characters can destroy any destructible object, with common sense governing whether an attempt makes sense at all. When time is a factor, you can assign a destructible object an Armor Class and hit points, plus any relevant immunities, resistances, or vulnerabilities.

Suggested Armor Class scales roughly by material - cloth, paper, and rope sit around AC 11, crystal and glass around AC 13, wood and bone around AC 15, stone around AC 17, and worked metal considerably higher. Hit points scale by both size and resilience, with a fragile tiny object like a lock having only a couple of hit points and a resilient large object like a cart holding considerably more. Huge and Gargantuan objects (a colossal statue, a towering column) are often better handled by simply deciding how long they withstand whatever's attacking them, or by breaking them into large sections and tracking each section's hit points separately.

Objects are immune to poison and psychic damage by default, and you can call specific damage types more or less effective against a given material - bludgeoning against stone, fire or lightning against paper and cloth. Big structures like castle walls often carry a damage threshold instead: any single hit below that threshold is superficial and does nothing, while a hit that meets or exceeds it deals damage normally.

Combat

This section builds directly on the Player's Handbook's combat rules with tools for keeping a fight moving at the table.

Tracking Initiative. A hidden list (behind a DM screen or on a private spreadsheet) lets you track unrevealed combatants and secret hit point totals, at the cost of having to remind players when their turn comes up. A visible list (a whiteboard, a shared document) lets everyone see the order and plan ahead, removing uncertainty about when the monsters act. Index cards split the difference - arrange them by rolled Initiative, move the top card to the bottom after each turn, and announce who's up next so the following player can start planning.

Tracking monster hit points and conditions. Track every monster's hit points individually, even in a large group, and give visually identical monsters distinguishing names or labels ("the ogre with the scar") so both you and the players can keep them straight. You never have to reveal exact numbers - once a monster drops to half its hit point maximum, it's fair to describe it as bloodied and visibly worn down, which gives players a read on progress without spelling out the math. Track conditions the same deliberate way, whether on an index card, a whiteboard, or wherever you're already tracking Initiative.

Monsters and critical hits. A monster follows the same critical hit rule as a player character. If you're using a monster's average damage rather than rolling it, a critical hit means rolling all the damage dice for the hit and adding them to that average - a goblin's normal 5 (1d6+2) becomes 5 plus a fresh 1d6 on a crit.

Improvising damage. When damage isn't specified by a stat block or effect, scale the dice to the danger - roughly 1d10 for something like being burned by coals, up to 24d10 for being crushed in the jaws of a moon-sized monster. Always cross-reference the result against the target's level: the same amount of damage that's a minor setback for a high-level party can be lethal for a low-level one, so weigh the number against who's actually standing in front of it before locking it in.

Handling mobs. A battlefield with dozens of identical, low-threat monsters can bog a session down in individual attack rolls. Instead, find the minimum d20 result each attacker needs to hit its target (subtract their attack bonus from the target's AC), then use that number to determine how many attackers with that roll or better are needed for one of them to land a hit - fewer attackers are needed against a lower AC target, more against a higher one. Once the group thins out enough that the shortcut starts producing odd results, switch back to rolling individually.

Using miniatures. For fights that benefit from a visual layout, the DMG expands on the Player's Handbook's grid rules with guidance on creature size and space on a battlefield, line of sight, and cover (half cover for one or two blocked lines to a target's space, three-quarters cover for three or four blocked lines). Three optional rules go further for tables that want them: flanking grants advantage on melee attacks when an ally sits on the opposite side of an enemy, diagonal movement alternates 5-foot and 10-foot costs for more geometric accuracy, and facing tracks front, side, and rear arcs so an attacker behind a creature gets advantage on its attack.

Combat is also where you'll lean hardest on building the monsters and NPCs you're running and picking and reskinning the actual monster for the scene in front of you - the DM's Toolbox and the Monster Guide cover both in depth, while this chapter covers how to run the fight once the monsters are chosen.

Chases

Strict movement math turns a chase scene predictable fast: a faster creature always catches a slower one, and creatures with matched speed never close the gap at all. The DMG's chase rules exist specifically to break that predictability.

Beginning a chase. A chase needs a quarry and at least one pursuer, with anyone not already in Initiative order rolling it now. Each participant gets one action and their normal movement per turn, same as combat. Track the starting distance between quarry and pursuers, and designate whichever pursuer is closest as the lead - a role that can shift round to round.

Dashing. Every participant can freely Dash a number of times equal to 3 plus their Constitution modifier during the chase. Beyond that, each additional Dash forces a DC 10 Constitution check at the end of the turn or a level of exhaustion. A participant drops out entirely once exhaustion reaches level 5, since their speed hits 0 - though the exhaustion clears with a short or long rest after the chase ends. Participants can also make attacks and cast spells at targets in range, using normal cover and terrain rules, but chase participants generally can't make opportunity attacks against each other, since everyone's assumed to be moving the same direction at the same time (creatures not part of the chase can still get opportunity attacks in, if the pursuit runs past them).

Ending a chase. If neither side breaks off, the quarry makes a Dexterity (Stealth) check at the end of each round, compared against the pursuers' passive Wisdom (Perception) scores. If the quarry never leaves the lead pursuer's sight, that check fails automatically; otherwise, beating the highest passive score among the pursuers means the quarry escapes. The quarry gets advantage on this check with more things to hide behind or a crowded, noisy setting, and disadvantage with the opposite conditions or if the lead pursuer has Survival proficiency or is a ranger.

Complications. Each participant rolls a d20 at the end of their turn against an urban or wilderness complications table; a result that triggers one affects the next participant in Initiative order, not the roller, and either of them can spend inspiration to cancel it out. Complications range from a crowd or obstacle requiring a check to avoid difficult terrain, to outright dangerous hazards like running into a hunter's snare or a swarm that gets an opportunity attack in. Characters can also invent their own complications for pursuers - a well-placed spell in a narrow alley works exactly the way it sounds.

A chase can split into smaller separate pursuits if the quarry splits up, forcing you to resolve each one in its own round-by-round sequence, and role reversal is always on the table - a party chasing a thief through a market might suddenly find themselves the ones being chased by the thief's allies.

Siege Equipment

Siege weapons matter in any campaign that features a real war, a fortified stronghold under assault, or a monster big enough to need something heavier than a longsword. Most don't move on their own - they need creatures to haul, load, aim, and fire them - and all of them share the same damage immunities (poison and psychic).

A ram's operating crew has total cover from attacks above them thanks to its gallery roof, and a siege tower's occupants have total cover from anything outside the tower while they climb. A mangonel and trebuchet both arc their payload high enough to hit targets behind cover, which makes them the tools of choice against a fortified position rather than an open target a ballista or cannon can hit in a straight line.

Diseases

A disease in the DMG is a plot device first and a rules system second - a wasting illness discovered in a tomb, a plague sweeping a kingdom, a warlock's affliction tied to using dark power. A minor outbreak might just be a resource drain solved by a single casting of lesser restoration; a bigger one can anchor an entire adventure around finding a cure or stopping its spread. Nothing forces a disease to follow a universal rule set - it can affect only certain races or creature types, and the story you're telling decides how contagious or curable it is.

The book includes several sample diseases as templates rather than a fixed catalog: illnesses that impose exhaustion, force periodic Constitution saves against escalating effects, or apply a stacking penalty until cured by specific magic or a specific rare cure. The pattern worth borrowing for a homebrew disease is consistent across all of them - an initial infection save, a recurring check tied to rest cycles, and a clear (if sometimes difficult) path to a cure, whether that's a spell, an herb, or simply time.

Poisons

Poisons are illegal in most settings but stay in circulation among assassins and worse. The DMG sorts them into four delivery methods: contact (absorbed through exposed skin), ingested (requires swallowing a full dose to take effect, with a partial dose optionally doing less), inhaled (a powder or gas filling a 5-foot cube), and injury (delivered through a slashing or piercing weapon coated in the poison).

Sample poisons in the book range from cheap and mild (a triple-digit gold cost, a short duration of poisoned) to extraordinarily expensive and lethal poisons that can deal damage in the tens of a d6 pool on a failed save. Acquiring poison openly is rarely possible where it's outlawed - a black-market contact or an unscrupulous apothecary is the usual route, and criminal contacts make the search meaningfully easier.

Crafting and harvesting. During downtime, a character proficient with a poisoner's kit can craft basic poison using the Player's Handbook's crafting rules, with rarer poisons left to your discretion and possibly gated behind hunting down specific ingredients. Harvesting poison directly from a poisonous creature instead requires the creature to be incapacitated or dead, several minutes of work, and a DC 20 Intelligence (Nature) check (with poisoner's kit proficiency substituting for Nature proficiency if needed) - a botched harvest by 5 or more exposes the harvester to the creature's own poison.

Madness

Most campaigns never touch madness as a system - characters shrug off horror the way action heroes usually do. But a campaign leaning into horror, or a spell, disease, poison, or planar effect explicitly calling for it, can use these rules to make that horror mechanically real. Resisting a madness effect is usually a Wisdom or Charisma save (or a Sanity save, if a table has adopted that optional score from Chapter 9).

Madness comes in three tiers of severity:

• Short-term madness lasts 1d10 minutes and covers immediately disruptive effects - being paralyzed until damaged, becoming incapacitated while screaming or weeping, or compulsively attacking the nearest creature.
• Long-term madness lasts 1d10 x 10 hours and covers more sustained effects - a compulsive repeated action, a powerful delusion, extreme paranoia, or partial amnesia about anything before the madness took hold.
• Indefinite madness grants a new character flaw that lasts until specifically cured, ranging from relatively mild ("I keep whatever I find") to outright disturbing.

Curing madness. A calm emotions spell suppresses madness temporarily; lesser restoration clears a short-term or long-term case outright. Depending on the source, remove curse or dispel evil can also help, but indefinite madness needs a greater restoration spell or something stronger to fully cure.

Experience Points and Milestones

XP fuels level advancement and is most commonly earned by defeating monsters - each has an XP value tied to its Challenge Rating, and a party divides the total evenly, counting any NPC who substantially helped the fight (which dilutes each character's individual share, since the fight was easier with the extra help).

Absent characters. Characters miss out on XP from sessions they didn't attend by default, which can create a level gap between regular and sporadic attendees - the DMG treats a two- or three-level gap within a party as fine, not something to correct. The alternative is giving absent characters the same XP the rest of the table earned, keeping everyone level-matched regardless of attendance.

Noncombat challenges. You decide whether a tense negotiation, a forged trade deal, or a dangerous non-combat obstacle deserves an XP reward. As a starting point, use the encounter-building guidance from Creating Adventures to estimate what a combat encounter of similar difficulty would have been worth, and only award it if the encounter carried a meaningful risk of failure.

Milestones. You can award XP for hitting a designated story beat instead of - or alongside - combat: completing a step toward the adventure's goal, discovering a key location or clue, or reaching an important destination. Treat a major milestone like a hard encounter's worth of XP and a minor one like an easy encounter's worth. Milestone rewards don't have to stop at XP either - a short rest's worth of recovery, a recovered Hit Die or spell slot, or restored charges on a limited-use magic item all work as milestone perks beyond straight numbers.

Level advancement without XP. You can skip experience points entirely and advance characters on your own schedule instead. Session-based advancement follows a suggested pace - 2nd level after the first session, 3rd after another, 4th after two more, then two or three sessions per level after that, assuming roughly four-hour sessions. Story-based advancement hands out levels whenever the party clears a significant campaign goal, with no tracking at all. Either option suits a campaign with light combat, or one so combat-heavy that XP bookkeeping becomes its own chore.

Bottom Line

This chapter is the one you'll open mid-session more than any other DMG chapter, because it's the one that answers "what actually happens right now." The decision chain is short enough to internalize after a session or two: decide if a roll matters, pick the right kind of roll, set the DC from the Typical DCs scale, and let advantage, disadvantage, and the degrees-of-outcome tools add texture once the dice land. Combat, chases, and social interaction each get their own toolset on top of that baseline, and disease, poison, and madness stay optional stress systems you reach for on purpose rather than by default. Keep this guide open next to the DM Quick Reference for the fast-lookup version of the same material once you know it well enough to skim. Return to the Dungeon Master Guides hub for the full 2014 DM chapter map.