Those of you who made it this far, great. Please give this as fair a read as you can. I'm of the opinion that the 5e tabletop(tt) rules matter in the balance of BG3 because they informed the design of all the classes and class actions. I'm going to hone in on the warlock class to highlight this, but it applies across a number of classes in a variety of ways.

First, I want to establish that the warlock class design balance is 100% centered around the short/long rest rules of the tt game. Warlock have 2 spell slots until level 11 when they get 3. Those spell slots scale at the same rate that all primary casters do, at 9th level they all have 5th level spell slots. Warlocks have 2 5th level slots at 9th level, whereas other primary casters only have 1 until 10th level. Warlock spell slots are capped at 5th level, so any spell they use with those slots will be cast as a 5th level spell but they will never be able to use those slots to cast 6th level or higher spells. Sorcerers, wizards, bards, druids, and clerics also have 2 5th level spell slots at 10th level, but they also have 13 other spell slots of lower levels. How is this balanced? Why on earth would someone play a warlock character knowing you only get 2 spell slots compared to everyone else having 15 at a similar level? Well because those other classes have to manage their spell slots per long rest, so in a 24 hour period they have 15 spells. Warlocks on the other hand renew spell slots on a short rest, so in general play a Warlock gets to renew 3 times for every 1 time that other spell casters do.

Now you might point out, and rightly so, that warlocks still have fewer spell slots per long rest, which is true (at 10th level warlocks would have access to 8 spell slots if they used 3 short rests per long rest, vs 15 for other primary spell casters) but those spells are cast as 5th level spells. You might think half the spell slots cast at higher level sounds a little overpowered, but this is limited because warlocks have a maximum number of spells they can ever know, just like sorcerers and at 10th level they can know 10 spells and 4 cantrips. So they might know 2 spells from every spell level 1-5 or some other combination. And warlocks have a very limited number of spells they can chose to learn from each level. For example, a wizard can choose from 23 5th level spells using the PHB alone and all of the other primary spell casters have more than 10 5th level spells to choose from. Warlock have 4 5th level spells to choose from. They also have 4 4th level spells to choose from. And generally at any given spell level their choices are far fewer than other primary casters.

Ok, so warlocks know fewer total spells, have 2 or 3 spell slots that scale in power and are recovered on a short rest, and have significantly fewer spells to choose from. Why play a warlock? Well they have the best offensive cantrip in the game by a wide margin, eldritch blast, and the invocations to make it great. Why is eldritch blast the best? First it has the force damage type, and that is the least resisted damage type in the game. Second it can target multiple targets starting at level 5. Third it does great damage with long range. But finally when you add agonizing blast you get your charisma bonus to damage on EACH BEAM (and you can repel on each beam too if you take the repelling blast invocation). Compared to a firebolt cantrip which uses the same damage dice (d10) and has the same range, the firebolt uses the second most resisted and immune damage type in the game, and is an all or nothing spell, you hit or you don't and you can only ever manage to get your charisma bonus to damage 1x per firebolt. Eldritch blast suffers from RNG, because you have 3 dice rolls to make (at level 11), but each successful die add the charisma bonus to damage so if you hit 3 times with an 18 charisma you are doing 3d10+12 as a opposed to 3d10+4 on a firebolt. And if you are using repelling blast you can move a single target 30' (no save) or upwards of 3 targets 10' each.

Why do I say they are broken? Because by giving free long rests at any time you destroy the reason why warlocks have 2 spell slots. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to take a warlock over a different spell caster, and in fact you are gimping yourself if you do. By making that change they have fundamentally broken the balance of warlock and monk, as these two classes mechanics are based on short rest renewable resources, so that while every use of their abilities is more costly per usage, the resources renew more quickly to make up for it balancing out these classes. Without redesigning these class structures to be rebalanced under the endless long rest system, they are inherently weaker than the other classes because they pay more to do similar things as other classes. And this is just one area where the implemented rules have disrupted class balance in a foundational way; people have been railing on the breaking of the action economy and how it negatively impacts some classes while buffing other classes.

Edit: changed the eldritch blast section to reflect an 11th level caster rather than a 17th level caster as we should have access to 11th level characters in BG3 but likely not 17th level.

Its not entirely broken but I agree warlocks are a little... not great right now, in fact they are the worst class right now sadly, especially with no multiclassing. The only reason right now to pick a warlock is the granted fiend temp hp and the pact of the chain summon for an imp or quasit, when we should be also picking them for cool stuff like pact of the blade for weapon, or tome pact for cantrips and spells, eldritch invocations for free at will stuff or augments to power, as well as the short rest burst spell slots. As BG3 is now though, warlocks are very lacking not even considering the infinite long rests. Their features are gimped with Chain missing Pseudodragon and Sprite, missing other pact boons, missing invocations, the second pact (Great old One) basically doing nothing I feel, and Eldritch Blast isn't close to being the power house it could and should be.
Overall Warlock isn't exactly the class it should be right now, and Warlock is my favorite class in Tabletop 5e and nearly every build I do includes it in some way. I actually thought it would be the easiest to implement into a videogame due to how modular it is.

I really hope Larian tries to fix things by making more areas invalid for long resting and thus requiring short rests AND fixing the powers and adding that which is missing to warlock. There is a lot for them to work with, especially in new content with Tasha's.

I hope to eventually be able to make my 3Warlock/?Wizard for Summoning madness but that'd require the Warlock to be fixed (And for the familiar to not count against concentration summons, cause right now they do for some ungodly reason.)

Rest less often?
Nothing in the game requires you to take long rests.

I long rest as little as possible even when my main is a mage. (My first long rest is usually at the Druid Grove after I've defeated the Bugbear assassin and the Harpies.


It's your choice.

If you want your Warlock to shine a little brighter only take long rests after every 5 or 6 encounters.

And that is a BS argument, you are essentially saying gimp your other characters to make your warlock seem balanced. That isn't a meaningful choice in terms of gameplay, that is a meta choice on whether or not you want to play with a self imposed handicap. Yeah, you can polish a turd, but it's still a turd no matter how shiny you make it or how much you wish it were something else.

Be straight up: they are garbage.
And yet, virtually every other stream I watch, people are playing them, even asserting they OP.
669.6 hours of playing SOLO playthroughs, testing SOLO builds, equipment and weapon(s) load outs for those build, etc. And I have yet to SOLO EA Act 1 with a warlock (but it has been done from one or two players that I know who likewise only play SOLO). SOLO warlock is an utter pain in the arse when compared to all the other classes currently in this game that can SOLO EA Act 1 with relative ease. Maybe once they hit level 5, maybe, I dunno, will see then.

Yeah, reason I say not outright broken is they actually could be worse, at least they are functional and some eldritch invocations are good right now like at will beastspeach, and some are getting mileage out of em. But overall, yeah they suck hard right now. But I make my MC one anyways cause they are still my favorite class in normal 5e and the Imp is the closest I can get to achieving my love for summoning. But god could they be so much more, heck, Warlock should be the class that can solo when applied right cause of their versatility and modular format, not what they are now which is only Hex and EB cause anything else is a waste of spellslots.

It's unfortunate really, to be honest...I actually think warlock has great potential but in its current state, I don't want to touch it.
But again, in all fairness, most people that play BG3 play full parties were I do not, so my lenses of looking at Warlock are tainted from that SOLO perspective.

Well their issues are just as glaring in a party tbh.

I feel like my warlock is being outdone in things like utility, damage, versatility, so on. The only 'OP' thing is that the imp is pretty much infinite and with some creativity you can cheese combat by making enemies fight a summon that keeps sneaking up on them constantly. And i guess they make a good face but Bard, when that comes out, will outdo em in that regard easily.

True in specialization the warlock almost always will get outdone in 5e, but the way they are constructed it is supposed to make up for that with surprising amount of flexibility and free stuff. But they do not feel like nor play like they should in BG3 right now and I hope they get fixed, with situations that favor their short rest nature and their stuff available. The shell is there its just empty I think?

+1 Shortrest classes drew the short end of the stick with the current resting system.

To be fair, even 5e seems to have the problem of the "15 minute adventuring day" so truer to the rules wouldn't necessarily solve all the problems with the warlock

And D&D is said to be balanced around 6 to 8 encounters a day, according to the Dungeon Master's Guide, so is it really "gimping" if you're playing rules as intended?

Maybe empty husk would have been a more apt description. But I'll be honest, I'm very much concerned that monk will be garbage as well for most of the same reasons. And I have my doubts about how they will implement bard and sorcerer spell casting without preparation. Every time they cut a corner on one of the classes without compensating that class to maintain the class balance they just hurt the classes. Cunning action a rogue skill? Lol, lets just give it to everyone for free. Rogues don't need that, never mind that it is the 2nd level ability and one of the more valuable ones at that. Barbarians get reckless attack, bards get jack of all trades, clerics get channel divinity, druids get wild shape, fighters get action surge, rogues get ...

Actually true to the rules would mean characters couldn't benefit from a long rest more than 1x/24 hours. Most tables I've played at use a 3/1 or 4/1 short to long rest rule unless there is a long downtime like overland travel, etc...

So you are looking for Larian to "gimp your other characters" because you don't have the self control to not rest after every battle?
By making the choice to have your characters take an 8 hour rest after every 3 minutes of combat you are literally meta-gaming each battle.
Starting a battle with less than full resources isn't a handicap -- it's Dungeons and Dragons.

If you are doing something that is diminishing your game-play enjoyment then stop doing it.
To use your own vernacular, you are the one who is bringing the turd. If you don't like how it smells then stop bringing it.

Yup, long rests need to be few and far between. Maybe fixed places like in Solasta?

There is literally a mechanic at play here, it's called short rest. It is there for a reason, and the warlock and monk classes are based around it. Other classes are not gimped if they can't do a full long rest after every combat, they are designed such that they have significantly more resources than monks and warlocks specifically so they can more easily operate between long rests. The current system is essentially tearing out the long rest/short rest class design and not rebalancing the classes that were SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED AND BALANCED on the notion you can only take 1 long rest every 24 hours, but you can have multiple short rests in between.

If you don't think they damaged those classes by breaking the mechanic that they were designed around, well I don't see any point in discussing it with you any further because I really don't think you are terribly familiar with 5e class design.

Again, this sounds like a self-control issue. I took a total of zero long rests on the way to level 3 with my party, and a total of 0ne long rest after reaching level 3. I've since taken a second long rest, not because I was forced too at the time, but because I wanted to move some of the plotline along.

My interest at this point is for more features/abilities/spells to be released for the classes currently available, and for additional classes to first be released. Concerns about balancing one class against another should be dealt with way down the road, once all classes and sub-classes are in play, and far more class/sub-class features are released and functional.

I'm kind of confused what the complaint here is. I've been limiting my long rests due to not wanting to miss story content, and my warlocks have been gold. We've run two of them (Wyll and another PC) in our party and they've consistently been fantastic. I've had a harder time correctly metering out my Eldrich Knight's spell slots since I've been conserving them for long rests, which I haven't taken often to prevent the world from progressing too far. I think the time mechanic that has always existed in Baldur's Gate games will continue to balance out the rest mechanic the more content that gets created.

I think maybe my experience with Warlocks in BG3 has been different but I have found em to be subpar nearly every combat, and only really shined in the dungeon with the hag. But limiting long rests may change this, though I haven't felt like long resting affects the world much?

If there is a time limit/mechanic, that would balance things out. But currently there’s no penalty to wasting time. You can long rest before every encounter without consequence.

I see, well I'm wholeheartedly here for adding more time passing on rest mechanics. I know there were some things that moved on but I guess they were mostly inconsequential so far. They still did a good job of making me FEEL like I was on the clock, but it would be better to add more quests and things that you can miss and the like. I can say from experience that if you're avoiding long resting too much Warlocks kinda feel like the best casters, at least they did to me.

Long rest doesn't affect the world at all

Agree with OP... i kinda thought Warlocks seem that way in 5ed overall to be honest...

Which is why they were my go to for our 5ed trial run... they seem to have less at their core(in casting particularly as some have said) but also less on the subclass front... pact of the tome seems the only that isnt totally underpowered...

And while taking the tome you can get a familiar(albeit regular) and with the book of shadows pact boon you can pick up shilelagh... both decent tradeoffs to the other two pacts... blade has more potential than chain... whole class has an afterthought feel...

While they only gave us the worst(imo) pact... i think the class is just poorly designed outta the book despite the idea of them being totally cool... missed potential... you are a simple blast cannon... with admittedly, really good sound affects... ;D

Class balance in D&D works the way it does because there is an inherent price to pay when you rest. Time is passing (the world moves on without you and opportunities are lost), you risk being discovered by people or monsters that might try to kill you, and in some cases, resting actually progresses degenerative diseases. You can't get a full night's sleep more than once a night and if you go too long without a full night's sleep, there are consequences.

Choosing to rest should be a calculated decision - not something you can do with no consequence any time you lose a couple HP or spend a spell slot. None of this exists in BG3 and it throws everything else in the game out of whack because all of the systems in D&D are connected.

In BG3, the world feels totally static to me; nothing happens unless you are there seeing it happen. You can walk away from a standoff, sleep four or five times, and come back and nobody has moved an inch. It feels really wrong and it makes time meaningless, which contributes to long rests being available at any time with no drawbacks. In fact, you (the player) are encouraged to take long rests all the time, because that's when the majority of significant RP moments happen.

There are certainly games that make it feel like time is passing, even if the world is fairly static. For example, I'm playing Torment: Tides of Numenera right now and one of the things you get roped into is a murder investigation. Spoilers:
This is a great way to create a sense of urgency and make time matter. BG3 has nothing like this and it really suffers for that.

The question of whether letting players police themselves is a solution to the short-vs-long rest issue, and its consequences the imbalance-between-class and the overall-difficulty issues, is a classical question of game design : should designers let the players balance the game themselves ? My answer would depend on the specific context, but in general (and in the specific case of BG3), it's a clear no.

I would be tempted to say that the short-vs-long rest mechanism is clearly and plainly badly designed, but the truth is more probably that it is simply not designed. Yet. And hopefully that will change.


First, let me get 2 somewhat obvious things out of the way.

1) How often you long rest affects the over difficulty. Because more long rests mean more resources to use in fights. This is important because DnD/BG3 is of players-vs-game type (as opposed to players-vs-players). So the challenge level is determined by the rules, not who you play against. And challenge is linked to satisfaction when winning. Most games of that type let the players to choose a difficulty level, but each difficulty level is a well-defined set of rules.

2) How often you use short rest and long rest affects the balance between classes. Because some classes are designed to recover resources at short rest and some at long rest. This is important because DnD/BG3 is a cooperative game. Players on the table rarely want to feel as if the class they picked is just there as a secondary role or foil, while someone is playing the story's lead character or superhero. That is also why most advice for Game Masters include giving every player/character a chance to shine. (All this balance is to be taken at first-order optimal play, when everyone makes somewhat reasonable choices, and that's it. There are too many variables, so min-maxing power-gamers will optimise the shit out of the rules and find crazy combos, and some classes will be better for soloing the game. But that's not the bulk of the game.)


How does DnD handle short-vs-long rest ? Well, the referee Game Master says when the group can and cannot take a long rest, and under what conditions. That ruling is usually given sense in-game. For example, since time passes when you rest (in a the wild, or a dungeon), you have risks of being attacked. Alternatively, since you need space to set up your tent, you can't long rest in a narrow corridor or a slippery and uneven cave floor. But deep down in the mechanisms, the GM is the rules of the game, ensuring that a good experience is had.

How does BG3 handles short-vs-long rest ? Well, it doesn't. I mean, it caps the number of short rests you can take before a long rest (now it's 2 instead of 1, yeah, awesome !), but without any limit to long rests, this is meaningless. It's as if there's no GM, of the GM says "up to you, have a long rest whenever you want".


Let me replace the question of "short-vs-long rest in BG3" by a more clearly numeric one. How many HP's should characters have in GenericTitleRPG ? Let's say that, currently, you feel that your favourite class, the Fighter, should have 100 HP, but the devs were lazy and programmed it to be 255 HP or 999 HP. Whenever your character takes 100 damage, you consider yourself dead and you reload. Maybe I want more challenge and I reload when I lose 90 HP. Maybe someone wants a much easier game and considers 150 HP to be a full life. This is players policing themselves. This has two issues.

A) It's cumbersome. I mean, no, it's just super-bad design. We should be able to enter our max-HP in the game and the reloads take place whenever we reach the threshold. That's exactly what difficulty settings do.

B) It's letting players trying to find where the game is sweet. Indeed, most often, there are some values for the parameters (and other rule-things) that make the game experience nicer. There isn't necessarily a unique set of parameters, and a unique sweet experience (also, players have different tastes). But it's the designers' job to isolate one intended experience and set up the parameters accordingly. Or give us the list of sets of parameters, each associated with a nice experience. Each of these sets of parameters could typically be a difficulty setting.

Now, imagine the devs dropping players in a sand desert and saying "there's an oasis somewhere in there, the water is perfectly fresh, the palm trees perfectly green, really, an amazing experience" but not telling the players where that oasis is. Or imagine a curry playce that doesn't merely let you choose how much chili chutney you want on the side of your curry, it lets you access all the ingredients in the kitchen, make your own curry and cook it as long as you want, while telling you they cook the best currys in town and charging you the same price as any other curry place. To me, that's what letting players make the rules themselves feel.

Note : obviously, my example focused on difficulty, but you can easily adapt it for class balance. If a Fighter starts with 10 HP (without modifiers), how much should a Mage have : 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 20 ? Just pick as you see fit !

Hmm, perhaps one HUGE reason why BG3 has nothing like such and such and allegedly suffers for it is because it is an unfinished early access game that is a year+ out from being a 'finished product.'
Whereas, the game you are currently playing is a 'finished product,' yes?
Therefore, for all practical purposes here, you are making a number of assumptions and judgments based upon an apples and oranges argument, so to speak.

They're asking for feedback on what they hand us, not on all of the possible variations of what this game could potentially exist in different parts of the multiverse. All I can do is tell them what's good and what's bad about what they have released. So, yes, I'm pointing out a way in which this game consistently falls on its face. It's up to them what they do with that information.

I make no assumptions about what they are going to do in the future. You seem to be suggestion that I should assume that they are going know exactly what I want and are going to implement it in a way that I'm going to find satisfying, and so I'm being silly for giving them the feedback that they have asked for.

Your assumption would be incorrect. I've played/DMed 5e since it's inception back when it was originally called D&D Next.

I simply don't require a game to police my actions.

You don't have to rest after each encounter, you choose to.
In BG3 you can take short rests after every couple of encounters and long rests after every 6th encounter and class balance is maintained.

You choose to break the D&D mechanics when you choose to rest after each combat -- that's on you, not the game.

In a tabletop game, there is a DM to tell you what is reasonable and what isn't. If you sleep 8 hours, get up and immediately have a 30-second fight and then say you're going right back to bed for another 8 hours, any half-decent DM would stop you from doing that. Why? 1) the rules say you can only take one long rest per 24 hours and 2) it's not a reasonable thing to do in the game world.

In BG3, there is no DM to say "this makes sense in the world" and "this doesn't make any sense" - the game engine needs to do it with rules. This is how you create a world that feels convincing and satisfying. From a mechanical standpoint, putting restrictions on resources is also how you make challenges satisfying to overcome.

Someone who is not familiar with D&D doesn't know that a long rest is 8 hours. All they know is that they hit the button and their HP goes back up and their spell slots are reset. And they can do this whenever they want. This isn't a good way to teach players about the world that their characters are living in. They don't have a reason to not take long rests after every encounter.

This is not a self-control issue. The short rest classes are built around taking short rests more often than long rests. The current rest system means that every third rest needs to be a long rest. That isn't how the classes and rest interplay is designed to function.

I think a good compromise would be when you enter a dungeon, cavern, non-friendly keep or tower etc you can’t long rest until you leave again. That would up the stakes dramatically and make those regions more about resource management. Short rests would become much more precious.

Perhaps you need to stay out in the open for a while until you’re strong and confident enough to take on that dungeon. Would definitely make the game more tactical, and remove the ridiculousness of teleporting in and out of the underdark at will before you even get a teleport spell.

OP : pretty much a fact. True.

Originally, I thought we would have many Short Rests and therefore Warlock would be great, but not so much for the moment if the player does Long Rest often.

I do not have a clue if Larian will find a solution or bother to find one.

When my friends/kids play D&D that is exactly how we play.

Short rests are lunch and dinner.
Long rest is sleep.
You get twice as many short rests as long rests.

Too many short rests tend to tip the scales too far for Warlocks, Monks, Fighters and Moon Druids.

100% yes.

For all we know, Larian had "figure out rest mechanism" on their to-do list since before the release of the EA version. So our feedback on this issue might be completely useless : possibly, they knew about how problematic it is not to have a proper rest system before players even experienced it.

Larian didn't communicate and give us a game with EA/playtesting labels, like "this mechanism isn't implemented yet". They have put everything on the same footing. So players should comment on everything and criticise equally all things that don't work.

I could censor myself, thinking "this particular issue is so blatant to me, surely Larian will work on it, there is no need to report it". But that would run the risk of them not having seen that issue at all. And as far as mechanisms are concerned, so far, I have not been given reasons to have a blind faith in the fact that Larian will get things right.

Thus, players should keep doing what we've been doing : give feedback on everything, without assuming that Larian has in mind.

I tend to naturally not take too very many long rests because I’d rather be exploring than hanging out at the camp. On my first playthrough that had the consequence of being level 3 before I ever saw the cutscene with Astarion, making his scene at the gypsy hunter’s camp *very* confusing to say the least. So I don’t think it’s too crazy to expect players to do a long rest with a couple of short rests before the next long rest (I like the breakfast/lunch/dinner analogy someone else made), and if you do that, Warlock and Fighter don’t suffer very much on resources, in my opinion. For me, the reasons I have no desire to bring a warlock are:
1. Wyll just comes to you poorly built, IMO so Gale seems a stronger pick. So no NPC warlock.
2. MC Warlock, I’d *love* to have *if* I could run Hexblade. But Hexblade isn’t an option right now, so no PC warlock.
3. Because I am a munchkin at heart, I really wanna run Paladin/Hexblade, but neither of those are options right now, let alone the multiclass. 😂

So I’m perfectly ok with the resting system, and while I haven’t yet had a reason to do multiple long rests in a row, it’s kinda nice knowing if one gets stuck and wants to pull out all the stops, long rest your way to victory. Solasta does a reasonable thing here where the game actually does track time and only let’s you long rest once in a 24-hour period. It’s really no different that BG3 in terms of impact, because if you insist on wanting to long rest, it’ll “pass time” to round out the 24-hours and then let you long rest, which changes the feeling of the impact of resting without actually changing the results (because while it tracks time, there are no consequences to time passing). The lenient long rest rules are also useful given the absence of difficulty settings in the event someone gets stuck, they can sort of artificially lower difficulty by long resting every fight or whatever. But I really don’t feel like the game has to force the issue one way or another. If they (or modders) were able to add customization on resting rules, that’d be ideal, but the current system works well enough as far as I am concerned.

TL;DR - for me, the problem with Warlock’s are down to available build options being basically the least interesting subclass and class features, not really bothered at all by the short-vs-long rest resource differences (how you choose to balance short vs long rests will favor different classes, D&D 5e isn’t perfectly balanced on tabletop even, nor does it need to be).

@Skyria - Solasta has you carry rations - you can only long rest if you have rations...and only at a camping site (which are infrequent). it is very different from the way BG3 does things and definitely adds tension. I would find myself asking - will I make to he next camp site? I also played a warlock in BG3 and found it fine - but because I would rest more than expected (to get my 2 or whatever spell slots back). The issue is about more than warlocks - any class that gains benfit from short rests and is *balanced* around this will be affected.