Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Should the game enforce 6-8 encounters/long rest

Just make it a choice, so people can choose to have TB or RTwP
This was funny to quote

It's really funny to see how your speech is different according to what we talk... (here and on other forums...)

The difference being:
1) the game would have to be rebalanced to allow RtwP.
2) Resources would have to go into said balancing, plus making RTwP work. thereby taking resources away from other aspects of the game.

Turning timed exhaustion off or on is a freaking option that would take a day to code. You can't equate the two.
But whatever. I can see you're trolling. Like half the RTwP elitists.

What it's going to come down to is game balance. If Larian doesn't think it will affect the game, it might work as a toggleable option. Perhaps different levels of difficulty could solve it?

Easy - No Exhaustion
Core Rules (and higher) - Exhaustion

It have nothing to do with horrible.

It is a fact that the one that set up the choice to begin with is the GM. It doesn't just spring up out of nowhere.
Who else would have set up the choice? (Have you ever been a GM btw?)

Why not just make it a separate bloody option?
So I can play hard mode combat, but still not need a mechanic that I, personally, detest.

Why do people feel the need that it has to be some sort of thing that every must use no matter what?
Does me not playing with timed exhaustion make the game less enjoyable for you? No?
Then just make it a separate option!

I agree completely.

This makes the exhaust condition from lack of sleep something players will always be able to avoid, because the GM is certainly not going to let the story die just because the players are going to take a rest. If she wants to push them (or punish them) because they take a rest, sure so be it. If she wants to drag out the story over a couple more hours, so be it.
But if the GM ends up with a scenario where the ONLY option is to pursue the horse (or whatever) then it is still the GMs choice.

Look, it is fair to hinder your party. It is perfectly ok really. You can put in enemies that push the parties weak points easy. As long as you are aware that it is your choice as a GM to put potential weaknesses on the party, that is fine. But in the end it is the GMs choice and most of the story is just the players and the GM pretending they actually make choices. It's telling a story where you all agree to suspend your disbelief for a bit.

Man it's not my fault if your argument are inconsistents...
Just look here how you change your speech 3 times in 30 minutes^^

I won't "troll" you anymore, going to speak with players that have a consistent speech

consistent*

..I've literally been saying it should be an option from the moment I realized enough people enjoy the mechanic that it would be selfish of me to want it's full removal.

But sure, 'polite' = 'inconsistent' now.

The issue comes down to where the line is for separate options. You're not exactly playing "Core Rules" without the exhaustion mechanic in place. You are tipping the balance of difficulty because you can perform any actions you want for as long as you want without the threat of exhaustion.

If exhaustion is toggleable in any difficulty, what other mechanics would be able to be switched on and off? Idk, but in BG2, if I used the haste spell twice before resting I became exhausted. That's just the way D&D rules work.



I have been a GM for 3+ years, so yes. As a GM I decide what the villain's goals are, but I have no bearing on what the players decide to do. I have to adapt my villain's actions to respond to what the players are doing. The world has to feel like it lives and breathes. I present challenges, but I don't offer solutions. The players must come up with the solutions.

A great quote from Matt Collvile:

"A GM doesn't solve the player's problems, they solve their solutions." A GM presents the problem at hand, but the players decide how they want to solve it. The GM then figures out how to make the player's choice a reality.

1. They decided to rest instead of pursue the horde. Well, the horde ran through a farmstead and burned it to the ground.

2. They decided to pursue and risk exhaustion? They are able to save the farmstead but the fight is that much harder because of exhaustion.

3. They decide the reward for defeating the horde is not worth it so they abandon the quest entirely.

The GM sets up the scenario, but the story doesn't end one way or another. The PLAYERS must decide which route to take.

Again I am agreeing with you, however in the end it is also the GMs part (in some systems) to make the story go ahead.

In your example, you set up the obstacle of the horde getting away. Sure, they burn down some farmstead. The players wish they had made another choice and tried to save it. Sure. This is fine storytelling, but you came up with these choices.
I am not being negative about these things in any way.

It is true that a GM isn't there to solve the players problems, but they are the ones that put the problems in the way of the players to begin with.
You could into the extremes (oh no sigh) and say "Well, here is the deal. You will get both your hands cut off OR this little girl will get whipped 50 times. What do you choose?" That's your choice as a GM. Can't put it on the players really. (Lucky us the players will always take choice number 3 instead)

I feel we are just going back and forth on story and GM things here and that is fine, however, I started out by agreeing with ... eh... someone... that the exhausted mechanic is really boring in a crpg. Everything about GM and player agency was just us wandering off from that point.
I do not feel there is a need for the exhaust mechanic, purely from being "tired" in a crpg. It adds nothing in this case, even if it is 2 seconds or clicking a (f**ing) bedroll.

I would love to talk about roleplaying, GMing and player agency with you some more, just not in the long rest thread

Edit: Would just like to point out I did not ask you if you had been a GM because of anything negative. Nothing here have been hostile from my side so far.

I think resting and even exhaustion mechanics are pretty important and I like that both Pathfinder: Kingmaker and the first Pillars of Eternity tried to complicate this aspect.

The thing is, D&D, when played with strict adherence to the dice rolls, is very much a strategy/tactics games, at least in terms of combat. Its combat system was based off tabletop wargaming systems originally. A robust resting/exhaustion system adds a layer of strategic management to that, and it also has the convenience of fitting within the roleplaying aspect of the game. I think the more things the system has, generally the better. And I hope Larian puts some serious work into this aspect. The original BG system wasn't terrible for its time, but isn't good enough today.

Spells per rest and hit point pools and exhaustion can all contribute to a complex assemblage of factors that a player has to weigh when making their decisions. It's exactly what a CRPG should be shooting for. Moreover, it can also allow designers to create complex challenges in dungeons or wilderness areas, where parties are put to the test no only to overcome a single encounter, but to overcome encounters as efficiently as possible, because they may have to chain together several successful encounters to overcome that segment of the game. Instead of merely having challenges that are only one independent encounter at a time, which is something that's true of the OS games, for example.

I find this very insulting. Have YOU ever been a GM before? Or even a player for that matter? The GM sets up plot hooks, not the entire story. Sometimes our group simply ignores the GM plot hooks because we're really not interested. In some cases we come to blows when the GM doesn't expect it and in other cases it's vice versa.

The choice springs up out of what the NPCs the GM creates want to do, how the players react to whatever it is they're doing. If your entire plot hook is "There are goblins in that cave to the west, go kill them" and the players go "we wanna go south instead" followed by yours "you can only go to the cave" then I'm sorry to say, you're a HORRIBLE GM.



Don't worry, by the looks of things now, BG 3 will have so little to do with D&D core mechanics that it won't matter anyway. I say we also remove spells slots and make fighters hit like a truck for balance reasons and call it a day at this rate

You could always not say it. Personal comments like this have gone off the scale over the past week or two and it's making the forum a noticeably less pleasant place to be, so I would ask that people kindly desist from doing so.

Seriously? A slippery slope fallacy?

Exhaustion is not some deep-seated rule that has to be in place or D&D falls apart.
Hell, we did not use it in the last world of D&D I was part of. My rogue frequently did night missions & went with the party during the day. As long as he got at least 3 hours of rest, and did not stay up the following night, the DM did not use exhaustion.
But the Barbarian still went Exhausted after raging.

That is the difference between the timed exhaustion I hate, and exhaustion due to skills.

Allowing people to pick if time exhaustion (forced camping) is on or off won't unravel the game or cause D&D to implode like a dying star.

It should be an option, because many people, like myself, don't like stopping every 5-10 minutes to camp for no reason other than 'time passed'.
I get camping to get HP & spells per day back. Those ARE mechanics upon which a game needs to be balanced.

Camping because 5 RL minutes passed is boring, to me.

So stop with this 'Where will it end!?' nonsense. It's false.

Does a day pass in 5 minutes in TT (I mean, you can have 3 weeks pass in less then a second, but you know what I mean)? It's also false to say 5-10 minutes, a day/night cycle can easily last for 3 hours in game (outside of combat naturally, we all know 1 round = 6 seconds in combat). So stop saying that as well.

You said you can do night missions, as long as you get 3 hours of sleep and sleep well the following night without consequence. That's fine - if I were the DM I might roll to see if you suffer it or not (probably a D20 with a DC of 7) but again, 1 night without sleeping results in 1 level of exhaustion, which is disadvantage on ability checks. You're just as good as you were in combat the day before, which means that if this magical "click" occurs as you're clearing out a cave it won't affect your last pack of enemies and boss battle at all, as some have worried. You're not forced to leave the cave just to rest before finishing the cave or whatever.

But yeah, no need to worry, they already said they won't have day/night cycles, so you won't have to rest at all. Now I'm curious if I can go play on the easiest difficulty and end the game without ever resting - wouldn't that be something?

I suppose I could've said "If someone" followed by "they're a HORRIBLE GM.", but please excuse my semantics - I've never put much on form... especially when I see things like "HaVE YOu EVeR BEeN A GM, btw?"

An average of 6-8 encounters a day has certainly not been my experience when playing 5e.

More like 1 or 2 encounters and then someone is calling for a short rest. In fact, how hard players "burn" through their short-rest abilities is determined entirely by the make-up of the group and the number of short rests a GM allows.

So, basically, Larian needs to enforce short/long rest type mechanics based on the pace that they want the game to be run at. They're the GM and should be using every tool in their tool kit to get the pace they're aiming for.


When playing 5e I preferred being limited to one short rest a day. Principally because I prefer how earlier edition handle "resting" over 5e though... so I know I carry considerable bias.


Different system so I don't think you can compare 5e to how a 2e based system did things. And if you just "let the players decide" they you're going to get different responses from different character classes (Warlocks and Fighters are going to want a bunch of short rests, other casters are not.) I'd rather not pit players against one another when it comes to stuff like this.


I'd be onboard for that. More short rests do make the game considerably easier. In fact, I'd prefer these kinds of "difficulty settings" over just mathematically nerfing players and buffing monsters.