Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Limited short rests now mean I only use cantrips

I've now found myself using nothing but cantrips and save scumming because I cannot tell if I will need to use stronger spells later.

In the same fashion as how a lot of players often stock up and never use consumables.

You forgot you have Arcane Recovery with wizards, don't you

I am aware of it, but that only gives you 3 recharges between long rests.

Three recharges? That's generous. By tabletop rules, that should recover only half your level's worth of spell slots, capped at 6.

Wow, I thought the short rest and two arcane recoveries recovered all spells each.

In PnP you can short rest as much as you like.

Nuance : as much as the DM allows :P But DMs usually allow at least two Short Rests before the end of the day. Some are too strict.

Or... you could just abuse long rests since there's currently no limit on them or anything to deter you from doing so?

That was the only way I could complete the game.

This reticence to use resources is a classic problem in video games. The problem is exacerbated by the 5E ruleset, which has loads of per-day limits. In my opinion, they should move almost everything to recharge on short rest and make short rests much more available. What's the current limit? 1 per actual hour?

The UI around short rests needs a lot of work. How many can I take? Why am I not currently allowed to take a short rest?

We can currently only take one short rest per long rest, which most think isn't enough. I think 3 per long rest would be good.

Or just not limiting short rests by anything but time. Characters seem to get tired fr real rests eventually, so short rests should just use up that time a bit

That's related to the issue of how to limit long rests. How to determine that enough time has passed to allow a new rest. If it's based on, for instance, actual real-world time elapsed, there will be cases of people having to walk away and leave the game running because they are in bad shape and need a rest, but the game won't let them.

Should include a wait mechanic, so you want to rest, but did 2 in game hours ago? sure, hang around here for the rest of the day, quests move forward etc, possibly even failing in some cases.

I concur, more short rests would be great. Or maybe add an option to play game without the horrid spell slots mechanic, let me use spells as much as I please would be nice so im not forced to long rest all the time.

There's a fair degree of knowing how to play a caster class, and knowing that you're actually okay not being at full health all the time. Don't exhaust your spells, you shouldn't need them most of the time, and when you do, choose wisely. Being able to change a cleric and wizard's prepared spells on the fly out of combat is more than enough to change the tide of battle.

Cantrips seem weak, but they're really quite powerful in 5e. Even more so here because there's environmental effects going on. Blood + Ray of Frost will often result in Prone from the ice patch, which then means an automatic critical next attack (which could even be immediately after the cantrip causes them to fall). Three party members in a row can take down very strong enemies this way.

I've been playing a wizard main with Shadowheart in the party but I've only been to camp three times in 15 hours. Quite a few of those hours were running around with less than 5 hp left on a few characters. Using Help on party members up a lot though, hah.

Also, eat food to conserve cleric spells.

It's the utility spells I end up never using because I have no idea if they'll work or not. Detect thoughts hasn't worked a single time I thought it would.