Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Exhaustion as a way to mimic time progression?

Its no secret that a lot of players want a day/night cycle in BG3, me included. Sadly its also no secret that Larian seems to be opposed to this idea. This thread is not supposed to repeat the arguments for a d/n cycle, since there are already multiple other threads that adress this.

In this thread I would like to suggest introducing exhaustion rules (as detailed in the PHB) to BG3 to 'mimic' time progression, since an acutal d/n cycle is unlikely to happen. The idea is to give a character one level of exhaustion for completing a set numnber of encounters or fights. This would not immediately force you to rest, but make it harder to fight on as you gain more levels of exhaustion by progressing the story, and it would give the impression of passing time in the sense that you're exhausted after a long day of exploration and combat.

What do you people think of this idea?

I think that we should still ask for a D/N cycle !
It does not have to be over complicated to add a lot of flavor to the game.

That said, resting when a character is exhausted seems necessary really fast (the first level makes combats but also dialogs harder).

Exhaustion should probably be in the game but I really don't see how it could work well, how it should be "balanced" and how it would really improve the game as suggested.

I don't see how it would help in breaking the feeling of time never moving on.

Limited resources per-rest already somewhat serve the same purpose, as exhaustion you suggest- with spells being actually useful now, when highground and backstab aren't an overwhelming factor, I found myself resting a bit more often. I would rather have them tinker with what we have, then add new, shallow mechanics for no tangible benefit.

+1 for adding exhaustion. However, simply adding it to the game-as-is would be useless, because there are no rest limitations. Why would you ever care about exhaustion if you don't gain anything by reaching the point of exhaustion and/or "pushing through the exhaustion" to adventure more? Currently I suppose you save on food supplies, but given the vast quantity you're given that's irrelevant.

It would need to be combined with some rest limitation (in the form of restriction or discouragement). Obviously a simple restriction is "You cannot rest until at least one of your characters is exhausted," but even I'll admit that this is too punishing. You could very well end up in a state where you can't progress, say if you only have boss encounters left but are ~out of resources and just barely before the point of exhaustion.

Another solution is to heavily limit food supplies. This would make you want to rest less, but exhaustion would effectively be the point where the game tells you "it's okay to rest now. We promise that you'll have enough supplies if you rest at this frequency."

And my current favorite solution, is that certain companions should yell at you if you rest without them being exhausted. Lae'zel wants to rush to the creche. Lae'zel will think you're weak and/or not following her wishes if you rest when neither you nor she is exhausted. This discourages rest without limiting it.

These are all just examples: my main point is that exhaustion is a ~useless mechanic if there isn't some benefit for reaching the point of exhaustion. RPGs should be full of decisions and trade-offs, not strictly punishments for playing a certain way.

Funny how topics are repeating themselves ...
Even funnier how previously rejected ideas now get appreciation ...

Well, +1

I think resting should revolve around managing "per rest" abilities and camp supplies. Adding exhaustion might feel arbitrary: even if the player manages their abilities well they'll still be forced to rest.

That said, exhaustion could be interesting as an optional, difficulty-enhancing feature chosen when starting a new game. It would effectively impose a limit on the number of fights the player can take or time they can spend on something before running out of food. This would make players think about which fights are worth taking and whether they should help, ignore, or exploit NPCs when their resources are low.

Let's just let them finish the game so we can get away from trapped at level 4 can we?
There's already an exhaustion mechanic in 5e, but it's related to classes like the barbarian.
There's also no need for this mechanic, level 4 cap takes care of that for you.