Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Penalty for Long Rest

As a DM of 15 campaigns who runs 3 games a week for yearsssssss I don't agree that rest systems are easy or formulaic at all. It depends on the area, how well people find a spot, preparations they take, who the watchers are, what they are looking for, odds in that area to have a fight and what CR beasts youll be fighting in what combination. There is a lot of DM discretion for when a short rest is pushing it and the odds of having done 2 so close together is going to have a pretty high chance of encounter. If someone wants to gather food, poisons, go hunting, find water, they are at risk of a solo encounter.

Resting is a serious mechanic in a lot of settings and you either have to try to put all of that in for a "D&D" experience or you have what Larian typically does which is a bunch of encounters are that are deadly-lethal difficult where you take more damage than you probably should and they drain you to the point you couldnt handle another one. Dialing up the difficulty to rest isnt solving any problems - its just making it arbitrarily more difficult. The problem would be the need to rest that much in the first place.

Since you can wander around, there is no guarantee youll hit hard, easy, easy, easy hard / rest patterns. You might go from deadly to lethal to deadly if youre just kind of zagging around the map. They dont really have "travel" like pathfinder kingmaker so much, so those types of bespoke encounters cant be dropped on you at will.

The core concept of "Someone has determined they need to rest to be able to progress in the game, I dont think you should let them do that" doesn't seem to do anything other than say that their concept of fun is wrong. There are going to be a lot of party comps, skill levels, and pc levels based on how people play the game and questioning their judgment on if they can play the game anymore is bizarre. If rest patterns are going to be formalized, the combat and encounters need to be formalized so you have just about one way of progressing through the game with little enough variance that the guard rails of rest limits would make sense in enhancing gameplay as opposed to detracting from it.

I also don't agree with you. I understand what you mean but I don't agree with your reasoning. Because:

The license for Baldur's Gate 3 was given to Larian Studio by Wizards of the Coast on the premise, that the product would follow the 5e rules closely, on the premise that it would be designed with D&D players in mind. A group of players that is used to and by majority enjoys permanent consequences based on their choices in the game. A group of players that ferociously guards the immersion of the fantasy they build up. Remember, not all games are designed for the broad audience, and that's a good thing. There should be a diverse selection of products on the market. You don't ask for an easy mode in Dark Souls do you?

Secondly, you brought up the old worn and tossed consumer right argument. Just because you have paid for a product, doesn't always give you the right to dictate how that product should work or fit you. If you go to the cinema and watch a movie and afterwards concluded that you didn't like it, do you ask for a refund? No, because you have used the product in full. So normally in those situations you research the product first. Are the reviews good? What did my friends that saw it think? And that goes for this game as well. As if you mean those people that already payed for the EA? Well, they knew what they were doing, fully aware that this product in the end might not be for them. If not, that's on them.

1. That premise of them being close to 5e is incorrect. its as closely as possible while making it playable and fun. The CEO and the teams have released both video and press regarding necessary changes. This is a lot more art than science in the translation and the idea they have decided to just crumple up certain pages because 5e and their contract with WotC can go fly a kite is a bit absurd. These are not arbitrary decisions. I am not defending them, but before people take a bat to them they should also be trying to think in the context of the most fun way to get a game out that follows closely. Part of fun is not putting things in that are a net negative and add nothing to the experience. If it isnt a holistic solution that dovetails in with the other factors considered such as combat difficulty, party composition, game difficulty, gamer experience level, people only doing mainline quests with no leveling, you hit a much more complex situation. Could I play this like a D&D game right now? Id add one more short rest, probably, but the fights are so hard you use all of the hite die in the first one, regardless. A second SR would most likely be for short rest abilities,not heals. So, sure, have a second one. But the other variables are still in play for long resters and theyre a needier group with a much more drastic swing in utility depending.

2. Worn and tossed - not sure how worn and tossed it is, would be interested in seeing why its an invalid point. If the experience being put in does not limit anyone else from playing their game but expands it and allows others with different goals, playstyles, and desires to now be able to play also, how is that offensive? It bothers you knowing you could spam long rest, even though you personally choose not to because you want a different experience? You need to have handcuffs on or youll press the button whereas others have no issues pressing it? Its a weird argument that a flexible playstyle that accomodates multiple styles of play is somehow limiting or upsetting by just having the knowledge that other people are out there playing your game differently.

I like this idea. We could also have wandering monster encounters if resting in a not too safe place.

I have question to any DM who runs sessions: How many battles PER session you have? Sessions last, what 2...3 hr?(unfortunately i never had a pleasure to play at the table D&D). with the limited rest to my knowledge how the spellcaster would work?

Of course they have to make some changes to translate a pnp game with a present DM to a crpg but that doesn't mean they shouldn't try to follow the rules as closely as possible. As you might have noticed on these forums quite a lot of players are upset about their loose translation as it stands right now. And the "most fun way" is subjective. Also affecting one part of the game means balancing the other parts. Limited rest means easier fights for example and there are several threads about the encounter difficulty being too high right now. Even the narrative stress that you shouldn't dally a long, you have an illithid tadpole eating your brain Sure, there are plot armor right now for people that rests endlessly. But IMHO it feels like just that, plot armor.

And for nr 2. Exactly, because that is how human psych works. We tend to take the path with less resistance. Does that make me weak for abandoning my principles? Sure it does. But I'm not the only one that want permanent repercussions for my actions forced upon me. And making every single thing a togglable choice in game options soon means Larian has to produce several games in one. Also, by targeting a broader audience you often alienate your main target, which in this case, I once again advocate, is D&D players.

But I think that we can agree that we have different standings on this subject

Two to three combat encounters for me. Stronger enemies, fewer encounters.

The easiest way to make Long Rests matter is to tie encounters to them. For example, if you kill the goblins guarding an outpost, then go into the outpost, the goblins inside may not have heard the battle outside. However, if you long rest, that's more than enough time for the people inside to investigate and become hostile (or at least suspicious).

I would suggest a combination of the above, and restricting areas where a long rest can be initiated based on whether you can Fast Travel (because if you can, you'll just travel to an area where a long rest is allowed).

Short rests need to be more than one per long rest, but shouildn't be unlimited...there are only 24 hours in a day, and short rests are giving free healing instead of using hit dice. I suggest at least 2, and I'd suggest adding an additional short rest every 5 levels. D&D assumes higher level characters will go longer between long rests because they have more resources - a 20th level wizard has 22 spell slots, and can recover up to 7 more (4 1st, 3 2nd) with Arcane Recovery. That's before looking at items like a Staff of Power.

We agree on the core problem (i think) - encounter nature / difficulty. Ive been having fun having most of these fights make me use terrain, tactics, spells I never use in D&D like grease and ray of enfeeblement. It puts a new focus on denial. Unlike most D&D battlemaps and their changes to range maxing out at 60 feet, these are close quarters arenas for casters and rangers. Concentration is hard to maintain, the enemies use a lot of unavoidable damage via aoes. The flavor gets rid of your typical D&D encounters where everyone just outputs pure damage, sometimes bane or something, and the occasional heal. As a DM I don't typically run many encounters per session. My parties like RP and narrative and we've gone 4+ sessions without fights before (lot of dice rolls, just a different type of encounter). When we do fight, they are memorable. An upcoming one im worried about a TPK on. D&D gets annoying if the initiative counter hits double digits, regardless of CR because of the time drain.

The basic nature of this game has almost no correlation to D&D fights i run or have been a player in. Thats why I am saying the camping system itself is arbitrary to focus on and kind of needs to be because the things driving the need to camp are so volatile that resting needs are not predictable. People are TPKing on things im like "really, I didnt get hit once". To hold people on our shared experience and try to tell them "nah, you got 3 more fights in you" when one is dead and back in camp already as it is...I just dont see the camp being an issue.. Too many guardrails on it has a good chance of boxing someone into needing to load a much earlier save, if they have one, to retry to the battle or go level up a bit and memorize different spells.

Depends

Certain games are meat grinders, some are narrative and politics driven. I hate large initiative counts because of map clutter and sheer amount of time it takes to go through the paces. So, I usually make smaller fight sizes with creatures who have multiple abilities to deny a boxing in by a druid summoning 8 wolves, all with advantage, each bite requiring a str saving throw or be knocked prone, their attacks are magical at druid level 6, and the creature cant move because all squares around them are occupied and just get melted. My fights usually take about 2 hours and we have a solid 4 hour session, Saturday games have gone as long as 10 depending on the players' thirst.

My personal style leans towards encounters of environment, social, political, and combat. So they have a lot of "encounters" a day, they just arent all fighting. If I averaged it out, it would probably be 1 encounter a session but translate to 2 encounters in game days.

So a penalty to long rest being outside of time wouldn't make sense to me because you are in game wise leaving the area to return to your camp, but maybe penalty for time sparingly but penalty for leaving certain events that disable fast travel such as a dungeons you enter to find a person or an item.



But TLDR I agree there should be some prevention maybe on a harder difficulty so the majority of players can enjoy the majority of Larian's work and effort.

No, no and NO!

I HATE the rest mechanic, because this just adds unnecessary complexity and is breaking the flow of the game all the time, it's extremely annoying and doesn't contribute to the fun of the game.

Since this is a video game, it should be as smooth as possible, and the resting mechanic is a pure PITA. Drop it for good.

It's a D&D game. It's balanced with that mechanic existing. There are tweaks which could be made, which is what we're discussing, but it you remove it, the balance will get even more out of whack.

It's a video game and this mechanic makes no sense at all in a video game. I understand the reason for this mechanic in tabletop D&D, but in a video game it's nothing but a stupid nuisance that makes me facepalm every time I have to do it (instead of progressing through the game, through the story, etc...).

What. There's a ton of cutscenes based around using the camp though. It's used frequently for story progression. Like the finding out Astarion is a vampire cutscene.

No, man, just no. Resting is an essential mechanic of the D&D game. Everything happens around it. For example, resting replenishes your spells, if you can rest anytime anywhere you have infinite magic slots. Therefore if this is a D&D game they have to use this mechanic and use it well, otherwise the game is just unbalanced. So it makes no sense what you are saying.

So is your issue that a long rest is required for resources to reset and you feel you need those resources to play through the story with out the long rest? The reason I ask is as far as I know besides the one tutorial time you are never forced to long rest. For instance I only really long rest when i complete an area or a quest chain but that requires me to take my licks with low resources or not using the instant kill option incase I need it later. Just questioning for clarification because the way you phrase it as if the game is forcing you to long rest even when you dont want/need to.

I don't think long rests should be punished necessarily, but one way of limiting them could be to just increase the number of short rests you get and then have it be that you can't long rest until you've used up all your short rests. Sure someone can just spam short rests and then long rest, but it's far harder to limit long rests in a game like this given there's no real timekeeping mechanic internally and there's no real way to limit how many combats a player will get into between long rests nor how deadly those combats will be.

Can be done easily at certain "key" points in the game, triggered or so, no problem. Or characters "yawning" after a while.

But not to restore resources, this should happen automatically.

Complexity is not necessarily helpful for game depth, only when it actually makes sense.

I think they can do same thing as pathfinder did and introduce supplies. Then designate 3-4 safe locations per act where you can rest for free, while otherwise needing supplies that weight quite a bit, so you can't realistically take unlimited amount even if you have the $$.


The downside is that it can place you in a dead end, like I had in Pathfinder where I was pretty much locked in a crypt with only exit being finishing it and going through the boss fight with me being 3/4 way in and no supplies left. Literally had to go back to a save a good hour plus ago because otherwise it was not realistically winnable outside of save scumming like mad. So I guess not everything is so simple.

They could also put a soft time constraint, again not to the point it's unwinnable unless outright clearly stated so as in "do this in 10 days or you're a squid". It can be something like automatic disadvantage to your party or stat penalties until you get to next step of the main quest if you rested way too much and thus wasted a lot of time in supposedly time sensitive setting. Maybe even some odd secondary quest or two down the road becoming unavailable, because you wasted too much time and did not rescue/intervene there in time, though maybe they should avoid that because it's not obvious like main quest progression.


Overall, I think it's obvious that resting mechanic is definitely not done yet and likely they want feedback to decide on exact restrictions on long and short rests.