Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Resting needs some limitations

You increase the party size so everyone has to rest less often.

I am not in the camp of increasing the party size, I think 4 is a good size, both for BG3 and 5e.

You can look to the solutions that are employed at tables, since bg3 "draws alot of inspiration" from 5e. Since even at a roleplaying table where group fun is the main goal, you can never ever punish someone for using mechanics optimally.

Since player agency is the most important feature, I think it would be a bad idea to just say "you can't rest here". The question is how the probability of having a successfull rest changes with the circumstances. I read about "not being able to rest in dungeons". Why shouldn't you in general be able to do that? You always can try to relax, lie down and even sleep. But there is always the possibility of an encounter.

It would even be bad to say "the situation is so dangerous that you cannot relax". who is to tell me how my character experiences the situation. mabye the character is a psychopath just in need of some shuteye. Characters can always attempt a rest and always be interrupted. The only real save (if you are not hunted by some assassins) resting place is an inn. You could do skill challenges to determine how save your rest is, investigation of the environment, survival skills for camouflage that get boni from tiny huts or something.

I'd rather not see more restrictions on how often I can attempt to rest but rather the possibility of always failing a rest attempted not in the confines of civilization.

I like the idea of "not getting the best result" or even failing quests when waiting too long, but it has to be - from quest to quest - communitcated that it is urgent and why. You can easily justify it for a hostage situation. for a quest that you took of a notice board- not so much.

essentially: never restrict player agency and always justify consequences in-world .

I'd like more short rests and random encounters when resting.

There needs to be a chance you are ambushed during long rest. Game is super easy free long resting whenever I want. With ambushes getting more severe in the more hostile environments you are in. Players should have to balance role playing through map events and combat instead of just combat slogging the whole game because you can long rest with no potential penalty anytime you want to. That’s what short rest is for in dnd.

Maybe short rest could cost some food : 1 (scaling with Con) per character. Max 3 before long rest ? And food no longer heal ?
And long rest use food (x2 short) + golds ?

I like the food idea, in terms of only being able to eat a certain amount of food between long rests. Also I don't think you should be able to rest as frequently as you want. You certainly shouldn't be able to rest in a "dungeon" type environment but haven't seen enough of the game to see how viable that is. There should also be a gold cost associated with it as well. There needs to be a bit of a strategy behind it, otherwise it's mostly a waste of time and everything should recharge between fights (health, spells). I also do not think there should be a chance of getting attacked if you rest too much, for the primary reason being that it will just encourage save scumming, and also most of the time I am going to end a play session I will do a long rest. If I'm about to log off for the night and want to recharge and fix up inventory, I don't want to have to do a big fight before I can save my game and go to bed in real life. That being said, I think the rest/camp mechanic is great, just needs a bit of strategy behind it and players need to discuss when is the best time to do it. The key is having to manage your resources effectively (most importantly health and spells)

I think the problem with using food presents the same potential issues as simply hard limiting rests: you could end up with a bricked save if you rest too frequently and end up unable to progress. Since everything in this game is finite, and especially since you won't know how much food you'll find moving forward, AND since you likely won't find it all, it makes the number of rests you'll be able to take a mystery, which means it makes it even harder to plan. Or it's so abundant it means nothing and isn't really a limitation.

This is indeed the crux of the problem. A human DM can handle problems like this easily, but having an algorithm try and figure this out is quite difficult.

Personally I think there should be a fatigue system. Time based, but also healing based. Time passes and fatigue increases. Healing also increases a character's fatigue. Resting resets fatigue. If you are out of short rests you would need a long rest to reset. Otherwise you are travelling exhausted with lower move speed and stats. Also likely need some cooldown or something on long resting.

I guess I sort of treat it like pnp, where I'm pretty careful with my spell slots. A lot of fights aren't very challenging so no reason to blow slots (shrug). But I've probably also been unconsciously avoiding long rests because that feels like I'm advancing time (even though it doesn't).



Personally, I would like this. Maybe they can make this the normal setting but also allow people that want a much easier time of things to disable it. I like it when things matter and I think it would help with the food is overpowered thing too.

This is a good idea, currently there is literally no downside to me not resting apart from simply not regaining spell slots, but it takes me ages to actually use up any spell slots anyway because cantrips are so OP in this game. Literally the only reason I actually have to rest right now is the fact that Lae'zel keeps saying she needs a nap, the big baby. We've only been awake for like 5 days now, suck it up!

Resting should only happen at specific camp sites you have to travel to. If you rest some generic enemies should repopulate areas you’ve cleared. This makes distance traveled feel more real.

This fixes literally everyone’s complaint. No ones going to trek back to a campsite unless they really have to. However, if you get some bad rolls and get your ass kicked, you can travel back, no artificial timer keeping perpetuating how long you’re in dire straits. But some monsters will repopulate, so it’s not just a refresh button.

Given the number of bedrolls I accidentally get into while looting I hope this is already on the works.

Maybe even throw in some possible unintended consequences like food spoiling, supplies being stolen/or found, a rare creature encounter, a nighttime ambush by a faction you pissed off. Nothing complex.

I object to "the should only happen" but I don't know whether you meant it that way. There should be a possibility of rest in the wilderness depending on how good you are at making camp (investigate the area (investigation & survival skill challenge) and if you are out of food you could check the surroundings for food with a perception and nature challenge.

repopulation is a very pc-gamey way to deal with cleared out areas. if we only talk in game difficulty and no-cheese solutions to this problem, you could always just disallow the rest. if you think that restricts player agency and doesn't feel in-world - so does a magical repopulation by the same monsters that won't seem to care that their kin was slaughtered. a cleared out area where no you are the danger should be relatively save for rest bar some roaming encounter.

Honestly, I feel like Pathfinder Kingmaker handled the rest aspect in a really neat way.

The timers would be a big ask for I can't imagine its easy to come up with the correct amount of time for a large variety of different players, but I really enjoyed making camp and assigning roles to my party based on their skills (cooking, hunting, guards, ect)

Camping also cost resources if you couldn't hunt, in dangerous areas, which would be a good solution for rest spamming in places like the underdark and in the middle of goblin town.

I would like to submit the following article as evidence:
Hitting the Rest Button
https://theangrygm.com/hitting-the-rest-button/

Other Unordered Thoughts:
- Limiting rests restricts player agency.
- Limiting rests restricts player agency.
- Rules as written (RAW) A character can't benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period, and a character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits. Short rests are not limited
- BG3 currently does a great job of using failed quests to push the game forward.
- To make rests meaningful we need to have time be meaningful. This would also fix 10 min / 1 hr spells lasting all day.
-- Some quests can tie to a time limit.
--- with quests failing foward failure to time is not a ruined save.
- Rests should not be denied, but may be interupted. having them take time solves this.
-- perhaps monsters repopulate.
--- spawning more seems a lame, but if the guards are taken out it makes sense to call some of the reserve troops out of say the goblin party to fill for the recently slain guards.

What would be the justification for a timer though? If the goal is to make the game mechanically challenging, why would anyone take 5e rules that focus very much narrative over mechanics and leave a lot of room for DM interpretation. 4e and PF2 game systems are much more suited to be translated into the PC game world. So I still believe that the focus is in choose-your-own-adventure. So what in-world justification would be there (in any given situation) to say "no, stop procrastinating, get along with your quest".




Time needs to be meaningful, yes, but world-meaningful, not "finish quest in 1 rest for platinum trophy, 2 for gold ..." and so on. The quest-givers involved need to project the urgency and whatever the different stages of quest success could mean, need to be explained by the quest.

Monster respawn would lead to power gaming cheese problems ( and Larian is not well known for being good at balancing things ), although it could be fixed by letting all these monsters not give any exp/items and only act as a hindrance/penalty for abusing rest all the time. Like i have to clear this long ass dungeon but i don't want to rest because i'll respawn a lot of annoying enemies that can't be stealthed and i don't want to go through all that again.

The justification is the text of the quest itself.

Example: Save Halsin, he got captured by goblins. He's either rotting in a cage, or goblin stew.

2 days later you go to goblin camp and find him rotting in a cage, save him and off you go.

However, player 2 waits 4 days and goes and finds some fat goblins talking about how tasty druid stew is.

The timers indicate a different outcome which varies based on the context of the quest.

Yes, i agree, but it would have to be like that for every quest and it gets even more difficult when you embrace quests that are not self-contained, but i think that's some way along the road ;D. trained neural networks for character archetypes initialized for every npc when you load up the game and the things they see will influence what they do. thatwould be the dream.