Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Options for balancing (long) rests

Considering that there should be some kind of logical progression/improvements over the original BG 1/2 resting system, I think it should be a combination of options and factors.

Resources
Long and short rest should consume resources. Food might be a main resting resource, and money could be considered its substitute - consider that you "bought" food from a nearby merchant. I like the idea of rations, mentioned above. So if you don't have enough food for rations - you pay money (just to save time for you instead of actually running to a nearby merchant). Of course, for this to work, food shouldn't be able to heal you in battle, and heal very little outside of battle, unless during rest.

Short rest - with food more health is restored (but it is not required)

Long rest - Food or gold instead are required. Maybe some additional resource(s) could be added, that would provide long-lasting bonuses (like in PoE2). And as a failsafe, if your party doesn't have neither (enough) food, nor money, then health isn't restored (but spells are) and maybe some kind of minor negative status applied (-1 initiative, disadvantage or some such).

Long Rest Restrictions
To avoid spamming long rest on every occasion and before every battle, there should be some limitations of using it (like in the originals).

Long rests should be allowed only in relatively safe areas. Say, not in caves, dungeons and behind enemy lines, no enemies in a certain radius or/and you should clean X enemy groups to be able to set camp in the area.
In barely to mildly safe areas long rest could be allowed but with a chance of random attacks. To make those attackers not OP you should be able to control all NPCs in your camp (or at least all your companions).

Triggers
A combination of suggested triggers would work great, IMO.

Such triggers might be:

• X amount of battles
• walked X distance
• used jump or other physical ability more than X times
• little to no spells left
• Quest event (party partook in some festivities/activities)
• ...

After one 1-2 conditions are met, your companions will suggest to rest. after 3 conditions are met, certain negative statuses begin to apply (eg slowed/encumbered, disadvantages, minus 1 on all rolls, etc), so with each new trigger another status applied in addition, on per-party member basis.

Short rest could clean one of the negative statuses, but the same trigger will reapply in half of initial value (e.g. X/2 amount of battles or walked X/2 distance), if quantifiable. According to D&d5e short rest is limited to 2 per long rest, which should be fair.

there are some threads about this already, but it is always good to point out this is a pending issue with the game

The bit that I find a bit strange is that how often players can rest is something completely determined by the player?

So if you want to make the game harder on yourself? Don't rest as often?
If you want an easier run of it? Rest often?

It's like a built in difficulty meter that the player controls.

I don't see any advantage to placing limits on how often players can rest.

What I *do* think is interesting is baking in consequence to resting too often.

e.g.

If you're in a dangerous area, you can't take a long rest until you find a secure area (checkpoint style "camps" you can rest at).
You can attempt to rest in a dangerous area, but if you do so, you have to roll on an encounter table for every hour you rest (this was in BG).
You have some time sensitive events that progress for every day you rest. This makes the world feel more alive and that certain events are time sensitive.

But stuff involving supplies or hard limits on how often you can rest are just annoying and frustrating for the player.
You've already got classes that lose 90% of their power as their resources deplete.

Yeah but leaving to the player affects the game dificulty, how would the encounters be balanced, rest every fight or not? For many people that matters (steam achievements, pride and accomplishment, etc).
I like 5, could be tied to difficulty, or maybe an option apart from difficulty, so people who don't like the system and just want to spam spells could rest every fight if they want.

Agreed with this. There are a lot of pushes for more restrictions in games lately. I would hope if there are limitations imposed to resting it would be tied to difficulty. I think the main problems I see with limiting long resting universally are:

• There's no telling how badly a fight will go. If the rng completely betrays you what should be a simple fight will leave you depleted and in need of a rest.
• If you are depleted but can't rest due to time or location constraints if rests are limited you have to either
  • Wait until the timer is up, which is anti-gameplay as you are just staring at a screen
  • Spend time backtracking to accomplish the same thing, which also adds to time that you aren't playing.

I do understand the thoughts of immersion being added by limiting resting, and having safe areas (such as ones with bedrolls) is a good solution as long as they are frequent enough, but being stuck because of a string of badluck and having to reload doesn't scream exciting gameplay to me at least.

Random encounters would be potentially fun, but the problem then becomes if you are still completely depleted from your last fight it's just going to wipe your party and result in a reload anyways. Still, I can see potential fun to be had with that so I wouldn't necessarily be opposed.

I think it's important to consider why the game is structured this way. As I see it, being able to frequently return to camp is how Larian wants the game to be played.

A lot of the plot progression is tied to the camp. That's why there's only one short rest and the combat's on the more difficult side. It's all structured to encourage you to go to camp frequently. That in turn moves a lot of these plot elements forward.

And we'll have even more party members in the final game, so they'll want us to juggle our team around frequently (and a lot more talking) before we settle on our final 3 teammates.