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

I didn't see this as a topic listed in the pinned feedback compendium, so I figured I'd start a new thread. Sorry if this has been discussed elsewhere.

Goal of this post:
• Invite Larian to consider options for devoting more balance mechanics to resting
• Invite discussion/feedback on the topic
• Perhaps provide one or two options Larian hadn't considered

Context:
• Feedback as a player that loves cRPG’s on max difficulty & DMs D&D 5e and PF2.
• Loving the game! Hope this will become my next 400hr+ game.
• Resource management is very fun and a major balance impact factor in D&D and deserves more attention.
• The best resting system of any game is tabletop D&D: one rest allowed per 24 hrs, players can decide to stop adventuring and go rest at any point, but the cost is TIME, and a world (DM) that reacts to that.

Current situation:
• Resting is “unrestricted” from a mechanical standpoint. That means that tactically the strongest party is a bunch of casters that go all out every combat. This is quite immersion breaking & unbalanced.
• Resting can “unlock” content. That means that you’re invited to camp a few days in a row at a certain stage to make sure you don’t miss anything, which is also quite immersion breaking
• The combination of no time or day/night cycle in-game and no (long) rest limitations makes it feel too “mechanical” to rest.
• It feels weird to not have the world react to resting. Building on fire? Nah I’ll just camp out for a few days and I’ll save people later.
• Abundance of healing food drastically reduces the need for resting & resource management.
• I actually like the fact we don't have to walk to a specific place on the map to camp, this is a nice quality of life upgrade that just saves time in real life.
• Balancing “resting” is left entirely up to the player at the moment. This can have two undesired effects:
. . . o Option A: resting way too much, throwing off caster/martial balance further
. . . o Option B: resting way too little, messing up (companion) story progression and less fun because you can’t go all-out in any combats “at the end of the day” (more likely option for me as a player)

Options for changes to the rest system (in arbitrary order):

1. Require a limited resource for resting
• Description: Consumable “camp supplies” required for a rest
• Examples: Pillars of Eternity 1, D&D, PF:KM
• Pros:
. . . i. Easily able to scale availability with difficulty
. . . ii. Can “solve” food issue by merging it into this mechanic
• Cons:
. . . i. Restricting access to supplies feels arbitrary after first interaction with a “civilisation”, could be countered with other factors (f.e. Weight)
. . . ii. Resource cost becomes trivial fast, making resting arbitrary after early levels
• Fun Factor: BORING

2. In-game clock/timer
• Description: have a calendar, hours and days that progress as you explore/rest
• Examples: the only RPGs without an in-game clock I can recall are yours. With DOS 1 & 2 it felt like a concession for not being able to pause the gamer and improve the multiplayer experience. In BG3 it feels like a holdover from DOS.
• Pros:
. . . i. Best immersion of all options, a day spent exploring a town or travelling large distances without combat can also be cause for a rest
. . . ii. Can implement fatigue based on time spent awake
. . . iii. Much better control over time/story pacing related to resting
• Cons:
. . . i. Probably have to make “night version” of (some) parts of the world, expensive
. . . ii. Probably have to rebalance the timing of some long-duration spells (can be a plus as well!)
. . . iii. Doesn’t really balance well or scale with difficulty
. . . iv. Like most of the following options as well, can discourage exploration, could be solved as Kingmaker did it by creating points where you have to wait for something & you can go exploring in the meantime (f.e. “it will take us a week to get everything ready, feel free to take care of your own business”)
• Fun Factor: AWESOME. Immersive & new gameplay options created by nightfall (f.e. waiting for dark to attack). Probably not realistic in scope though.

3. Rest limits tied to story events/reacting world
• Description: “the ritual will take 3 days, make sure to return before then”; “The mindworm will start weakening us in a week, we need to find a way to remove or delay it before then”; “Save Mayrina before the hag takes her baby” “You went to sleep while the building was on fire, did you expect the flames would also take a nap???”
• Examples: BG3 (sort of now, but really soft), PF:KM
• Pros:
. . . i. Can scale with difficulty (if willing to change story elements slightly, remove on lower difficulty levels)
. . . ii. Creates urgency
. . . iii. Can affect ending slides depending on timing of certain tasks
. . . iv. Can give pop-up message that encounters/dungeons will evolve if you choose to leave, rest and return later
. . . v. No need to make the “night world”
• Cons:
. . . i. Need to define clear balance for timed quests
. . . ii. Time “stops progressing” meaningfully while not on a timed quest
. . . iii. Should avoid hard stops that end the playthrough (5 rests and your head explodes)
. . . iv. Need to give clear warning/insight in what “timers” are running at the moment
• Fun Factor: FUN! (probably personal preference if I’m being realistic)

4. Milestone resting
• Description: Have rests at fixed story points (more strict version of option 3 essentially)
• Examples: Bannerlord
• Pros:
. . . i. Good control over story pacing & “intended” combat balance
. . . ii. Fairly immersive
• Cons:
. . . i. Could cause frustration not being able to rest when you want to, could get stuck
. . . ii. Not knowing when your next rest is going to be is not fun
• Fun Factor: MEH, OK I GUESS

5. Timer system tied to number of encounters
• Description: Have rests at fixed story points
• Examples: Bannerlord
• Pros:
. . . i. Good control over story pacing & “intended” combat balance
. . . ii. Can assign weights to different combats (f.e. a hard encounter has a different weight than an easy one for filling up the rest counter)
• Cons:
. . . i. Not immersive, seems like arbitrary game mechanic
. . . ii. Can be tricky to figure out right balance for all party compositions
. . . iii. Messing up a fight could cause you to get stuck
• Fun Factor: PROBABLY NOT FUN FOR MOST PLAYERS

6. Triggered by companions
• Description: “I’m feeling tired, let’s go to camp”; “I have something to share when we have a quiet moment in camp”
• Examples: “fatigue” mechanic does this a bit in cRPGs
• Pros:
. . . i. Good control over story progression
. . . ii. Gives player a reference point for when to rest
• Cons:
. . . i. Need to tie the triggers from companions to a different system. (f.e. Number of spells remaining? Story triggers? Number of encounters?)
• Fun Factor: OK



Thanks for coming to my TED talk. Please weigh in with your personal opinions, other options you see & preferences so we can hopefully put this topic in Larian's radar and find a better solution (if you believe we need one)!

p.s. omg I'm in formatting hell.

I think the best solution would be a a calendar, similar to PF:KM. Give people plenty of time, but do limit it at some number, so the fullcaster group cheesing would be impossible.

Here is my idea, it is my take on the best idea I heard. This is essentially a combination of the OP's 3 and 5 ideas.

Th game would have some sort of hidden fatigue meter, which increases based on the average number of steps the party has taken since the last long rest, and also increases when receiving any sort of healing EXCEPT that from Short Rests (because the idea is to encourage more short rests, and spacing out long rests. And also forcing a long rest right after a short one because the short rest healing kicked you into high fatigue seems silly). You would not be allowed to long rest until a certain amount has been passed. Let's say 67% of the way to a point of Exhaustion. Once the fatigue meter has passed the mark, it becomes visible, and if you continue to neglect it for, say another 25-33% past the fatigue point, the party will get a level of Exhaustion - much like how pressing forward without long rests in 5e will make the party take one as well.

Continuing to neglect Exhaustion more will eventually cross a second threshold and reduce movement speed by half. This might not necessarily grant a second point of exhaustion immediately, as that should be enough of a clue to players "you should really rest right now". But if they keep going...


If you cross an Exhaustion threshold in combat, it won't take effect until the combat ends, then take effect immediately.

The tricky part is figuring out how many steps and how much healing it should require to reach those levels.


1. The average number of steps would be the combination of all the steps taken by everyone you've had in the party since the last long rest, and divided by 4. So if you're all traveling together, everyone will have about the same. If you have one person scouting ahead and sneaking and moving, they'll do more than other people, but if they do an extreme amount of sneaking, it'll eventually average out.

2. Healing which takes your hit points past maximum doesn't count the overflow towards the fatigue meter. Short rests also do not count towards the fatigue meter.

***


This is better than a method based around consuming resources to long rest, because it prevents you from being blocked for lack of resources - you can walk around some more. You also can't stock up on resources to trivialize long rests.

This is better than a random encounter system because if you're really on your last legs and NEED the long rest, you won't be attacked at your weakest. (Or you won't need to long rest immediately after a long rest because the random encounter went badly for you.)





Good thoughts. Let me think...

1) Let's say "out of combat".
2) I'd say include. Walking around all day can be tiring as well. In my mind I imagine that healing would probably be notably more exhausting than walking.
3) Fast Travel... Maybe, or maybe not. If it were to count, perhaps at least a 50% discount on the amount of steps it would take. Calculating a step count if Fast Travel is activated in the middle of nowhere could be tricky, though.
4) Jump is movement.

My opinion:
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthread...mp;Words=Tylm&Search=true#Post698031

Timer would be the best, but that'd modify the script too much, that's requires a lot of effort.

I honestly don't want to add too much difficulty to it, but I don't want it to be as easy as it is right now. IMO the problem with resting right now is the fast travel system. If you had to get to a fast travel point in order to fast travel anywhere, including to get to your camp before you could take a nights rest and if there was a chance your nights rest could be interupted by some kind of random encounter attack on your camp you would have a fine system worthy of the original games.

I would just implement a fatigue status that gets triggered at important story moments or when companions have something to share to basically tell the player they need to go back to camp. Then have fatigue start a timer that changes to exhausted when it's done, where exhausted would carry some minor debuff. When in a dangerous area or a dungeon have the "go to camp" button instead start a long rest with a chance for interruption by enemies (have the screen go black for a few secs just like a short rest, then either fade in to combat or a successful long rest). Finally put a minimum 1 short rest before going to camp again and a max of 3 short rests. Should structure and limit resting while preventing people from missing out on camp interactions.

I like a combo of 1 and 2. Resting should consume "rations" and the food you find could be combined to create a "ration" or you could buy them from traders. Food would no longer have a heal effect but is given a value. Let's say a long rest requires 1 ration, and a ration has a value of 10 food. Apples could have a value of 1, potatoes 2 etc. So you could use 10 apples to create one ration, or 5 potatoes. These are completely off the wall numbers, but hopefully makes sense for a concept.

On top of that, it should be tied to a 24 hour clock. If you want to camp at 2 or 3pm, go for it but now your stuck adventuring through the night. This makes a huge impact on how encounters would go, especially for those without darkvision inherently. 1 in game day could last 1-1.5 real time hour/s, and anytime turn based mode is activated, that obviously would slow the clock to 6seconds per round (both in combat and put of).

Regardless of how the system works, long rests should always go on a cool down, perhaps 15-20 minutes (and excluding time spent in combat) so it can't be abused. Then also give the player 2-3 short rests like how 5e was designed

Needing to walk to a fast travel point would start to feel like pointless busywork unless there was the chance for a random encounter or something. And in a system without a human DM to manage, random encounters have issues.

Let's say that when you camp, there's a chance of a random encounter. There are two ways to handle this:

A) The encounter happens before you get the rest, so you're still drained of HP and spell slots.
B) The encounter happens after you get the rest, so you're fully refreshed.


In situation A, the random encounter could be downright lethal, and frustrating, because that's the only way to recover spell slots and heal. Players will think "WTF am I supposed to do about that?"

In situation B, you'll be able to start out feeling pretty decent and full-up, but for the encounter to be meaningful, it'll have to be challenging, so it could end up going pretty badly for you, making you feel like you need another long rest right away, which will be annoying. If you handle it easily, it'll still drain some resources and feel a bit like a waste of time. Because random encounters generally feel like a waste of time anyway.

And I am ignoring the issues of random encounters at camp having an entire camp of people who can't be in the fight at all for balance and gameplay reasons.





There already are rules provided by 5e for the Exhaustion condition, which are debuffs which increasingly stack the more it builds up.

https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Conditions#toc_15

Exactly, random encounters on long rest/fast travel do not add anything to a game. They just waste the players time and most of the time will be either a party wipe or a breeze.

Not to mention can lead to loosing game progress if you did not save at a good time.

I would love to have real time progression & day/night cycles in the game, but I doubt that would happen as it requires a huge overhaul.



I think this is a very workable idea. It would a proxy for "time" in-game that doesn't interfere with existing game mechanics too drastically. You can just keep track of total distance traveled in feet/meters. To avoid people being frustrating by "having to walk around" before being able to rest you could disable or reduce the threshold on lower difficulties.

You could also factor "actions taken" or other stuff into the algorithm to simulate the exertion of battle.

I would still prefer if it was combined with a long rest limit for certain quests, as you mention as well. The world need to be responsive!

Discouraging exploration might be a valid concern with this approach though, but it would also create a clear sense of urgency while on "timed" quests. And worst case you can always push each day a little bit further (into exhaustion) to "win exploration time".

+1 Agreed

I most agree with point 3., but I also like the other options you provided. I hope Larian are considering them.

Just to add to this, what about a cost for fast travel? Could be based on distance. So either you take time from your daily timer or you use a resource of some sort to get to where you're going faster. Also, would love to see occasional random encounters at the campsite (easily based on our own death rate in certain areas haha), and/or the ability to pay for rooms at an inn or something for (seemingly) more security.

This is the way, Larian please look into the camp rest, it's really not immersive at all

I feel that when you start throwing a bunch a rules and restrictions into a game, it is going to put some people off from playing the game. Larian is making the game in such a way that will attract a wide range of players and not just a few elite DnD players. If I am a wizard my spells are important to me. I should not be penalize through the entire game because I am unable to rest to fill up my spell slots.

Right now it's important for clerics to have their spells. As a cleric being the healer, needs to be able to have the spell slots available to heal the party when needed. If you restrict people from resting. Your cleric is useless. Sure you can drink potions and eat pork to heal your self but people will complain about eating food isn't immersive during a battle. When you do add these restrictions it makes some battles turn into a slog fest.

I think if I am in the underdark and need a long rest. It should reflect that I am in the underdark. I mean find a safe spot and lay down bedrolls and sleep for the night without the interaction of the camp. But if I do need to go camping for those character moments. I need to at least get out of the underdark or goblin camp.

Options 1 and 3 to 6 are feasible.

Larian's game design has no notion of time as such (same in DOS).

I am not sure which method would be best, BUT there has to be a way for a "massacred" or exhausted party to do a Long Rest, otherwise a weakened party could be somewhat blocked before a hard final fight for example.

There has to be some limit, mostly to prevent the spam Long Rest before each fight. Not too strict though as "to each his/her own playstyle". I personally almost never rest: I did once after level 3.5 mostly to start the story bits that come from Long Rests (nothing happened: will *have* to rest often to trigger events).

I like #3 the best, but may be very difficult to implement correctly while telling the story that Larian is attempting to tell.

Discussing this with friends, we have gone back and forth and around and around. Where I’ve finally landed on is...maybe just keep it simple. Gate certain areas where it’s safe to rest, areas where there is a probability of getting ambushed and have a significant disadvantage during the battle, and other areas where you just can’t camp. You’d have to make a clear path out of the dungeon before you could “return to camp”.

BG1 & 2 were similar to this and those games were “ok” 🤣

Makes sense, at least if Fast Travel is also off in the "blocked" or dangerous parts.

I honestly think long rests are working like they should. From the usual "I could use a break" from my companions which seems to trigger after a set amount of time and such. So it seems they have some sort of fatigue meter in place. that you can chose to follow or not.

No i didn't read everything, my tadpole said no. just wanted to drop this off and let ya'll discuss it.

I think having certain areas restricted from fast travel/long rests and increasing the number of "daily" short rests (2 or 3 probably) would solve my issues with the current implementation. A day/night cycle and a clock/calendar would be great, but it might not easily be implemented.