I wanted to list a couple of pretty significant concerns I have about some of the Game mechanics surrounding Health, Dying, and Resting. I love the game, but right as I am about to feel like I'm playing D&D, these game mechanics wrench me right out of it, and make some of the things that make D&D particularly challenging and immersive in a FUN way nonexistent or severely hamstrung.

-Long Rests
Long Rests right now are able to be done at any time, which completely eliminates the resource management aspect of going through a "day" in the game. After any instance where you use a couple spell slots or lose some health, you can just pop into a long rest and come right back to where you were with all of your health and resources available again. Every D&D campaign is run slightly differently, but I believe most operate under an understanding that a Long Rest can only be done after a reasonable amount of in-game 'time' has passed. No DM I have played with would, for example, have the players go through the the first enemy encounter or action encounter of the day, and then allow the group to long rest if they had just long rested before the event took place. This is supposed to emphasize the players' abilities to manage their resources while fighting, and adds the drama of risk/reward when sacrificing potential health now for a valuable spell slot you may need for a boss later. Right now, that does not exist. There is no risk for throwing all my spell slots at every encounter, there is no penalty for charging into the enemy without planning (besides death, which I will be getting to shortly), and the feeling of dungeon delving and fearing taking risks that D&D provides is totally neutered by long rests not being limited in some way.

-Possible Solutions:
First off, if the game is balanced with unlimited full-party replenishment after every event, I understand that balancing will need to be changed to account for this adjustment.
The easiest way to solve this issue is to have some invisible timer behind the scenes, making a certain amount of time to have to pass before the players' group can long rest. Real-time could be a reasonable amount of time the player spends playing the game (having the timer stop when the game is paused or when in dialogue) before they are notified they should long rest.
Other than this, it could be after a certain amount of XP gained or at certain set up milestones throughout the campaign. Certain areas could be granted asylum status, such as a city from where the players will set out on another journey or quest, and thus would allow the players to take a long rest whenever they want. This would be ok because it would represent the players possibly taking a few days off at an inn to gather supplies, which commonly happens between "chapters" or bug milestones in real-life campaigns.
I suggest an invisible timer because then the players can focus on in-game cues, like the characters expressing exhaustion verbally, which they already do in the game, except those interactions don't really demonstrate anything important to the player right now. Obviously a visible timer would also be fine, but it might have the result of having players stare at the timer when they are in dire straights instead of focusing on the actual game in front of them and how they can still complete their goals.


-Dying
Having dying work the way it does in this iteration of the game is antithetical to the goal of transferring D&D rules into video game format. Death in D&D is, depending on how you play, always a threat, but rare in 5e. Obviously some campaigns are more intense than others, and death will be more expected, but death in real-life campaigns results in players making new characters that are then woven into the story, NOT an expectation of being revived. But most characters in real-life D&D will NEVER DIE during a campaign. They will be knocked unconscious or even be at death's door, but there are few characters that will be resurrected dozens and dozens of times before the end of their campaign. At much higher levels, death becomes easier to thwart with spells and powerful allies, but even then it is considered something rare and sometimes miraculous. In the game, we are not rolling new characters each time we die, and I would never expect that to be the case. You want your players to play as the character they created and the companions you created. By making death permanent until a player can find 200 gold or a resurrection scroll, you are just placing an annoying obstacle in front of the player and the goal of the game. It is not a fun mechanic, puzzle, or a fun challenge to get players revived, and it has the possibility of even being impossible at times with the finite resources available in the world. The difficulty and brutality of the game is in one part enjoyable, but completely sours the experience with the addition of soft perma-death. The DM in the real world can account for these unfortunate circumstances on the fly, making sure the players won't end up too frustrated or blocked in the campaign to want to play anymore, but since this game has only its programming to depend on, you have to ensure that these situations cannot be reached by the players by making sure the mechanics support the overall goal for the game. We are limited to a certain number of companions, with a certain number of revivication scrolls available to purchase, as a limited amount of gold to shell out to the talkative skeleton who can revive people back at camp. But if the intention is to never have to lose a companion forever, why make death a mechanic to begin with? Death does nothing in this game but make the player potentially have to run around after a battle to try and find a scroll or enough money to revive the fallen companion. Dying in BG3 is easy, but without the freedom and fluidity of the real-life game to allow for the making of new characters on the fly, it makes no sense for death to be incorporated into this game. This is a story about THESE specific characters, so having them die defeats the purpose. The drama in death for games like D&D is that the character you have grown to love is gone forever. But in this game they are not gone forever; in fact the player is actively encouraged not to leave their companions dead, with several avenues to resurrect them. But then, why is death dramatic or exciting or FUN in that instance? What happens if the character I created, my main character, is killed and I don't have any way to revive them? I continue the story without them until I can afford to bring them back? That doesn't seem like a cool, fun game mechanic, it sounds like a harsh punishment for getting crit by a big boss that makes me want to save scum to get a more enjoyable experience than playing it as-is.
Also, the enemies focus down downed characters over dangerous combatants who are fighting, which just adds to how easy it is to die in this game. It's a valid combat strategy for the enemy to take, but it will make people focus more on making it through the fight without having to burn too many res scrolls than to just win the fight, which is what it should be all about.

-Possible Solutions:
Death should be taken out of the game and replaced with a Downed/Unconscious mode instead. Downed players go through the same saving throws to see if they can stabilize to be healed or helped, or if they will fall UNCONSCIOUS and be unable to take part in the rest of the battle. Then if the rest of the party is knocked unconscious or downed all at once, the player reaches a Game Over, and must reload, the same way as if all of them had died. But now, the unconscious players can be revived at the end of battle if they were unable to be revived while they were downed during the fight, and the adventure can continue immediately, the difference being that the player did not have to expend a finite resource to ensure one of the companions would be able to continue with them. They will still have their burned spell slots and abilities, as well as low health, which adds the same challenge as reviving any dead companion. It's a very small change to the mechanic, ultimately, but it eliminates revivication scrolls as being a possible soft-lock for progression through the game. It also helps from an immersion standpoint; if there are these scrolls that can bring people back from THE DEAD, then why isn't EVERYONE using them? Why aren't enemies using them? Why can't I use it on people who aren't my allies? It makes it clear these are items made expressly to solve the 'problem' of death, but death is something you can just remove from the game without having to sacrifice the difficulty or consequences of handling a fight poorly or just getting unlucky.

-Food and Health
Food heals more than my potions sometimes, and seeing as how potions and healing spells are expensive and a huge part of D&D quests, it throws the balance of health resources way off.

Firstly, lets look at DURING battles. Food can be used in place of a potion to heal a character. The amount of health gained, depending on the food, can be enormous, and more than a potion of healing even at a full roll of 12 (or around that). If food wasn't so much cheaper, or had some sort of downside like making you slow or some type of debuff, it would be more acceptable, but as it is now it just makes healing during battle easier in a game that should be emphasizing good limited resource management. This is not super egregious, but it is a little odd and makes potions not feel really worth it to buy, and healers a little less important in battle. If my cure wounds spell does about as much healing as a pie I found in a cart, but costs an action instead of a bonus action, I definitely feel less like using cure wounds and more like focusing on offensive spells all the time. The additions of these resources also do not sufficiently balance out the intensity of battles, and do not stop the constant onset of death, so I am being careful not to appear hypocritical here by saying it is very easy to die in one section and then complaining about an increase to health boosters in another. Death doesn't come as a result of no ability to heal when it is your turn, it comes out of a merciless, cold onslaught of AI characters programmed to show no mercy, which may be different than what some D&D players experience.

Secondly, there is OUT OF battles. Characters can chow down on apples and raw chicken until they are full health, which goes back to my argument about Long Rests and the importance of balancing resource management. Usually, adventurers have to carefully consider and prepare healing spells and healing items like potions, which either extinguish a very valuable resource that could be used for other things (prepared spells, spell slots) or cost a significant amount of money (regular potions in D&D cost 50gp each, since they are considered magical alchemical creations) and then there are short rests at certain intervals of play, which of course right now is 2 at any time. If I can stock up on apples and save my spell slots and money in exchange, then there is really no risk or punishment to being lazy or reckless with my health bar. Part of the challenge is figuring out when to press on and when to turn back; health is precious and adventurers will often travel around bouncing between 40-80% health as they decide to use spell slots and items outside of battle.

-Possible Solutions
Food could just be eliminated as a health source, or could heal significantly less, even being capped at a percentage of the players health before it stops healing altogether.

I would suggest something like a combination of a lowered effectiveness and some sort of debuff that accompanies it. They would have to be debuffs that didn't just disappear in 6 seconds to avoid there being virtually no consequences outside of battle for just spamming food. There could be a food limit between long rests, debuffs that only go away after a long rest or short rest, or debuffs that last for a certain number of battle encounters/until a long rest, whichever comes first.



*Activision Employee My Views are My Own*