OK. I came up with this idea during my last thread on this subject, but I wanted to present it here as a new thread so that the idea isn't missed by Larian.
Problems:
1. Character development dialogues are tied to End Day/Camp.
2. Characters in party want to End Day too frequently when they haven't done much at all. (Lazy bums!) This occurs because the characters have some sort of dialogue available, and the only way to trigger said dialogue is to End Day. So, if I don't want to miss any dialogue, I need to End Day, play for about 10 minutes, End Day again, etc. even if I haven't hardly done much but run around a bit. With a tadpole in my head that could turn me into a Mind Flayer unless I get a healer soon (something they all urge me to do as quickly as possible), seems stupid to rest so much just so I can talk to my companions and get all the dialogue/character development.
3. Without a proper Day/Night Cycle, certain things just seem stupid, like sneaking into a Goblin Base Camp in broad daylight. Astarion especially is used to the night. Why would he NOT insist that we sneak into the Goblin Camp at night, and why wouldn't we sneak in by night? Some missions just seem idiotic to try by day.
4. Many players are upset by not having a Day/Night cycle. (Myself included, though for me it is more of a minor issue).
My New Suggested Solution that will hopefully have minimal impact and might actually resolve this:
1. 2 Long Rests per day. First long rest changes it from Day to Night. Second long rest changes from Night to Day.
2. The characters would ONLY say they are tired and need to rest AFTER they have endured something worthy of needing a long rest, not whenever they have a dialogue available. My suggestion is that if a character loses more than half their hit points during a battle or uses all of their spell slots, they might suggest their need for rest. It would also make sense after a traumatic battle, like fighting the undead in the dank crypt and other boss fights. It does not make sense BEFORE a boss fight when all you've done is fight baby enemies and you still have full health and all your spell slots.
3. Dialogues become available at certain points like they do now, but whenever you long rest, whether it is the first or second long rest, all dialogues that have become available between rests are able to be triggered at camp at that time. So if I go for a long time without long resting, I should be able to trigger all dialogues that are available since the last time I long rested (unless the dialogue no longer makes sense).
4. Food should be required to recover hit points during long and short rests and are ONLY able to heal during long and short rests. They should be used up based on how many HP the characters need to recover during rests. If you don't have food, you can't rest. Food should NOT allow characters to recover while adventuring especially during battles. It just doesn't make logical sense to be able to eat a cheese wheel in combat, let alone as a bonus action. But the main reason for this suggestion is that it will force players to short/long rest more frequently in order to recover hit points and spell slots, and it makes food a more unique and reasonable healing item. It also gives you a reason to just store food at camp as opposed to carrying it all around on you at all times. If food is treated like health potions, health potions are meaningless. I wind up selling most of my health potions right now because they're worth more money and don't do me that much good because I usually have tons of food around that do pretty much the same thing. Basically, if I have a million healing items, I don't need 2 short rests or a long rest as much. Therefore, I don't go to camp as much and thus I miss out on dialogue from party members. Make food more of a necessity that is different from health potions so that it will force people to rest more often and thus encourages character development.
