Currently, if you rest after reaching the inn, a flaming fist will take care of it alone.
Maybe it's not based on time (if you aren't near the inn will be burn for year) but in my opinion is the best solution and doesn't encourage metagame.
Still main quests shouldn't progress on their own.
Right, and this is very similar to what I am advocating. We also see a time sensitive encounter very briefly in the Underdark. If we rest too many times after encountering the poisoned gnome, and don't heal her, she eventually dies. So Larian actually already knows how to do this, and I'm really just advocating for more of it, with added depth.
I think a lot of people have missed my clarification that when I refer to "time", I mean the number of days passed, as signified by our long rest use (
players decide how much time has passed, not the game).
This means that players could spend 100+ hours of real time playing the game, without moving an encounter forward in time, so long as they don't have their characters take a long rest. Therefore, there is
no rush created in real life by making an encounter time sensitive.
And again, I only think time should be a factor once players have "triggered" an encounter, in that players have made a choice that has either caused, or made them aware of, an
imminent danger. For gameplay/story purposes, it makes more sense to assume that the events don't transpire until the players discover them. But once that discovery has been made,
the event is in motion, and should be treated as such. If time stands still even when the player is encountering something that should be urgent, then the game loses the ability to ever create urgency, hurting both gameplay and story.
I am
not advocating for the passage of time to progress storylines where the danger
merely involves a future threat, even if time could be considered a factor for when that threat may arise. For example, when the goblins are trying to find the grove, the amount of time it could take is highly variable, the danger is not imminent, and therefore the main quests would not progress on their own/be time sensitive.
However, if you inform Minthara of the Druid Grove's location, the goblins should not be willing to wait more than, say, two long rests (2 nights) until they move to attack the grove.
Your character's actions took a future threat, and caused it to become imminent. This gives weight to player choice, without causing the world to move on without the player's involvement. Players would therefore still be free to choose their own order for which encounters they wish to experience first, because time does not become a factor without the player's input.
