After lengthy consideration this is what I would like for the resting system in BG3:
- A gold tax in the form of Camping Supplies to discourage long rest spam. Let the game reward you in gold for playing well and saving resources. Tax should be high enough to matter.
- Local resting spots. Abandoned houses, camps, ancient temples, friendly settlements etc. Mostly for immersion to make the world feel real and have a sense of distance and scale. But also for game mechanics, as explained below.
- Fatigue system that prevents you from always backtracking to a safe camp somewhere beyond a realistic distance. If you push deep into a dungeon, wilderness or the Underdark you have to rest there. Basically a fatigue system would effectively limit the radius in which you can operate at full strength and set meaningful intervals for resting.
this leads to...
- Redesign the fast travel system. Remove magical teleportation everywhere and only use waypoints for mundane travel on foot so that fatigue can come into play. Every rest spot / campsite should have a waypoint. Disable teleport to base camp and put it on the actual map and as a regular waypoint.
- Optional random encounters in areas that aren't flagged "safe" in the spirit of BG and D&D would also discourage rest spamming. An increasing chance to be found could work if you spam rests, perhaps.
There is simply no beating around the bush with this one. D&D 5e is designed around Long and Short Rests, attrition and fatigue to it's core. Resting can't be removed or changed from 5e without making a complete mess of all the classes. Accepting this will result in a far better game. You can still remove any resting restrictions on casual difficulties where balance isn't as critical to begin with.
Yeah these are honestly wonderful suggestions. There certainly needs to be profound changes to the rest system as it is. They don't really need to make just one specific camp environment and that's it for all eternity, it would make far more sense to have a few specific camp sites in the game. And character progression shouldn't just be when the characters are at camp.
