Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Resting and random encounters

Well put and I just want to agree completly!

Personal story: I never really played much rpgs at that time. I played a bit BG1 when my brother got it from the local library, but I didn't get very far.
When BG2 was about to be released, I read in a gaming magazine about it and it intrigued me. Then I palyed it and I loved it. The combat was anoying, but it was a a way to pass time between the story and the banters. For me personally, everything that makes the combat harder or more sluggish takes away from the true beauty of BG: The characters. That is the reason I have a hard time understanding people who want harder battles. Since I personally always got the feeling that there are a lot of rpg with good battle system - but most lack in the character department.
(Fun fact: that gaming magazine also talked about the romance that will be in the game and gave the examples of Jaheira and ...Imoen.)



I actually never played a D&D campaign with random encounters when we rested in the wildernis or during long range traveling. Did run into one during exploration and dungeon crawling though.
The static thing.. It is good and bad.
Yes, it would be better if there where some more randomization for the battles or more non-combat movement. But on the other hand, I do not find the battles overly easy, so I like having multiple chances to plan and aproach the same situation.

I hope it stays this way. Personally never enjoyed 'trying to rest' random encounters in tabletop or in a CRPG. A perfect solution IMO would be a a toggle in the gameplay menu so that those who enjoy can have it and those who don't, don't.

So self contained dungeons with limited (or no) resting? That would require a change to entire structure of the game. Resting can't be tied to events, because what if you decide to leave and do something else? Limiting "in location" doesn't matter because there is fast traveling, and even if it didn't exist players would just have to jog outside.

One could set pre determined spots for resting, but unless you respawn enemies on resting like in Dark Souls it doesn't matter anyway, just adds "again" jog time.

Unless someone things of something brilliant, resting in games like that will always be kinda bad. The best Larian can do is encourage enjoyable pacing of long and short rests. And I personally didn't encounter any issues.

I feel Larian does their best work in scripted events rather than tacking on "sandbox elements". But I've previously suggested using "random encounters" to address the balancing issues with long rest and pickpocketing, while also providing immersion.

1. CAMPING: In larger areas with united enemy forces (ie. goblin village), taking a long rest in midst of wiping out the area would lead to the remaining enemy AI being placed on alert. This would entail anything and everything from reinforcements (approx same xp total to prevent incentivizing xp farming), enemy perception advantage, traps and ambushes. Instead of a frozen, blatantly unresponsive and unimmersive, world - passage of time as well as appropriate reaction to action would be simulated. Long resting would become more of a strategic choice with pros and cons.

2. PICKPOCKETING: Implement a law & order system to pickpocketing (currently totally breaks the risk vs reward mechanic). Introduce a hidden roll (prevent save-scumming) when pickpocketing. This would simulate the offended NPC becoming more suspicious and later reporting the incident. Party would at a later stage be confronted by the law (eg. Flaming Fist shouting I am the law!) or mercenaries and demand to search the party belongings. Cooperating could lead to stolen items being confiscated (possibly opposing rolls investigation vs deception to hide some of the items) and possibly a fine. Resisting could lead to combat and/or later escalation while player being flagged as a criminal which would penalize future interactions with merchants.

One can only dream that one day Larian will value immersion over cheese

That's why I'm not suggesting they necessarily block resting outright most of the time. They obviously can disable quick travel and block the exit temporarily but that would be rather heavy handed. It should probably be done very sparingly.

But if you trigger a combat in certain areas then that should trigger a flag somewhere and if you long rest without having cleared the area then that should trigger a reinforcement event and then the area ends up being a lot harder. That way it doesn't matter if you quick travel away, because the aggro flag is set and when you do come back then there's going to be a consequence. I mean, isn't this also pretty much what any half-decent DM would do, if the party refuses to do anything without first having a long rest?

Or rather you would get an injection of extra XP in a game with a set amount of XP, making long rests in hostile areas a desirable strategy for a quicker progression through levels .

That would be an unfortunate potential side effect, yes. Can't be halped, I don't think.

But you would not really get to high levels all that much faster, not by simply murdering goblins, just like murdering city guards wasn't really a great strategy for reaching higher levels faster in the original games. There's enough experience to go around anyway and there are vastly more interesting ways to earn it than by spending a couple of hours fighting a small legion of goblins. Unless one happens to be looking for that challenge, of course.

Let's be honest, we've probably all done the infinite giant slaughter in Saradush, at least once, but how many of us would regularly leave the computer on overnight to max out experience that way? And that was an infinitely respawning giant worth thousands of experience. All in all, I think certain areas getting reinforcements if you take a long rest before finishing them is a perfectly sensible compromise that provides some incentive for not resting after every fight but also doesn't really force any kind of grief or meaningless busy work onto players.

I would imagine something like this.

First of all, we need a time mechanic. The game currently has no time mechanic and it feels very static. I think a simple "light filter" that changes the look from Dawn / Day / Dusk / Night. wouldn't be too hard.

With time in the game, yes you could short rest as often as you need and gain hit points by spending hit dice the same as we do in table top. A long rest full heal would require enough in game time to pass before you can long rest again. I haven't really broken down how long in real time that should be but, it should be long enough to make it hard to exploit.

Given the fact that Larian decided to use food as resource for resting leads me to believe that we won't get any day / night cycle, leaving the game static and yet another deviation from traditional Baulders Gate and D&D.

How lame.