Larian designs campaign and it needs ruleset that will make this campaign work well - that means pacing rests and encouraging engagement with mechanics.
I agree, but what they have isn't it.
The purpose of Short Rest in 5E is to give players a way to recharge a bit mid-day so they can get through a few small skirmishes before needing a long rest. If you read the PHB, you see Short Rest is all about HP gain. Only those who need health use up their dice and they roll one dice at a time. So if they need a small boost to top-off their health, no big deal. A properly implemented Short Rest system lets people keep their health topped off (more or less) for quite a few skirmishes.
But BG3's system gives you 2 short rests that are simply insta-heals. Thus staying topped off for several fights is now more difficult shy of using spell slots.
When I played BG3 last year, I thought the food was clever. Taking the time to pull food out of packs and have people eat it is basically what a short rest is supposed to be. It was a bit of an inconvenience, but it was at least natural and gave the items some utility. It also allowed the party to focus their pool of cheap-health on those party members who needed it.
But ... I had forgotten about the short-rest button (Still don't use it to this day to avoid missing content). When I remembered it, I realized the system was OP. But unlike some people who think the problem was the food, I actually think the problem is the short rest button itself.
I would rather have the mechanics of short-rest integrated naturally into the game so that it feels less like table-top and more like what the table top rules were trying to simulate. Let me take control of my "short rests" by... pausing to look in my packs and distribute the food myself. Maybe even change the "Short Rest" button to a "Distribute Food" convenience button to do that part for me. (Any name that doesn't use the word "rest" in it would work). And possibly the most important thing: It would mean only needing 1 rest button. If there is only 1 rest button, we don't have to worry about users getting confused by the various rest types, when and when not to use them and the possibility of "abusing" or "ignoring" the other button.
I loved BG2 because BG2 added conveniences and hid the complexities of D&D (But also let you expose them if you cared). In BG2 when users hit REST, it appeared that everyone healed to 100%. But 3.5E rules didn't insta-heal everyone on rest. Behind the scenes, the game would have the healer repeatedly memorize/rest and cast healing spells on the party as many times as necessary to ensure everyone was topped off and their own spells were replenished. That was a convenience that you could disable in the config but was on by default. Those types of time-saving conveniences have been in cRPGs since the gold box games of the 80s.
But when it comes to resting, Larian is doing the opposite of making things convenient. They are actively putting up hurdles and trying to make things as complicated as possible for reasons I can't even explain. Now we have a rest-toll which requires you to gather camp-supplies (What? You didn't want to loot every single container in the game? Tough luck). And maybe the worst part is they invented a new homebrew rest type called "Partial Rest" which is REST, but only gives you 50% benefit and no short rest. But it doesn't cost camp-supplies. So if you want 100% health, you have to partial rest two times in a row. Once to get 50%, then have your healers heal the party with spells and then partial rest again to recover the healers spells back. More hoops to jump through and to what end? Why is Larian wasting time on this when they could focus on bigger balance issues like Fast Travel from anywhere and being able to Long Rest from anywhere. If anything should require some limited and depleted item to use, it should be the fast-travel system, not the Rest button...
I think many aspects of the game are better than they were a year ago, but resting is not one of them.
I am not a fan of treating the campaign like a creativity toy
I push for options because I know BG3 is trying to cater to a number of groups and I know some will want explicit 5E features like a short rest button. I just hope Larian doesn't forget what made BG2 stand out. There is nothing wrong with adding convenience to a computer game. So why not allow users to choose if they want to be able to eat the food in their packs and have 1 rest button. Or no-food in the game and a short rest and a long rest button. Or if they are struggling, let them have both food and short rest. Options like that seem like the best way to make the most people happy. There could even be some crazy option like adding a resting-toll to the game in combination with a new homebrew resting type for a total of 3 types of rest, all with different behaviors and proper usage times.
I admit, I went a bit overboard with the options, but I was thinking multi-player sessions where Hosts may want to set up some homebrew rules. Relying on mods is a possibility, but getting mods to work in multiplayer requires everyone has the same version of the game and the same version of the mod. I am in a house with a mix of Macs and PCs and I have friends that use Stadia. So how does one host a game that requires mods if it is impossible to install a mod on all the platforms? If it is built into the game, that is not an issue.
