Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback A brand new suggestion to limit long rests

Why we need restrictions on resting.

Simply put : balance. And before I get assimilated with a min-maxer : no, I'm not saying it should be absolutely impossible to find some objectively better builds or strategies. I would just like the game not to be so-obviously unbalanced that it's hard not to notice.

The skills available in DnD 5E have different levels of power. And 5E uses an age-old technique to balance these : skills have different costs, so that the most powerful skills can be used fewer times, before you get a "full refresh" (which, in DnD, takes the form of a Long Rest, and corresponds narratively to the end of a day, or at least an 8h period without danger or effort).

Putting no restrictions on Long Rests means nearly-completely removing the concept of resource cost, and this means players can use all the best skills all the time, rendering the low-cost skills obsolete (as well as messing with the balance between classes).

It would be possible to modify the 5E ruleset in such a way that Long Rest no longer exists (mechanically) and all skills are fully available at the beginning of each fight. You would "just" need to revise the power of each existing skill (spells included) to account for the increased availability of all of them. It would be a huge endeavour of course, but it would be theoretically possible.

However, Larian started BG3's Early Access with much fewer modifications than that, and nearly all of their modifications were breaking balance fairly hard. Also, from what I have heard about D:OS2, Larian is not simply good at balancing a ruleset, even when they create it. In view of this, I'd rather have them follow the "if it ain't broke, don't break it" philosophy and stick to the 5E blueprint as closely as possible.

So, like in 5E, Long Rest should be restricted in some way.



Current restrictions on Rests.

For Short Rest, that's already done well. We can take only 2 Short Rest before needing a Long Rest, as per the 5E recommendations.

For Long Rest, restrictions are still essentially non-existent.

(Note : strictly speaking, Larian made one change to Long Rest since the first Early Access version, with the addition of a food requirement. But it has contributed nothing to restricting long rest, while certainly making the UI interaction required to take a Long Rest more tedious. If Larian intends to limit our usage of Long Rest this way, then this is a case of balancing by Hostile/Unpleasant Design. Needless to say, it is a really, really poor design approach.)

So we mainly need to think about Long Rests.



The suggestion : Long Rest unavailable in dangerous areas.

One issue with the way Long Rest works in tabletop DnD is that it has narrative and time implications. An 8h period passes when you Long Rest. But BG3 is a (AAA) video game, and it struggles with the very concept of time (which negatively impacts immersion, but that's another issue). Also, the game world is utterly static : patrolling enemies will not react to finding bodies we left behind.

While these are genuine problems that will hopefully be addressed eventually, I think the following idea could go a long way to restricting access to Long Rest, and be effective immediately.

Mark some maps/areas as Dangerous. When the party is on such a Dangerous Area, they can't take a Long Rest. These maps are functionally the "dungeons". Examples include Ilyn Toth's cellar, the spider cavern, the goblin camp/fortress. And ideally, the party would also be prevented from taking a Short Rest if there is an enemy nearby.

From a Dangerous Area, the party can walk back (or fast-travel) to a previously visited safe area, to get a Long Rest. But doing this will repopulate the dangerous map with enemies. This way, the party has to beat the whole map in one go. Unless the map is built as a rather big area, and contains a few Safe Spots where Short/Long Rest is possible.

Why this is interesting :

• It explicitly restricts Long Rest. So it respects balance between skills and classes. It forces players to think about whether to expand more resources now, or keep them for later.
• It makes sense within the world. (You can't expect 8h of being left alone if there are Goblins patrolling in their fortress, or spiders hunting in their cavern.)

Difficulty considerations.

Of course, some players will not want to have to go through an entire dungeon/map without a Long Rest, and prefer an easier experience.

That's fine. All that's needed is a simple difficulty option : a parameter "Rest Is Possible In Dangerous Areas", which players could be set to "Yes" or "No".


Acknowledgements.

Credit should go where credit is due. This idea is not mine. Other RPGs use it, but I first heard it described by Nick Pechenin, Lead System Designer at Larian Studios. He was saying in July 2020 that this is how they were planning to do it. I'm not sure why they're not using this idea in the EA version, given that it was already implemented in an earlier version. (In this same interview, Nick was also explaining why Larian made the good choice of dropping team-based initiative and switching to creature-based initiative. I'm also not sure why Larian has stopped communicating on their design thoughts ever since Early Access started.)

Anyway, Larian, if somehow you receive this feedback, I wanted you to know that your initial idea isn't bad. Feel free to use the Early Access period to try on players (with a difficulty option to disable it, for those who don't want any restriction).