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

Interesting but sadly uneffective.

Marking places as "danger zones" ...
Adds only few minutes (at top ... i mean you can get from Waukeen's Rest to te Beach in "few minutes" :-/ so more like few dozen seconds) of walking for everyone who will either want, or need rest ... i know it might seem like "acceptable cost" for those of you who would like to restrict resting ... but for everyone else it is just anoying nonsence that dont really restrict anything. :-/

Repopulating areas ...
That would indeed solve the problem with abusing resting ...
Sadly for the cost of potentialy abusing looting, exping, and wich is worst in my opinion, potentialy making the game unplayable for some people ...
Imagine situation, lets say you go kill Minthara, Ragzlin and Gut ... but you are attacked in camp on sight (for example bcs you knocked out the Twins) ... so whole Goblin base is fighting you, for you as a player its a tough battle (this is still one of conditions, so dont involve your personal skill or experiences ... right now you are player who have problems here) so in order to get through that battle, you spend all your resources (now you see why that condition was there) ...
Now, you can either go fight whole interier of Goblin Base without single spellslot ... or you rest ...
So you rest ... and the camp is full again ...
And you once again get to the point where you have to spend all your resources in order to just survive ...
See how easily you can end in infinite loop?

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Im affraid the only way to please people who demand Long Rest restrictions would be to tie them to the story itself ...
Wich is sadly nerely impossible in game as this one.

But i could imagine it as some popup message saying: "You just arived to Druids Grove, would you like to rest?" ...
And until we make some major quest progress in that particular place ... aka save Halsin, or either redeem or kill Kagha (read it as: Move futher in the story of that particular place, to mimic some sense of time) the message will not show again.

Resting spots would be clearly determined and marked on map ... each would work for single uses (unless renewed by story progression)
And there would be NO other way to get Long Rest, than this.

Short rests would obviously become unlimited and they could even be free.

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Personaly i believe the best compromise here would be either setting amount fo resources needed for Long Rests ...
Or even better, make using food for Long Rest optional, so players who would not like it would need to just work with camp supplies ... and strictly reduce their existence ...
If you so happen to get into tight spot ... you allways have option to simply switch food back on for that one night, and then turn it off again.

It would also give us option for an Achievment ... i would call it Hungry Adventurer

I agree, unfortunately. The more I think about this topic, the more true it becomes in my mind. Repopulating would frustrate players, myself included. Having to refight and refight my way through areas... No thanks.

Also, I must say, the "make people walk to return to a place to safely rest" thing is also not appealing. Like I said somewhere, Icewind Dale. Didn't stop me from returning to the inn to rest. It was just annoying having to backtrack all the time just so I could proceed.

Random Encounters also don't really work. I mean, again, after some greater consideration, I have to agree. They would just annoy and frustrate, just like they did in BG1 and 2 and Icewind Dale. I try to sleep, interrupted, kill enemies, spam sleep again, interrupted, fight enemies, spam sleep again, over and over until I sleep. Did it stop me? Nope. Just annoying.

That's why I'm saying, make short rest more important and valuable so long rest is less desirable to spam a lot. That's the only solution I can think of right now.

OK. Imagine this: Crash on beach. Fight devourers. Multiplayer 4 players. Player 1 lost 4 HP. Player 2 lost 3. Player 3 lost 7. Player 4 lost 5. Level up!

Tool tip pops up: "Short rest can be done at any time, as much as you want, by pressing the Short Rest icon. This will fast travel you to one of the camps for safe resting. Short Rest costs 1 Camping Supply per point of HP you wish to recover - minimum 1 Camping Supply per character. Each character spends Camping Supplies individually and can spend as much or as little as they wish - minimum 1. That character must either have Camping Supplies in their inventory or in their own personal Traveler's Chest at Camp. In Single Player Mode, all characters share the same inventory and Traveler's Chest at Camp. Short rests also reset various class spell slots and abilities. For example, the Warlock has all spell slots replenished after every Short or Long Rest. The Fighter's Action Surge and Second Wind and other later abilities, the Druid's Wild Shape, the Cleric's Channel Divinity powers, and the Monk's Ki also reset after a Short or Long Rest. Besides this, a Short or Long Rest is required to Level Up your characters, a Wizard can use Arcane Recovery ONLY during a Short Rest to recover some spent spell slots, and many dialogues are only triggered during a Short or Long Rest."

"For Long Rest, all abilities and spell slots are reset, and all HP is restored. Many conditions applied to your characters will also be removed during a Long Rest. A Long Rest ends the adventuring day, meaning your party is resting for the remainder of the day and starting again in the morning. Long Rest costs 5 Camping Supplies per Character Level at the Camp. So, if you have 2 characters at the camp at Level 2, the cost is 20 Camping Supplies (5 x 4 Character Levels). If you have a party of 4 at Level 2, the cost is 40 Camping Supplies (5 x 8 Character Levels). The cost is steeper because of the additional benefits of Long Rest."

So, with our example, each player gets the Camping Supplies window and chooses how much they want to heal up during a Short Rest. Player 1 spends 4 Camp Supplies in his own inventory to heal up to full health. Player 2 spends 3. Player 3 spends 4, leaving 3 HP loss. Player 4 spends 3, leaving 2 HP loss. Players exit camp after Short Rest, appropriate abilities are reset: such as Second Wind, Warlock Spell Slots, etc. As the Wizard is exiting camp, she is asked, "Do you want to use Arcane Recovery?" If Yes, the Wizard can then choose how many spell slots from their maximum Arcane Recovery pool, that they wish to recover. So, at Level 2, the Wizard could recover 1 Level 1 spell slot. In options, a player can turn off the popup, choosing to trigger Arcane Recover themselves during a Short Rest without having the reminder - if they feel it's annoying.

Later, players choose to Long Rest after fighting their way past Mari and Barton and company. They now have Party of 4 customs, Shadowheart, Astarion, Gale and Lae'zel, because they picked up Lae'zel before going to the crypt. Hmmm. Do they really need to keep all these characters around? The cost is going to be 5 times he total Character Level. That's a steep price for characters they will NEVER use because with a Party of 4 customs (based on present game anyway), they can NEVER take any of the origin characters in their party... ever. So why keep them around? They'll just leech off of you. So, you take a Long Rest and boot those puppies from your camp. Camping that night for a party of 4 Level 2 characters would be 40 Camping Supplies. If you keep the others with you, it's 80 Camping Supplies. Yeah. Time to boot the excess baggage.

The basic Camping Supplies cost for Short Rest severely pushes players towards Short Rest while the higher cost of Camping Supplies for Long Rest discourages frequent Long Resting. As a party, if I need to recover 19 HP and my abilities and some spells, I can spend 19 Camping Supplies as opposed to 40. At later levels, this becomes even more pronounced as the cost for camping during Long Rest would be even greater. 4 Level 8 characters would be 160 Camping Supplies per Long Rest, but if you only need to restore maybe 30 HP as a whole party, that would be only 30 Camping Supplies for a Short Rest; a considerable difference. And, if they do actually listen to a lot of us and increase party size to 6, the costs become even more. You might spend 40 Camping Supplies for a Short Rest for a Party of 6 Level 5's, but 150 for a Long Rest.

Maybe 5 Camping Supplies per Character Level is too much for some players. Provide a Long Rest Camping Supplies Cost slider that reduces the cost from 5 per Character Level to 4 or 3 - 3 being minimum so there is at least SOME cost to Long Resting that would maybe still encourage Short Rest at least a bit more frequently than Long.

With Tool Tips that explain the details more, and are worded to encourage Short Rest more than long, and with Camp Supply Costs being less severe for Short as opposed to Long, players would be far more inclined, I would think, to Short Rest more and Long Rest less. It also encourages players to boot party members they aren't using or don't plan to use. It makes camp management a bit more immersive, and it makes food you pick up A LOT more valuable. With as much food as they're dropping currently in the game for players to pick up, this would truly be no big deal. You could likely Short Rest multiple times in the beginning and still Long Rest a few times before reaching the grove.

And, I almost forgot to tweak this idea a bit from previous mentions of it. No cost for extras in the camp. Yeah, upon further consideration, Volo, Scratch, Halsin, Owlbear Cub, etc. shouldn't cost a thing. If you aren't taking them with you to adventure, restoring their HP or spell slots, they shouldn't cost a thing. Let them find their own food.

Anyway, this is what I think Larian should do. (Will post in Megathread also.)

BG1/2's resting system without random encounter and dangerous/safe area would have been stupid and uninterresting as hell. Just like BG3's resting system is.
On top of that it would have had a lot of bad consequences on the game (exploration, management, roleplaying, world building,...)

I won't argue about your comparison but I disagree with a lot of words in this quote (i.e "don't make sense", "annoying", "somewhere")

All I'm saying in that regard is that was my experience. The random encounters and forcing me to backtrack painstakingly to Long Rest did absolutely nothing to stop me from Long Resting. It just made the game more annoying. Likewise, I'm afraid that it'd do the same exact thing with BG3. People will still backtrack and still Long Rest whether you have Random Encounters up the wazoo or whether you force people to backtrack without Fast Travel. I would, to be quite honest. If I'm going after the Hag, for example, and I'm half dead, I'm not going to continue on to fight the hag. I'm going to backtrack as far as I have to in order to rest safely. Then I'll go after the hag because, practically speaking, the hag is one of the toughest fights in EA. Beating her without a full health/spell slot arsenal is suicide unless you use gimmicks.

I'm just saying, we need something different to manage this, and that's, again, why I think promoting Short Rest usage and making it far more appealing, rather than restricting Long Rest more, would cause players to naturally use Short Rest more and Long Rest less.

That said, I just tested out the Camping Supplies that you get from the start of the game. By the Gods! They could make each Short Rest 5 Camping Supplies per HP restored and Long Rest 10 times Character Levels at Camp and you'd still have enough Camping Supplies to Short Rest a thousand times and Long Rest at least a dozen (not literally).

I counted 325-ish Camping Supply Points by the time I reached the Dank Crypt (after getting past Gimblebock and crew.) I Short Rested once and healed 10 HP between Shadowheart and my Wizard. I spent 1 Spell Slot. 325! That's insane.

That said, 200 of those are from a Camping Supply pack that comes with each character to start with. That's gotta go. That's too much. That's 40 each character, and including your own, there are 5 characters prior to the grove. You don't need that. Take those away, because it doesn't make sense to start with food after you've just escaped with practically nothing from a crashing nautiloid, and you still find 125 Camping Supplies amidst fish, fruit, etc. That's plenty for low level using the Camping Supplies Cost I was drumming up.

I short rested and it would have cost me only 10 Camping Supplies (using what I suggested). That's still 115 Camping Supplies should I feel the need to Long Rest. Even with all 5 characters at level 2, that's only 50 Camping Supplies to Long Rest. So, I could Short Rest twice in total AND Long Rest twice by the time we reach the Dank Crypt. Not sure you need more than that, for crying out loud, even if you totally suck at the game.

BUT, that said, even IF they still give players that much food, knowing that it costs 50 Camping Supplies per Long Rest for a camp full of 5 level 2 characters, chances are, players are going to say, "Hmmm. I don't want to do this too much. Maybe I should use a Short Rest instead. You never know how much food I'll find later."

So, I think it'd work. I'm going to continue to play the game and drop different food items every time I Short Rest to continue to see how many Camping Supplies I would spend if I Short Rest using the 1 Camping Supply per HP healed suggestion.

And then, I'm going to drop extra Camping Supplies when I Long Rest, based on the suggestion, to see how that works in the long run.

And I'm going to drop all the Camping Supply Packs. 40 Camping Supplies per is over the top. Maybe on Easy Mode, that would be good, but not on Normal or harder. With that much food, what's the freaking point of Camping Supplies at all?

And what if a player is resting too much and have to find/buy food ? Is that better than walking in a safe area ? It is even worse in my opinion.
On top of that, it's absolutely impossible to balance the supplies with such a map design.

Being able to rest as much as we can (like in the old games as you said) is absolutely not the problem imo.
The problem is the complete absence of any need to manage its resources.


I cannot buy the argument that random encounters during rests are soooooooo annoying. It happens A LOT - way too much - when you travel in many games, which often annoy me a lot too...
But not when you rest, except if you're extremely unlucky and get 3 of them in a row (which happened a very few times during the 15+ full BG1/2 playthrough I did)

An average of 4 combats of 5 minutes for 20 hours of gameplay won't reduce anyone's appeal for the game.
But managing your ressources would matter a bit, the world would feel more alive, the decision to press the long rest buttons would be more meaningfull and it would add a bit more tension/unforeseen events to your adventure. Only pros.

That's how it worked in older games and that's how it works in actual games. The unforeseen events makes you manage your ressources.
Limitations on top of these events may at best improve the system (Solasta because of its linear maps), but may also be boring has hell (PoE when you cannot find a camp supply).


More short rest / long rest would make the short rest based classes and features way more powerfull. 2 short rests / long rest in a very good balance in my opinion.

Yeah. This totally works. I Short Rested twice. Then I used potions to heal but counted them as if I Short Rested. I made it all the way to the grove without Long Resting at all, and I dropped less than 30 Camping Supplies to symbolize that I'd "spent them" to Short Rest, 1 Camping Supply per HP restored. So, in the end, I still had 95 Camping Supplies - unless I miscounted and forgot to add a few (this without the Camping Supply Packs that I dropped because people who escaped from a mind flayer pod should probably not be carrying around so much food, AND I don't need it).

So, that means that my party of 5 (5 in the camp, because I'm doing a party of 4 playthrough right now), just went to Level 3. So, if I Long Rest now, that's 15 Character Levels at my camp, so it would cost 75 Camping Supplies to Long Rest. I simulated a Short Rest via potions twice, so that would be 4 Short Rests needed to reach the grove where you can buy more supplies if you need to. This means that if I played a Warlock, all spell slots reset 4 times, and if I'm a fighter, my Action Surge and Second Wind would be reset each of those times, provided I had the abilities. If, in future state, I played a Monk, my Ki would likewise be reset that many times. So, that makes those classes so much more awesome because they are having their abilities reset more often.

Note: I think the grove should be the first place where you can buy Camping Supply Packs that are 40 Camping Supplies per pack. That would work rather well. 2 Packs would provide players with a Long Rest for a party of 5 at camp at Level 3.

They're not that expensive AND you continue to find lots of food throughout the game AND the Ranger and Druid classes can cast Goodberry, which would help to cut down on the cost of Camping Supplies that you have to find/buy, because they'd also count as Camping Supplies. I think that's more than reasonable.

As for spell slots, my Mage has 2 left and Shadowheart has 1 Level 2 slot, so we were able to reach the grove with spell slots left, even. I'm planning on trying to finish the grove with harpy fight and secret tunnels fight without Long Resting, if I can help it. Then take a Long Rest AFTER the grove is cleared.

To summarize, 4 Short Rests would be all I needed to get to the grove, 0 Long Rests, and 30 Camping Supplies if during Short Rests 1 HP restored = Camping Supply. Could I have taken Long Rests? Yes, but not many. At lower levels, it would have cost less, but at higher, the cost becomes limiting, making it so you don't just Long Rest more than once or twice at most before you reach the grove.

Hmmm. The Random Encounters interrupting my resting happened to me a LOT, especially in Icewind Dale. Sometimes, I remember triggering a random encounter 3-6 times before finally getting a chance to rest. Each time, I slaughtered them easily enough with very little issues. So what good did it do? Nothing but annoy me. "Another random encounter?" I'd ask myself, and then painstakingly fight through it.

That said, I do agree that if Random Encounters were done well, it would enhance the game and it could be used for Long Rest discouragement in certain locations like the Hag's Lair. However, I fear that it won't be done well. Then we'll be stuck with annoying mob fights that mean very little because people will still spam Long Rests.

Yes, more Short Rests make Fighters/Monks/Warlocks more powerful, but that's the thing that makes their classes more important. They can reset their abilities with a Short Rest while the OP Damage Wielding Mage has to wait for a Long Rest. Once Mages can cast Fireballs and other high damage spells, THAT'S when they shine. At these earlier, baby levels, they don't shine as much, but give them more spell slots and more powerful spells at level 5 and above, and suddenly you'll see that they WAY overpower Fighters/Monks/Warlocks etc. UNLESS those classes can reset their abilities with Short Rests more frequently.

Take a Level 6 Spellcaster. In Tabletop, I have Gale leveled up to 6. He has 2 Level 3 spell slots, 3 Level 2, and 4 Level 1. He can cast Fireball, Fly, Haste, Lightning Bolt, or Vampiric Touch up to 2 times per day. He can do Dragon's Breath, Blur, Gust of Wind or Mirror Image 3 times per day. He can Cast Find Familiar, Magic Missile, Ray of Sickness, Burning Hands, Detect Magic, Identify, Mage Armor, Silent Image, Thunderwave or Witchbolt 4 times per day. That's 9 powerful spells per day, and with Arcane Recovery, that could add 3 more spell slots, for a total of 12 powerful spells per day plus he has an unlimited number of Cantrip uses, knowing: Fire Bolt, Light, Poison Spray, Prestidigitation, Ray of Frost and Toll the Dead (some of those he's able to do because of items he picked up.)

So 12 powerful spells a day and an unlimited number of Cantrips.

Now, let's see what Vexir, my Battlemaster has. 1 Action Surge and 1 Second Wind per Short Rest. With BG3 system, that's only 2 of each per day. Not a whole lot per day. She also has 4 Superiority Dice, so 4 per short rest, 8 per day. Done. That's it. Are these as powerful as a Fireball being cast twice per day, or a Lightning Bolt? They're powerful, but against a single enemy here and a single enemy there. It's nothing compared to the Mage's 12 spell slots casting Firebals, Magic Missiles, Burning Hands, Dragon's Breath...

The balance in the system is actually based on classes like Fighter and Monk and Warlock being able to use Short Rests a bunch of times per day.

Look at Wyll. At level 6, he gets a whopping 2 Spell Slots. That's it. TWO. He doesn't even get a 3rd spell slot until Level 11. If he can't short rest and regain those 2 spell slots more frequently than twice a day, Wyll can't do jack with magic. He's screwed compared to the other classes.

Same with Wynari, my druid. She doesn't get her spells reset unless you long rest. She gets 10 spell slots total at Level 6. She doesn't get Arcane Recovery. She doesn't get Channel Divinity that resets per short rest. She gets Wild Shape that resets every Short Rest. So, she's worse off than a mage because she only gets 10 Spell Slots and 2 Wild Shape Resets per day. Again, one of the best things about a Druid's Wild Shape ability is that it resets every Short Rest. So, Druid players should be able to spam Wild Shape if they want and take a short rest after to recover it. That's one of the wonderful things about that ability.

So, I absolutely think that they need to unlimit Short Rests in terms of how many you can do a day, and instead limit Short and Long via the Camping Supplies. The Camping Supplies are already in the game. All they'd have to do now is adjust the cost for Long Rests and give Short Rests a Supply Cost so that Long Rests cost way more - thus making Short Rests more beneficial to take on a more frequent basis.

I'm not sure if unlimited short rests are a good idea. As someone who loves playing warlocks and multiclassing in DnD, I can assure you there are crazy shenanigans you can do if there is no limit on the amount of short rests you can take between long rests.
In my opinion the best way to discourage long rests would be to make it so that some things in the world happen based on the amount of long rests you took while still only allowing a fixed amout of short rests per long rest. In my opinion that would even increase the immersion. RIght now everyone tells me to hurry, but if I spend 10 days in a row only sleeping and eating, nothing really happens.
You could also adjust the game difficulty that way. On higher difficulties you'd have to do more encounters per day if you want to complete them all.

I'd rather not. I like to play at my own pace and hate being rushed by games. What's worse, such a system causes the game to force you to play it in a specific order.
The current system works fine. You can rest as long as you want and if you don't reach the burning inn, it will burn forever, but if you get to the location, you have a limited time to do something. Of course, main quests shouldn't have any time limit. Of course, main quests shouldn't have any time limit.

But that's the point. Warlocks are supposed to be able to cast less times during a single combat but replenish spells slots more easily after.

Anyway, I think this is the way to go. Encourage short rest. Discourage long. Then people will naturally long rest less and it won't feel as much like you're adventuring 10 minutes and resting 24 hours.

What's the problem if people spam long rest if you can avoid it BUT still have to manage a bit your ressources ?
Is that a problem in BG1/2 (or IWD) that you can rest everywhere ? I don't think so.

Well done or not is just a matter a numbers. I guess it's also not hard to tell the game "if you already have a random encounter during your attempt to rest, you cannot have another one right after".

Unlimited short rests would mean unlimited spellslots/day for a warlock.
On top of that, players would probably miss a lot of camps events. I really don't understand how it could be a solution, even if I totally support your suggestion to make supplies necessary for short rests too (at the moment food supply is only an "inventory management mechanic" and nothing more interresting).

I'm just going to carry this over to the Megathread so we're not having two different discussions about the same thing on two different threads.

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