You are missing the best option: remove resting alltoghether and go back to cooldowns.
Cool downs? 😴
Boring. Pointless. Annoying. I could just go afk for a few minutes, get something to eat and drink, and rest as much as I need. What is the limit? Waiting painstakingly until the cool down is complete.
That's worse than BG1 and 2 and Icewind Dale 1 and 2 where I could rest as often as I wanted as long as I manually ran to the edge of the game map and returned to the inn. At least they had monsters respawn and/or chance random encounters as well to help increase the risk/annoyance factor which helped discourage rest spamming.
No thanks. I'm not asking for much. I want the rest mechanics - both of them - to have meaning and purpose. Right now, Short Rest has none except that it is a tad more convenient than Long Rest for a fraction of the benefits.
I'm just saying, the current mechanics make it so you can LR after every fight for full health and spell slot restoration. Therefore, SR is pointless. LR is encouraged presently and SR is discouraged because it's limited while LR is not.
Why SR when you can LR every time?
Imagine playing a D&D session where after every fight the DM let you LR so you recover fully. This is what it'd be like:
Your quest:. Wipe out the cult of the Dead Three.
You kill the cultists at the entrance. 6 rounds of combat. 36 seconds of time passed in the world of Farrun. Party heads to the inn and sleeps and returns the next night. Cultists never notice their guards at the front entrance were butchered. Party heads down into their lair. Encounter. 4 more cultists. 1 minute encounter. They're dead. Well. "That's enough for today," says Gale. "Let's get some rest. I'm tired.". Sleeps 24 hours. Returns. Still the cult haven't noticed they're guys' bodies lying around. Party continues. Another group. This is 2 bosses. 1 minute, 10 second fight. Shadowheart says, "Well. That's it for me. It's been a long day. Let's get some rest."
This is BG3 currently. Literally, this is what happens to me in the game. And what's more I have rested during playthroughs every time the characters say something just to make sure I don't miss out on dialogues.
I can't even imagine a DM allowing such an idiotic gameplay. No. Once you kill the guards at the entrance, you keep going until the cult is dead. If the PCs are really struggling to get to the end, you give them help via NPCs or you let them rest with some sort of ramifications - ie. The cult discovers the bodies and is on high alert. SOMETHING happens that makes sense.
BG3 is not alone in this. Kingmaker is just as bad, or worse, actually. I literally went into the Stag Lord's base, killed some guys, left, camped on the world map, returned to the Outpost, sold equipment and returned, camped some more on the world map, and then went back into his base. Nothing changed. No one was discovered and no alert. Nothing.
I get it's a video game, but it doesn't matter. If they want this game to be THE D&D game, they need to fix this. Stop making every encounter based on the idea that you'll be fully rested each fight, and encourage SR while discouraging LR. I have created untold numbers of campaigns and modules and so forth. You never build quests where players are able to, and even required to, LR frequently. The whole trick is to build them so that players can adventure as long as possible before a single LR.
