Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Short Rest Poll

OK. After a good deal of thought, and I mean a good deal of thought, I forced myself to remember what it was like when I first played the game - my very first playthrough. Setting aside ALL playthroughs since, here is what I came to the conclusion about:

Long Rest as is worked just fine. Why? Because on the initial playthrough only, I was fooled into thinking that Long Rest really did matter. I believed that I couldn't Long Rest often because I was going to turn into a mind flayer.

Now, that said, these are the things I remember thinking:

OMG. The first fight against the 3 intellect devourers was brutal and I HAD to Long Rest afterwards, just like the original tooltip suggested (for it used to suggest a long rest at that point, while now it suggests a short rest). Yes, the intellect devourers have since been nerfed into booty easy half-baked squishy brain thugs that can't do anything intellect devourers are supposed to do, but it is truly no longer as difficult and thus wouldn't likely require a long rest at this point.

Back to what I remember:

Still. I was actually scared to long rest, even though I knew I had to and figured the game wouldn't tell me to do it if I couldn't. So, I did, and I had Shadowheart scold me for doing so, but I was like, "Shut up, Wench! I nearly died. If we run into even more of those, we're totally dead. I know we might turn at any moment, but I have no freaking choice."

On we went the next day, and I was thankful for no signs of turning. We ran into Astarion, Gale, etc., got to the Dank Crypt with Gimblebock, chased him off, made our way inside, fought the mercenaries, and nearly died again. In fact, I think it took me like 3 times to get through that part without game over. Mari and Barton were brutal, and exploding surfaces! OH MY! And I had to long rest again.

Still, I did it as infrequent as possible. It wasn't because the game limited me, but because the story tricked me into thinking that I had to rest very little. As a result, I got a few dialogue cutscenes, but I missed Gale's Mirror Image and Go to Hell one on that initial playthrough. If I remember correctly.

The point is, in truth, the story does discourage long resting and encourages using short rests and whatever else you can use to keep going. So, in that regard, there is a sort of limit to resting and Larian does discourage long resting in some way.

BUT... and I must stress that it is a BIG BUT. Once I realized as a player that I'd been duped, I remember feeling very angry. Especially on subsequent playthroughs when I realized I'd missed some fun character development cutscenes, I was SUPER angry. That's my favorite part of games like this - the character development and interaction. Finding out I missed some just because I actually did what the story guided me to do, that made me REALLY unhappy.

And also BUT... and I must stress that it is a BIG BUT... I have never liked the short rest, quick click, kinda sorta heal functionality. It is SO much less strategic and intuiative than Hit Dice, and it strips short rest of many of its primary functions - such as Wizard Arcane Recovery ONLY being able to be done during a short rest. And as mentioned above and multiple times over and over again, limiting short rests to 2 per day really nerfs classes like the Warlock. You get 1 to 2 spell slots per short rest, which is only 6 total spell slots at most per day for like 10 levels - I can't remember exactly how many off the top of my head before you get your 3rd spell slot. Meanwhile, a Wizard will have a total of like 6 spell slots per day by the time s/he reaches what? Level 3? And the Warlock doesn't get that many other good perks as a class to make them worth much as a fighter or rogue or anything else. Other classes are also going to be nerfed because of this - druid being one of them because Wild Shape is also reset during short rests, as are fighter special abilities.

But Hit Dice effectively limits short rests while still allowing players to short rest as much as they want per day. Hit Dice would GREATLY encourage short rests over long while still keeping players from spamming short rest too much. "How?" you might ask.

First-time players will be tricked into thinking they shouldn't long rest, just as I was. So, they need an alternative and will naturally find short rest to be a good one. The tooltips now promote short rest after the intellect devourer fight, so first-time players will naturally use it first. Yay! Good. At level 2, which they should be at by the time of the intellect devourer fight, they'll have 2 HD per character. Click Short Rest. Menu pops up. There are 2 eight-sided dice for Shadowheart on the menu and 2 whatever dice for the MC. You click on one of the 2 for the MC, and the tooltips could tell you, "This heals you 1dX number of HP. You could use one or both HD right now. However, keep in mind that every time you Long Rest, you only get half as many HD back as your character level. So, at level 2, you will only get 1 HD back when you Long Rest up to your total of 2 HD. Use them wisely. Also keep in mind, though, that many special abilities and spell slots are reset when you short rest, depending on your class, while some classes only have their spell slots and special abilities reset during a long rest."

Afterwards, they could even have Shadowheart's, "I'm not sure this is such a good idea," cutscene dialogue play out. After all, she's not sure a short rest is even good with the tadpoles in your head. "We need to find a healer," speech makes sense. Why NOT have her say it during a short rest after so little time has passed since you crashed?

And, they warn you up front that you can get healed via HD during a short rest, and you will have some characters reset their special abilities and spell slots while others will not. Thus, you know immediately that there are limits to your resting, both short and long.

You continue. You short rest again after meeting Gale because you're still afraid to long rest because of the story - you have tadpoles in your head. You short rest a second time and use NO HD. You just did it to reset your special abilities and spell slots for some of your classes. Great. Fine. Mission complete. Good job Larian.

They could then have another dialogue triggered. Gale's mirror image scene or go to hell dialogue. Both of these begin to clue the player in that something is different with the tadpole. Maybe they CAN long rest and get away with it. After all, Gale's dialogues - both of them - and especially the Mirror Image one, imply that your tadpoles are special and you remain "blissfully unchanged."

What does this do? This lets the player know, instead of later blindsiding them, that they can long rest a bit more frequently without being so afraid to do so. After playing through a second time and beyond, players shouldn't have that same feeling I did that they were tricked and deceived and also that they missed out on content. Larian is having Gale actually warn them almost right away that they maybe can relax a bit and long rest.

But the game still warns you not to long rest too much because you could still turn at any moment. They're just letting you know it won't take hours. So you still kinda limit yourself. Shoot! To this day we don't really know how the finished product is going to manage this. None of us truly knows if Larian is going to have a set number of Long Rests are allowed before you have some sort of Dream Lover sequence even if you don't use illithid powers. They still might do something like that. We don't know. So it is still a legit method to discourage long rests.

Now, to make sure you didn't miss it, what I'm saying, in summary, is that long rest is still discouraged via story. If they added Hit Dice as the mechanic to limit short rest, and removed the 2 per day, this would encourage more short resting which in turn would naturally discourage long resting. With the story and an encouragement to short resting, people would naturally not long rest as much. Add food to it in more limited quantities, and I think it would really discourage long rest spamming and encourage more short resting.

Again, let me be clear, short rest via Hit Dice is NOT that complicated, time consuming, or difficult. It is a very easy mechanic to manage. You click Short Rest Button. Window pops up. Each party member is shown in the window with their Hit Dice. You click on the Hit Dice one at a time. It rolls and heals you that many HP (+ your Constitution modifer). YOU get to decide how much each character heals each Short Rest. And let me be clear. It's a QUICK dice roll - as in instant. Not the d20 animation style you get on skill checks but a - click on HD and get result instantly to your character - event. Not even a second transpires so you can click on 20 HDs in like 2 seconds and be done, if you wanted.

How hard is it? Let's count how many clicks. 4 party members at level 4. Click Short Rest Button. Click Hit Die for Character 1. Maximum 4 clicks for that character. Click Hit Die for Character 2-4. Max 4 clicks per character. Add a button for Arcane Recovery. That's maybe one extra click or 2 for wizards. Maximum number of clicks per Short Rest? 20 at level 4 if you count clicking that you're finished - and this is only if you have like a wizard with you. How hard is it to click 20 times? How long does that REALLY take you? And that's MAXIMUM number of clicks. You could short rest and click 4 times and be done... Or 3 times... Or 8... Or 2.

What are the benefits of this system?

1. More special ability and spell slot resets for classes like Warlock, Fighter, Monk, Druid, etc.
2. Arcane Recovery is now done via short rests, making short rests more valuable to wizards.
3. Short rests are encouraged while long rests are not needed as much. Thus, the adventuring day is extended instead of having people adventure 5 minutes and take the rest of the day off.
4. YOU get to decide how much your characters heal every short rest. You don't just have 2 per day, and if 1 or 2 characters didn't need to short rest, so what. It's not a wasted short rest. You could just have 2 characters heal and save the Hit Dice for the other two characters until they need it.
5. You can short rest a lot, switch out to still fully rested characters who haven't used Hit Dice, and continue your adventure with your still fully rested characters while leaving those you've spent Hit Dice for back at camp. Thus, you CAN utilize your WHOLE party more. You can switch out characters and still continue to short rest that day and receive benefits for it. In current game, if I've spent my 2 short rests with one party of 4, and I go to camp and switch out some of them, I can't short rest anymore.
6. Dialogues can be switched to short rest triggered dialogues pretty easily. Why? Because they could still have you go to camp during a short rest, and still have the dialogues they've already worked so hard on take place at camp. The only difference would be that it isn't night. It's day now when they take place. But, the benefit is that you wouldn't miss a lot of those dialogues that you miss now if you don't long rest frequently. In other words, by tying the dialogues to short rest, you have a much better chance that people will trigger them. And, just in case people skip short rests and just do long, they could still be tied to long rest too - so tied to both so players don't miss them.

So, again, to recap. What would they really need to change?

1. Short Rests trigger dialogues.
2. Remove the limit of 2 Short Rests per day.
3. Add the Hit Dice mechanic to Short Rests.
4. Send the party to camp for a Short Rest so dialogues can be done. (If they don't have to do this, I'm good with that. I just put this in here because I figure they probably would want to do this to make their lives easier. I am ALL for dialogues happening outside of camp on the road. I'd prefer it, actually.)
5. Make Arcane Recovery only available during a Short Rest as a simple, extra little button you press right near the Hit Dice buttons.
6. Limit food more (and this is a maybe. If they keep food as a limit for long resting, they really do need to limit it more).

What I'm saying is, this would NOT really be a major overhaul on Larian's part. Sure. On subsequent playthroughs, you might be like, "But I could long rest without limitation." But I will say that many have made some valid arguments in this regard. It is safer to have long rest unlimited so players don't get frustrated and soft locked than it is to try to figure out a decent long rest limitation that would work. The story does do a good job prompting players to long rest infrequently, and if they tied dialogues to short rest, it would work much more to prompt players to use short rests as their go-to instead of long.

Heck. If I knew I would get more character development if I short rest frequently, I'd be short resting ALL the time. No question. That alone would be a huge motivation to me to short rest instead of long. And the Hit Dice mechanic would also promote this for me because I could short rest more than 2 times a day AND I control who heals each rest. It isn't just a quick heal button you only get to use twice max per day and sucks to be you if only one or two characters needed it.

Seriously. It's a few clicks, people. A few clicks. It's not some hugely time consuming mechanic. Watch a Solasta short rest video and see for yourself. Even at higher levels, it's not a painful mechanic. It works REALLY well, and I can't stress enough how much I like the fact that with Hit Dice I am in control of how much each character heals and when.