Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Rest Mechanics/ Camping Supplies - Take 1 million

The Point: To create a resting mechanic that makes sense from a story perspective and is strategic; providing value for both long and short rest, as well as value in the use of items such as potions, scrolls, etc.

NOT the Point: Not trying to hard limit resting. In fact, quite the opposite. We don't want resting to be limited to X number of rests, and I personally want even short rest to be not hard limited.

The Suggestion:

- No hard limits to long or short rest. In other words, you don't just have X number of short rests per day, nor do you have X number of long rests per area, or anything similar. This is at the party level, meaning no hard limits for the party as a whole, like it is currently with 2 Short Rests per party per day.
- Short Rest Camp Supply Cost: 2 Camping Supplies per character in the party per Short Rest.
- Short Rest HP Recovery Limit: Similar to Hit Dice but simpler, each individual character has 1 use of HP Recovery per character level. So, you click on the Short Rest button and a small menu pops up. Each character has HP Recovery button. The number of remaining uses is shown on the button. Click the button once and the number goes down 1. That specific character alone is healed a number of HP equal to their average Hit Dice value + Constitution Bonus. Example: MC has Con +2 and their Hit Dice is 1d8. They are level 2.
They click the HP Recovery button once and heal 7 HP. They now have 1 use left. They click it again and heal another 7 HP. That character only is out of HP Recovery uses. The party can still short rest however much they want, and the entire party would still recover things like Action Surge, etc., but that particular character who has used up their HP Recovery uses, would no longer heal HP during any other short rests that day. As with Hit Dice mechanics, you only regain 1/2 your Short Rest HP Recovery uses back every time you long rest. This then discourages short rest spamming and actually encourages a long rest after a few short rests. It puts the power of healing during short rest into the hands of the player, managing it separately and strategically for each individual characer. If Lae'zel doesn't need healing during your first SR, save it for when she lost almost all her HP at level 4, and she needs to use 3 or 4 HP Recovery uses in order to even get back up to close to full health. (Note: Arcane Recovery for wizards would be another button on the Short Rest menu, making it so wizards don't have it as a skill in their typical Hot Bar. It would be something they can only use during short rest - thus promoting short rest more for wizards.)
- Long Rest Camp Supply cost: 10 Camping Supplies per character in the camp per Long Rest.
- Partial Long Rest (1/2 cost long rest): Relatively as is to current mechanics, if you don't have enough to fully long rest, you can spend half as much for half the benefits. So, if you have 6 characters at camp, the cost to do a full long rest is 60 camping supplies. Let's say you only want to spend 30 (1/2 the total cost). You can still long rest for 30 camping supplies, but you only get half your spell slots back and half your total HP back. If your max HP is 60, and you have 40 currently, you'd gain 30 HP back. Thus, you'd still be at full health. If you have a total of 4 level 1 spell slots, and you used 2, you'd gain 2 back and be at full. So, the benefits of a partial long rest is that you spend less camping supplies, and you could still regain full health and spell slots. Thus, there is more strategy involved in the mechanics. Partial Long Rest would only be at 1/2 cost with 1/2 benefits. Anything less could potentially make short rests less valuable and appealing.

The logic behind this is that long rest is taking the rest of the day off with everyone at your camp, not just a one hour break with those in your party. So, characters may actually eat and drink several times during a long rest, and the fact that you have more people at camp than in the party would naturally make sense that it would require more resources. The cost is 5 times as much as a short rest to promote short resting more while making the cost of long rest a bit more impactful. In other words, though you may still have lots of camping supplies to spend, and you COULD long rest more frequently, the simple fact that short rest costs 5 times less would encourage using it over using the long rest. It's psychological. It's not an actual limit. You COULD long rest, but the cost for a party of 6 at camp is 60 camping supplies. OR... for the low-low cost of 8 camping supplies, you could short rest and regain some of your HP and abilities. The benefits of that short rest aren't as great, but DANG it's a lot cheaper.

And yet, having short rest cost something psychologically plays with a person's mind. Even though you may have 300 camping supplies, the fact that a short rest even costs maybe 8 camping supplies makes it so that you won't want to just spam it as much as if it is totally free. So, you short rest maybe 4 times and suddenly find you only have 268 camping supplies, plus you ran out of HP Recovery uses for 2 of your characters. Suddenly, you feel like maybe a long rest would be better, even a partial one.

This also causes players to ask, "Do I really need all the characters at camp? I mean, I only take 4 with me to adventure, and I use the same 4 all the time. Maybe I should ask Wyll and Gale to leave the party since I only ever use Shadowheart, Lae'zel and Astarion. Later, Karlach wants to join. I like her, but I'm not crazy about Astarion. Maybe I'll kick him and tell him to go his own way." Thus, you lower the long rest cost to 40 per rest as opposed to 60 or 70 or whatever depending on how many people you let join the camp (Volo, Halsin and other non-adventuring party members excluded from this - Barcus too at present).

But what if you play multiplayer party of 4? Will I never have origin characters at camp? At present, you can't have them join your party anyway. So why bother having them sit around at your camp all the time? Boot 'em. And, if at a later time, Larian allows us to have party of 6, fine. How much is it worth it to you to keep those characters in the camp? Party of 4 multiplayer with 5 origin characters (maybe more later) is roughly 90 camping supplies per long rest. That's a lot. Maybe, just maybe, you'd then have to spend a little bit of money at vendors to buy camping supply packs, if it is really that meaningful to you to keep them.

And again, keep in mind that you get over 300 camping supplies just between the beach and the grove in the beginning if you search everything. Likewise, the game awards you with plenty as you travel about the EA. It's actually more than enough to sustain a camp of 9 or 10 party members if you really want to keep them around. And again, if nothing else, you can buy camping supplies from vendors at a relatively low price.

Add Create Food/Water spell and add more food value to Goodberry, and this would make it even easier to manage your food supplies with a larger group at camp.

The point, remember, is NOT to limit players so they can't keep all the characters with them and still long rest A LOT. We WANT players to utilize both short and long rests APPROPRIATELY - meaning not use one too much so that the other is meaningless, and in order to do that we need both to have strategic value. We don't want players feeling like they NEED to cut characters from their camp or party. However, by providing a cost based on per character in either camp or party, it creates more of a psychological state where players are forced to think about what they really want to do.

In other words, it creates meaningful choice. If I short rest, it costs less but I get less from it. If I do it too much, I might hurt myself later by not having as much for a long rest. If I long rest too much with this many people in my party, I'll eventually have to go to the vendor to buy more camping supplies. Do I get rid of some camp members? Do I just deal with it and buy more supplies and store them at camp? Do I short rest more to avoid the steeper long rest costs? Bah! I hate Astarion anyway. He's out of here.

AND, I almost forgot, the system I'm suggesting here allows players to switch out party members and do even more short rests per day. Has Astarion used up his HP Recovery uses? Switch him out for Wyll who still has all 4 of his. The adventuring day continues. More strategy. More thought as to whether you should long or short rest.

And again, more strategy in regards to who you keep at camp and how many. A larger party at camp means more expensive long rests, but it provides you with the ability to switch out during a single adventuring day and use more short rests. So, it's a bit of a potential trade-off, and again, provides you, the player, with more meaningful, strategic choices.

This kind of thing is the end goal I and others are looking for. Something that causes players to view resting from a strategic standpoint.

Finally, and lastly, keep in mind that this is still a work in progress. I'm just trying to help develop the overall concept based on what Larian seemed to be trying to do when they first implemented the camping supplies system several patches ago. Please don't knitpick the details. Maybe it's not 2 camp supplies per character in party. Maybe its 5. Maybe long rest is 8 instead of 10, or 15 instead of 10. Maybe HP Recovery is restored to full number of uses every long rest. Whatever. Please look at the overall suggestion and don't flood this thread with knitpicking the finer details.

Thanks

What if you only have supplies in your backpack? Will then a short rest cost you 40 pcs?

For me, it literally doesn't solve anything.
Increasing the cost of rest will in no way make the player stop using it, and more "encourage" to search every chest they come across, even if they have not done so before.
The player can buy supplies from traders and even more than double the amount of required supplies will not change anything.
Not that you need gold for anything in this game, even at the beginning of the game.
Given the age-old law of rpg, you won't even get to the middle of the game and you'll have so much gold that you won't have anything to do with it. Honestly, there hasn't been a game where at some point (usually sooner than later) you don't have millions of gold.
You might as well spend it on food.
Your solution can only really make a difference at the beginning of the game.

It can actually work if food will be more valuable and rare to find throughout the game. So that player will think and plan strategically when to rest and do they have enough resources

If SR costs 2 pcs per character in your party, a party of 4 would cost 8 pcs per short rest. So, as long as you have 8 pcs in your combined party inventory as you travel, you can SR once. You could have 100 pcs at camp, but you can't SR if you don't have at least 8 on you as you travel.

This adds value to a party carrying food on them at all times. You can decide before leaving for the day how much you plan to short rest keeping in mind you'll probably find more as you go.

In terms of packs that equal 40 pcs, either store them at camp because they weigh a ton, and only use for LR, or how hard would it be for Larian to make them partially expendable? They're worth 40 to start, but you can use only 8 of the 40 when SRing. Now the pack is 32 pcs and weighs less and is worth less gp.


Again. It's not meant to "stop using" any type of rest in particular. It's to provide value for each type. See? That's where I think we've been falling short in the past. We're trying to create a limit for something that shouldn't be limited instead of trying to create value for both types of rest.

Who cares if you can use either rest indefinitely? If you have 100 camp supplies and you use 60 for a single LR, you might rethink another LR so soon. Why? I could just spend 30 gp buying more camp supply packs from the vendor? Sure. But if you don't NEED to, why would you? You COULD keep going with several 8 camp supply SRs instead of popping 60 after every fight. So why spend gold unless you NEED to?

And THAT is the point. It's not locking you out or limiting you. It's just encouraging SR and discouraging using LR between every fight. It is making each valuable in their own right.

Only this is in conflict with the fact that the rest is not to be limited. If food becomes too scarce, that's how it will end.
Another thing is that 100g for a carrot would be an inflection that would not make logical sense.
Apart from that, there are spells that by themselves should generate large amounts of food.

I think it would be much easier to just reduce the amount of food we can find drastically with almost the same effect. If you don't have a lot of food in the first place, you will also think twice about resting. No offense, but I think the approach you are suggesting is just too complicated for a videogame where the developers are already struggling to not overwhelm new players who don't know DnD 5e with all the rules and mechanics.

Also I am not a fan of saying goodbye to NPCs that have a rich story of their own just because 'they cost me food'. I mean sure, I almost never actually use Gale for example, but I like having him around in my camp anyway because I like my camp to feel alive and I like interacting with him and finding out about his story, even if I don't run around with him all the time.

It is a bit different than simply limiting food. It's about mentality. I acquire 300 food. I'm feeling like I could rest a lot. First LR, spends 60. Wait. Now I'm at 240. Dang! Now I'm doing the math. I get 6 more. That's it. What if I don't find more food? Find another 50. Oh. Okay. I'm probably okay. I'm not stressing now, but in the back of my mind I'm thinking what if I hit a dry spell? SR costs WAY less. Maybe I should use that more.

Versus - I only find 40. Each LR is 40. I get 1 rest. Oh dang! Now I'm stressing for real about a game. I find 40 more. Okay. Still stressing but not as much. Dang! I need to LR. I use 40. I only have 40 left. I MIGHT or might not find more. I have no clue. Oh! Bad luck. RNG on last battle was BAD. I'm so screwed! I have to use my last 40!

And again, this system isn't FORCING you to get rid of party members. The safety net is vendors. Spend a bit more, keep everyone in camp. Maybe costs 30 gp pet LR to keep 9 party members with a party of 4 multiplayer session. Not exactly breaking the bank. But, it gives you the strategic option to boot them if they aren't worth it to you.

The concept is like this: You have 1200 euros to spend. Your bills are 1100. You have 100 left over. You could either spend 20 on some sort of subscription for some channel you really like, or you could spend the whole 100 on going out with friends and such.

It's the same thing I'm suggesting. You have 100 gp to spend. How much is having all those party members at camp worth it to you? You could either spend that 100 on new weapons and equipment, or you could spend maybe 30 of it on a camp supply pack because you didn't find enough food in the world to support the whole 60 camp supply cost - or you long rested too much between fights and you're running just a bit short of camping supplies.

In other words, the only time it would be an issue where you'd feel like you need to maybe think about cutting party members is IF you both long rest a lot and you have a lot of party-member potential characters at camp. Otherwise, with the amount of food Larian already has in game for you to find, you'd probably be just fine never spending a single gp buying camp supplies.

The vendor is ONLY a safety net where you'd need to spend more, and the number of camp members would ONLY be an issue if you long rest a lot. And then, even then, the cost of buying food should be cheap enough that you never get soft locked in the game or have to start selling really cool items just to long rest.

Again, the point is to discourage one rest over another, but to provide value for both, and it ISN'T to try to force players to stress over food or resting mechanics. I REALLY don't want to create a system where people are stressing over resting. That's completely against the point.

I literally don't understand how it would make me reluctant to take another rest, how is it really different from the current mechanics?
We can store an infinite number of items in a box in the camp so weight is nothing.
Honestly, the more I think about it, the food mechanics seem to be worse and worse. This is one of those things that you can easily bend both ways.
I think Larian should step back and rethink this mechanic.
Even limiting rest to certain places would be a more significant solution in the long run.

My point is, if you haven't been concerned about taking a short break up to this point, you still won't.
If a wizard or cleric player still has no reason to press it.
What would help a short rest to heal the character completely.
Let's say the character fell into a trap and lost, let's say 80% of hp. You use a short rest but do not regain full health. However, you know that you are most likely in for an ambush.
If you had full health you could easily try to fight (let's say you recently rested and have all your slots).
They could even remove the limit of short rests. A situation where you could go on but lacking hp is pretty much in this game.
Don't even mention that I could use healing spells or potions. Why should I do this, both cost me resources that I could use in combat, and food, and so I have a million.

Let me put it another way. Based on the system I'm suggesting. Single player mode. You crash on the beach. You have 0 Camp Supplies. You find fish and other food equalling roughly 15 camping supplies. You meet SH. You fight intellect devourers. You're new to the game, so you stink at combat, and they nearly kill both of your characters. You REALLY need to long rest. Forget short. You're hurting bad and used up all your spells.

You're stressing. You found 15 camping supplies and it's just you and SH. That's only 4 camping supplies to short rest. 20 to long rest. Dang! Do you ask SH to leave the party so you can LR? But then, you're traveling by yourself. Or, do you trust you'll be okay as long as you SR right now for 4 and hope you find enough soon to LR? You do this, SRing for now and using an HP Recovery (you should get two at this point because of level up to level 2). Either way, you should have at least 1 to spend for now.

You could either now go through the nautiloid or outside beyond. Wisdom would say, "Hey. You found food on the beach. Maybe you'll find more food on that side too where there's a shore." So, going out, you find more food. Ah! Enough for an LR. Now you're feeling better, but it's still kinda limiting you. You've only got just enough for an LR. You decide to do it.

SH says, "I'm not sure this is such a good idea. We could turn into mind flayers at any moment. We need to find a healer." She then tries to prompt you, per the dialogue that you trigger if you LR at this point, that you shouldn't really be doing this right now. In other words, Larian is telling the player to trust the DM and keep going. Don't rest here. Then have the game give you the option to back out and not actually LR at this point. Return to where you were and keep going OR keep going through with the LR and pray for the best. Either way, you have more options with this approach.

But then - I'm not done yet - as you keep going, regardless of which path you chose - either through the nautiloid or go outside and find more food - you are able to keep going because an SR should be enough for you to heal up to face a few fishermen, especially since all you have to do is be smart enough to shoot the mind flayer to get them to stop trying to kill you - and this only IF you fail to convince them to not attack you.

OR... you face Astarion... or both... Whatever the case, with food supplies so sparse, do you add him to your party or no? Maybe you aren't comfortable doing so because you don't have a lot of food and the tool tips explained to you (assuming they would) that if you add more party members the food cost goes up for both types of rests. Ah! But isn't there bound to be more food around? Wait! didn't Astarion just chase a boar into some bushes? FOOOD!

See? MORE options. More value for each type of rest. Short resting can keep you going for less food cost. You might even push yourself a bit more than you would normally if you didn't have the cost associated with the rests. After all, no cost at all would mean, "Why not?" Food cost now says, "Well, maybe you won't have enough for later. Maybe you should weigh your options."

"But this is early game," you might say. "This is pointless for later when you can go to vendors."

Nope. Why? I found 320 camping supplies worth of food and supply packs, etc. on my quest from the beach to the grove. I find out that each vendor sells camp supply packs worth 40 camping supplies each. They are worth (let's just say) 30 gp each pack. I now have all 5 origin characters in the party. That's 60 camping supplies per long rest and (with a party of 4) only 8 camping supplies per short rest.

Now, I CAN long rest at least 5 times and even still short rest for 2 with the amount of camping supplies I have between my party inventory and what's at camp. I'm sure to find even more as I continue. But, do I really have a guarantee that I'll find more? Nope. There's no guarantee that I'll ever find more. Sure. In later playthroughs I'll get a sense of just how much I'll find, but in the initial playthrough, I won't know.

And even if I DO know, so what? The cost of a long rest is still WAY bigger than short rest. I'm still not going to just long rest between every fight because that 320 camping supplies will go real fast if I do. Think about it. I fight the owlbears. 60 camping supplies. I fight the goblins at the entrance to the village. 60 camping supplies. I fight more goblins. 60 camping supplies. I fight the ogres. 60 camping supplies. I fight more goblins and a bugbear and ogre female. 60 camping supplies. I fight the ettercaps. 60 camping supplies. I fight phase spiders. 60 camping supplies. Etc. etc. etc.

Even IF I find another 60 camping supplies just in Moonhaven, spamming long rest is dropping my overall supplies dangerously low. Yes. I sure can just go to the vendor and drop 30 gp for another supply pack, but again. Why? Why would I want to do that if I can help it? Wouldn't it be wiser to NOT long rest so much and maybe keep some stores of camping supplies at camp in case I do have some bad RNG going on?

And then, on top of that, IF Larian made it so there are areas where you find less food - like the Underdark or Grymforge (have you noticed you don't find as much food in those areas?), then having those lots and lots of extra stores of food that you found on the surface is intelligent gameplay.

And THEN, even IF you unwisely spent all your food supplies spamming long rest constantly between every single fight in the game, all you'd need to do is go to a vendor to buy more so you don't get soft locked.

So, yes. It still works. Why? It discourages you from long resting in some fashion while still leaving plenty of room for players to long rest a lot if they need/want to.

Again, it's putting the gameplay into the hands of the player while mentally encouraging the use of both types of rest. Current gameplay simply encourages long rest and makes short rest only a quality of life quick heal button. That's SRs only current purpose. It has no other real strategic meaning or purpose.

Ah! But! You might say, "What about late late late game? If I save my food supplies from the beginning and am wise in early game, I may have so much money/food that I can long rest literally between every battle without ever needing to worry about food."

Well, for one, that's good roleplaying. You were wise enough to manage your resources. That's one potential approach Larian could take with this system. At that point, maybe they won't care.

OR... maybe something else will kinda limit you by then. For example, at that point, they COULD literally give you a set number of days to accomplish something. Remember, you're turning into a mind flayer - or SOMEthing - so the more you rest the faster you becoming one. That is sort of the premise they've created in the game. Right? Sure. It's on hold or delayed at early game, but it is implied that later in the game time may be of a greater importance. I'm not saying it will, but it is something they COULD use later and it would make sense.

OR... maybe they could have certain checkpoints where regardless of how well you've been storing food, you start again at 0 or with a much more reduced amount. For example, you leave Grymforge and head to Moonrise. Suddenly, your camp is ambushed. Thieves/wolves or whatever make off with a huge amount of your food supplies. You're reduced to 200 camping supplies again. Dang! You had over a 1,000, but that single event has reduced you back to maybe rethinking long rest so much.

See. There are SO many ways they could spin this. I'm also hoping they provide you with MORE opportunities for party members. Karlach, Minthara, Barcus, even Halsin, all able to be adventuring party members that would then count for camping supplies. So, again, as you increase in the number in camp, your cost is going to increase. Thus, camping supplies are more important to save and not spend so drastically on long rests unless you have to.

And so, instead, you'll be more apt to switch out characters and keep going. Have 16 people at camp who COULD adventure with you in your party? That's 160 camp supplies per long rest. Short rest is then even more awesome to utilize at only 8 per short rest because you still only have a party of 4 (or 12 for a party of 6). 160 for a long rest? Maybe 12 for a short rest? Even if you have 2,000 camping supplies, 160 per long rest is suddenly a bit more of a big deal as compared to taking a lot of 12 camping supply short rests and switching out party members.

"But what about Wizards?" you say. "I WANT to long rest between every fight so I get all my spells back."

Okay. For early game, I can understand why. You don't get a lot of spell slots to start with. However, this system still allows you to long rest as much as you want. Again, it's just that at some point you may have to spend a bit of money to do so. Small price to pay for you to get what you want. Go to a vendor, spend 300 on buying 10 camping supply packs. Leave them at camp. You now have 400 camping supplies. You get 300 from the beach to the grove. So, you have a total of 700-ish, depending on how many times you LRd on your way to the grove. Even if you LRd between every fight, you aren't full camp for most of these encounters. Intellect devourer, maybe 20 camping supplies. Fishermen, maybe 30. Gimblebock. Maybe 40. Barton and Mari and company. Maybe 50 if you picked up Lae'zel first. Otherwise, just 40 again... maybe. Scribes in the dank crypt. Maybe another 40-50. So, maybe a total of 190 camping supplies if you long rested between every fight with max companions? Still leaves you with 120 camping supplies by the time you hit the grove. Buy 400 more, and you're set for long resting your brains out in the next area. That's 300 less gp than you would have if you long rested less, but who cares. You're getting to long rest as much as you want for a very low price.

Later in the game, however, you won't even feel this as much. Level 6 wizard has 4 cantrips you can cast as much as you want, 4 level 1 spell slots, 3 level 2 and 3 level 3. Not counting cantrips, that's a total of 10 spells you can cast before needing a long rest, and if you use Arcane Recovery during a Short Rest, you could potentially gain up to 3 more level 1 spell slots for a total of 13 spells per long rest.

Jump a few more levels. Level 10 Wizard. 5 cantrips. 4 level 1, 3 level 2, 3 level 3, 3 level 4, and 2 level 5. So, a total of 15 spell slots, and with Arcane Recovery during a Short Rest, another maybe 5 more for a total of 20 spell slots.

In other words, the tougher the wizard, the less they really need to long rest between fights - provided Larian doesn't pull a bunch of "Let's make every fight super deadly so players feel they MUST LR between every fight," kind of thing.

But, even then, we have the failsafe of "You can long rest as much as you want as long as you have the money and can access a vendor."

Taking away infinite resources would upset the special kiddies too much.

We are beginning to enter the level of absurd numbers.
And that certainly won't help in the discussion.

You still don't understand something. You sound like the decision to take a short break or go back to the trader is complicated.
Mercy, the game has a dense network of fast travel, which means that we can come back to the trader at any time.
And you will definitely come back even more often after picking up anything that is not nailed to the ground.
I assume the traders will always have enough supplies to allow the player to rest otherwise the player could be blocked. Rather, every trader should have that much because you have one regular trader who doesn't leave or get murdered by us (or even not).

If they introduced a time limit or an inventory reset, they would be eaten alive by players and reviewers, therefore it will not appear. Nobody will deliberately spoil the game's ratings.

Increasing the amount of food due to the number of people in the camp literally punishes the player for playing the game. While I can bear the cost on each companion, the additional characters shouldn't cost you anything.
Why the hell then keep useless characters like Volo in the camp? You can't even kick them without killing them.
In the full version we will have 8 companions (maybe even less because one has probably been replaced or removed), it is still only 2x more than at present.

Also what about multiplayer? Then what players are punished for playing together. 40 extra food for rest is a lot to start with if they want to experience the history of companions.

We're not entering a level of absurd numbers. By the end of Grymforge, I literally had over 1,000 camping supplies in current game. The point is, if you don't use them regularly, you WILL store up lots of camping supplies, which then WILL allow you to LR as much as you want for weeks of time even IF Larian increases the cost to 60+ per LR and makes SR cost something.

You think I don't understand you, but I think it's the other way around. I totally get that it's super easy to go to a vendor. Fast Travel from ANYWHERE to Silvanus Grove Rune and jog less than a minute to Aron, the halfling vendor. That's just one example.

But it IS still an annoyance, and what you don't seem to understand is that I'm saying this is an okay element of the game. Fine. Teleport from anywhere and jog 30 seconds to Aron and sell a bunch of stuff and buy more supplies if you need to in order to long rest as much as you like. But will you in between every single fight? No. It's annoying. So, you'll push yourself a bit to keep going and maybe use more short rests because the alternative is to spend 30 extra seconds to go to the vendor to buy and sell things in order to get enough supplies to long rest... when you could just SR for 8 camping supplies which you actually have on your person ready to use right now.

See. You're being overly technical here, and that's the issue. It's about psychology. That's the point of the suggestion. Even if you have 300 camping supplies (or 500 or 1,000), if it costs you 60 for 6 characters at the camp, and 80 for 8 at camp, it causes you to stop and think. How many LRs can I do at that cost? Is it worth it? What if I don't find enough going forward? If I kill the vendor, will that potentially cause me issues with resting going forward? Maybe I should reconsider. Wait! There's a goblin vendor who sells camp supplies. I'm good. I can kill the tielfing and halfling. Even IF I start to run out of food, I still have someone to fall back on.

And as far as Volo and other non-companion characters, I addressed that. They don't cost. Withers, Halsin (if he isn't able to be a party member), Barcus, Volo... they don't count towards the cost. Just the people you can adventure with. Everyone else can fend for themselves. What else do they have to do all day?

And yes, it is costlier if you invite more people into your camp, but doesn't that make sense? You're having to support more people. So why WOULDN'T you have to spend more in camping supplies to feed every single party member? Sure, they could do it like Volo and Halsin. If they don't adventure, they don't cost anything. I'm good with that too. Like Halsin and Volo, they can fend for themselves. This would be something like - if the companion was never used that day, they don't cost anything. If they even lost 1 HP at any point or joined the party at any point, they cost. That way, if you bring them with you, switching out other companions to extend the day, they cost something, but if you didn't use them at all, they don't.

Remember, I said something LIKE this. I'm trying to develop an overall concept. Larian could handle the details like this.

And I did already address multiplayer. But again, it's details. Maybe the camping supplies cost is reduced for multiplayer. Maybe the amount each food item provides in camping supplies increases by 10% per player you are playing with. So a fish that is 3 camping supplies in single player is maybe 5 in multiplayer.

There are so many things they could do to make it work. Like I said, have various points where your camping supplies are reset to some specific number. By Grymforge, you've acquired over 1,000 camping supplies. You have 7 in the camp that cost 70 per long rest. You could still LR more than 10 times.

Ah, but as you leave Grymforge, a behir attacks your camp. Cutscene shows you fleeing into the next area with a few supplies on your back. You had 1,000 camping supplies, but now you've only got 200. Suddenly, you're no longer so wealthy on camp supplies. Hope it can get you buy until you can find another vendor.

Which, if Larian is good to people, they would make it so it could and you find another vendor fairly quickly, or something similar. Again, the point is, it could work to psychologically cause people to rethink simply spamming LR between each fight.

I don't know, for me it's pretending that players are handicapped and can't connect the fact that food respawns.
It probably depends on how you play, but when you pick up everything as it goes, you fill your inventory quite quickly, then you have options to either go to the trader right away or distribute the weight to different characters.
Usually going to the merchant is just faster.
Something like this is definitely not half as annoying as a PoE1 system.

I don't see any major adjustments happening, the food rest system is what it is.

Essentially resources in BG3 are extremely plentiful to say the least. Fresh food is laying round everywhere, as is gold, and magical items. It's so easy to acquire gold that it really has no meaning. Finding magic items provides no excitement as they are literally everywhere. Personally I never bother with food as there is more than enough CS lying about or lootable not to mention it can be purchased from multiple vendors. Since I have more gold than I know what to do with buying it has negligible effects on my vast wealth.

Having said that I know why the developers (of the vast majority of games) so generously lace their worlds with treasure. A more realistic approach would confront the player with real economic scarcity and insecurity, but who wants to escape to that world?

I LR and SR when it feels right because there is no real imperative to do otherwise.

The past 48 years of D&D players, who caused this game to be developed.

But is that common in D&D? Players struggling with the drudgery of foraging and eating in a resource scarce environment? If I became fabulously rich the first people I would hire would be someone to buy groceries and cook for me (plus I'd never wear a pair of socks twice).


I haven't played TT D%D in ages but isn't food abstracted in 5E? Do TT players run around gathering sausage links and carrots?

I wholeheartedly agree that there is just too much of everything in bg3 which is a big part of the problem. I'm hoping that this has to do with the fact that they are testing a lot of things by doing this right now. I'm hoping that when they release the game they will balance all this better.

Regardless, I think that food could manage resting in the way that I have suggested without making players feel too restricted.

Again, what I don't want is for some sort of scarcity of resources so that it becomes some sort of survival game where players are struggling justifying enough food to take a much needed rest.

The point of my suggestion is that by providing cost to each type of rest, and making that cost substantially different, it gives value to both rests by pointing out that the short rest is so much less cost then the long, thus encouraging the short more frequently and thus encouraging continuing an adventuring day as opposed to simply ending it day.

But yes, for it to really work, they would have to at least reduce the abundance of all the things mentioned. It wouldn't need to be a huge reduction, but something significant enough that it creates a bit of a balance.

So let's say LR costs 60. Before you reach the Grove they reduce how much you find to maybe 240. That's not a huge reduction, but it's at least an entire long rest less. Now, if you use one long rest, you only have 180 left. It's not enough to really stress you out, especially as you might continue to find more food at that point, but it's enough to make you a bit more nervous and maybe rethink a long rest as opposed to short rest.

After that, let's say you're exploring and find only 60 more in the village. But you had to do three or four fights just to get that. That's only enough for one more rest. You might still have plenty back at camp for another four rests, but the fact that you did three or four fights for one rest worth might make you push yourself a little more.

And yes. Maybe they should have limited supplies at the vendor. Again, nothing too extreme, but enough to make players rethink spamming long rest. If I know that between the two vendors there is only 4 camp supply packs, I might not just wontonly long rest.

This is dangerous though because you could wind up accidentally soft locking players, which we don't want. But again, there are ways to work around this. For example, game assesses you have less than 120. As your adventuring, you encounter a deer that spawns on the path in front of you. Killing the deer drops 60 camping supplies.

That's just one example of something they could do. Another would be that the vendor restocks the pack or 2 when you fall below a hundred. I'm not saying this is necessarily the solution. I'm just saying it can work without stressing players out.

Or, better yet, each vendor is only stocked with one pack at a time. So you can have a ton of gold, but each time you go to the vendor you can only buy one per vendor. So, you can basically get maybe one long rest worth every time you visit the vendor. There's nothing stopping you from leaving The Grove and coming right back and buying another one per vendor, but limiting it in this way keeps players from just buying tons of packs and storing them at camp without at least a little annoyance.

Or give the restock some sort of limit where you have to at least get involved in one battle before the vendors are restocked.

But again, you're not really considering the camp cost increasing per character in camp.

I might have 1,000 camp supplies, but 8 party at camp. That's only 10 LRs. That's not a super abundance. And what if you add mercenaries, which I believe was mentioned they were going to do? Add 2 more, or 4 more. Suddenly, 1,000 isn't so huge a number.

It's like mercs in Pathfinder. You don't have to buy them. They get more expensive as you level up, but if it's important to you the game gives you enough to have them.