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

I hope things stay mostly the same, except the amount of food changes based on the difficulty levels. Leave it as is for story mode, and take away most of it for the harder settings.

Same with healing potions. (I usually end up in Grymforge with 80+ healing potions left in my inventory.)

If there's only enough to long rest, say, once or twice before the grove then the player will have to be cautious. And then later, maybe there's nothing much in the underdark except for a few scraps here and there.

That will make the player pay close attention to when the short rests are used up.

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The only issue left is the way the cut scenes are tied to long rests. The more I think about it, though, the less I'm concerned.

1. Most of the scenes don't need to be seen. So what if you miss Astarion looking at the mirror and fishing for compliments? Maybe you'll get it in a later playthrough. That's not a bad thing.

2. Some of the scenes could be combined to happen in the same night. For instance, you can still have a dream sequence after Gale stares reflectively in the fire.

3. Failing the above two points, just tie some of the less important cut scenes to short rests now and then.

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This fixes the problem.

If a player is worried about getting "soft locked," maybe lower the difficulty. Or, since a partial rest is still slightly restorative, it's possible this isn't even an issue.

Your question was about scarcity, as was my response. The players have voted that yes, they do want scarcity in this game, regardless of the short attention span of some players.

You know... Difficulty would make all the difference for limiting food. Story is like now, like you said. Normal is enough food for 1 LR and maybe 3-4 SR every 3-6 fights or so. Hard every 6-10 fights. Super hard means you have a hard time finding enough food to long rest even once every 11+ fights. Something like that.

I still think, though, that short rest should be managed by something like HP Recovery/Hit Dice as opposed to 2 hard limits. It would make short rest more meaningful and strategic, allowing you to do SR at the character level instead of the party level, switching out party members when they've used up their SRs.

And I still think camp supplies costing per character causes players to rethink strategically how many they want to keep in party. Why keep Astarion around if he's not doing anything for the party and he costs camp supplies every long rest? Or, better yet, if I know he's going to cost 10 camp supplies anyway, might as well switch him in and someone else out and get some adventuring out of him. I got 2-3 fights out of Gale, so switch in Astarion and give me 2-3 fights from him too, using SR per character to prolong the adventure that day.

SR camp cost isn't as big a deal as the above mentioned items. Make them free still without camp cost. That's fine. But let me use my SR at the character level at least.

I didn't vote scarcity, and I don't think many have. Less than current? Many have. Yes. Scarcity. No.

But as JanK pointed out, difficulty settings could manage both experiences.

I applaud the stated goals and like the concept of charging a little for SR and more for LR based on camp population.

Here are 2 comments/questions.

1. Why would the psychological effect of charging food for rests work under this system when it doesn’t work in the current system? Would it be down to balancing food supply or have I missed something?

2. Why are seperate “HP restorative short rests” for each PC more strategic that a party wide SR? The proposed system introduces a ressource that has exactly one use. Using such a resting charge on a PC comes down to noticing they are below an HP threshold. When you’re out of gas, you fill up the tank. No decisions required. At least the current SR system sometimes gives me pause when I realize I’m doing it to heal only half the party, wasting a lot of potential HP in the process.

The player should not have to wonder whether to keep the character in the party or have additional food if he does not plan to use it, but only learn the story.
This is a silly system and goes against how most role-playing games work.
This is not a survival game and should never be.

I certainly don't want different rest costs depending on the difficulty level.
On a higher level, I wants stronger enemies with better stats and skills, and if possible, I wants them to be smarter. I don't want to increase the difficulty level by food problems.

It is a bad idea to significantly increase the amount of rest fights.
The game is balanced for 2-3 fights to rest which is good.
Thanks to this, we can have more interesting and difficult fights. If the game was balanced for a larger number of encounters, they would have to be much simpler and it would end up with junk mobs that pose a minimal threat like in WoTR.
Thank for the dubious pleasure of playing such fights in TB.
In the end it will only end up with a more boring game where you spam cantrips most of the time.

The current system must be changed. Noy only it creates total disbalance between the classes, it's also stupid from a roleplaying perspective, when you're encouraged to rest after every fight like oh you fought couple of harpies, you're tired now. Not very in the spirit of adventurer/hero/villain

In this respect, it would be no different from other DnD games.
Of course, you can come up with some limitation, but the game should not turn into survival.
Limiting rest in some areas would be a better solution.
You could still step back to rest, but that is still unavoidable.
You will never achieve a balanced rest if the game is not fully linear. For this reason, you are not even able to load the CD.
No one wants serious time limits, apart from a small fraction of players

LIMITING rest is a bad idea. Period. The WORST thing Larian could do is make it so that players are limited in resting so that if they really need it they are totally stuck. That's why I keep saying that the suggestion is to MANAGE resting so that it is meaningful and creates value to each type of rest - long and short. I want a rest system that provides choice for players.

The system I'm suggesting allows players to choose more. Astarion is out of Short Rests, but MC and the other 3 in the party still haven't used even 1 out of 4 because they're level 4. Switch Astarion out and keep adventuring. Switch in Wyll. Option. Choice.

LR costing more because more characters at camp. Option. Choice. Instead of simply saying, "Doesn't hurt anything to just leave the useless Astarion (I'm picking on him a lot, but lots of people don't like him) at camp, so I'll just ignore him," now you are pushed into making a choice. "Leaving him at camp costs me 10 extra Camping Supplies per Long Rest, and I'm not even using him. I can either:

A. Switch him in and use him to quest so he's actually doing something purposeful each day and helping me to continue my adventuring day beyond 2-3 fights per day
or
B. Kick him because he's not doing me any good whatsoever anyway
or
C. Keep him and pay the price anyway because I might need/want him for later story/quests.

Options. Choices. Roleplaying. Strategy. THAT is the point. It isn't about "I want to make players use long resting less simply because they're abusing the system." It's about providing players with legit, meaningful choices. It's about creating a more unique definition and purpose for the game mechanics instead of "Short Rest is ONLY a quick heal button for quality of life." and "Long Rest is for dialogues and full restores in between fights after 2-3 fights."

And no. 2-3 fights per Long Rest is a VERY sucky RPG experience. VERY SUCKY. Like in the movie Elf "It's very sucky" kind of sucky. I don't care if it's a cRPG or TT. That's VERY bad RPGing.

Seriously. Larian. If you're going to design the game so that players can only, or should only, do 2-3 fights per Long Rest, do away with the entire Long Rest/Short Rest system and implement a NWN Bend the Knee Rest mechanic where you heal and recover all spell slots between every fight with the simple click of a button. Don't force players to take a rest after 5 minutes of adventuring so that they adventure for 5 minutes and rest for 24 hours.

As stated in numerous posts, the story tells you, "Hey player. You and your friends are all INFECTED BY BRAIN EATING MIND FLAYER PARASITES THAT WILL TURN YOU INTO MIND FLAYERS. Now, granted, we don't know when or anything - should be HOURS after infection before you totally cease to exist and all, and after that your body endures a week's worth of wonderful, gruesome transformations - after which you'll butcher everyone and everything in the area - or enslave everyone because you'll BE a mind flayer - but regardless of whether we know WHEN, the fact of the matter is that you WILL turn into one eventually - and probably quite suddenly, as a matter of fact - without likely getting any kind of real warning. SO... you NEED - no ifs, ands or buts about it - you ABSOLUTELY MUST find a healer and quick before your sudden transformation occurs."

So, since the story tells you that you could turn ANY DAY NOW and QUITE SUDDENLY, it makes absolutely no sense to wake up on the beach, meet SH, fight for 30 seconds, and rest for 24 hours. It doesn't even make sense to wake up on the beach, meet SH, fight for 30 seconds, meet Astarion, fight fishermen for 15 seconds, meet Gale, fight Gimblebock for 15 seconds, fight Mari and Barton and company for maybe another 30 seconds, and fight scribes for 30 seconds after exploring a dank crypt. Gods! Putting myself in the ROLE of my MC, I'd push myself literally as hard as I could to get SOMEwhere in order to try to find a healer.

And then, once I met Nettie and everyone at the grove, from a story perspective, I'm urged even more to DO things. Now, not only do I have a tadpole in my head that could or could not turn me into a MIND FLAYER at any point in time - because, you know, nobody REALLY knows because the entire process is totally messed with - but now I have to save a group of tieflings from being kicked out before a nebulous time-consuming ritual is completed - no idea how long it really takes to complete. Oh.... and btw... I also have to defeat 3 goblin leaders and hope that makes the rest of the goblins actually go away (though it doesn't and you still have to kill them all anyway), before they find the grove and butcher everyone within anyway... not to mention take them out so that they don't hurt anyone else on the road - you know, like kidnap a Grand Duke or something from a burning inn that never goes out.

But sure. In spite of all these things that the story throws at us so that we should actually extend each adventuring day as far as possible, let's suspend all semblance of immersion altogether so we can rest for 24 after only doing maybe a total of 1 to 2 minutes of actual fighting. 2-3 fights per day. Clear a tiny area of the map. Then rest for 24 hours.

Well. All we did was go from the beach and cleared the nautiloid, met Gale, and approached the dank crypt. Pshew! What a long day everyone. Guess we should call it a day. Could turn into a mind flayer in hours, but let's call it here at the foot of the crypt.

Well. I know we have a mind flayer parasite in our heads and tieflings are counting on us to save them from the druid ritual, and it's been like 3 days already since the ritual first started, but we just fought 2 phase spiders and 2 ettercaps. No... let's clear the whole spider lair. We fought 4 phase spiders, 2 ettercaps, 6 baby phase spiders and 1 mama phase spider. Total combat time = 2 minutes. Well. Sorry tieflings. Hope the ritual isn't completed today because I'm beat after fighting so many monsters. Man! I sure hope that tadpole doesn't take me over today. Ah, but I fought 2 battles. I'm spent. I should replenish my spell slots and HP because I don't want to use cantrips to keep going - OH! And I also have no more Short Rests that I can do because I used 2 already. Even though 2 out of my 4 characters didn't need those short rests during both times I used them, oh well. Sucks to suck. Time to sleep because 2 battles was rough on me.

pretty much +1 to everything, it's so immersion-breaking

The newbs want EZ mode in their games. Who wants to escape to a challenge?

I bet on Larian removing any need to manage rests.

Thank you for liking my idea. It's good to know that at least some people like it. Sometimes I do get two focused I'm trying to explain things to people who don't like the idea that I overlook those who do. So thank you for supporting it.

Sorry, Flooter. Didn't see your post.

1. Several things at play are meant to change the psychology of resting. First, unlimited Short Rest. No more 2 per day. This is a important aspect so players feel like they can short rest as often as they want. This is the mentality that is easy to fall into presently with Long Rest. I can LR as much as I want, so why not? Second, though SR is now unlimited, several things now keep it in check. 1. Food cost. Though minimal, if you spam short rest too much, for things like resetting Lae'zel's Second Wind and Wyll's spell slots, it will add up. 8 camp supplies is minimal, but SR 8 times and it equals an LR. So, it still limits SR in some way while giving players some room to actually use SR more. Third, the increased price of LR substantially points out just how cheap SR is. By creating two prices, the brain immediately starts to compare. "Well, shoot. I can SR for 8 or LR for 60? I think I'll SR.". Free makes SR an afterthought.
2. HP SR Restore is like Hit Dice made simpler. It's at the character level so it's more strategic. You have more options. You have a party of 4 level 4 characters and 2 at camp. Each has 4 uses of Restore. Lae'zel loses all but 10 HP. MC loses 5 in total. Wyll loses 6. Gale loses 10 and uses spell slots. You do an SR for 8 camping supplies. You use 2 Recovery at once for Lae'zel, healing 14 HP. You use 1 for MC and Wyll and 2 for Gale. Next time you SR, you use 0 for Lae'zel. She uses Second Wind instead because it was reset via SR. You use 0 for MC. Don't need to. He only lost 3 HP. You use 1 for Wyll and the rest for Gale. He's out. Next SR. Switch Gale out for SH. He's done. Spend 1 on Lae'zel, 1 on MC, 1 on Wyll. Continue adventuring. Next SR. Wyll is done. Lae'zel keeps going, using 0 this time. Again, Second Wind. MC uses one and SH uses 0.

Quite the difference from you only get 2 and you're done for the whole party that day.

No worries, I don’t expect you to be at my beck and call. Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions.

1. That makes sense, I can see it. “Free makes SR an afterthought” reminds me of how the SNCF (France’s train company) stopped offering their employees free coffee because they’d keep leaving half empty cups lying around, abandonned. Charging a few cents per cup meant the employees still had as much coffee as they wanted, but made them consider whether they were actually going to drink it before pouring another cup.

2. Though you’ve mentioned it several times in your explanations, I have trouble remembering you can swap PCs in and out of your party. That does give depth to decisions involving SR.

Side note 1: I can’t remember if you can actually kick PCs out from camp. I don’t think you currently can, but dearly wish you could.

Side note 2 : I’d gladly try the proposed resting system. I’m a little worried that Larian aren’t iterating nearly enough on stuff like this. Maybe they’re doing it internally, but what’s the point in EA if not player feedback?

OK. So, now I'm going to incorporate what Furious put on his post into this one.

The concept:

1. Food spoils, but during Long Rests, the PC with the highest Survival skill automatically rolls to see how much excess food is preserved. PC rolls less than 5. No food is preserved. PC rolls 5-9. Up to 20 camping supplies worth of food are preserved into a 20 Camping Supply Pack. Camping Supply Packs never spoil. Any excess food is automatically tossed as it spoils that night. PC rolls 10-14. 40 camping supplies worth of food are preserved in a 40 Camping Supply Pack. 15-19 is 60 Camping Supply Pack if you even have that much excess food lying around. 20+ is an 80 Camping Supply Pack, again only if you even have that much around.

2. You can craft camping supplies at any time also by collecting or buying empty packs. Right click on the pack and select Craft Camp Supply Pack. Survival check is the same as above.

3. Camping Supply Packs can be partially used. So, if you use 40 Camping Supplies, and you have a 60 Camping Supply Pack, you now have a 20 Camping Supply Pack.

4. Short Rest costs 2 camping supplies per character in your party. So, party of 4 = 8 camping supplies. If they allow party of 6, 12 camping supplies.

5. Short Rest is not limited. You can Short Rest as much as you want and regain warlock spell slots, special abilities like Action Surge, etc.

6. Short Rest is HP Recovery is either managed by Hit Dice, per 5e, or a quasi-Hit Dice mechanic. Each PC has 1 use of HP Recovery per character level per day. Level 4 character? 4 uses that day. So, Lae'zel would have 4, Astarion 4, Wyll 4, etc. Each use grants that character's Hit Dice average + Con bonus in HP. Hit Dice for cleric is 1d8. Con bonus is +2. A single use of HP Recovery would be 7. After a long rest, you only regain half your uses for the next day. So, if you only have 1 use left, at level 4, you only get 2 back when you long rest and would then have 3 the next day.

7. Long rest costs 10 camping supplies per companion character at camp - not including people like Volo who doesn't adventure with you. MC + 5 origin = 60 camping supplies per long rest.

8. 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.

I love how discussions give birth to entire complex systems ready for implementation, like this one. It sounds like a logical next step to the direction, where Larian is heading with camp supplies, that's great

Maybe it will need some playtesting though, so I hope we'll get something like that implemented before full release

The system is tragic.
You literally sell automatically all the food you have and buy supply packages in return = no mechanics exist.
Or else who will forbid me to use all my food for crafting?
Literally nothing will change except for the cost of a short rest.
At the moment, it is creating mechanics for the sake of their very existence.

OR.... Larian makes it so vendors only sell 1 Camp Supply Pack each every day or every other day or something like that. What does that do? Forces players to not just sell all food and buy tons of packs. And the vendors could be made to only sell the camp supply packs worth 20.

What's that look like? You go to the vendor and sell 60 camping supplies worth of food and buy 20. You go to the next and buy another 20. Long rest costs 60. You only get a partial long rest. Maybe you should have crafted a camping supplies pack.

Ah, but wait. Did you find a backpack in order to craft a supply pack?

That reminds me of one other element I meant to include. Once a pack is used up, you now have an empty backpack to craft another supply pack.

And remember, you have to roll to see how good of a pack you can create. You may have 100 camp supplies and 1 empty pack. You roll a 12 Survival. You created a 40 pack. You use 60 to LR. Yay! No food spoiled. But if you rolled a 9 instead, you only created a 20 pack. 20 food spoils. Have 2 packs? Sure. 2 rolls can be made and you'd probably be fine. But see. It limits you to only a certain number - a number Larian can then control and tweak to make it balanced.

- Agree with no short rest limit.
- Disagree with the "healing recovery" button. Hit dices are not more complicated but way more interresting.

About supplies you're overcomplicating things once again.
Resting require supply bags (apples, sausages and other food as supplies ON/OFF) + small chance of unexpected encounters in dangerous area (mini camps) + small chance of unexpected events at camp (main camps) = perfect system.

You're welcome


Totally agree.