Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Mega-threads and Guides Camping and resting.

I would like it if Larian made 2 possibilities to take a long rest:

1. A basecamp where all your companions are. When you rest here it pushes certain story elements further. obviously it has a fast travel point.
2. A backpack camp with the partymembers you are travelling with. Camping in dungeons or on the road may or may not trigger random combat encounters depending on your survival/perception skill.

For me it doesn't make sense from a roleplaying perspective when I'm in a dungeon I travel all the way back to a bascecamp and trigger story-plots just to take a long rest. I want the immersion and excitement of take the chance to long rest in the dungeon I'm exploring.

Quoting this for a +1. It sums stuff up well.


There was a mention made in another post about waypoints only able to be used from the waypoints itself (Witcher/Cyberpunk Fast Travel essentially) which also is a good idea I think and solves the issue of just freely teleporting wherever (which makes being in dangerous areas... less dangerous or immersive). But that is maybe a separate thing from just the resting too.

Also OP: -Technically- it is Spell slots. Not Skill slots :P

What do you call it when a fighter gets to use Second Wind once per rest? I don't call it a spell. :P

I'm being generic because they're roughly the same mechanic. I'm a progressive so I like to use inclusive language where possible. #allskillsmatter

I see your point. Personally, I don't think we should be expecting pure D&D, but on the other hand I don't want to throw out the rulebook. I think the HP bloat you're referring to is just a consequence of it being a video game. Save scumming is one of the big things a video game needs to be built around.

This also sounds like it'd be a bit of a micromanagement chore.

I think this is your tabletop bias a bit. The last thing you want to do in a tabletop game is hold up the game and interrupt the roleplaying mid-adventure to start the micromanagement by breaking out the manuals and rewriting the character sheets. So you level up only after it's over. Video games are different. You have a computer to make it easy for you, and there's good odds you're playing by yourself so no one's going to complain.

I don't think there's any reason to defer the level up process till later, especially because it means having to manage multiple level ups at the same time, and that means that having to do a little bit of micromanagement at a time, you have to do a LOT all at once while performing "other activities" and that is going to be a pain in the ass. You know there are CRPGs where the game just does the levelling up for you if you want? You just click a button!

Last time I played a video game that was so stingy with its level ups was Might & Magic: Darkside of Xeen. Good times.

Why do short rests need to be in specific locations on the map? I don't recall any rule in D&D that says short rests need to be in a specific location. Aren't you just chilling out for a bit?

I really don't think short rests need to be complicated. If your location is relatively safe, click a button and recover some of your strength so you can push onward. It shouldn't be a big deal.

I think it's interesting you mention this without commenting at all on Expeditions: Viking, which is much closer to your suggestion than Pathfinder: Kingmaker, where you can camp basically anywhere. Maybe you should take a look?

See the example from Final Fantasy XV or Pathfinder: Kingmaker. Who needs a basecamp? Just find a safe space and bring the camp to you.

What bias ? i never played any TT, only video games.
But I know the rules and I think the video game would be better if the rules were better implemented, especially for resting (and the link with action economy).

It's hard to understand your point. Looks like you're missintepreting things a lot.

- What micromanagement are u talking about ? At the moment every character level up at the same time... what's the difference ?
- Viking conquest absolutely looks like micromanagement... That's absolutely not what I talked about.
- "Other activity" for long rest mean what you want it to mean... And what you have in kingmaker is "other activity" : cooking, watching, hunting, camouflage.

Short rest shouldn't just be a "healing button".
I never said we had to find 5 "specific spot" on the whole map.

What's "complicated" if you have to deal with :
- your hit dice and a very limited number of features during short rest.
- level up + a very limited number of feature during long rest.

It's just more immersive, rests become usefull and it become a part of the player's meaningfull choices (strategy, action economy,... what it is in the TT)

Yeah I never said anything about timed quests. You can have day and night without timed quests. You always jump to conclusions and assume things -_-. Do you want me list examples too? I say what I mean and nothing more.

Oh no Zarna caught the scent of "muh realism". May god have mercy on us. Lol I'm kidding.

No way I'd trust any of them till after the actual party is set later in the game past act 1. Mizora has Wyll's balls, Astarion exists, Shadowheart literally worships darkness/lies/secrets/thievery/blood sacrifices(Shar loves those in particular), Laezel takes pleasure in cruelty literally, Gale was rejected by Mystra for a reason he ain't telling and he has a Shadow bomb in his chest(Suspect as fuck).

As a Paladin Oath of Vengeance, the lesser rightous Paladins mind you, I'd kill them all.

Some datamine content suggests they are actually worse than that. So no I don't trust a damn thing lmao.

Edit: I think Maximus idea could work. It's like a refined version of kingmaker which was just ok.

Yes! This is what I want. I might have slightly different preferences on a couple of the details, but the broad strokes of this are perfect!

I’m curious what these loopholes were. I know you never recovered all your HP per rest naturally. You had to expend spells or potions both of which are limited. So it was very common to dungeon crawl with less than max HP.


You can’t stop munchkinism. People min-max no matter what. But encounters should require some level of tactics and strategy or it becomes so watered down, the gameplay becomes boring.

I mean I think we are on the same page here.

This is essentially what Solasta does except for the short rest areas being designated. I disagree with that portion.

Yeah, short rest (almost?) anywhere, why not. Right now, there is no real point in using the short rest - you can always long rest (well, besides maybe having to do a few more clicks or being in one of the few locations/situations where resting actually changes things - which you often don't even know about in your 1st playthrough).

I understand Larian's position to want to avoid save-scumming. HP bloat is another change that is currently overtuned. For example, in the current game meta there is little incentive to use spells that require a saving throw. Lowering AC only benefits AC targeting attacks.

{Assuming Larian is committed to one form of HP Bloat or another}
One thing that could be done is to give the player a +1 to proficiency, and enemies a +1 to AC.
This would help balance the effects of HP Bloat on using saving throw spells versus AC attack spells.
As both spells get the improved accuracy to avoid save scumming that Larian is aspiring for.

• TBH it would be easier to balance HP Bloat by not starting with lowering AC and raising HP.
• Giving the player +1 to proficiency and the enemy ~5% increase to HP would have raised accuracy more equally for both attack types.
• Also this would have been less of a distortion to game balance.

Hindsight is 20/20 xD


My ideas for improvement are dependent on Larian improving the UI and inventory management.
I'm picturing that most actions involving material components would be automatic for the player.

• The spells will notate which material components are needed.
• Material components will have their own inventory (normally a wizard would have their personal bag).
• If the spellcaster knows the spell the material components will show in the bag with 0 stock (so the player will know what to look for).
• When the spell is used the correct amount of material components is spent.
  
  For example, the spell cloud of daggers requires a "shard of glass". At camp, the player could tell Gale to gather shards of glass and the bag would fill it's inventory to max 2/2 (or something like that)
  Now Gale could cast that spell 2x between long rests.
  The spell Fireball requires "a tiny ball of bat guano and sulfur" which let's abbreviate as "sulfur compound".
  When the player asks Gale to gather material components the menu can pop up and they could a limited amount. So the player would have to choose between "shards of glass" and "sulfur compound"
  
  Now the developers can balance these spells with how often they would like the player to cast between long rests.
  
  EDIT: material components are also a great candidate to replace all the spell scrolls littered around the world

People who can't appreciate the added value of few well placed time restrictions are DISGUSTING.

Back to BG3, I must admit that I tried to think few ways to improve the resting system, but frankly it's such a train wreck I'm not sure why I should bother with it.
Personally the only satisfactory solution I could think of is to throw the entire current system in a trash bin where it belongs and replace it with a proper day/night cycle, with passing of time, etc, etc.

Pathfinder Kingmaker nailed it, and they didn't have a fraction of the budget that BG3 can boast.

I just hate that so many companion moments are missed by players because the game does such an awful job telegraphing that you won’t turn into a mindflayer if you rest. From a mechanics perspective I don’t particularly care but from a narrative perspective it drives me up the wall. They should really have a moment where you’re forced to rest that clarifies this.

That said, I’m in favor of fixed campsites you rest at, or, failing that, the suggestion to use waystones for long rests. Fixed campsites might help with scripting companion events as well, as right now even if you do rest often you can randomly miss out in certain scenes.

Timed quests could work if the day/night cycle was tied to when you camp, rather than a constantly ticking timer, because it puts the agency of time passing in the hands of the player. If it’s a day/night cycle like bg1/2 then I would be less in favor of timed quests.

That said the thing that bothers me about this game is that it is possible for time to pass (mirkon and arabella can both die; you can miss out on the waukeen’s rest event) but the game poorly telegraphs it. Either have time pass or don’t, I don’t like this weird middle ground they seem to be going for (the da example you used tied camping to the over world map which is why it was effective).

I’ll also add that I find the idea of random fights when you camp incredibly unappealing. Maybe if you camp in a dangerous area but that’s about the extent of it.

Throwing down the gauntlet are you, Tuco? Well, you won't be able to stand against our combined forces (despite Ayvah's checkered, elf-punching past).

Something that would be really helpful would be to have all the books in the inventory automatically appear at the book pile in camp. Or, for lore hunters, if the place where you camped actually contained its own secrets. The place where the player camps in EA is super evocative; there's the canoe with the emblem of Baldur's Gate that is there before the Talkative Skeleton appears, there's a fishing rod (implying that there might be a fishing mini-game), a small romantic / creepy temple across the river that offers some privacy, the little cave where Halsin sets up that looks like the entrance to somewhere else but which leads nowhere... It would be good to have the option to go "snooping" in your campmate's tents, with a similar mechanic to Astarion's bloodsucking and similar consequences... And yes to all the basic maintenance stuff, organized as mini-games.

I agree 100% with you. The 1 and 3 bother me a lot, and your suggestions are great. I have another one too:

When you leave the camp, a screen appears with all the companions, for you to choose who will accompany you, without having to recruit one by one with dialogues (similar to what happens in Pillars of Eternity: Deadfire when you leave the ship). Reference here.

Seconding the fast-tracking of 1 and 3; they are so annoying in their current state.

1 and 3 definitely need to be implemented and tested. 1 it would be somewhat like dragon age I think but that is not necessarily a bad thing as Origins and BG3 seem to be games where a lot of character interaction, management, and plot happen at the campsite and this would be extremely convenient for me so that I don't have to switch so often.

Agree with 1, 3 and

About the other two, yes, +1, but about this one, there should be an option on the map to "Leave camp" which fast travels you back to the spot you fast travelled to camp from. That option moves the entire party back there.