Originally Posted by rael1011
I think it might be worth considering that consumable items should have an expiration date. I see the following benefits for the game:

1. Despite now needing food for a long rest, it is present in such abundance that this solution barely caps the number of long rests the group can take. If every long rest decreased the expiration timer on consumables it would add an extra layer of consideration to taking a long rest.

2. We all know the problem: You have cool Items and spells in your inventory, but you want to save them for "a really hard fight". But woops, suddenly you played through the whole game and your inventory is full of useful stuff that would have been fun to use. I encountered that habit in BG3 too, and I think with the above suggestion people would be encouraged to actually use those sticky slime bombs and health potions that keep piling up in the inventory.

I extremely disagree with a big fat chunk of capital NO. Long Rests should not be discouraged, as they are an extremely vital piece of story content.

The first time I played the game, I avoided long rests like the plague. Haven't rested a single time out of sheer fear that a long rest will push the story into a negative path if I do it, because I didn't know the Illithid is dormant. So I played the entire playthrough without resting and after finishing it; the game's story and companions felt so disappointingly shallow. Where were my companion dialogues... where were the dreams everyone keeps talking about... where are all these intricate scenes that everyone keeps uploading on Youtube... I saw absolutely none of it and found myself detached from all companions and terribly disappointed with the story, because all of this is found in Long Rests which I avoided like the plague.

So because of this I now partially long rest all the time even when I don't need a long rest, in order to catch every single piece of story and dialogue, no matter how small because that is what I treasure in these games.

By adding a meaningless expiration feature caused by long rests, all it will achieve is just make people avoid long rests even more than they normally would. Because apart from how someone might avoid long resting due to unknown story reasons; why in the world would a person want to explore and loot every single container out there just to lose that loot after a few long rests, which they have to take in order to experience meaningful story content.

So I disagree heavily with this.

EDIT: And for clarity, I don't like the resting system as a whole myself as it doesn't feel dynamic with the events in the game nor does it feel immersive. It's literally a button that I have to click to gain more story and lose buffs and spell slots while doing it. So adding features trying to circumvent it or discourage it will never accomplish anything because the resting system itself is the problem. It should never have been a thing in the first place, especially it acting as a time skipper and locking story content behind it.