Tried a new resting system in patch 6 and not impressed. I'll say again, in my opinion the system should look like this;

- For a short rest you spend some food and make it anywhere, just out of combat.

- Long rest available only in certain places on map(like fast travel points now) and requires supplies. They must be like checkpoints(possibly even savepoint on ironman mode), so when you having passed some part of plot, there is an alert some sort that the "day is over" or "people are tired (as it was in the bg1\2)" next checkpoint unlocked and you can go to camp for resting, communicate with companions and the plot go forward(new dialog option unlocked etc).


If you want just restore spells and abilities, you can rest at the last open checkpoint\campplace or call it whatever you want.

This is a very bad idea.
I won't dwell long on the idea of saving only while resting in a game that is 90% rng based.
However, resting in a given location is pointless because there is a fast travel in the game from anywhere on the map. Changing it to specific places does not make any sense, at most the player will spend 30 seconds to get back to the place.
That way, it might as well stay as is.

Limiting rest to some stage in the story makes even less sense because the game is fully non-linear, which means that the developers are not able to predict in which order the player will fight.
Something like this is turning off the problems.

I am still waiting for a good solution to the "rest system". This undortunately isn't one of them.

Tying rest to specific place, will only mean that players have to backtrack to rest. Tying long rests to story progression (and that's what OP suggest from what I understand) means that either game will rely on metaknowledge for success (it is after all handcrafted game with no proceducal generation) or will offer resting places generously enough to make the whole system irrelevant in the first place. There is of course Dark Souls system, that works thanks to respawing all enemies between checkpoints - I could see it work for DnD system. Gaining metaknowledge and what spells to prepare would be part of gameplay loop. And while I might be interested in a game like that, I don't think it's a good fit for BG3.

For long rest to work, we would need a systemic risk/reward system - ambushes were a thing in BG1&2, as discussed before it is more of a flavour then actual mechanic. I think one could impliment it well in real rogue-like - with permadeath, ironman, and systemic consequences. In handcrafted, story driven adventure, resting will always be out of place - unless, of course, someone proves me wrong one day.

Other than short rests requiring supplies, these are all things that you can do on your own, if that's how you want to play it. I have missed out on plenty of comp dialog/comp story advancement because I don't "abuse" the long rest system. I am, again, more concerned about adding some kind of notification about those, than limiting what someone else can do.

I feel we will disagree on many things , but by principle, if a feature can be skipped or ignored and isn't designed to be a skippable minigame (like Gwent), then it's a bad feature that probably shouldn't be in the game.

I think you also pointed out an issue - someone who well manages resources and doesn't spam rests, can miss major story content because of that. So pacing your own rests isn't exactly trivial - you rest too often, and you might triviliaze encounter by spamming powerful spells that should be limited in use. Don't do that and you can miss story content. I am in the same camp. There is lots of companion and follower stuff I haven't seen, because I just don't rest often enough. That's not great.

In this case, however, I don't blame Larian. I think it is clever to include story content in camp - makes it feel more like part of the game. But it is awkward balancing act, otherwise one can ask, why resting or spells-per-rest are a thing to begin with. "Story content at camp" indicator might be some kind of a solution.

Did you miss the mention of the " for ironman mode only"?


This makes sense and is fully justified in the story driven rpg its gives a sense of time and progress of the plot that it is not felt right now. The game is not linear true, but it divided into zones and has important steps in plot, like example after the first visit to the Druids Grove(lets say after a dialogue with the Kanga) another camplace is unlocked. Another unlocked...lets suppose after the Hag den. So on.

This is just a reasons why I suggest campplace system. You have passed some stage in the plot, you receive an alert and need rest. Right now it is too messy.

And from the point of view of limitations and chalenge, I also see its as logical solution, you have a certain amount of resources(spells and skills) and you must use it carefully to pass some part of the game, before next chekpoint/rest will be unlocked.

I'd be all for making rest spots "contextual" to the map in the same way Solasta handle them (meaning: every now and then you'd come across to a specific location suited to be a camping spot).


An even better solution would be the Pathfinder Kingmaker system, but that would be a larger amount of work.

Hilariously enough, even both combined aren't going to be a FRACTION of the work required for the convoluted Larian's instanced system, while being vastly superior in terms of flexibility, coherence and immersion.

No D&D game yet has done a good job with rests. NWN 1 and 2 let you rest after every battle, and you were full health. Solasta works, but it's only because it is more linear. The old BG games were just annoying with random encounters or you had to painstakingly travel back to a rest area, sometimes through multiple area maps. You could still rest as much as you wanted, but the price was being annoyed.

I still think the best solution is tweak the current system. Forget the whole limiting short rest to only two. Instead, implement a camping supplies cost for short rest that is much more reduced than long rest requirements. It should be based on character level and number of party members that you have currently in your party. One camping supply per character level in your party. So, if you have a party of four level one characters, a short rest would only cost four camping supplies. If you have a party of four level four characters, a short rest would cost 16 camping supplies. Thus, the cost is minimal, but a short rest also does not provide all the benefits of a long rest. Wizards and clerics still don't recover full spell slots and you still don't recover to full health. You can short rest virtually anywhere as long as not in combat, symbolizing that you did find some rest area that was safe and you took an hour to bandage yourself, eat some food and drink, and recover your stamina.

Similarly, the long rest should be a bit more realistic in that you need to feed everyone at your camp. It wouldn't be just based on who you have in your party, but who you have at your camp. Since it would be the primary meal of the day, it should cost two camping supplies per character level at the camp. So, if you have six characters at your camp that are all level four, that would cost you 48 camping supplies (6x4=24 levels x2 per level). If you can't pay the total cost, like it is now, you only get partial benefits based on how many camping supplies you use. In this particular example, if I only had 36 camping supplies my party would only heal 3/4 it's health and spell slots, and if they only had 24 camping supplies, they would only recover half their health and spell slots. And so on and so forth.

This creates more of a strategy to the gameplay. How many camping supplies are you going to keep on you versus how many are you going to leave at camp? How many members of your team are you going to take with you at a time, knowing that the more you have with you the more it's going to cost just a short rest? How many are you going to keep with you at your camp versus telling someone to leave, knowing that the more people you have at your camp, the more it will cost just to Long rest? And, it causes players to think about how often they are really going to rest, knowing that every rest is going to deplete some of their camping supplies.

So rest as much as you want player. Just know that if you abuse the system too much, it's going to cost you more in the end, because you're going to have to go to the vendor to buy camping supplies in order to keep on resting as much as you do.

And while we're on the topic, I do agree with those individuals who think that there should be a literal area on the map for our camp. It does bug me that it is literally, as Raphael himself puts it, middle of nowhere. There are plenty of places that the mini camps could be designed to mirror instead of being mini camps that are some sort of nebulous room or chamber that exists somewhere that you can't really reach on the game map itself. Why make the mini camps and the main camp exist nowhere?

So, for example, if I long rest on the beach, why not have the mini camp look just like the beach near where the door is to the dank crypt? If we long rest in the dank crypt, why not make the mini camp look just like the room with the fireplace, the dining table, etc.? If you long Rest in The Grove, why not make it look like some private corner of the actual Grove? They could even make it so that you can't leave the certain area where the mini camp is, and make it so that there is no one around, but make it look like an actual location on the map that is recognizable to the player.

And finally, I still would love for them to implement some sort of semblance of time via time-based events. I know I've mentioned this before, but I still think it's a good idea. By time based events, I mean things that happen because you long rested a certain number of times. I don't mean that missions are locked out or that you failed them because you took too many long rests. I just mean that something happens when you long rest a certain number of times.

Long rest three times after you find out about the ritual? Rath steals the idol, disrupt the ritual, and it is forced to start all over again. He is then locked up in the prison area and he is no longer able to help you in any way, unless you break him out. This is just one example of what I mean. It would provide players with more complications if they take too long by using too many long rests, and it adds to immersion and helps to create some semblance of time.

I like the idea of your companions complaining about being tired to remind you to rest, ala BG 1&2. At present, I think the current rest system is better than what we had. Two short rests to replenish health, and a long rest for spell slots & abilities. I think this makes it necessary for us to not blow through all of our spells & abilities every single fight if we want to keep moving forward, rather than engage one set of enemies, long rest, engage the next set, long rest, etc etc.

With the PF system, some time happen when you storm the fortress, everyone shouts; Hurry up! You need to quickly get to the main hall and defeat that !name! bad boy. But you lie down in front of the door of his room and sleep like a baby. Such immersion...

I think Dheuster wrote a quite interesting suggestion in his feedback thread

https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=795295#Post795295 (warning, a lot of text)

Basically he suggests that the camp resting is kept mainly for story progression and that hit points and spell slots gradually replenish over time instead
I would add some twists to it but overall I feel it's a nice compromise that gives benefits to both camps. You can burn through all your resources in every encounter but then you'll have to wait until the replenishing is done, or you can use your resources more sparingly and therefor get a smoother experience.

I have no idea of what you are even talking about.
The point of the PF system is that you can set camp anywhere there's enough ground space and if not in close proximity of enemies.
And then you can choose between a shorter resting time that just use up supplies or taking longer and hunting for food.

it's a system that works in synchrony with the fact that you often have limited time to achieve certain goals, so you can't be EXCEEEDINGLY wasteful with your rests.
The specific of when you rest exactly is irrelevant, not to mention mostly up to the player.

If anything, your frankly silly complaint about the possibility of resting just before an important fight applies to pretty much any other relevant title in the genre. PF is the one that disincentivized that behavior the most.

The system itself was rather disliked considering how it got castrated in WotR

Yeah, well, people who disliked it are incompetent fools and they can take a hike for all I care.
It's pretty much the best compromise between depth and flexibility I've seen in the genre... And I've been playing the genre since the Ultima V days in the late '80s.

I'm also absolutely not a big fan of how they botched it in WOTR for a more abstract, obtuse and slightly more punishing system with the corruption thing, but all things considered it didn't change TOO MUCH in practical terms.

Conceptually it makes LESS sense, but in practical terms it's still a system that discourages the player from taking too many unnecessary rests without being exceedingly punishing, which in the end is all you are supposed to ask from a competent rest system in a CRPG.

The system with WotR is in practice unlimited rest. The corruption system on paper is supposed to discourage people from resting. The problem is that the bar loads so slowly that you have to rest every short while to get the first level of corruption at all.
About 90% of the locations in the game are so small that you cannot physically rest more than 2-3 times (if you do it after each fight).
In every larger location there are items (more than one) that reduce it practically to zero, so you can rest as much as you want.
There are supposedly random fights in the game while resting, but I have to admit that I haven't seen a single one throughout the game.
What really keeps players from resting is that after each rest you have to spend 5 minutes buffing.
Unless you have the ability that your buffs last for 24 hours, then you can rest again and renew all your slots for free.

I don't mind disagreeing, forum conversations would be really boring if everyone just agreed all the time.

However, with some resource management, LRs can be skipped, by design, or, maybe the better term is (self) limited. But the primary argument for this kind of thing is the opposite, and having it be abused. Since I don't abuse it, I miss out on a lot of stuff I shouldn't be able to miss out on, comp/tadpole interactions being my primary examples. I've seen more of them on YouTube than I have in game. This is a double edged sword, however. I don't see the need to continually revamp the rest system because I simply don't abuse it, but I do miss out on things that are rather important for character development and driving the stories forward. Stories because it's companion and the actual game. In swtor, comps will get one of two "we need to talk" icons on their portraits, one for "in any tavern/SH" and another for "on the ship". Comps already get quest markers, they just need to expand that to "go to camp, so we can talk" some kind of way, even if it's just adding a quest marker to show they need to talk, and if you talk to them where ever you are, they can say "Can we do this in camp" or something. I do agree that camp should be important, they just need to add clues that I have to go there, especially if I'm not having issues managing my resources, or don't feel the need to abuse the LR system.

No, the system in WotR is brilliant and gets challenging as soon as you take Drezden. On harder difficulties it not easy by any means.

Well, I don't.
Nor I want to be able to.

In fact, being able to "rest after each fight" is exactly what any barely competent rest system should discourage.

In what way? I finished the game on core level. Rest was no problem at all.

My point is that you can't rest more than 2-3 times because there aren't that many fights in a given location.
More likely, however, is that you will not have to rest more than once at the very beginning (just to get rid of exhausted)

Ultimately, if you think about it, what is the big deal about letting people long rest as much as they want - provided that the story doesn't call for you to NOT long rest often?

I liked Kingmaker rest system because it gave you the ability to long rest as much as you wanted, BUT you always knew that you were on a time table. If you didn't manage your resources well, you'd mess yourself over in the long run.

The issue I have with unlimited long rests in BG3 is that you are, like kingmaker, on a time table. Yes, eventually people are like, "Oh, the tadpole isn't changing you as fast as it should," but YOU STILL HAVE A WIGGLING ALIEN TADPOLE IN YOUR BRAIN THAT WILL EVENTUALLY TURN YOU INTO A GRUESOME MONSTER IN AN UNSPEAKABLY HORRIBLE MANNER. So, if you take too many long rests, it is only logical that things should start happening in the game to discourage your from continuing to long rest so much. You should start showing symptoms of changing or the ritual should show signs that it's nearing completion or the goblins should find the grove again and raid it or the githyanki should not just sit there at the bridge waiting for you to show up but they come find you suddenly and ambush you at Moonhaven or wherever you are, or the tieflings should get restless and steal the idol again or SOMEthing.

But whatever. You know, I've come to terms with this one. Neverwinter let you long rest with a little processing please wait popup after every fight, and no D&D game has yet to develop a truly smart and fun rest system. So, if they don't do anything different with this, it won't break the game. Do I think they could make it better and more fun? Absolutely. It isn't an impossible task to make the rest system intelligent and fun at the same time.

I still think the absolute best approach is to treat it like you are the DM of a tabletop experience. Players can do whatever the frick they want in tabletop, but the DM provides consequences for abusing any system. If you long rest too much, make complications happen. Food and camping supplies management, overall, is boring. It is, to me, a secondary band aid fix. I'll put up with it, but ultimately, as a DM, I know that players typically don't like to micro-manage food and supplies. They like to glaze over that aspect of RPGing. I don't need to tell them, "You just picked up 6 apples, 4 pies, 3 racks of ribs, and a partridge in a pear tree. Oh, and there were 4 forks and 8 knives as well." They'd kill me if I did that to them everywhere they went to explore.

No, as a DM, and it would work well with video games too, this should be glazed over. It is assumed they are finding food and such unless they are in some desolate wasteland and resources are scarce. Then and only then might the DM apply some sort of survival aspect to the game, and even then it is usually handled via a Survival skill check.

So how does a DM handle resting in a tabletop session? They say, "You can't do that here," if there in some dangerous location like a hostile goblin camp or in a hag's lair, and they say, "Well, because you slept three days, the ritual came to a conclusion and the tieflings were booted out of the grove and you can't access it now," after several warnings that they'd best not rest too much or there are going to be consequnces. That's how D&D is played. DMs who let players just long rest infinitely when they are on some sort of time table story-wise are not DMing well. The whole point of an RPG is to create an alternate reality that people can escape to. It is fantastic in many ways, but there are still logical, realistic rules set up to make the world more real and immersive. There needs to be some explanation for things that don't line up with reality. "I let you long rest 8 times, allowing 8 days to pass, but the ritual is still not finished." "Why? How?" the player asks. "You slipped into a time warp and went back in time 3 times," the DM replies. "Ah,"says the player. "That explains it. But where did the time warp come from?" "The magical artifact you are carrying... perhaps..." says the DM.

At least that's explaining why you can long rest for 20 days in the game and nothing happens. Everyone and everything is still in the same place having the same conversations.

People don't like time constraints, no matter how forgiving they are. Many people will feel compelled to rush, which spoils the gaming experience.
Personally, I don't want any time limits, I like to play the way I want and not be forced to choose the most optimal path or worse, intentionally have to avoid certain areas as long as possible just to not run some script that starts the timer.
Fortunately, game developers know that time limits are not popular and do not try to force them into games.
People didn't like Kingsmaker time constraints (most of them at least) which ended up with WotR literally having one time quest.

I swear, as soon as I say consequences to taking too many long rests, people immediately assume I'm talking about quests with time constraints. I'm not talking about the typical, "If you don't do this quest in 3 days time the quest locks you out and you can't complete it, so move your butt or else," kind of thing.

I'm talking about standard DM logic. I, as a DM, would never want to lock players out of story quests and such. However, if they abuse long rests, I might make things slightly more complicated for them because they were doing things which didn't make sense in terms of the story.

Here's an example outside of BG3 of what I mean. Diadell and her companions learn that there will be a meeting between a lacky of a crime boss and a dwarf who is looking to pick up his money from a job he did. The meeting is to take place that evening, at midnight. In between, Diadell and her companions ran into a few fights, and they don't want to go to that meeting with next to no HP and spells. So, they decide to long rest. "Screw it," says Diadell. "If we miss the meeting, we miss the meeting. I'm not risking it."

So, not wanting the players to miss out on that opportunity, I, the DM, have an NPC friend of theirs arrive at the inn the next morning. "You aren't going to believe this," the NPC says. "I was in the slums at the meeting site where that lacky of the crime boss was supposed to meet with that dwarf who did that one job. There was a rival gang fight, and the whole thing was botched. Looks like the meeting is rescheduled for tonight. Thought you might like to know."

Suddenly, though they did something that should have messed them over so they couldn't complete the side quest, I, the DM, made it so that something happened to explain why that certain thing didn't fall through and so that they know they could still complete the quest. However, because of the rival gang fight, as a consequence for not going, I make it so that there are more gang members at the spot because they are expecting that there could be more rival gang trouble. Whereas initially, the encounter might have been easy, I make it slightly - SLIGHTLY mind you - harder to compensate for the fact that they decided to long rest. I originally built the encounter expecting that they would be weaker, so it wouldn't have been as tough. Now, however, because I know they are going to be tougher since they long rested, I increase the difficulty of the fight to make the battle more fun and rewarding.

Right now, the issue is that long rests in the game without consequences like this make every fight easier. That's not how good DMing works. If the players are going to long rest frequently, then there needs to be some sort of complications and such that make up for the fact that they decided to reset all their HP and spells and such.

Yeah, that's because many people couldn't spot a good mechanical design if it was sitting on their sternum and taking a massive dump.

It was the same with XCOM 2 and " suffocating timers". They made the game better in at least a half dozen ways, made the encounters and goals far more interesting AND they were trivially easy to disable entirely for the tossers who didn't want them, but hell if that ever stopped people from bitching night and day about them.

Man! I love XCOM 2 precisely because of the time limits. They made the game more exciting. And you could save as many times as you wanted so if eventually you messed yourself over, you could go back to a previous save and start back up from where you think you could fix it. But the point of the timers was that it was exciting, it kept you on the edge of your seat, and it made the game more challenging.

Now, that said, I do like to be able to explore RPG maps. But I don't think any of us is talking about having such time constraints that players feel like they can't explore maps in this game. We're just talking about having things happen when people abuse the system

I understand exactly what you mean. I mean, people that are unhappy about how LRs function in the game are completely free to use them as they see fit, and yet, here we are, right? So what's the real issue? Well, those "tossers" might abuse it, right? So it's nothing but "but someone else might do this, and I don't like it". Is it ironic that you provide the simplest solution of all to this game breaking issue, that I wouldn't even be aware of if I didn't read the forums, in the very post I quoted right here? If you don't like it, don't use it.

Nah, this is a bullshit comparison that misses completely the point.
Not only these two examples aren't actually similar but they are pretty much antithetical.

One is a rule that improves the game mechanically, by defining very clear rules and limits into the system. People can just sidestep it if they don't want to engage with it, by disabling it at the very beginning of a playthrough or even modding it out of the game.
The other is a BROKEN mechanic that (according to you) people could just choose to not abuse if they can self-impose restrictions on their playstyle.

Conceptually It's like purposefully adding to the game broken, overpowered equipment and then just claim "Who cares if it breaks any resemblance of balance, you can just use weaker items instead". Which is bloody stupid.

Incidentally, I DO NOT abuse the LR system. In fact, I rest as little as possible in general, regardless of how much the game regulates the mechanic. I think I've already gone through the EA at least twice by using something like three or four long rests IN TOTAL.
That doesn't mean that I have to like a half-assed, abusable system only because I can choose to not abuse it.

We already talked about this dozens of times in the past year, anyway, but the "TL;DR " is that "If you don't like it, don't use it" is pretty much the stupidest argument that can be made when it comes to discussion core mechanics and balance.
A game is pretty much defined by its rules and limitations. What you get when you ignore or sidestep them can be at best described as a toy.

I say that because I've actually done it. If I didn't read the forums, I wouldn't know there was an issue with LRs, because I wasn't even doing them often enough to get all the tadpole interactions I should be getting, let alone all of the comp story beats that are possible.

Regarding "core mechanics and balance", what are the settings for higher difficulties than Normal? I assume you must know, since you're railing against something that's existing in what could likely be the second most easy setting in the game. But hey, there's another thread complaining about speaking with some squirrels, and they're just silly "Disney squirrels". Does this mean that "don't talk to them" is a stupid argument too? You're in a SP game, what Joe Casual is doing is irrelevant. Set up some rules for MP, most assuredly do that. Make things harder in higher difficulties, that's a given. But when we're discussing what equates to EZ Mode? Nope, that's a control issue, not a game issue. I play my cRPGs on the highest difficulty I can. Going in on Normal shows me how easy the games could really be if I didn't want to be assed to push myself, and yet, never have I come to a game's forum saying "EZ Mode needs to be fixed, it's too easy".

The game should definitely challenge us and make rest available / unavailable at some points.
This does not prevent your biggest friend Joe Casual to spam LR by another mechanic.

We thought about this in the wrong way IMO.

What most of us wants with the resting system is some kind of challenge. Not restrictions so Joe cannot spam if he wants. One does not prevent the other.

The game should tell us when we can and when we cannot rest. If we consider the supply system, it does not prevent Joe to buy food at merchants and stack it at camp if he want to.

But I still don't have any kind of mechanical restrictions in the game with the amount of food we can find everywhere.

Restrictions is exactly why games have rules.
Players cannot ask Joe to play how they would like him to play... But you cannot ask players to create their own rules with core mechanics in a game.

They could restrict food availability at higher difficulties or as a separate toggle in the options for people who like that.

For myself I play casters because I like casting spells, and I find it boring to be stuck with using a crossbow or similar on a caster. So, the current normal difficulty with lots of food available works well for me.

The more I think about it, the more I think Larian already found "a part" of the solution.

But in my opinion it shouldn't depend the difficulty level at all, it should be a core feature of the game as it is in DnD (time in DnD, food in BG3).
That said, it seems extremely hard to balance especially considering the number of items considered as "food supply" you can find absolutely everywhere.

Of course you should be able to play as you will. That's why you should always be able to buy tons of supply bags to store them at camp

I think that time is the bigger issue at play here. If we had a discernable day, things would fix themselves. I think you touched on this in another thread, this is certainly not my idea, but with no dividing line between day and night other than being in camp, the waters get really muddy.