So I have a few things.
1: It might be good to allow access to all followers, even the ones not in your current party, whilst the player character is in the camp. I like to collect gear for all companions, not just my regular team, so it would make it much easier if one could access all companion's inventory whilst in camp, instead of having to kick some companions out of my party, ask others to join, give them the gear, ask them to leave, and then ask the others to join again. It's not a problem the first few times, but then it gets kind of annoying. It would also allow me to level them up then instead of later, which is a minor concern, but could be nice.

2: It's nice that you have implemented another short rest, but it also means that the player doesn't take long rests as often, which isn't bad, but the cutscenes related to the long rests need to be tweeked a bit because they now show up later in the game. I had Astarion spout all kinds of vampire related stuff in the party banter before my character was supposed to figure out that he was a vampire via the "bite-my-character-whilst-she-is-sleeping" cutscene.

3: Please allow the player to take all companions with them when the fast-travel away from camp. It's not an issue when taking a long rest most of the time, because you just wake up where you left off in the adventure, but when you pop back to get something or talk to someone the party splits up, and you have to manually make everyone in the party fast travel. Also if you switch someone in your party out, they cannot fast travel until you place down a save with them in the party, and then load that save file. It's very annoying when you do it a few times.

I like your first suggestion, it would make it easier to manage follower inventory/abilities and really doesn't have much of an impact on actual gameplay. The only thing this might impact is if you take a long rest in an unsafe area and the camp gets attacked, you would then have more followers under your control than normal, but I don't really think that's such a huge issue.

I've decided to follow through on what I've said elsewhere and start the discussion I really want to have.

Something I like about Baldur's Gate / D&D is the idea of getting fatigued and having to rest. I like the idea of waking up after a rest at full strength, and then trying your best to avoid getting worn down before your next opportunity to rest. For the basis of this discussion, I don't want to discuss whether of not resting should exist at all, but rather how we can make it the best it can possibly be.


How can skills slots be better?
I am taking it for granted that skill slots are a key part of D&D gameplay. You will need to rest in order to recharge at least some of your skills between battles.

I currently don't really have any substantial feedback on how the skill slots mechanic could be improved on, but feel free to jump in if you have any thoughts.

Let's try not to talk about completely throwing out the rulebook. Don't just say "everything should be cooldowns". lol.


Camping should be fun!
Larian should remove the implication that long rests / camping are in any way a bad thing.

Currently, in order to encourage you to ration your long rests, the game implies that the more you rest, the stronger the tadpole grows. This implication should be removed. I think it would be enough to just apply the geographical/resource limitations on camping.

I think that "long rests" can be limited geographically. You can only camp/long rest at designated camp sites, like a fast travel point for example.

Additionally, if you have a camping minigame (see below), it gives you the ability to start playing with other limitations like limited rations and start having a "time cost" that is expressed through the explicit cost of camping. In the Expeditions: Viking example below, you can actually ruin a campsite if you're not taking good care of it, and you can get in a bit of trouble if you run out of food.

The key distinction here is that camping is not something to be avoided, but it can cost you.


How should short rests be rationed?
I think it might be worthwhile keeping the "short rest" mechanic with no limit on short rests. In this case, I think it might be worthwhile exploring whether it might be possible to take advantage of the advantage of Baldur's Gate being a minigame to ensure there are substantial downsoides to short rests, and that short rests have a cooldown period, and get progressively less effective the more you use them until your next long rest.

By "short rest", I basically think it would be worthwhile allowing your party to do things like healing between battles, so you can focus your combat abilities (eg healing) on combat. But maybe after a while the short rest healing effect diminishes as your party gets more battle-fatigued.


Camping Minigame
One thing I feel that Baldur's Gate 3 is sorely missing at the moment is a camping minigame to flesh out the camping experience. Currently, Larian have implemented a free roam campsite that I'd say is modeled after Dragon Age: Origins.


It's nice having some quiet time to spend with your party, but there isn't really any gameplay in this. The only "gameplay" just ends up happening in dialogue cutscenes anyway. I think the idea of physically free roaming the campsite like it's just another level in the game might be a bit unnecessary.

What I'd prefer is if they take some inspiration from other games that have some good ideas for camping minigames. Some examples:

Expeditions: Viking
You have campsites dotted around the world map, where you assign characters jobs such as cooking, hunting etc. Really cool minigame.


Final Fantasy XV
You need to find a campsite to start the camping minigame. I really like the immersiveness of this, with characaters setting up the camp and interacting with each other. The cooking mechanic is also really pretty.


Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Here you can camp almost anywhere to start the minigame. Not my favourite example, but the game shares a lot in common with Baldur's Gate.


Are there any other examples or suggestions of rest mechanics that you think would be an even better model for BG3?

I'm definitely for implementing rations that you need in order to long rest. There must be some sort of cost tied to it or the player is just going to use it after every single fight and it would be completely meaningless and dull.

About short rests, I actually like how Solasta is doing it, because it's not simply a "quick-heal-button" that you press while out of combat, but a more tactical decision how you want to spend your limited resources on short rests before each and every long rest.

I haven't played Solasta, so can you explain what you mean in more detail?

I don't have any issues with camping/skill slots as they are now in BG3. My main issue is that I dislike a lot of the things that are being suggested to "fix" resting, especially timed quests, not being able to use waypoints and having to double back, and minigames. So, I hope if any of these things are added, they are optional (you could select what you want in the options menu).

As far as I am aware, short rests are pretty much handled as they are in 5E. You basically could do as many as you like but in order to heal your characters up, you would have to spend the available hit dice. And once spend you don't get those hit dice back until you do a long rest.
That way you have to make a decision whether you want to burn through all you hit dice to heal up big time or hold back on them a little bit so you could squeeze in maybe another short rest along the way before you have to long rest again.

"timed quests"
Stick around. I'll be looking for your support when we need to disagree with someone suggesting this.

"not being able to use waypoints and having to double back"
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this and I might need more detail. I feel like you don't like the idea of rests being limited to specific locations? Tell me more. Also, what do you feel is the best way to stop people from just camping everywhere all the time?

At the moment, Larian hasn't quite got worked out how to stop people from camping too much. They just try to make you feel bad about it.

"minigames"
Have you taken a look at the minigame examples I've provided? Do you have any particular criticisms? I'm keen to hear more about how you feel a minigame would detract from your experience.

Personally, I don't care if people camp anywhere they want, so I am not worried about stopping them from doing so. I think the original BG games let you do so, with only maybe the possibility of some trash mobs attacking? Feel free to correct me if I am wrong about that.

I don't like hunting and crafting and such, and would rather spend my time doing quests.

I would like to be able to get all the companion scenes, though. I hope they fix that so I don't miss any.

In my opinion, just leave it as is relatively. Without a day and night cycle I doubt i'd be more immersed. In addition I doubt bg3 is a relaxing happy adventure. Storywise their is suppose to be pressure from the tadpole. I think those mini games may detract from the more serious tone of the narrative. Roleplaywise I wouldn't trust the cooking, for example. I think the pace storywise should remain relatively fast. Most of the things you want sound like fluff that will slow things down.

Personally I like fluff. I would have like the "adventuring" party. I just don't think bg3 is like that. At least in Act 1, I think the tone is very cut throat. I don't think you really get companions becoming more like friends till probably act 2. Like some things have to hit the fan first.

Mechanically I think wild sorcerers have a way to get a slot back actively in an extremely limited capacity in a specific way. I think if you play a class a certain way, then under a very strict circumstance you get a small resource back. The problem is it would restrict play style. Wild sorcerers combat this by being luck based. Then again more rng is always bad. If feels like trying to "fix" 5e rather than build on it is basically "pick your poison".

I don't like the idea of having to sacrifice combat advantage to get the proper benefit of short rests. I think it should explicitly be an opportunity to rest and recover with no real immediate downside.

The reason I like having some level of recovery after each battle is because it means that each battle can be a bit more challenging. It's more interesting when the challenge in each battle is to "get through the battle alive" rather than "get through the battle without a scratch".

But it's fine by me for there to be eventual downsides like "running out of short rests", or getting fatigued because it's been too long since you've had a long rest. Like it'd be neat if at the beginning of the game, maybe you take a short rest after every encounter, but by the late game after the difficulty ramps up a bit, you're deliberately having to get through several encounters without a short rest in order to conserve them.

You think it's fine to just take a long rest after every single battle? If so then okay. That's your opinion.

My method of reducing long rests having campsites at fast travel points, which would be spaced out appropriately. So you know, you'll be encouraged to save your skills so you can make it through several encounters without a long rest, but if you're struggling you can always go for a bit of a walk back to the camp site, and long rest. (And maybe some of the encounters respawn a bit?)

I also want to add -- I think long rests should automatically resurrect any dead party members. I've mentioned elsewhere, I think we should abandon the idea that party members in BG3 ever "die" in combat. As it is, resurrection scrolls are just handed out like candy and the idea that party members literally die every other battle is just immersion-breaking. It'd be better to just give them some kind of "unconscious" condition, stop handing out quite so many scrolls, and encourage the unfortunate party member to recover at camp.

I think you'd be comfortable with the examples I provided. There's no reason why you need to take those camping minigames super seriously. You can half-ass it pretty quickly, or you can take it really seriously and get some advantage out of it.

I would certainly play a mode with more survival type stuff in it. This should only be an option though since I doubt most people would like it.

The main thing I want to see is a day/night cycle and the ability to camp in different locations. Maybe something like the DA:I system. I just think it is really immersion breaking as it is right now with being forced to do things only in the day and to go from especially the Underdark back to the only campsite. Would be easier as well with a visual indicator (night/day) to know when to rest (long rest should be only once a day.)

If done right, these elements add a lot and wouldn't slow anything down, only add more realism. Having a lit fire giving away your location and trying to cook and eat is a rather tense experience if you expect to be killed at any moment. I think something like this should be added as optional DLC, would much prefer them to work on other things first. I agree with you about the cooking, pretty sure everyone would be making their own food and glaring at each other around the fire. :P

It's meant to be a tactical decision. You could also have the cleric use healing spells. But that costs resources. That's what D&D is essentially. Managing limited resources. Do you max out HP but use up spell slots? Do you cast a fireball now and hope you don't need it in the next encounter?

In old school, you rarely were at full strength. As a party, you had to decide whether to face the monsters head on or perhaps just sneak by. Or even negotiate. There was no true benefit to kill every encounter. But such nuance is hard to program into a game. It's best left to a DM. But I do find more satisfaction of defeating an encounter with less than stellar resources. It makes the victory that much more sweeter.

We should start talking about this before early access gets too far along.


The challenge is that HP bloat (HP bloat is referring to lowering AC and raising HP to compensate) has increased the incentive to spam spells. The current game meta involves taking down enemies by always putting your best spell forward. which requires a follow up rest. A lot of folks have advocated to be more true to DnD 5e. At this point I think it'd be good to bounce ideas on how Larian could add fun homebrew to the game.

Possible Changes

• Revert some of the HP bloat
• Increase spell slots for spell-dependent classes
• Add items that restore spell slots?
• Limit short and long rests to safe zones
• remove the high amount of spell scrolls everywhere
• add in expendable material components for spells (let us at least test out with Find Familiar Larian, please)

I'm again using Fire Emblem as a measuring stick, spells have finite uses that replenish outside of combat. Casters get a lot more uses per battle and I think players (videogamers) may prefer to keep some elements of a spell happy meta.

These changes can add in levers so that the game can have rests moved to exclusive safe zones.

I think adding expendable material components is one of the best ways to balance the future game meta. It'll keep uses of strong spells, like Fireball, in check while allowing the character to more freely use other spells.



I think it'd be good to suggest the tried and true fishing mini-games that are popular in RPGs. I'm leaning towards a system where the player could fish/hunt/gather (so that if the player wants to roleplay as a vegan they can) and the dishes have to be prepared at camp for the next leg of the journey (similar to FFXV, but hopefully shorter animations like Breath of the Wild). The cooked dishes could only be eaten during a short rest, and that would explain how the party restores health or spell slots. (Whichever is better for the game). So if the player forgets to maintain a supply of food, short rest won't heal anything. (Or even have the number of short rests limited by food supply).

I call on my allies for support!
Aishaddai wants the main quest to be timed. Help me!

So why camp at all then? If you're fighting side-by-side with someone and sleeping beside someone, I'd have to imagine there's some bare minimum level of trust there. If you can't expect you to cook your food (while you watch them) then how can you expect them to have your back when it matters?

You don't need to be friends to have a good time.


Clearly you've never played D&D with a munchkin. Old school D&D had plenty of loopholes that could be abused, and resting was one of them. See Icelyn's comment below:

It was (and still is) up to GMs to manage this if the players start trying to exploit this mechanic. It is now Larian's burden to ensure that the mechanics of the game encourage players to play the game in a way that promotes immersion.

First, to clarify: I will use the terms tactics to refer to "in battle", and strategy as "outside battle".

I don't like the idea of having to get through battle "without a scratch". I like the tactical stakes being a bit higher. Party Wipe should be an ongoing threat.

The big problem for me with expecting too much strategic planning and encouraging me to min/max in the metagame is that this is essentially encouraging me to embrace my inner munchkin. When that happens, I break games. I will find loopholes, and every one of them will be thoroughly exploited, immersion and roleplaying be damned. BG3 doesn't have any GM who can stop me.

The only hope BG3 has is if they limit my munchkin-ness to the tactical level, and allow me to try roleplaying the strategic level without obsessing about the details. Then they might be able to balance things properly enough that it won't be easy to break the tactics in BG3.

(DOS2 has plenty of other exploits, but these are just the ones that are ridiculously absurd.)

I think Aishaddai agreed with me previously about hating timed quests?


Punching Solas?

Agree with this. It creates story problems when other npcs die if you are so easily able to bring people back. For example, if the child gets killed, why not bring her back?

1) The first thing according to me is that resting should be a moment in which you have things to do.

D&D include all this, there's no need to create tons of things even if some could be a great addition (cooking, ...)

Short rest :
- Hit dice rolling (manual)
- Feature/spell slot recovery (automatic)
- Use features or other (manual, i.e arcane recovery)

Longr rest :
- Spellslot recovery (automatic)
- Use features/spell ritual (manual)
- Level up (manual)
- Spell preparation (manual)
- Other activity

2) the second thing is that we shouldn't be able to click rest everywhere. Resting shouldn't just be a button.

Short rest : Only on specific spot designed on the map.
Long rest : Fast travel to camp needed (only possible from the outside, not from cave or dungeons)

3) the third is that resting should have consequences.
It should really be a part of how action economy works in D&D... Meaning that you have to choose wisely when and how to rest/use your features and spell slot.

The only solution about this is to add random encounters, at least for long rest.

Maybe a camp activity should be "watching" (don't know the right word in EN). Something that would decrease the risk of random encounter.
See how it work in Kingmaker to understand how "non-D&D activities" could be implemented.

=> I think that those things would totally solve the rest mechanic issues and the action economy of the game.
=> On the other hand if you have to rest to lvl up, players won't ever miss the "story rests"

Some things could be easily enabled/disabled as options if needed.

+1 to Maximuuus, this is a great d&d system

I believe i read somewhere on this forum interesting idea about how handle long rests ...
Its autor was talking about ading some resource material for teleportation by Waystones ... adding a Waystone to your camp ... and finaly disabling fast travel from anywhere and restrict it for waystones only.

I still love the idea, it limits long rests a bit, but also not so hard so people are completely screwed ...
It takes away the problem with existence of portals, that no one uses for some reason ...
It solves problem with your camp location (Think about it, everyone is telling you that you are in hurry ... yet every day you return to same place and start exploring over and over from the same spot.) ...
And it certainly dont allow you to rest "in middle of the spider-nest". :-/

Well, it might seem as a too easy solution, a kind of "Deus Ex Machina" to solve developers problems instead of favoring rpg tabletop/BG experience.

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.

When you said there should be "Pressure from the tadpole" -- to me, this implied that the main quest will have some kind of time restriction.


I can give you examples, but they're mostly moot on the basis that "a (good) GM won't let you do that" -- bear in mind that this is my point and that the problem is that BG3 does not have a GM. What happens then is you have situations like in the original Baldur's Gate where you could essentially spam rest without consequence. Tell me what's stopping you from spamming rest in a regular D&D session? Concepts like it takes 8 hours are meaningless if time is meaningless. You need a GM to build consequences.

Munchkins are a meme in D&D because they give headaches to GMs. No one complains about munchkins in a tactical board game like Warhammer. Tactics is how the game is played. If you want tactics, you need to lock these rules down.

D&D is not a system that's well designed for people who want to "defeat the GM" because that's not what D&D is about. If the GM wants to kill your party then your party will be dead. It's that simple.

D&D is collaborative and the GM will adapt to the players. In D&D, the tactics are not necessarily important, depending on the group. In many cases, you can expect a GM to reward for good roleplaying even when it's bad tactics. Any time a D&D session is "tactical", it's an illusion. The GM is actively deciding on the level of challenge and the GM is always actively making the decision not to kill your entire party.

When translated into a video game though, that changes: the level of challenge is relatively fixed and it is possible to "win" against the game.

Tactics are very good and I enjoy this but not when they detract from roleplaying. Especially considering that one of those tactics is save-scumming.

I don't know that your suggestion is super productive really.

Anyway, Pathfinder: Kingmaker's system was far from perfect. It could easily be spammed except for only some minor consequences coming from the timed quests. And there was a bit too much freedom in choosing where to camp. I don't know how a day/night cycle substantially improved Pathfinder. I don't recall it doing anything really. Maybe someone would like to explain why it's so important in Pathfinder: Kingmaker?

I like your thinking, but I still think it's worth trading this off for a more immersive and dynamic campsite.

The idea that you have a magical campsite that you carry with you everywhere is a little bit weird. I really think it's better to have the campsite adapt to the locations you're travelling to. This means the campsite will lose all of that unique charm, but I don't think we should be heading to camp in order to do more exploring. Camp should be something different.

Hello guys,

With the upcoming release of resting and camping, and the way the current game is being played we should talk about resting and camping and how to balance and improve it.

- some of the issues are "sort rests are essentially a spam-aoe heal/mana regen"
- frequent camping is to easily accessed (ie you can (short/long) camp anywhere)
- frequent camping impacts some classes viability (making casters more or less powerful) For example, if you could only camp in some area's, casters would become more or less validated depending on a n umber of other external factors. classes less dependent on camping like fighters are gain value when camping can be done less frequently.
- frequent camping impact the difficulty and progression rates of the game (camping and regenerating more means its easier to heal, get more spells to cast etc)
- frequent camping influences the power of non-combat related choices in the game essentially making things like intimidation etc less important.


Just a few issues to start it off.

How do you feel about it and what do you think should be done to remove / change short/long camping to improve the game?

It is very easy to miss companion scenes now. I would like something to indicate when a companion has a scene at camp so that you don't miss it (or some other way to ensure they aren't missed). Other than that I am happy with the resting system. I especially don't want timed quests added.

Do you mean, The camping system itself has a timer on it so you cannot access the companions quests etc? If so, this is an interesting take on it.

The way I see it, there are three or four large issues with the camping/resting mechanic in the game as is:

Most glaring issue is the lack of a Day/Night cycle:

Sadly, Larian seems dead set against implementing a proper day/night cycle as in the original games. The reason given for this is to my knowledge what I consider a rather poor excuse to follow the DOS2 formula: That a day/night cycle would require a massive overhaul of the AI "living routine" akin to The Elder Scrolls series. This disregards the fact BG3 is a mostly linear game with static encounters unlike the vast changing sandbox that is TES, and a day/night cycle would ONLY require the illusion of passing time. The AI would largely behave very much the same, bar having the added potential of camp-fires and additional sleeping enemies (reflecting nocturnal/diurnal patterns). Encounters with sleeping enemies could be balanced with adding more of them. If Bioware managed to do this in 1998, Larian can do it over 20 years later.

This change would bring immersion to the eternal day, it would bring variety and new interesting tactical opportunities. It would set a sort of framework/suggested limitation to resting and thus also address some of the balance issues in a roundabout way.

Other major issues:

* How the camp is static and does not reflect your area, breaks immersion.
* How resting is near unrestricted when the story impresses upon us we are running out of time, is an immersion breaking narrative dissonance.
* How virtually unlimited resting in D&D where are classes built on a more restrictive formula, affects balance. When boredom/patience becomes THE limiting factor (like ie. weapon dipping); you know the game design is BAD.

Suggestions for improvements:

1. Immersion/narrative dissonance. Camp could be explained to be a specific place, perhaps a pocket dimension, connected to a teleportation/dimension door device. This dimension could even have time flowing differently (ie. eternal night) that would also address the narrative dissonance of you resting and relaxing while the tadpole eats your brain/nethernese destruction orb beating in Gale's chest. Both allegedly ticking time bombs.

2. Balance. Tricky subject. Clearly an already relative weak subclass like the Champion Fighter compared to the likes of Battle Master, is weakened even further. Yet once per day abilities like their Action Surge can in effect be used once per encounter if resting in between every fight. Full casters are significantly stronger, but casters like Warlock less so. I would suggest balancing these directly by making some several abilities stronger than the rules normally dictate.

Example: Champion Fighter's level 18 ULTIMATE ability is akin to eating one or two of Larian's magical healing apple/food stuff (a micromanaging implementation I dislike, just give us passive regeneration as part of tadpole powers if you must). It is very weak in RAW, it is practically useless in BG3. Stuff like this would NEED to change.

I agree. the lack of a day night cycle is jarring.

- frequent camping impact the difficulty and progression rates of the game (camping and regenerating more means its easier to heal, get more spells to cast etc)

This.

To be honest, i expected the devs to balance the gameplay pacing to something like having 3-4 encounters (1 smaller dungeon) per long rest in average, to make the resource aspect of the game meaningful. Number of encounters between LRs could be more as you level up and have more actions/spells/hp etc. But clearly thats not the intention? At the moment it seems you can just spam LR anytime.

Im looking forward to see how they try to tweak this via higher difficulty modes, especially that camping is now tied to story moments.

The Resting system was always an integral Part of DnD. It was always a tool for a DM to balance things.

Its also Part of the special appeal of DnD.

In DnD a Typical adventure calls for a decent into a Dungeon to find/ Kill / Destroy / Rescue something important. A HUGE part of the dificulty is preparing for the Dungeon (buying potions, ropes, Torches, holy water and ton of other Adventuring tools), and also get the casters prepare spells according to what you maybe expect to encounter.
This ALWAYS Provided an additional layer of tactics and deceisions to make.
A Huge part was always to organize your Spells and resources along the way and dont fire everything you got because you dont know when you can afford to rest next time.
In fact the WHOLE GAME evolved around that as a good party combination always had a healthy mixture of very resource independent Classes with some highdependent classes and some in the middle row. In DND a group of 6 wizards is crap because while powerfull in a single fight you wont get far into the dungeon. While a group of 6 Paladins will be extremly selfsufficiant and thats to their inate healing abilitys while beeing tanky will allow them to stay alive long without a rest. But Lacking any form of Crowdcontrol the Paladins will be easily either outnumbered or stoped by something heavy magical.

THe list goes on as every class has a set of Roles depending on how they are skilled. DnD was ALWAYS about diferent skillsets working together to complement each others.

And the Resting / Camping mechanic always worked INTO that goal.

Larian has never understood those DnD mechanics, and probably never will. Most of their fights are typicaly Hard and require you to THINK how to beat the enemy. However in DnD alot of the challenge lies not in beating the enemy but using teamwork to be extremely efficent to not waste all resources.
A typical DnD dungeon in more glorious days was not filled with one deadly encounter after another. It was filled with obstacles towards your goal. So many trash monsters that didnt pose a huge Danger on themself, but in numbers beeing able to wittle you down slowly. ALso Traps, mazes, and other stuff to make you waste REsources (spells, potions, equipment, hitpoints, use per day abilitys).

The question was in WHAT shape you arive at the various encounters. The limitation of resting is an INTEGRAL Part of the DnD difficulty.
Larian doesnt understand this. Instead they try to make every encounter Challenging fight for life. And to compensate the REsting system is basicaly non-existant and used to push on character storys.

The exictement to find a save resting place is INTENSE in a REAL DnD adventure. It also emphasizes ALOT of different class abilitys.

Examples:

- Druids Goodberry spell is legendary because of getting fed and abit healed when there is NO option to camp
- Certain Character lore help indentify a save rest place (Cleric recognizes a smal Lathander shrine in an UD crypt, Ranger finds a hidden cave to savely rest.)
- Bards with their songs can dracticaly reduce the Resource need of other specialised classes and reduce the need for camping.

the list can go on endless. But Larian doesnt understand it. They dont see that camping is an important part of the Difficulty and not just a story element.

THis game should have never gone to Larian to be honest.

Good points. I would also like to add that the ability to magically teleport back to camp pretty much at will and no matter where you are really breaks immersion for me. As I said once before in these forums, it's like the Fellowship of the Ring zipping back to Rivendell every night to rest.

I'm not too sold on the notion of a pocket dimension camp though, it feels 'wrong' somehow for a low level party? I would rather have to find a safe place to rest, as with the previous games, and the risks that entailed.

Also the mechanism whereby all party interactions are locked to the camp is not great game design; it's been noted several times how players have missed out on dialogue because they weren't aware that that is the only place interactions can happen. I assume this is due to the cinematics; it would seem the tradeoff for having fancy cinematics is that others factors get left by the wayside.

It all just feels so restrictive, I thought cRPGs were about (the illusion) of freedom of choice but with BG3 I find myself being railroaded by their dubious design decisions.

I hear you. I would prefer a camp that reflected the changing environment (and a day/night cycle). But seems like Larian is set against it. Teleportation to a pocket dimension/specific place is the only thing I could think of that could explain a static camp system. Pocket dimensions for camping is a D&D staple, from Rope Trick to Magnificent Mansion, and Dimension Door style teleport would be a nice homage to the original BG (something the game really needs more of if it is to live up to the namesake).

Even a scripted camp system would be better than the current system in my mind. This would work and be immersive given the linear nature of the game. Add slow regeneration to passive tadpole powers to overcome the need to rest just for full health (scrap Larian cheesy food items) prior to hard encounters. Expandable magic assets would be enough to carry the party through to victory even when low on spells (good thing with cantrips being so strong in 5e).


I agree completely. There is something artificial in forcing all major conversations in the camp. The original games could surprise you with these moments wherever and this made it flow more organically. Larian is perhaps trying a little too hard to make their static camp useful beyond the mechanical effects.

I think the rest system in today's game market probably does need to be different from 20 years ago to be honest. Modern culture has moved into a very impatient meta where instant gratification and short attention span are the default. That doesn't mean you have to let everyone do everything RIGHT NOW though. I think they have the framework of a decent system that with a little cosmetic work could address the story and immersion issues without necessarily going down the full day/night route they are unlikely to pick up at this point.

What I'd go with would be along these lines:

Where Gale jumps out the glyph cliff, have a moderately tough fight. During the fight have him emerge and help. Once combat is over, add dialogue to the effect that his "expert wizard skills" have unlocked a magical glyph that allows transport to a secure location. In camp, have standing stones with glyphs for all the travel points for that map location, which you can unlock 2-way travel for by finding their counterpart in the map.

Then, ONLY have fast travel work via the camp location; and ONLY allow short rests at the camp location as well. Finally, give short rests a 30min cooldown, and only allow a long rest once they have both been used; but don't have a separate cooldown on a long rest so you can transition straight from 2nd short rest into a long rest if you want. You can justify this in the world by making a short rest the equivalent of preparing a meal which also explains the HP regen, and makes it perfectly reasonable to eat dinner and then go to bed.

That gives an effective 1hr cooldown on a long rest which makes resting more tactical and resource economy more involved; and means that if you want to go from, say, the Goblin camp to the Druid Grove you need to fast travel via the campsite which can trigger companion updates and dialogue options. Same goes for if you want a short rest: you don't just bust it out, you travel to the nearest glyph and port to the campsite, again giving companion arcs a chance to trigger.

That's an interesting point about the pocket dimension, I hadn't realised it's a staple art of the lore. I guess I am a little (over) fond of the idea of adventurers resting where they travel, battling the elements, etc. It makes finding an inn in a settlement that much sweeter.



That's very insightful re: modern culture and instant gratification. I would loved to have seen the response in feedback if a more traditional BG resting system had been implemented from the outset, just to see what newcomers would have made of it.

I entirely condone a fast travel system, it just feels more immersive to me when it implies going on foot (or other forms of travel), rather than zipping around everywhere through magical portals that apparently nobody else in the game world has noticed or uses, especially when the party is at such low levels.

There are ways of making going to camp more challenging, but to try and peralize the players for going to camp is not the way to go. Limiting the amount you can go to camp will just set casual players off. It may be the bee's knees to you guys to make it tougher to recoup after battles, but most will look at it as punishing them (because that is ALWAYS the way they see it).

Personally, I would like if they implement a roll on random encounters on the way to the camp. But that is just my personal choice, as is your posts, your personal idea of what will work for you, not really what would work to make the game popular to a broad base of players. Considering how many times you have to short rest, and the only way to recharge your groups short rest is to camp overnight, trying to limit a 1 hr cooldown would not be looked positively by the general player. If they were to make it for a 1hr cooldown, they would have to increase the number of short rests provided.

What if a player spends his gold and cannot buy potions? That player does a particular fight in a deep dungeon and uses his 2 short rests quickly, whelp guess they are screwed since they have 45 minutes to wait before they go back to camp. Or do you think they should have to backtrack through the entire dungeon, run across the world map to their camp? After traversing the entire world map, how many times do you think they should be forced to run across it before they are allowed to utilize easier fast travel? How does that even make sense? I mean you have to look at it in regards to what is enjoyable for the average player.

Now if you want to say have a hardcore mode, where there is camp limitations and such, I say that is a great idea to add additional challenge to seasoned players, but absolutely not for normal and under, hell even hard should have that limitation. You do not see it in Diablo, DOS2, or any other rpg fantasy game. Even ME didn't do it.

If traveling to camp "breaks" your immersion, challenge yourself not to over use it. But don't try to decide how others should use a mechanic in THEIR game.

Also, would like to mention, the camp is not a static day/night camp. The world is, but not the camp. You do have a day/night version of the camp. That is why when you click the "rest for night", it turns to night.

What I'd like to discuss here is what we should expect regarding rest, why the rules for resting are still not satisfying existing, and how Larian is communicating on this.

In particular, the purpose of this post is neither to make a suggestion about how rest should be handled, nor to explain why (or if) the current absence of any restriction on long rest is a problem.


There was this interesting Rock Paper Shotgun interview in July 2020 with Nick Pechenin, Lead System Designer.
- part 1,
- part 2 :

This interview is actually quite interesting and I thought about making a topic about "all of it" but that would completely go in all directions from the start. So this post is just about rest, which is discussed in the 2nd video, from 16:19 to 18:41 (see timestamps in the description).

One striking thing is that in the BG3 play footage running as a background, we can see the game saying "Cannot travel to camp right now. Do you want to take a short rest ?", presumably when the player asked for a long rest. Nick also said "short rest is a resource". He even says, "your decisions about your resources have a bit more weight" (than Divinity : Original Sin). So there's at least one person in Larian Studios who is, or was, thinking in terms of resource management. Finally, Nick said that some zones are "set up as danger zones, where you cannot just teleport out, and walk off all of your injuries".

So it appears that Larian clearly has a given some thinking to how rest should work. However, in the current EA build, we don't have any rule regarding long rest. What could explain that ?

• (a) The window in the video is the equivalent of "functionality not available yet". Larian still doesn't have the system in place, so they gave us direct access to camp, no restriction.
• (b) They had the system working with a previous build, but they have difficulty getting it to work again in the current version.
• (c) They wanted to experiment and see what the players would say if there's no rule restricting access to long rest.
• (d) They've changed their mind. They've decided that rules on long rest, like many other 5E rules, are boring.

I'm short of ideas. Anyone sees something else ?

I hope it's not (c). I'm absolutely fine with experiments, even or especially un-announced ones (I mean, you probably want not to announce it if you want certain data). But at this point, they've probably had more than enough "no rules for long rest is bad" feedback and "yay, free long rests" feedback. They could probably have made up their mind. By not communicating, I personally feel they're not really gaining much. (Yes, I know, at the end of the EA, it won't matter that much what EA players think of Larian's communication, only how enjoyable the game is. Still, I thought a developper doing an EA would want to reduce the noise in the feedback. Communicating your plans is a good way to cut short the pointless feedback.)

Now, in view of this, what do you think the full release rules for long rest will be ?

I'm not going to organise the bookmaking activity. The only prize for getting it right is bragging rights.

I won't be a wild gambler here : I would bet on a "no long rest zone" system, since that's what they described (of course, they can change their plan).

If implemented, that system raises a question : if an area has, say, 6 small encounters, and you backtrack to camp after 2 encounters, will there be encounter respawning, or will you be able to continue through the other 4 ? For the sake of the game, I'll bet on "no-respawn". Given how badly the passing of time is taken into account and the fact that so far every encounter is a hand-crafted puzzle, I'm not sure they would generate a random replacement encounter.



Note : I searched for the threads on rest to see if there was a main one I could continue, but I found 41 threads with rest/resting in the titles. @Vometia/Sadurian : I'm wondering if it would be worth opening a Mega-Thread for this topic. EDIT : also wondering if this is better in General or in S&F. Feel free to move if more appropriate in the other subforum.

I would love to see a lot more restrictions on resting... where you can do it, how often you can do it... even what times during the game day it can be done... It would make for a MUCH more engaging challenge in terms of resource management. Heck, I'd even like to have a fatigue system so that if you do too much between rests, or spend too much of your time walking around 1 pound short of fully encumbered, your combat effectiveness, movement speed, and ability to concentrate on spells falls off the edge of a dark cliff.

Unfortunately, I don't believe that any of that is going to make it into the game. I think that the current unfettered rest-as-you-please mechanics are going to be the place where this will all end up in the end. In short, I think that (d) was the correct answer there.

I have already started a topic on this post a few days ago, and this post really should be merged there.

I think we will get a multi-zone system in the end. Some areas there is no resting and some areas where you have to go to an inn to rest. Without an Inn system in place it is much harder to make resting restricted. They might also make areas where you might have an encounter when you rest as they already have a few non-random encounters in your camp, so a system to build these is probably already in place. If they do end up doing this I would hope they limit the experience on these encounters so they are not exploitable, but I doubt they will. It would be really neat if the encounters were with enemies that were on the overworld and found you and are no longer there after, but is probably unlikely to be a feature.

I think that the issue is exactly as you said... non-random. It is one thing to build in a system of triggers where "if this, then this" is the basis for determining what happens. A random encounter table might be infinitely harder to implement. Would you like to have your odds of being attacked in the middle of the night be the same s your odds of critically failing a roll currently are without the loaded dice option? Because I have a distinct feeling that that is what you'd get.

I would prefer that over not being able to rest in that area, it gives me the choice instead of being a restriction. Also this is what I think they will do not what I want them to do, which is the main goal of this thread. I very much believe a more complex resting system will be introduced when Inn's are.

There are certain areas in the game already where you can’t camp. In the hag’s lair, you have to exit to long rest.

I thought long resting would alter the outcome but sure enough after I stepped out and went back in, Mayrina was still in her cage.

Maybe in future patches if you don’t rescue her before a long rest, she will die.

Among many other things, the rest system needs to be improved and limited in its uses.

I do think it's probably C, but I don't think it's quite as bad as you fear. Limiting where and how often the player can long rest is probably end state of balancing. Throwing mass testers into a fire pit of no long rests with uneven difficulty and continual changes to the balancing is probably a bad time for Larian. It makes sense for them to remove all limitations on resting for the beta, gather data (not from forums mind) on how players respond and then implement the resting limitations at or near 1.0.

There needs to be both many more resting restricted areas, and long rest enabled areas. For local resting.

Using the same camp for long rests during an entire act will always prove troublesome, as the party is expected to somehow teleport that distance. It gets more silly the further you travel.

Going to sleep in a surface camp while deep in the Underdark is already immersion breaking and silly in EA. And no, having a really convenient teleportation network everywhere you go to explain this is not the answer. The teleportation system breaks immersion even more since it's obviously there only for gameplay convenience and doesn't make sense in the context of the game world.

A big part of adventuring IS setting up camp in dangerous locations with possible consequences, and looking or securing a safe place to rest.

Why can't we rest in the fortress or in the village in the Underdark? Why can't we rest in abandoned camps or in the Blighted Village after securing a house, or clearing the entire village? Or in the safe areas, Druid Grove or Tiefling camp?

There are so many exciting and logical places to have a long rest in! The pocket dimension camp is boring and weird in comparison.

I think that Larian's long term plans for the "long rest system" is basically to not give a fuck and keep this half-assed abortion of a system we have currently.

Man, i just hope they don't keep it as it is, i'd forgotten how bad it is. As things stand, coupled with how buggy the companions are, it means that before even reaching the grove one must long rest twice, once to get SH's first chat and then again for Gale's mirror dialogue. Jarring as all hell, especially considering the plot.

Even if ...
Why not? If you dont have enough self-moderation to not use something that makes you mad, its kinda your fault.
And if you do, you dont have any isue with that option being able often than you use it. O_o

I dunno, personaly i keep engaging fights without spellslots, since i simply forgot to rest.

Of course, bad game design doesn't exist. It's always just the player's fault. /s

Because it’s garbage as far as mechanics go?
and better alternatives wouldn’t even need to be figured out, they could just copy from better games.


Also, I hardly ever rest unless absolutely necessary, but that doesn’t change the fact that “Don’t like it? Don’t use it” is trash as an argument.
And making a mechanic meaningful ahold rely on self-restraint and some make-believe head canon about pretending the flaws aren’t there.

This, of course, even trying to ignore that ignoring the rest system currently comes with its own set of issues, like the fact that in my last play through I hardly experienced any companion story progression precisely because off my habit of not resting very often

Really strong points, I’ve argued the same myself but less eloquently. I hope the resting system will change but it would seem Larian have locked themselves into the whole camp interactions/cinematics system so I can’t see it changing. It’s another convenient mechanic for the casual player and one that won’t bother most.

Those of us who want to experience the sensation of undertaking a perilous adventure; finding a safe place to rest in the wilds, exploring a city at night, the excitement and relief of finding an inn in a settlement, etc., are finding these things sorely lacking in BG3.

I've said this before, but I'll say it again, I'm absolutely sure that the "resting area" is tied to acts. In second act, we will have something new (I hope). Perhaps in the future we will have some kind of permanent "base"?

Now, now ... look whos talking about quality of arguments. -_-

That is exactly where you are wrong ...
It wouldnt need to be figured out so the game works as YOU want ... but it would need to be figured out for others. O_o

There are people who are resting aftere every encounter, since they simply want to ... and since Larian is gathering our gameplay data, i dare to presume that they know much better than we do how often are most people resting.
I presume not even you would expect them to tune game for minority.

Me neither ...
Usualy when characters starts talking about needing rest i still have at least half resources unused. :-/

And to be honest i mostly dont use it not bcs i have some "rule" in my head, but bcs its much more fun to keep exploring world, than to go through the same speech i have seen allready dozen times ...

In my point of wiev, i traded quality for quality ...
What better did you people showed to support your opinion than "its suppose to be that way by rules this is based on, even if that dont follow them litteraly" or "i dont ike it" ? O_o

The point is that keep it as it is satisfy everyone ... except extremist that demand their restrictions as it seems. :-/

You want rest? You can.
You want rest later? You can.
You dont want to rest at all? You can.

Everyone happy.

I honestly believe that rest system will be adjusted, but not until all classes will be ingame ... and not until they gather enough data to see if there is any who really desperately need them more or less often.
From my point of view, so far it seem that Clerics needs them most.

In that case you ignored your characters that was demanding rest.
Your choice. :P

Bravo +1

Seems like you are rather fond of every single shitty argument or video in blind defense of this game, for some reason.

I think and hope that right now the system is incomplete. Even costing a food resource would be better than what we have right now as then there would be an opportunity cost and a place in the world for food and goodberry that is not combat.

No, I'm not? Stating it boldly doesn't make it a fact.

That's basically just gibberish.
And "How much people are resting" now is irrelevant, when the problem is precisely that the game is currently WAY too permissive with how much you can do it.

...What?
Also, there's no hard rule about how to adapt the rest system from pen & paper to videogame format, so trying to imply that any complaint about the current dysfunctional form of the feature is a matter of fanaticism toward the original rulebook is comically misguided at best.

Ah yes, "extremists". Is this another attempt to play that hilarious "silent million" angle?

You don't understand how game design work. Not even specifically for "videogames" but for games in general. A game is defined by his rules and restrictions.
Imagine "Let's play Monopoly. But every few minutes you'll be free to decide if you want to add to your bank 100,000 $ or not. It's up to you".

"Demanding" (very sparsely) to rest without giving you any actual reason to do it given that there's absolutely no penalty involved is rather pointless, isn't it?

Um, also forgot to mention, if they add way more areas where you can not go off and rest, like the Hag's home, that would also be a big help to restricting Rest, so that there are opportunity costs like progress in a dangerous location when you need to rest. And I'd probably add a third short rest, which would be on the upper end of short resting but would incentivize away from long resting in general before accounting for restrictions.

Oh yes, you are ... and if you would bother to read whole sentences, you also find out why.

Once again, you show that ugly habit of confusing therms "irrelevnat" with "irrelevant for myself only".
Not to mention that other ugly habbit of simply deny every argument by the "i have patent for being right" pose. How did you say that? "Stating it boldly doesn't make it a fact."

It is not irrelevant tho ...
If you want to determine how often should people be allowed to rest, first you need to find out how often they are resting ... it should not be any surprise that group made of Battle Master, Tief, Warlock and Druid ... wil need much less long rests than group made of Wizzard, Cleric, Eldrich knight and Arcane Trickster.

When you realize that, you should be able to deduce that first you need to implement all classes and specializations ... then you can start gathering data on how much are they actualy reliant to resting system ... and THEN (and only then), you can start figuring out how to restrict your resting system, so your game is still playable and enjoyable for every single class or specialization. :P
EA is suppose to be work in progress (see what i did there? ), we are simply not there yet.

What what ... quality for quality? Its common expresion in my language, it means that im only willing to try as hard as you seem to.

Or did you missunderstand the rest?
That was just comentary on you not liking my argumens, and concidering them weak ... since, all you showed so far its "its suppose to be as i say, bcs its suppose to be like it" that is not much strong argument either. :-/

There you are right, there are not rule about adaptations ...
But as i stated abowe (and in other words in previous post) Larian simply dont have needed data curently.

Dunno, i have no idea what that is.

It seem to me like you dont understant how game design work ... especialy in "early acess" or "still in development" state of that game. O_o
I would not claim that im anyhow experienced in this myself, i only know some people who are working in this business for couple of years now and im talking to them from time to time about it ... no personal experience tho. :-/

But seeing that example, i believe you nailed it:
Yes, that is how Monopoly were made, when its creator was wondering what funds should players have at start of the game, or what funds and how often are suppose to being added, or removed from his bank ...
In other words, that is how you play Monopoly Early Acess ...

And you record few millions of that games simultaneously ...
Then you gather your data and determine when and how many $ should players get and when.

I think i detected contradiction ...
First you claimed, you missed some story since you didnt rest. Now you claim that resting is pointless, unless you are penalized for "not resting".

Can you please decide before we continue? O_o
Either you want that story, therefore you have point ... or you dont, therefore you dont rest, but also dont mind that you missed some story. O_o

You are purposefully wasting people's time and rambling random stuff at this point.
Half of your arguments aren't even actual arguments, but convoluted, roundabouts ways to claim that everything is matter of opinions. The rest is nonsense.

No, it's just irrelevant to the point at hand in general.But we are going in circles here.

Uh, this isn't about misunderstandings. it's more the fact that the grammar of your entire sentence was hilariously broken from start to end. And if I can tell it even as a non-native English speaker I have to wonder what sort of mess it must sound like to an English/American user.

No shit it's Early Access. So?
What does it change? Do you fail completely to grasp the idea that an early access player can implicitly just judge what's there and the ridiculous futility of suggesting that any feedback should be held back until the game is finished?

I don't "need to decide" anything. There's nothing indecisive about what I stated and I made a perfectly clear point. Your reading comprehension is just failing you.

That is litteraly impossible ...
If you feel like you are wasting your time here, then i have surprise for you ... being here, talking here, wasting time here, as you say ... all that is your doing, not mine.

I have the same feeling.
Was this sentence suppose to be example of valid and good written argument? O_o

Bcs you said it?
I dont see any example of valid and good written argument to support any other claims. O_o

Naturaly!
Why would you expect me to react differently on the same stuff?
You repeat > i repeat ... simple as that.

Have you ever heared about definition of insanity? Its doing the same thing over and over, and expect different result.

Well, by all means i can write you in my language and you can use translator yourself, if you think that would make more sence ...
FE.: Co se mě týče, můžu ti klidně psát vlastní řečí a nechat tě ať si to překládáš sám, jesli ti to tak vyhovuje víc ...

Also, when we are talking about understanding english ... do you understand this: https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=boardrules&v=1 ?
Especialy theese:
- We do not tolerate abusive, malicious, personal attacks. You will be banned if you persist in this behavior.
- Anyone deliberately antagonizing other forum users is not welcome.

Once again ... read whole sentences. :-/
I told you specificly what does it change, i even used your own example to make it easier to you ... none of it will work, while you are closing eyes, stuffing your ears and yell: LALALALALALALALALA. It takes at least two to make conversation.

I never said that.

If your point was not taken ... its was obviously not so perfectly clear as you think ...
Also i never claimed that you "need to decide" so i dont quite understand those quotation marks. O_o
I simply asked you to state your point ... politely, i would add.

RagnarokCzD and Tuco.

Kindly knock it off. You have both made your points, and have now drifted into willy-waving territory.

Original Title: The Long Rest, Its Problems and its Solutions

"Make certain to rest a lot." "Rest as soon as you get Shadowheart." "Before garnering too much reputation with Gale, you should rest." "As often as you can, rest so that you can get all the dialogue options, because companion reputation..." Etc. etc.

The Complaints: I think most of us have heard recommendations of this sort from those who have been willing to share their experiences of BG3 gaming. We have encountered the frustrating dynamic of having missed conversations with our party members because we did not rest enough, or perhaps that we failed to rest between certain story events. As part of the gaming experience, as part of travelling with party companions, one would expect to get to know them better over time, and it is strange to me, and many others, that this was frustrated by the constant need to rest. I must admit to being somewhat bewildered by this gaming dynamic. Resting should be something we do as a party once our resources have been exhausted, once our party is exhausted, tired. So the question is (or at least, one of my questions): How is it that in BG3, my ability to progress in dialogues with my party members depends on how quickly I exhaust my resources? The more quickly I exhaust my resources, the better my chances of progressing in dialogues with my party members?

The Story Problem: Now, just to be clear, I have had a tremendous amount of fun playing BG3. I was (and still am) fanatically devoted to the original two (as I'm certain many people reading this are), and I am impressed with the direction BG3 is going, and with the story as it's unfolding. With that said, I would like the party and gaming experience to be a bit more fluid, or consonant with the story. So this brings me to my first major problem, which really goes beyond gaming dynamics, to the problem of story consonance: the decision to constantly rest is extremely dissonant with the story we're presented as characters.

We are told that we have a mind flayer tadpole in our skulls, ostensibly eating away at our identity, and soon to turn us into abominations. The absolute farthest thing from my mind, when presented with this information, is to continually rest, to spend day after day in bed. In my first playthrough, I refused to rest at all for the longest time, fearful that any delays would spell doom for myself and my fellow party members. Now, admittedly, this is perhaps an overcautious (neurotic?) approach to the information we were presented with, but certainly the other end of the spectrum, of simply resting and sleeping as much as possible, is just as bizarre.

The Gameplay Problem: Another problem with the Long Rest is how disjunctive it is to the gameplay experience. Shadowheart and I have just killed the three intellect devourers by the beach, and when I click on the Long Rest button, we're magically transported into a coastal camp setting next to the forest. How is it that we just arrived at this campsite? And, how is it that after having rested at camp, we arrived back to the same beach location inside the wrecked mindflayer ship? This kind of magical teleportation breaks gameplay immersion, and it doesn't get any better when I'm in the depths of the goblin fortress, having infiltrated my way inside, and I can immediately pop in and out between the goblin fortress and my party's camp. Finding the camp in the first place should make sense, gameplay wise, and getting back to the camp should make sense, as well.

A Story Solution: For each of these two problems, the solution should correspond with its category: the story problem should have a story solution, and the gameplay problem should have a gameplay solution. As for the story problem, the best solution (as it appears to me) should be that the story itself should, at regular intervals, bring us to camp, in order to make certain that we as a party hit those important party conversations that progress the plotline. I will give some examples: Once Shadowheart and I defeat the intellect devourers, there should be a story cutscene that brings us to our new campsite. This cutscene could take on any number of flavors: After the battle with the three intellect devourers, we witness a goblin horde approaching us as they search the wrecked mindflayer ship, and we have to hide and run away into the forest to escape from certain death. Exhausted, we look around and find ourselves in a clearing, and decide that this is good enough a place as any to rest. Or perhaps we have to flee the intellect devourer battle because we are suddenly overwhelmed by even more of them. Perhaps we are knocked out in the conflict, and we wake up in the forest camp clearing, with someone (Wyll?) having rescued us. There are any number of options. Likewise, after having entered the tiefling camp, we are invited to rest and recover from the battle, and the story brings our party to some quarters the tieflings have set aside in the camp, to give us a chance to rest. I don't pretend to be able to plan out each of these story reasons to bring our party to camp or to rest, but I can well imagine there being story reasons spread out across various events, to make certain that our adventure is punctuated with the party dialogues that complement the adventure.

A Gameplay Solution: As for the gameplay problem, I propose that there is a gameplay solution in order to make our return to the camp more immersive. Littered throughout the map, I propose that there be interactable "forest trails." Once you approach a forest, a bunch of trees, or a road into a forest, there be "forest trail" tags that you can interact with that bring the party to the campsite. It would be like the interactable tags found at the edges of the map that bring you into another instance, but these would be more numerous, and would bring the party to our campsite. Not only does this make sense gameplay-wise, of accessing the forest camp through the forest. It also makes sense of how we will rest once we reach cities: there can be "alleyway" tags in the city map that we interact with in order to bring us to our 'tavern' or whatever our new party rest site will be in the city. Likewise, travel between the "forest trails" and our campsite can now be new opportunities to introduce skill checks: (1) if the party has someone with a high enough stealth check, we can always avoid 'encounters' on the way back to camp; (2) if the party has someone with high enough survival/nature checks, we avoid certain pitfalls or traps along the way; (3) if we have a member with a high enough history/lore check, we may encounter a ruin or some sigils along the way that this party member recognizes; etc. This opens up a new series of ways to introduce story elements into our gameplay.

Feedback: In any case, these are some of the thoughts I have had while playing BG3. Please, let me know what you think. I would be interested to hear what you think of my proposals, of how my proposals could be implemented, but also of any other ideas you have come up with or come across to deal with these problems.

Nice contribution.

Fully agree they need to choose a solution to doing Long Rest at will and, the opposite, players who try to never rest.

Hello,

Thanks for your feedback. This is something we already discussed a lot and many of us share your issues with the actual rest system.

This TP in/out is 100% immersion breaking, we can easily miss dialogs and the urgency of the main story doesn't match at all with the unlimited rests.

Another issue you didn't really talked about is that ressources management makes no sense (why having spellslot if we can rest at any time).

I agree with all this.

On the other hand your solutions looks very complicated.

About the gameplay solution :
- we should not be able to TP at all while we're inside (a dungeon, a cave,...)
- we should be able to TP from the oustide but through the worldmap (open the map, click on the camp)
This would looks like a travel and not a WTF TP anymore It would works the same but the feeling would be very different, especially if the game say something like "you travel for 2 hours".
- I'm also one of those thinking that fast travelling should have consequences. Random encounters (combats or not), new creatures appearing on the map, new/modified questline... Anyway, something that would give the feeling that this world is alive.

At the moment everything/everyone is just waiting for us and the resting system just increase this feeling because nothing never happen.

Players would also have to rest if :
- we wouldn't be able to change our prepared spells at any time (like in DnD)
- we would have to rest to level up (like in DnD).
This would probably solve a part of the missing dialogs/companion story issues.

About the story solution :
It could be cool to just have a quest "find a spot to rest" after you fall the nautiloid. This could be the following of the tutorial and this could lead us to the camp.
Of course this meant that the camp has to be on the map^^

@Maximuuus

Gameplay Solution: I definitely agree with your concerns about TP'ing from within a dungeon or cave. That seems bizarre. I also really like your suggestion that travel to the campsite should have a notification alerting us to how much time has passed (the "you travel for 2 hours" suggestion). That makes a great deal of sense. If party members have higher survival checks, they could speed up travel times, but we could also get hopelessly lost if none of the party members knows how to travel in a forest setting.

Story Solution: I really like that idea, of having a quest to find a campsite! I think that's another great solution. We could make the campsite accessible before the goblin battle at the tiefling camp entrance.

I very much like your statement of the problem. As Maximuuus mentions, though, I feel like the solutions might create new issues and none of this addresses the resource management part of the problem. I also think that, though a story solution and a gameplay solution both need to happen, that they need to work together in one coherent system. I would either search for two separate solutions that can be woven together into one or look for a single solution that addresses both problems.

My ideas for the moment:

1) Eliminate the permanent camp entirely.
Putting down roots doesn't feel like something that you would do as a small group that has landed in the middle of nowhere and needs to go out searching for answers that might be very far away.

You need to do something with the companions that aren't actively in your party. They could go about their business in the world (where you could seek them out if you want to trade them in) or maybe they're following the main party, carrying all of the camping gear.

2) Camp wherever you are, but have risks commensurate with your location.
You can take a long rest or a short rest whenever you want. The location of that rest would be where you currently are or somewhere nearby. Someone could make a survival check, with higher results on that check corresponding to locations that are safer, easier to camouflage, or have better access to food/water/firewood. Having someone with a high passive survival in your group might point out good resting places as you wander around. In a populated area, like the grove or a city, you could initiate a rest by talking to an innkeeper or equivalent, or just take your chances on the street.

The risk needs to be high enough that you can't just rest all the time safely. Wherever you are, there would be some chance of a random encounter appropriate to the area (e.g. wandering monsters in the wilds or pickpockets in a city alley), but you can better prepare yourself for those encounters by setting a watch and rolling a perception check. Maybe if you're resting too close to the goblin camp, there's some chance that their scouts notice you and don't attack, but the camp is better prepared for you when you arrive. Lots of options here.

Odds of an encounter increase based on things like:
-how dangerous the area is
-how good of a campsite you found
-if you have food/water with you or if you have to go out looking for it (and how much is available nearby)
-how long your rest is - long rests in a dangerous area should be much riskier than short rests
-how long you have been in the area - the longer you've been around, the more likely your group has been noticed
-how good your watchperson's perception checks are (this could also impact whether you are surprised if you are found)

3) Have some representation of time passing.
This could be a day/night cycle where resting advances the clock a certain amount of time based on how long you rest. It could be the current system where it just turns to nighttime every time you take a long rest (though I personally don't prefer that). It could be other things in the world changing while you are resting. Again, lots of options and I don't know that there's a best one - just something that works with the rest of the system.

4) Decouple story moments from long rests.
If Wyll likes something that you did in battle, he can tell you about it right after the battle, wherever you happen to be. Or some amount of time later when there is no active threat nearby. Or maybe it's the next short or long rest. Maybe some are tied to a location - it would make sense for the party to take place in the grove, for example, no matter which side you took.

-On the Topic of Short Rest-
I fully support the idea of having a short rest initiate some of the long rest dialogue, it would alleviate a lot of the issues with story development.

-Back to Long Rest-
I still think that the player should be limited on where they can use long rest. And, it is okay to have a permanent camp to waypoint to for long rest. Combat becomes more interesting when you have to manage a healthy amount of resources.

We'll probably always be able to fast travel out of a dungeon, but the player should have to walk back to where they were from the nearest waypoint. This would put a fair amount of incentive to push through the dungeon and manage resources.

Essentially the player should have to take a waypoint to camp (can only use long rest there) and then take a waypoint back out.

• This way, players who are new to the game and struggling with combat can recuperate with long rest and resume the dungeon crawl.
• After the player becomes accustomed to combat, they will want to avoid repeating the same path into the dungeon.
• The player will start to strategize on how to manage spell slots and items, etc.

Players who are familiar with D&D will already be managing their resources throughout the campaign.

I may have mentioned this in a much earlier thread, and it may not be a popular opinion, but here goes. First, it seems to me that Larian is committed to this idea of a teleport to camp for a long rest on demand, as long as you're out of combat. I doubt this will change. At least, we're seeing no sign it will change.

Given that reality, I think the only thing that's needed is an in-game explanation for how this happens. For example and just one way to do it:

The MC has an invisible ring of teleportation, and it only portals to one location: a small campsite existing on its own plane of reality. The party could even be teleporting inside the ring itself, with time stopped in the outside world. After all, that's effectively what happens with the camp rest. Teleports and portals aren't unusual in this setting, it just needs to be explained. This wouldn't require more than a single cutscene at the end of the prologue, or even just a tutorial pop-up if the resources aren't there for another cutscene.

This doesn't solve any of the complaints about making the game too easy, but again I don't think Larian is showing any interest so far in changing the basic long rest mechanic. At least explain it, if it's going to be this way.

I agree that the resource management piece is important. I'm fine with having hard limitations on long rests, but without a solid day/night system (which is not a small undertaking), it's difficult to think what those restrictions would be. My thought was to replace those hard limitations with increasing risks - so you can rest whenever you want, but resting a lot in the same area without getting interrupted becomes increasingly difficult so you have to be careful about when/where you choose to rest.

Another idea: Keep the permanent camp, but get rid of all fast travel and teleportation. If you want to long rest, you have to walk to camp. The current system feels ridiculous because there is no cost to or restriction on the character or the player. If the player has to walk the character all the way across the world every time they want to sleep, they're going to have to learn to be more efficient with their resources or spend a ton of time walking the same paths over and over.

I don't particularly like this idea. I hate the permanent camp, but having to walk there every night replaces something unreasonable with something else that's unreasonable. I also don't like punishing everyone in order to discourage a particular behavior. But maybe there's a nugget there that we can use.

The solution is definitely going to be adding a cost or a risk to long rest. I'll probably enjoy whichever option Larian chooses, I'm that kind of gamer.

I was focused on which option would maintain mass appeal. It's usually easier for players (not familiar with RPGs) to handle a cost versus a risk.

My suggestion:

- Outdoors only: You can go to the camp only if you are in an open area, away from enemies. Thus, it's not possible to skip to the camp from the Underdark, Goblin Fort, etc. In these cases, the party needs to go to a safe area for the long rest button to works.

- Sleeping bags: When they cannot go to the camp, the characters can sleep in sleeping bags. Just place the bag on the floor and click on it. It is also possible to sleep in the beds that you find in the buildings. Sleeping in a bag works just like a short rest. DOS has sleeping bags, so I believe it will be easy for Larian to implement. A message may also appear asking whether the group wants to light a fire or not.

- Time passing: Time passes when you sleep, and this can lead to complications for certain quests. I advise putting time into some quests, like saving Benryn.

- Random encounters: Random encounters are an important part of D&D games and this can appear in BG as well. When sleeping anywhere, you will have a percentage of being attacked by creatures. The type of creature depends on the environment where they are camping and whether or not they have lit a fire. Tests can be done to determine whether the characters were taken by surprise or not. To prevent the party from going to camp all the time, just put random encounters when they go camping as well. Perhaps to say that they were followed by some creature.

- Tiredness: After many hours without sleep, just fighting monsters, the characters can accumulate levels of exhaustion (PH, p. 291). This can be shown with them talking (“I'm exhausted, I need to rest.”), and at the interface, with a grayish color on the portraits.

- Nightmares: But how to prevent the characters from resting all the time? Simple, the tadpole does not allow. They will suffer from constant nightmares that prevent them from resting, and it's useless to sleep all the time. This can be shown with a narrator's dialog or the character saying that.

@Gustavo R
I really like the nightmares idea, as a dynamic that prevents overuse of the Long Rest function. There should be some penalty to just resting all the time, and this seems like a great one.

So basically these two points are in direct conflict of one another. People (including yourself) say that you need to limit the travel to camp because it is not realistic, or it breaks immersion or whatever. But then you reference the crazy sleeping bags in DOS2 where you can just completely heal with unlimited uses? I mean what is the difference? That just seems like recommending some change, for the sake of recommending some change.

I totally disagree with the need to walk to camp. It is just a waste of time for the sake of wasting time. Should there be a risk involved in going to camp? Absolutely. But there is no difference between integrating a random roll on engagement fast traveling to camp, than to do it where you camp on location. There is literally no difference at all. Basically what you are requesting, is people play the way you want them to, or else be penalized, have your game time either limited or wasted walking through complete zones for camp. Good luck getting that implemented.

These are basically along the lines of how they did it in DA:O and overall it worked. There was limited places you couldn't go to camp (I think the long road and Orzammar. But yeah the principle worked. The big thing is to not cause to much of a penalization to the player to access camp, but put some challenge to it. Definately a better idea than forcing them to walk all the way to camp, that is just not even remotely acceptable.

The topic of short rest convos to camp convos also works, again similar to DAO. There was some conversations you could have to progress the companion story, but the major ones had to be at camp. As for managing spell slots etc, maybe they should offer the player something like that in difficulty, maybe a D&D setting that would follow those rules. But I doubt overall, the average player would want to be that strict on the rules. Though I think they should definately offer something to the player that does.

Yet again, you are putting words in my mouth and I don't appreciate it. If you'd read the second paragraph, you'd see that I disagree with the idea as well and in no way indicated that I was requesting it or trying to get it implemented. It's just an idea. It's a fairly extreme idea, but talking about extreme ideas is an awfully good way to develop more reasonable solutions that you wouldn't arrive at if you only look for the low-hanging fruit. Maybe spend a little less energy being needlessly combative and shooting down other peoples' ideas just because you don't happen to agree.

If it is something you don't agree with, don't write it as an idea. I am also pretty sure having a discussion, that when someone disagrees with you that is not being "combative". That is someone simply disagreeing with you. Sorry if I interrupted your echo chamber. If you don't want someone "putting words in your mouth" (which ironically came out of your mouth) than don't write them. I quote:

So where EXACTLY did I put words in your mouth?

You realize that Camping is only in the game to progress some story right?
You realize there was NO camping in DOS1+2 right? So why you expect a meaningful resting mechanic now? Just because someone called it BG3 to boost sales you expect a refined mechanic based on DnD rules?

Its ok as it is. Noone cares DnD rules anyway at Larian. And since you can rest anywhere and as often as you want there is at least a function to it by advancing story. It could be alot worse belive me!

had had mentioned this before, but utilizing the different kits that you get or choose would be fun. Such as the herbalist kit to make healing potions, or the smithing kit to make/upgrade weapons and armor. The alchemist kit to make alchemist fire, resistance potions, etc. All these would take time to do, however, and they are only done if a character is staying at camp (not traveling with you), or if they are in your group, then can only be worked on during your long rests. This will also give those non-active characters something to do while they wait for you to come back. To avoid this from being abused (just spend everyday at camp), this is definitely where the rations come in. So you need to go buy/collect some before you can long rest again.

The wizard ability to learn new spells should also only happen during a shot rest. In PnP, the wizard needs to take time doing nothing else, other than copying/learning the spell from the scroll.

Have training at camp. Your inactive characters can spar, sling spells for practice and do other things related to their character, and as such they gain a little bit of experience. (This would remove the all characters whether they are in your party or not leveling at the same time when in essence they didn't do a damn thin except sleep all day at camp).

All these idea can be implemented when you go to camp, but don't have to be micromanaged which would be important.

They do care about DnD rules at Wizards.-

As many mentioned, long rest, shall be divided into 2 different camp:

-Outside :
*Keep the current camp scene
*Moderate/Low chance to get ambushed while sleeping
*Consume rations/food (also food shall not recover HP, this will make the use of them)

-Inside (cave, dungeon, etc)
*Separate scene with the current environment or just a campfire on ground
*High chance to get ambushed while sleeping
*Consume rations/food


This shall be the basics of long rest. They could even add more encounters chance, based on the more you rest (can be based on the fact your tadpole attracts monsters).

First let me just link this other, non-mega thread. It's highly relevant. Maybe it should be merged in, I dunno, but for anyone big on this Mega-thread's topic this other thread is worth reading. https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=680197#Post680197

Now then.

It is a general rule of gaming that if a player can do something without any in-game time passing, no game-world progression, then they should be able to do it without spending any real world time either. Both as a handy dandy QoL feature, and also because there's just no basis for players to not be able to do that instantly.
If you can stand there and manually stort your inventory for an hour without anything happening in game, no passage of time, then the game should just provide an autosort button that does it for you, instead of wasting your time.

So let's say we limit long resting to designated locations. Campsite (entrances) on the map.
If a player standing 10 feet from a highly dangerous cave boss but undetected can turn around, leave the cave, walk to the nearest fast travel point, teleport across the map, walk to the campsite, long rest, do that journey in reverse, then attack the boss after, with the rest of the world being in the same state as it was before they left, limiting camping to that location has had absolutely NO effect. It has done nothing. It has addressed zero problems. The game is in an identical state to how it was before that change. All of the issues causing people to ask for changes to how long resting works will still be in full effect. The only minimal effect is wasting a couple minutes of real time that shouldn't have been wasted.

So, if the player is able to do that, then they shouldn't have to. They should just be able to click a long rest button to do it instantly while standing next to that cave boss. And to be clear, when the player does that, they are not teleporting to camp, nor are they camping right there. They are making the whole long trip described above; the game is just letting you skip the "cutscene". So really, it shouldn't even effect your immersion. Either way the fact remains, location dependent long rests are in no way a solution to any of the problems, since it won't have any affect on them whatsoever.

Another idea discussed, equally as useless as location dependent camping, is adding a real time delay to doing another long rest. Once per hour, or once per in game day/night cycle (that doesn't actually progress time in any fashion) are both examples I've seen. Similar to how a player that wants to rest whenever they want can go back to camp with location based resting, a player can just let the game idle until the timer wears off for delayed resting. Rather than the round trip from and to that cave boss, they will just afk and go make dinner or play a game on their Switch or whatever while the timer ticks down so they can take the rest right next to that boss. The idea accomplishes nothing.

But something does need to be done about the long rest problem. As it stands, there is no point in Warlocks existing, since Wizards can use every single one of their spell slots every single fight. There are numerous other examples of why what we currently have is bad but I feel like that's the most glaring.
If you were to attack the goblin camp, instead of getting the ability to walk through peacfully, you would realisticly *have* to do it all in one day. I have not done this so I'm not sure how many separate combat bubbles that would split into but for the sake of discussion let's say the gaps in clusters are big enough to make it 4 seperate fights. I'm taking these coming numbers from DnD class pages so unless they changed in game a level 4 (level cap as of this posting) Warlock only gets 2 level 2 spell slots, and a Wizard gets 7 slots 3 of which are level 2. With our current abilty to long rest whenever we want the Wizard can cast 7 spells every fight for 28 total, 12 of which are at level 2. 28 spells for a set of fights that would have had to have been all in one day. And the Warlock only gets to cast 8 spells, losing not only in total count but in count of highest level as well, which is supposed to be their thing. Using short rests, my expectation would be to see that averaged out Warlocks and Wizards cast the same number of spells per fight, but instead we get the stated numbers. As far as I'm concerned this dynamic alone serves as absolute proof the current system requires changing. There are HUGE balance concerns here.

I'm low on time so I'm not about to type out a long winded attempt at solving the issue but the gist of it seems rather obvious to me: players should not be able to long rest whenever they want. And more imporantly, the restriction on when they can rest needs to be not a real-world restriction, but rather an game-world restriction. A restriction that requires the game world to actually progress in some manner before the player can rest again. A simple example would be needing to get through X amount of fights before the long rest function unlocks again, but I'm not actually proposing that as a solitary solution since not all days or fights are equal. Some days a party would indeed only do the one fight, and other days it's the four fight's of the goblin camp.

I think for the sake of simplicity there should simply be ‘zones’ where you cannot long rest, until all enemies are cleared. For instance the goblin village, the underdark, any large dungeon or tower etc. That makes those regions more challenging, and short rests and other resources become far more valuable (spell slots, scrolls, potions etc). No different to the bandit camps or subjugated villages in Witcher 3 – you can’t meditate until the area is ‘safe’ which is often marked by villagers returning etc.

Sure, you can run your ass back out and find somewhere that you can long rest, but if you head back in you’d better be sure you’re ready.

I would suggest reactivity in the world. Something like:

1. After getting to the grove, if you long rest five or more time then the ritual is complete. The tieflings are cast out and the grove is forever closed. Maybe you find dead tiefling bodies every so often. "Goblin gotcha?"

2. If you go somewhere like the goblin camp and attack then retreat to go long rest... when you return the goblin camp is reactive. There are more guards, they're more vigilant, maybe the leaders have gotten together in conference which would make them harder to confront. People coming in are questioned more fully.

That sort of thing. Make the world progress in measurable ways as the long rests continue.

+1 for world reactivity.
For your grove example, there should definitely be some sign that the ritual is progressing. Louder chanting, magical effects appearing, dialogue changes. That'd be super cool.

I think Darkest Dungeon has a very good System.

1. Every profession has unique Camping Skills.

Some enhance the dmg for next fights. (sharpen weapons)
Another heals (clerics)
boost morale (jester aka bard)
reduce the chance for ramdom attack (dog master at watch)
etc. ...

2. Small Rest aka Camping is a commitment which cost resources.

You have 2 stacks firewood and rations which use inventory space.
People have hunger and need rations or the moral drops
you can eat rations for little hitpoints
you use rations for resting for the bigger effect

With such a system Darkest Dungeon has no need for dedicated healers.
Healers are strong in the camp when they can heal for big Chunks but not infight.

The whole system is very immersive and a constant consideration between possibilities.

Divinity Original Sin was amazing! The combat was fluid, and I highly recommend sticking with that combat mechanic.

I loved the way you had a set number of action points each turn to attack cast spells, etc (as well as more powerful abilities that could only be used once or twice per combat). In Baulder's Gate however, you have zealously enforced D&D long/short rests as a mandatory mechanic which makes combat and resting feel VERY tedious.

I get that resting IS an important mechanic in tabletop D&D, but in a game it's just... boring.

You can keep the D&D flavor of the world and setting (which I love), and encourage visiting your camp for the story line elements already in the game, but go back to the Divinity Original Sin 2 action point system and eliminate "resting" all together.

We should still have a "Go to Camp" option to regroup, heal up, chat with companions, craft, etc, which would be voluntarily used, but it shouldn't be mandatory to regain your spells / abilities. It's much too tedious.

As it stands now, I would rename the game to "Baldur's Long & Short Rest".

You have the game mechanics perfect in Divinity Original Sin 2. Don't throw that system away. Take that combat, and throw it into the D&D universe, and pow! You've got yourself an amazing D&D game that has the Larian Studio's flavor that we all love!

You aren't *supposed* to be long resting after every fight.
More to the point, you aren't supposed to use everything you have in every fight.
A key element of DnD's design, which is of course what this game is advertised as emulating, is that you going into fights thinking that you don't want to use all your spell slots or whatever because you want to save them for the next fight you'll get in without them replenshing.
Resting doesn't ruin the flow of the game, it's meant to be a vital component of the flow of the game.
To remove that element, which to be clear is already the effect we have with the ability to long rest whenever we want, would completely destroy the class balance.
If they remove resting that will destroy so much what is being taken from DnD that they would have to change it so heavily that they could no longer advertise this as being a DnD based game. It couldn't even be said to be in a DnD universe.
Regardless of all that, Divinity's combat and "perfect" do not belong in the same sentence, unless placed around the phrase "is not"

I just have a problem with Long Rest being essential for certain dialogue and characters saying they need to rest because there is a dialogue to trigger. This has caused me to long rest, run through Blighted Village, no fights, and suddenly a party member wants to call it a day...WITH A TADPOLE IN YOUR HEAD. Nope. Not believable.

I think the following about resting:

1. 2 short for every long.
2. 2 long rests a day, not 1. Days are too short for people with tadpoles in their heads and long rests are like 8 hours in D&D, not a whole day.
3. Long rest changes day to night or night to day so we can move about by night, allowing us to sneak better into the gobbo camp for example.
4. Food is ONLY able to be used during resting to heal, either short or long. Every HP you heal requires a food or drink item. This makes food different from potions, making then both more important for different reasons.
5. Give us Hit Dice like 5e is supposed to have. I need to heal 10 HP, I roll d8, I get a 5, I eat 5 apples or maybe 1 cheese wheel, I decide to spend a second hit dice, I roll a 7, I'm fully healed and consume a pitcher of water, or something like that.
6. If you rest outside of camp, you risk a random encounter. The more dangerous the area, the greater the risk. Perception checks are rolled if encounter triggered to see if surprised.
7. Limit Fast Travel so that if you are unable to safely get to a Waypoint rune you can't fast travel. This way, I'm not short resting in a hostile gobbo lair or teleporting to camp and back right in the middle of the base somehow getting past tons of enemies. Thus, short resting in a dangerous place might actually be a necessity. Find a corner and hope they don't find you.
8. Stop using "I'm tired, let's call it a day" to let people know a dialogue can be triggered. Instead, just have the dialogues able to be triggered in some sort of order. Whenever you go to camp, if dialogues are available the exclamation appears. With 2 long rests a day and dangerous resting outside of camp, players will be forced to camp more often to trigger dialogue. Even short resting in camp would be safe so people might go to camp for short rests too.

wait wait what? Is *that* why the ambient "I need to rest" lines are spoken?
I thought those just occured if their health was low?
That's the only time I've noticed them.

I think it would be cool to just make spell-slot/long-rest-ability recovery cost inspiration points. Those points can then be refilled at temples/shrines/inns via "donations". Solving quests awards inspiration points. Obviousy those points can only be spent outside of combat.

Being downed in combat incurs fatigue, fatigue can only be restored by resting. Likewise you can only consume a limited number of food between rests to restore health. Fatigue in turn decreases movement pointss/acrobatics/athletics.

Resting in itself does not recover spell slots, but costs rations. During rests you can either heal or recover a very limited number of inspiration points. Story-related rests do not cost rations and can be triggered by talking to the relevant companion.

That way you decouple health recovery from spell-slot recovery which imho is the crux on why resting is so difficult to balance. It also gives more control for "world-building" spells such speak-to animals/dead and the like.

Resting as is works fine for vanilla DnD where the DM can regulate the flow of the game, for a video game I feel as if more granularity is needed IMHO.

All this could be conveniently explained into the DND rule-set with the tadpoles.

Bonus: add some flavor items which restore a number of inspiration points. Different companions like different items.
Double-Bonus: Resting slowly resets vendor attitude. Vendor attitude increases by buying items from the vendor.
Tripple-Bonus: Some quests are timed and resting gradually reduces inspiration/money earned.

Yes. I didn't notice it at first, but after lots of playthroughs and such, I discovered that every time they say they're tired it is because of a dialogue being triggered that you can go to camp and speak with someone about. It may not even be the character who said they were tired.

I first noticed this when I had done a long rest, ran through Blighted Village, and got to the crossroads north of the town. I didn't fight at all. Just ran through town. Suddenly, Shadowheart said, "I'm exhausted. Can we call it a day?" I thought. That's odd. I just did a long rest and ran through town. There is no reason to end the day right now. I ended day, and sure enough, I think it was Gale had something to say to me with an exclamation point over his head. I tested it out multiple times. It's ridiculous. If they say they're tired, or your character says he's tired, that means someone wants to say something to you at camp.

It's particularly dumb when Shadowheart says she's tired, you go to camp, and she says, "Why are we doing this? We have a tadpole in our heads. We need to find a healer." When that happened, I thought. "You're the one who said you were tired and needed to rest for the day. Now you're asking me why we're doing this?"

It's also stupid because you have a tadpole in your head and everyone is telling you that you can turn into a mind flayer if you take too long. So, when I first played through the game, I thought, "I'm not resting if at all possible. I'm not going to end the day. I'm in a race against time. If I can push on, I'm going to." Thus, when I learned I missed out on tons of dialogue because I hardly long rested, I was pretty upset.

Long rest and conversations need to be untied. I don't mind it if it's at camp, but then you need to give me reasons to go to camp to trigger the convos. If I can only short rest and long rest safely at camp, then I'm going to go to camp more. Still, if I'm racing against time and every day counts, at least make it so that a long rest is like it was meant to be in tabletop D&D. It is equal to about 8-10 hours. Short rests are supposed to be about 1-3 hours. So if I adventure for 30 minutes, short rest, adventure another 30 minutes, short rest, that's like maybe 4-6 hours of the day. Then a long rest would be about 8 hours, now I'm at 12-14 hours. Night time. Let me travel around by night, fight a battle or two, short rest, do some more, short rest, do some more, long rest. Now it's morning. That's my suggestion. That makes a whole lot more sense.

Now look at how many times I might have gone to camp to trigger dialogue conversations. If I know that I might get attacked if I short rest in the wild, I'm going to go to camp more to safely rest. If I'm not in a super dangerous area, a fast travel to camp even for a short rest, isn't that big a deal gameplay-wise.


I disagree about spell-slot/long-rest recovery costing inspiration points. This is 5e rule breaking and presents lots of other balance issues if you do this. Inspiration points are for rerolls only. Resting is classic D&D spell slot recovery. Refilling Inspiration at temples and such, especially with fast travel, would only allow mages to be SO much more powerful, thus throwing off the balance. Resting to recover spell slots is meant to be limiting to prevent OP mages. Plus, Inspiration points are supposed to be for good roleplaying only, as a reward for doing well in the game, thus giving you the ability to reroll for important moments, etc.

Fatigue in the game would be more true to D&D 5e rules. If you don't regularly eat and drink and rest you would suffer fatigue. If Larian implemented a fatigue system, then food would not be needed to heal. You could just do away with food healing at all. It would then be specifically for preventing fatigue or removing it. This is what it was meant to be in D&D anyway, not hp recovery. So, in my book, that would be way better anyway, more meaningful and realistic and would create a bigger difference between potions and food. It would give food a bigger purpose, which was the reason I suggested making food only recover HP in camp. Add a fatigue system, and do away with food recovering HP. I'm good with that.

I do agree, though, that they should implement consequences for wasting time. If you take too long to attack the goblins, for example, they just show up at the druid's grove and start attacking. Things like that. This could easily be implemented with what I said: 2 long rests equal a day, not 1. After you long rest like 10 times, 5 days, the goblins show up and attack. Something like that would create more of a race against time element that would keep players on their toes and keep them from abusing the rest system to recover after every single battle.

But ultimately, we HAVE to uncouple the dialogue/story/character development aspect from long rests. It's ridiculous to have a character hardly do anything and then say they need to rest just so they can spark a conversation. I've literally had sessions where I adventured for 5 minutes and suddenly they want to end the day. Dumb.

So much this. Let companions talk to us on the road, or implement short rests where your party sets up a little camp wherever you are right then, and you can talk to companions then.

And Larian needs to do something about the conflict between tadpole urgency and resting. If they really really need us to rest and get that cutscene showing that the danger isn't as immediate as we suspected, then find a better way to force it. Give our characters levels of exhaustion (we were just kidnapped, put in vats, implanted with tadpoles, fought our way out, and then fell out of a ship), or in the Gale/Lae'zel introduction scene have one of our characters hear a horde of goblins approaching and heavily imply we need to find a place to lay low for hours, or something.

As it is now, like GM4Him, in my first playthrough I tried my best not to rest, thinking that there was some sort of time pressure. I first rested significantly after leaving the Grove, which resulted in the game never showing me that "hey, we're not all turning into mindflayers!" scene, so I continued rest as little as possible. This resulted in me missing even more cutscenes/dialogue.

Sorry, totally against an exhaustion system in this game. I mean it is fine in games like XCOM2 where you have a bunch of soldiers to work with when your others become "wounded" or "exhausted", but in this game, with these few companions it would be terrible. Can't say that I ever had an issue of not camping to see the rest scenes. That is a new one. I mean after a few battles, you have to to get your short rests recharged. Not to mention, I was pretty sure they weren't going to make the main character a mindflayer in the first chapter.

In D&D 5e, resting removes exhaustion. In PnP a long rest only removes a single level of exhaustion, but I'd be fine with Larian homebrewing that it removes 2 or all levels. You wouldn't have to go without any companions, because you'd simply rest and everyone would be fighting fit again.

In the post you're quoting, I'm not arguing for an "exhaustion system." I'm arguing for a specific instance of scripted exhaustion that incentives resting for the first time, so that the game ~ensures you get that resting cutscene. Assuming that Larian wasn't "going to make the main character a mindflayer in the first chapter" is a metagaming, not in-game, reason to rest.

And it's not really true that after a few battles you have to get your short rests recharged. With food and scrolls, you can go a very long time before actually needing to rest.

I just can't see any way that a real resting "penalty" that is true to DnD rules could be implemented that isn't awkard or forbiddingly resource-consuming, since the PnP solution itself feels like a crutch. It allready implies characters "meditating" or "preparing" spells while resting. All my suggestion does is put it into a currency a video game can understand. I don't think the inspiration thing would make mages OP because it still costs the players money and actual game time.
The POE/Pathfinder-Kingmaker solution to resting (basically rations) was a worthy attempt at making resting meaningful, it just ultimatively fizzled because it was incredibly difficult to balance/tune the cost/frequency of them. Diversifying this system feels like a decent way to improve on that. I could live without temples/inns but it would create a scenario where a player could get stuck and would have to backtrack.

I also think that adding "deadlines" to a videogame that doesn't even have a day/night cycle opens such a giant can of worms in terms of making the campaign feel coherent. How do you f.e. communicate the different time-limits in a way that isn't awkward at best and frustrating at worst? How do you differentiate between quests which are supposed to just "feel urgent" (tadpoles) and ones that have actual deadlines? It is a whole lot of work/Q&A to implement and IMHO can't really be simply tacked onto a game without a boatload of redesign and you are ALWAYS bound to miss something. Just take a look at EA and the amount of work still left to do with filling in all the blank spots in reactivity. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see a game suceed in doing it - I just think it is reeeeeeally hard to do. Kingmaker had a system which sort of simulated the passing of time and basically had to engineer the entire campaign around it.


In the same vein I think adding "time"-based fatigue is really tough to pull off in an RPG in a meaningful, fun way. Again, POE had an exhaustion system similar to the one you are proposing and tbh, it didn't really add anything and at best amplified the use of rest-spamming. The only reason why I am even bringing up exhaustion as a possible mechanic is because during some of my playthroughs I had characters downed 3 times during a fight to the point of it feeling like cheese to keep an enemy in place.


I sort of agree, but I can understand why larian is handling it like that as a story vehicle because it is the only place where you can get all characters together and you can control the environment. Maybe all it needs is a line like "Lets get back to camp and I will explain" to make it feel less dumb. You wouldn't have to end the day, just return to camp.

Agree with all of this. I can see maybe adding fatigue and food not healing as a menu option though, as some people (not me) seem to like the current unbalanced system a lot. I would still prefer a system with one long rest per day and 2? short rests (not sure what is usual for this) but resting would be a lot less confusing if they could add a day/night cycle. Characters should definitely be able to talk to us at any point rather than just at camp.

They added a slight bit more suggesting that we aren't going to turn into mindflayers but it is still not enough imo. None of this new stuff would make me feel comfortable just taking my time doing whatever. I still only rested because I knew I would miss dialogue with companions, not because I wanted to. I would think most people would still want to find someone to remove this unwelcome tadpole as soon as possible since it does not belong. Perhaps they should add something implying that the tadpoles cannot be removed at all and we have to deal with them.

I had no need to use short rests on anyone except my warlock. I as the player obviously knew we wouldn't turn into mindflayers, but my characters would not have this information and most of them wouldn't just believe someone saying this to them. Even if I was playing an idiot character who believed everything they were told, I still would not find myself needing to rest as often as the game seems to expect us to for companion dialogue.

That would be a good idea if they can't decouple dialogue from camp.

For the tadpole urgency vs long rest disconnect, I think there should be more in-game justifications via story/dialog that make resting seem at least somewhat sensible.

Instead of basically doing nothing for us, Nettie, Halsin, Ethel, Priestess Gut, Minthara etc should all have dialog that suggests that they've actually slowed down the ceremorphosis process somehow, even if only temporarily. The more often we rest right now, the clearer it becomes that whatever the normal ceremorphosis timeline is supposed to be, its clearly not working in the same way for the party. But that could also be revealed through the main story beats.

I feel like that would be more interesting than "We need to find a healer!" and then every healer we find can't actually do anything for us. Instead of just perpetually punting the permanent solution to the tadpole prob, the various NPCs we meet along the way should actually step in with some magic or witchery that's ostensibly buying us extra time and affording us opportunities to rest more normally. I liked the idea from earlier posts about having set-piece story occasions to rest after first entering the Druid Grove, or the Goblin camp, or after Waukeen's Rest and the like. Maybe internal dialog that suggests that the tadpole has gone dormant 'for a time' or that resting for now is safe, after interacting with the NPCs who were presented to us as possible solutions. The Nautiloid doesn't even touch on resting as a thing, since it has those recharging pods in every other room and Lae'zel is in a hurry. But something should definitely happen by the time the party has reached the druid grove or the goblin camp to make periodic resting seem logical, even with the worm in our brains.

Agreed, I guess it is mostly the amount of exposition tossed at the player in such short a timeframe without proper introduction of the resting mechanic which causes the large disconnect. If Larian can adjust the pacing a bit more I think things would be a lot less awkward.

had posted the thoughts below in a related thread about day/night cycle, but also wanted to include here as it impacts camping/resting - and i do agree with other posters, that some work on these mechanics would go a long way when the game ultimately launches

This ^^^ But Larian stated very early on, that they would not be doing a Day/ Night cycle. In my opinion it's the best solution though, so I hope they change their mind. I try to go 4 encounters between long rest. But then what is an encounter? I only eat food during long rests. If I don't have enough for everyone, then I don't rest. But that only works for a little while. Food becomes plentiful soon after you get to the grove.


I definitely believe companions should be able to talk to us, whenever and wherever.

The prospect of restricting use of long rests doesn't appeal to me at all, and I don't return to camp after every encounter. The price of returning to camp is the break in the adventure.

That said I would be pleased to see certain enhancements to the camp, including working crafting stations (portable models, of course ) and streamlined access to all follower inventories, as the OP suggested. I'd also like to see "pick up" options added to the right-click menu for certain pieces of furniture (chairs, standing mirrors, and other not too large items that could conceivably be carried back to camp).

The original BG games allowed frequent rests--if the player chose--and I see no need for that to change. Limited camping also seems likely to break follower story lines.

That said, I really don't care if at release restricted camping is added to hard modes that I'm unlikely to play, anyway. BG3 needs to appeal to a wide range of players. I personally am finding "classic" to be about right. Sure, it's easier on replay, but I think normal difficulty should be tuned for first timers. It should allow for choosing companions based on who you'd like to spend time with, not just which classes/characters are most min-maxed. It should also be possible to land hits without "dumping" stats not used in combat to "below commoner" levels. The player should need to make an effort to understand game mechanics and to play competently, and feel that they need to pay attention to be successful, but I'd rather not see "gotcha" mechanics (like not being able to rest when you need to) added.

I think instead of restricting rest, they should design more time sensitive encounters. Like with the burning building for example, if you go there, see it's on fire, and decide to take a long rest without helping, then those "8 hours" should change your ability to rescue certain characters.

This leaves players with choice, but also makes the decision matter. Sometimes you might want to push your characters because you have a problem in front of you that will get worse if you give it time, but sometimes you might not care/it might not be worth it to engage in the danger without recovering.

This.

Instead of a character saying, "I'm tired. Let's call it a day" whenever a character has a dialogue that can be triggered, can we have a character say, instead, something like, "Hey. Can we return to camp a sec? There's something I'd like to do there" or "Hey. I'd like a word with you in private. Can we return to camp?"

Then allow whatever dialogue that can be triggered to be triggered whenever I Fast Travel to camp, as opposed to End Day.

Example: Gale's Go to Hell dialogue is ready to be triggered. Gale isn't even in my party while I'm going through the Dank Crypt. The game has Astarion, who is in my party, say, "I'd better see a bedroll in my immediate future." Instead, why not have Astarion say, "Hey. Can we take a break and head to camp a sec. There's something I want to do." You Fast Travel to camp and Gale has an exclamation mark over his head. Though Astarion said he wanted to go to camp, it was only because Gale had something to say. Astarion could have wanted to go to camp for any personal reason he doesn't want to share. Whatever. That's not important. The main point is that the characters aren't always tired and needing to End Day just because they have something they want to say. Instead, they just want to head to camp for a bit for one reason or another.

Same as the other threat ...
You allready said this multiple times in other threats, creating another one dont make it good idea. :-/

So you think it's not a good idea?

I decided to put these in their own separate threads because on the other thread people are focusing too much in one thing I said instead of on each item. This one is swallowed up by all the fighting over whether there is urgency in the narrative.

I really dont see any difference from the other threat:
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=765998&#Post765998

There you want to untie dialogues from end of the day ...
And here you want dialogues to happened everytime we get to camp ...

That is basicly the same.

First of all, while we have to appreciate what has been given us by Larian so far, I believe is also important to talk about mistakes, after all, we, players and Larian both want to play/create the best RPG game out there.


SO, the resting system. Its might actually be a tricky one, making it work properly. in my opinion, might actually need some map changes, in order to acomodate this essencialy D&D RULE.

The way that it is right now is just lazy. being able to constantly spamm it, and worse, HAVING to do it in the most non immsersive ways possible is not fun.

For example, if you want to kill the goblins, all of them, its extremely difficult to kill them all without long resting.

So, what you do, simply go to camp and get back to the dungeon, in an instant, you get out a dungeon full of globlins, just to sleep and get in without any alarm.

Or maybe before the hag fight, going to camp from the dungeon just to rest and get my spellslots felt like a non immsersive chore.

Some might say, ''git gut'' ''learn to 'use your spells slots in a more eficient way'', "resting is an option".

What I get from this is "dont use your fun spells, be in a fight for +5 minutes bcz of less spell damage means more attacks which means more miss (sacred flame im talking to you), which means more turns (without abusing spells) which means in such long fights.


The system, as it is, also leads to balancing issues in fights. If the game in a certain moment is trying to caught you by suprise in a boss fight, but you furtionately rested not long ago, but was, nonetheless, caught by suprise, how would that scale, will the npc be programmed to fight a half slotted party, and if it is, would it be too easy for a full slotted party? (which was also caught by surprise).


My sugestion: in ALL nonefriendly dungeons, the player cant go to camp. We should have a system that allow us to rest inside the dungeon once, using the tools provided, or using the surrounding, like beds. This would mean the dungeon itself could be designed for a full slotted party of a specific level. Considering the fact that they are going to rest only once.

We need pc to actually interact with the enviroenment, with skills checks to determine if they are going to find the right tools to set some improvise camp up.

Most of the party dialogue should be available in the dungeon, and there could be some unique dialogue depending on the place you are resting.

While resting, there will be a chance to be attacked by the nonefriendly npc that rules said dungeon, or any other form of interaction with the party might occur, like some unique quest you might stumble to while spending the night there. Rangers and such could be provided with scout mecanisms to forsee fights for example, and other unique supporting spells other classes could use, like light, darkvision and also traps.


I hope Larian goes the extra mile with this and make the resting system better. This will probably be the best game we get for 10y to come.

Now think about how many dialogues you will need remove from the camp to somewhere else. There are no problems with the rest system, I believe there are problems with the dialog system for which you need to rest.
Also
> if you want to kill the goblins, all of them, its extremely difficult to kill them all without long resting

This is not difficult at all if you use food and a short rest. We can also have one fight in the camp, if you go with goblins. This is just the case when you have not rested, and still this is not impossible fight. You should also explain "dungeon" in more detail. Goblin camp? This is an open location. The Underdark? No. Conditionally we have two dungeons in my understanding:

1. Owlbear Cave
2. Hag's Tea House

Idk about Owlbear. but I think we can't rest in Hag's Tea House. So maybe there's a difference.

You can rest in the Hag's House, just not in the plant trap maze. Not that it matters, because if you're smart, you backstab Ethel out of combat with one character, and then proceed to do the same with the other 3 characters for 4 separate surprise attacks that give you 2 free starting turns per character, or 8 total actions before Ethel can react. If you can't kill Ethel with 8 total actions, you either went in severely underleveled, or you are just playing completely suboptimal builds. Killing Ethel clears her entire house of the curse and deactivates the plant traps. Obviously before visiting Ethel, you want to kill the Redcaps outside; just get on a high ground mound and since their mobility is bad, you can get several surprise attacks in from high ground and just burn down each redcap one by one as they reach you.

Either way, the goblin camp is not hard. Outside, you can first take out with a single 100% crit on the sleeping mobs up top as sleeping mobs are automatically crit, so a single Lazael auto one shots them, and then you take out the 2 bugbears easily without aggroing the camp.

You then go and save, poison the cauldron, pass the dialogue check so you don't drink the poison with them, it wipes out half their camp and leaves the other remaining Goblins at like 6-7 health, and then you climb up to the stone bridge above, surprise attack the mage up top and kill him, and simply snipe down the remaining force as none of them can reach you besides the ogre throwing javelins at you, so you focus him first.

Inside, you tell the hag whatever dialogue you want, follow her to her room, kill her in private with a single surprise attack in the first turn before she calls help (just do a Lazael Frightening Strike from backstab stealth, or select the dialogue where you tell her you are killing her and if you roll initiative well, you go before her).

You then go talk to Razglin, pass the dialogue check to sabotage him (or don't talk to him and save him for last), go to Minthara and easily kill her alone with the 2 other goblins; if you kill the archer first, nobody rings the drums for help. Then you go back to the central room and get up the ladders to the roof and start sniping the goblins from high ground; they'll miss most crap on you and die trivially. Make sure to talk to Spike with Wyll and kill him alone with the other goblin easily.

All in all, that route lets you go rescue Halsin, bring him to Razglin's chamber and fight at most like 10-12 goblins, and they're separated by a wall and door if you know how to use LOS to your advantage hiding by Minthara's room, let the melee trickle to you and you kill them easily before Razglin's room; when fighting Razglin himself, bumrush him to kill him asap as it removes the aura of leadership off his allies; clean up the rest easy.

By far the hardest fight in the game is Bulette if you don't cheese him, followed by Githyanki patrol.

Man I hate these fights where standing somewhere high means you can just shoot everyone down without ever being at risk of being attacked.

The entire Goblin fortress, Minthara, the entire Zhentarim hideout...

Insta kills by shoving into a pit or river comes close second. The environment overrides all class abilities and undermines clever resource management.

There's so much cheese! The resting cheese is just more cheese on top. I want it all gone.

Yeah!

It's great that you all know this, but people won't know it at the first playthrough, so many of these fights will be difficult for them. However, I do not consider a fight with a goblins to be such, they just have little HP. Also, about "hag's dungeon" I meant the underground part, because it is closed. That's the difference. By going there, you "load" another area. And don't forget about spider, first time it was a very difficult fight for me.

I find resting to be always a problematic mechanic in cRPGs (perhaps, that's I actually welcomed that it barely exists in PoE2).

I don't think it can work well without fundamentally altering game's structure. The best implimentation I have seen so far was, I think, Pillars of Eternity1 - a set amount of camp supplies meant devs would know with how many "rests" you would come and could design accordingly - and give you extra supplies if a dungeon was longer. That way they could pace resting, and endurance mechanic meant that depleting HP gave a clear indication when we will be resting, and , at least in my case, it didn't trigger my spell hoarding habit. That is still not without fault, as nothing stops players from overusing rest and trekking back to town for more supplies, nor from barely using their skills. It doesn't quite prohibit unfun play, but at least encourages fun play and gives indications on how to achieve it.

Making resting not available in some ways can backfire - for example I really didn't enjoy Kingmaker for that reason (among many many others). You have to manually decide on how many rests you will carry at any time - amd the game doesn't provide information on which we could make an informed decision. Most of the time supplies are useless, but everyonce in a while one will suffer without a decent supply - but one cannot know that without a foreknowledge making the whole thing frustrating.

I think resting works better in a procedural setting - Darkest Dungeon does it well. When one will misjuidge their rest it might result in a failed run, but it won't halt players progress as such.

For a more handcrafted experience like BG3, I think resting also needs to be to some extend handcrafted. And interesting idea might be (though not fit for BG3) a bonfire system, like in Dark Souls - having resting checkpoints set and having to defeat enemies before reaching the next one (of course respawn is mandatory, as otherwise nothing stop players from cheesing by backtracking, making it not an ideal fit for a game interested in characters and story). I think the best we can hope for is some kind of pacing mechanism. Again, PoE1 I think is good example - encouraging certain pacing, and disencouraging cheese, without prohibiting it. I think Solasta has set resting points, which somewhat serves the same point, but I expect it, again, doesn't prohibit backtracking and cheese (didn't play it, so I can't comment).

In BG3 resting will never be really good, I don't think, as it is a mechanic that runs counter to the world design. Some form of limitation might be nice, but in my personal playthrough I felt I rest rarely, as with backstab and hight advantage spells are mostly an unnecessary bonus, and there were plenty of items to provide healing.

Since the game *is* D&D 5e, you can't really fight against the Long Rests. More problems will arise if you try to ignore the rule.

They need to embrace the resting rules, and make them the best they can be. There's a lot of good stuff there too! Especially if they let us camp on the road in the spirit of D&D.


- Finding a safe looking spot and camping in the Underdark after a tough day can be really, really immersive

- Companion talks get more scenes that are more immersive and atmospheric

- Higher risk / higher reward. Personally I love the feeling of actually being in trouble and scraping my inventory for anything that will help me get out of it.

- Wizards play differently and require more planning for the day than other classes, which is very fitting for Wizards

- Tiny Hut and Magnificent Mansion would be absolutely incredible in BG3 for resting in dangerous areas. You could even have cool scripted scenes waking up inside a Tiny Hut with a band of ogres waiting outside and having to devise a plan how to fight them after letting the force field down. High level Wizards with Mansion (something like Raphael's?) would be incredibly useful for the party.

Another post about resting. Lol. Larian has to do something about it. There are just too many of us saying it's broken.

More like this should of been posted in the previous thread and this one should be merged. Also forum goes through phases, not to long ago it was about gods.

Its not about phases ...
One new person creates an account to complain about something, dont even care enough to see if there isnt simmilar topic allready ... create new one ... and others will smell it at range of few kilometers, like sharks ...
Then it may create ilusion of "big isue" unless you notice, its still the same people repeating still the same sentences. :-/

Ragnarock.The entire point of this forum is so that people can come out here and tell Larian what they would like Larian to change about the game. It may sound like complaining, but it is all about telling Larian what they think isn't working. When you say things like this, you are discouraging people from doing what they are supposed to be doing.

Please stop defending the game and making it seem like people are just being vicious jerks because they don't like something about the game. How else do you think people are going to take it when you say we're like sharks.

Resting system is perfect, don't change anything, thanks.

If you say so, still seems like phases to me.


What are you talking about, Rag replied to my post about people posting, that's it.

+1

@MrSam: Resting is a problem.
At the moment they might as well add a "restore all resources button" than can be used any time outside of combat.
Or they rename resting to "I want to progress companion quests or have strange visions"

Can you explain why you think the system is perfect? What do you like about it? (Seriously asking here. We can't have a discussion unless you provide reasons and arguments, and who knows you might convince some of us to change our minds)

Press long rest button -> all resources restored -> happy mind, let the adventure continue. What's the problem? You want to take a shower and shave beard or what?

If that's all it is, it's not really a resting "system" is it? It's just extra clicks. What you want is a Dragon Age style automatic heal and cooldown reset after every fight. But D&D isn't that game. Classes get their abilities and spells back at a different pace in D&D so you can't change it into Dragon Age without screwing up the classes.

So you're fine with companion dialogue being restricted to long resting?
And that the ease of long resting means that spellcasters are now much more powerful than martial characters?
And that you can fast travel back to camp in the middle of a dangerous area, long rest, then come back fully rested and fully restored, removing a lot of the tension of dungeon delving?

For me, the last two things are absolutely normal, in any case, I do not spam rest unnecessarily. But do I want use spells more often, rather than wait for "judgment day"??? Yes.

I only care about the dialogs. It's not good right now.

Two things:

• Resting in dungeons
  It's impossible to rest in the Zhentarim hide-out, suggesting that they are experimenting with allowed areas for resting.
• Rests before worm take-over
  The current build has no limit to the number of rests before the worm takes over, but the story suggests that excessive resting could result in a game loss.

The Zhent hideout should be an ideal place to camp. If you're their "friend" or wiped them all out and it's empty.

You also can't rest in dungeon under Teahouse. I already wrote about this in some thread, hmm... I think people here just mean by "dungeon" absolutely any area with some enemy. And Larian forbids rest only in DUNGEONS, not in open locations.

LOL, yes please.

These things are, objectively, wrong with the resting system:

1. The camp does not exist anywhere you can find in the game world, and wherever you actually are when you choose to rest, you go to visually the same camp.

This is an obvious riff on the DAO camp idea, where it was also bad. Although you can expect the camp "layout" to be the same wherever you are, it would at least be nice if it looked like the region you were in.

If it is intended that the camp is always in a "safe" location ( given it contains a dog, a god, and various other hangers-on ) and the camp does not "follow" you, then a long rest should be possible without actually visiting the camp.

2. Much of the intra-party dialog occurs only at the camp, which seems forced.

Obviously this is beneficial when creating the A/V assets, since you know the location and don't have to try to merge camera angles with some random location.

On the whole, I guess I prefer restricting the conversations to camp if it means not looking up the nostrils/at the back of the head of the character I am speaking to.

3. Long rests are always safe.

Often DnD and videogames based on it have used the notion of safe/unsafe rest areas. The camp is a safe area, as generally are taverns/inns, player-owned buildings etc. The open road, the underdark, dungeons etc are generally not safe.

There are various consequences to resting in unsafe areas, including theft of goods, the potential for random attacks etc, but these are not reflected in BG3 as the camp we magically return to is classed as "safe".

4. There is no concept of time.

Long rests have only one requirement; that you rest/sleep for 8 hours, at least 16 hours after the completion of your last long rest.

But this is meaningless in BG3. Since it has no concept of time, this means that a long rest is available whenever you want, without even the cost of eating meals ( given how much food ther is in the game, you would think you might need to eat some of it for sustenance!).



This is what is, objectively, NOT wrong with the resting system:

1. That you can long rest after every encounter.

There is, as far as I know, no version of DnD that has ever existed that prevented you from choosing to rest after every encounter to regain spells and other class abilities, it that is what you wish to do.

It is not to do with class balance, not to do with tactical finesse, not to do with playing ability. It is merely a judgement as to whether you have enough resources left to enter anouther encounter without replenishing them. If you judge that you do not, you rest, unless there is some overriding reason not to.




Personally, like most of the other things that the TT players obsess about, I ignore the fact that I can min/max resting in the game, because I see no reason to do so. The game is more enjoyable role-played, without looking for advantages everywhere.

I think the easiest solution to the resting problem that wouldn't require a major overhaul of the camping system is to have a waypoint at the campsite and make it so that you can only fast travel from a waypoint location. That way when you enter a new area, like when you fall into the Underdark, you can't return to camp until you find a Waypoint (or find a way to backtrack to one). It makes the most sense from a narrative perspective and limits how often you can camp. I'm also not a fan of how you can fast travel from anywhere on the map.

The only problem I could see is that it might make things TOO difficult. What happens if you fall into the Underdark and have to fight the minotaurs without any spell slots? I guess that's what fleeing from battle would be for.

As it stands, I will never complete a game with Origin characters. Their story, their benefit, their enhancement are all built around scenes and events that can only take place at camp.

It makes no sense for me to go to camp when I still have full resources on everyone and still have 1 or 2 short rests. And then some events can't even trigger at all, like the Tiefling celebration scene + Halsin without you doing this.

You are penalized for NOT long resting enough by being stripped of story and cinematics.

After lengthy consideration this is what I would like for the resting system in BG3:

- A gold tax in the form of Camping Supplies to discourage long rest spam. Let the game reward you in gold for playing well and saving resources. Tax should be high enough to matter.

- Local resting spots. Abandoned houses, camps, ancient temples, friendly settlements etc. Mostly for immersion to make the world feel real and have a sense of distance and scale. But also for game mechanics, as explained below.

- Fatigue system that prevents you from always backtracking to a safe camp somewhere beyond a realistic distance. If you push deep into a dungeon, wilderness or the Underdark you have to rest there. Basically a fatigue system would effectively limit the radius in which you can operate at full strength and set meaningful intervals for resting.

this leads to...

- Redesign the fast travel system. Remove magical teleportation everywhere and only use waypoints for mundane travel on foot so that fatigue can come into play. Every rest spot / campsite should have a waypoint. Disable teleport to base camp and put it on the actual map and as a regular waypoint.

- Optional random encounters in areas that aren't flagged "safe" in the spirit of BG and D&D would also discourage rest spamming. An increasing chance to be found could work if you spam rests, perhaps.

There is simply no beating around the bush with this one. D&D 5e is designed around Long and Short Rests, attrition and fatigue to it's core. Resting can't be removed or changed from 5e without making a complete mess of all the classes. Accepting this will result in a far better game. You can still remove any resting restrictions on casual difficulties where balance isn't as critical to begin with.

Yeah these are honestly wonderful suggestions. There certainly needs to be profound changes to the rest system as it is. They don't really need to make just one specific camp environment and that's it for all eternity, it would make far more sense to have a few specific camp sites in the game. And character progression shouldn't just be when the characters are at camp.

This is probably too strict? If I'm reading this correctly, you want
-long resting to only be possible at specific designated sites
-fatigue that limits how far you can walk. How would this work: if you try to return to a distant campsite, at some point your characters just collapse and won't move anymore?? But they will get up and walk as long as you're moving "forward"??

Unless these rules are only present in a hard "Survival" mode, these two options combined will too easily result in softlocks where you're too resource-tapped to press onward and too weak to walk back to the previous campsite. You should always be able to manually walk back to your previous camp (or fast travel point).

I think a better option than "fatigue-limited backtracking" is that there are just more areas where you can only fast travel from a designated camping site. Basically any areas that are not on the overworld. E.g.,
-Hag's Lair: no campsites or fast traveling. If you want to return to the surface, you have to get to the end or climb back up to the surface (I believe this is how it currently works?)
-Entire Underdark: there are ~3 campsites (temple entrance, Myconid colony, shoreline). You need to walk to any of these points to long rest or fast travel back to the surface. Otherwise, no fast travel.
-Goblin Temple: no campsites or fast traveling
The combination of limited campsites + food cost (+optional random encounters) should be more than sufficient to discourage long rest spam.

No

How would you solve the rest spam, then?

And if you want to keep the rest spam or turn D&D into a DOS or Dragon Age style system where you get all resources back after each fight, how would you solve Wizards, Sorcerers, Clerics and Druids becoming twice as powerful as the rest of the classes with that "feature"?

Putting a gold requirement on long rest would deter using long rest at all. If you put a fatigue and gold requirement on long rest along with weight for such a item, this would become tedious micromanagement. Along with problematic with requiring X gold per day (along with gold requirements already in the game).

There is already sign of long rest requirement via dialog that characters say out of no where. This leads to possibility of a day night cycle of some sort, I would guess a fatigue system - one that reduces attributes or combat effectiveness. Along with locking long rests to the feature, so it would be time, combat, or checkpoint triggered.

Compiling more ontop of it will lead to a survival game (starvation, camp equipment breaking/repair, exhaustion, etc).

No to a mage tax!

I would prefer to simply have some sort of in game clock and have one long rest and maybe 2 short rests allowed per day. A gold tax is not necessary and complicates what should already be an easy system (5e).
Yes. Have a few in different parts of the map similar to DA:I and they become mostly safe after clearing the surrounding areas.
Yes. With a day/night cycle or at least an in game clock, you would know if you could continue traveling to a new safe place or backtrack to an already discovered one.
Yes. Fast travel would be allowed between discovered camp areas but the in game clock would advance according to the estimated travel time. The camp model could be the same for most areas (overland camp would be what we have now, Underdark camp would be another model, etc.)
This could be interesting but perhaps either as a menu option or if camp locations are not used for a while then enemies would respawn near them.

That dialogue seems to only be because someone wants to talk to you at camp. I tried resting every time someone complained about being tired on my last playthrough and it was ridiculous and immersion breaking.

We need a day/night cycle or at least an in game clock. Exhaustion can simply be like it is in 5e, eating and equipment repair would most likely be assumed to be happening during rests. Dialogue should be able to happen anywhere unless it requires a camp trigger, to avoid the feeling that our companions have never done anything requiring exertion in their lives.

I think instead of a gold tax, it could consume food? There are a lot of food items but it still would act as a resource being consumed?

Then maybe computer D&D just isn't your kind of game.

You can't make a DM rest system in a computer game, so all your doing is making mage tax rules and that seems really brightness challenged.

Day/Night because of the "story" elements of the camp, but otherwise go with an unlimited short rest where everyone can refresh including mage/clerics, but add in that if you rest in a dungeon with live encounters they will patrol and notice and attack or be way harder to fight. The world is already way to static, like you can kill and no one notice and the corps just stay around.

So you can rest in a situation where time isn't a factor, but make it impossible to do a little goblin killing then rest with no time reaction from the goblins.

^^^This

It generally feels like a unfinished feature, I can't imagine it'll be left like how it is for full release.

So you are saying that mages should get to rest every five minutes so they can use all their spell slots in every battle? That seems "brightness challenged" to me. Balancing classes is necessary, especially when we get to higher level spells. I didn't play much of the first two BG but there was a decent rest system in the form of fatigue, seems that it worked fine for computer DnD.

Agreed and I really hope they modify it a lot.

The purpose of a fatigue system is to make all classes want to rest.

Systems where only spellcasters need to rest are weird to begin with. Imagine multiplayer where the mages are nagging to rest but the fighters who don't need it are just ignoring it. All classes need an incentive to rest. Fighters and Rogues will want to rest when they have a -4 fatigue penalty to attacks and saves.


I really don't want to micromanage apples, melons and pigs heads. I want the food stuff and other trash loot out of my inventories. Other RPG's don't make you deal with pointless trash like this. Still this would be a better use for the food items than having them double as healing potions. But what if you run out of apples? Do you have to backtrack all the way back to Druid's Grove to buy more before you can rest? If all food was consolidated into one item such as "Camping Supplies" it would be much easier to keep track of available rests.

If long resting doesn't cost you anything, there's no incentive to not rest after every fight and no reward for managing your resources efficiently.

I wonder if such a "tax" is supposed to work.
The cost cannot be high because the average player who does not spend much time collecting rubbish (easy with very limited lifting capacity) could be easily blocked. If the game can lead to a situation where the player is unable to progress any further, it is definitely a poor project.
However, if the cost is low, the player who collects most of the items will be able to rest unlimitedly, and in such a situation it is definitely a senseless mechanic.

Local rest won't work with current systems either, which is a problem to use fast travel to get back and rest. Even if they disable the ability to teleport from anywhere, it won't matter much, considering that the fast travel points are relatively densely packed. At worst, you will lose an extra minute.

The problem isn't the current resting system, the problem is that you can rest while the game is time frozen.

They need to implement triggers that changes the world if you start something and they sometimes do, like with the Gith patrol and Laz leave your party and run to the patrol, if you do just about anything else than following her, she gets killed, because time still passed.

Killing the goblin priest might allow for hiding her body and rest, but attacking the front gate and most others in the current design should result in everyone gathering in one single room, making a close to impossible fight.

Also why can't we assassinate the goblin leaders, they all seems like fight that should be impossible to hide. Especially the drow one where 3 gobs ignore the fight even while I stand on top of the wall shooting into the drow and friends in line of sight of them, not to mention in line of sound.

The entire goblin area could use a major overhaul to allow for fighting smaller groups and it being easy to see why it doesn't attract attention of the rest, AS LONG AS YOU DON'T LONG REST in between encounters and that you destroy the drums.

if i remember correctly in dragon age origins camping is handled where you have to physically get your party to the travel point on the edge of a given map. I think it worked very well. Since you wanted to keep on going so you didn't have to double back and then reenter and w/e. currently in bg3 there's no reason at all to not do a long rest after every single battle. I think the idea to make it waypoint only is a good one BUT they would need to add more waypoints imo. they would have to be placed while keeping in mind that they are the way the player accesses long rests. i.e. in dungeon areas one at the beginning and one at the end kinda thing. They'd have to take out fast travel but walking everywhere in a game without respawning enemies can get boring SO

once you've gotten to camp after you sleep it lets you choose which waypoint you want to come back out at. thus you can only fast travel after a long rest.

it would be really lame if they solved this problem by adding time pressure with the tadpoles. I hate time pressure in games. lemmie take my time! It would also bias the balance towards characters who don't need to rest as often (i.e. away from casters).

There is a reason the whole "fatigue" system, or "damaged armor" system has basically been removed from 99% of these type of games and MMOs. Most people do not like them, and find them restraining. There really should be no type of limit of long rests per day, considering there is actually no time tracking system (day/night cycle) in the game to begin with. Who knows, maybe they will integrate the whole day/night thing. But I am thinking since it is not integrated by early access, I am not confident it will be added at all. But again, who knows until launch day. I just don't see how anyone can say that mages are somehow OP in this game, considering the bulk of their spells miss. If anything, I have found the melee fighters to be way more OP than the casters.

Just remove spellslots if there aren't limitation...
The whole concept is based arround resting limitations and the strange concept of "day" and "hours" that exist in the FR and in D&D.

At the moment resting is just 2 "heal" buttons.
It can't be something else than work in progress. Such a great game with such a resting system would be a shame.

Melee fighters are powerful, full agree. Mages are much more powerful in this game than they are in 5e. You may miss, but you can afford to risk more of your spell slots in one encounter, since you can get them all back at any time outside of combat. Not to mention the ways you can increase your chance to hit, like high ground. Even if your chance to hit still isn't to your liking, there's always Ol' Faithful, aka magic missile. It's a nice way to guarantee some damage is done. If you have an enemy at low health, and you don't want to waste the rest of your party's actions on such a weakened enemy, magic missile will just delete it.

Oh yeah, MM is old faithful in this game, the majority of the other spells are trash atm, hopefully they will tweak them by launch.

It'd be cool to see all of that stuff in the camp actually turn into useful stuff. Plus, how the hell are we returning to the same camp every time, and there's no wagon or anything pulling all of our shit? I know some of our allies and Jergel are waiting there, but still. That's a long walk from the Underdark.

I think they should consider using the current environment and we place our camp anywhere, even being able to explore our current location while in camp mode.

I also think we should have packmules or something to lug all of this shit around. Adding crafting stations to camp and other weird things would be cool, too. Definitely more traders.

Finally, I think there should be more random events. Even minor ones like a wandering trader or a surprise attack.

Obviously the worm needs to eat your brains out if you sleep too much. A tax?! They need to put a tax on versatility. You want to balance out your character's stats to make him more versatile, but then you realize that versatility means the wizard class. And so you rebel against the system by making a half-orc barbarian and playing him responsibly, even though you can't even do that.

Having what amounts to infinite rests means they will have to homebrew even more stuff to balance things in later levels. Already it is pointless to play warlock if you just want to be a spellcaster. In any other game except maybe survival ones I would agree with you that fatigue and broken gear are just a pain, but this one is supposed to be using the 5e framework. I much prefer ranged combat to melee, only use Lae'zel for this but she is somewhat useless with everyone else being ranged. While the lower level spells aren't exactly OP, if used "properly" (high ground, etc) or used mostly for crowd control, they do very well. My wizards barely touch MM, instead the spellcasters use things like Web, Entangle, Spike Growth, and Faerie Fire. Cantrips are used for damage, and even those I use specific ones that work best for the situation (usually Chill Touch or Firebolt.) I don't have the issue that many others seem to have with spells missing because of this and I even have Gale in my party most of the time.

They SHOULD include a time tracking system, but to give you a certain time to complete act 1 before instantly dying via the ceremorphosis into a mindflayer. Say you couldn't complete Act 1 with any character and *had* to play multiple times to see it all because of the time constraint. That way you'd rush to one of the three paths to the towers instead of combing the entire map. It would make sense story-wise as well, and I'm surprised it's not already integrated into the game.

To see that on the full release would be awesome. It would speed up Act 1 (which we've all played to death already) and give you a reason to replay to try another path. It would tie into the story really well if they added sickness later and more dreams or other events about your infection. Again, insta-death if you don't finish Act 1 in time.

This is a terrible idea.

It would definitely make sense for the story but it would be horrible.
I'd rather have changes in the story and something that clearly say : "you're not going to become a mindflayer soon" that having to rush act 1.

Then what ? Going to the gith patrol right at the beginning and dying ? Looking for Halsin takes times, what's considered as "enough time" ? And if you're going to the Hag first which is finally not a solution ? Game over ?

Timed quests and a more living world in which things happen even if you don't trigger the script by yourself is something I'd like... But a game over if you don't rush fast enough would be a terrible mistake (and they won't do it).

I heartily agree that time limits aren't the best solution to the false sense of urgency in the game. I like exploring areas fully, interacting with as many NPCs as possible, and taking time to manage my inventory, so I don't want to feel rushed. Plus, you would end up missing half the story due to the ridiculous amount of times you have to camp to see all the convos and cutscenes with party members. I didn't realise that on my first playthrough, so I camped infrequently, and I'm finding out now that I missed a ton of interactions.

I don't like the use of the trite fake urgency either. However, because most players have been conditioned to ignore in-game urgency, that's even more reason not to have a time limit, as it will end up being an unpleasant surprise for people. As others have suggested, it's better to make it more clear early on in the story that the tadpole is in stasis and finding a "cure", while important, is not urgent. I think it would be better to address the story-related issue with a story-related solution, rather than add game mechanics that may frustrate a portion of the player base (and significantly change the experience).

I also agree with the OP and others who have said that the companion dialogue queues (and cues) need to be improved. This playthrough, I'm getting much more of the companion dialogues, but I have to purposely avoid doing any significant things together. This is something I didn't know to do on my first playthrough, and other new players won't know to do it either (and shouldn't have to).

If they had a specific order for companion interactions and each one that you acquire just queued up, then they wouldn't get out of order. Some of them that don't indicate an end to the night could also double up (i.e. more than one companion interaction per night). Perhaps some of the companion discussions could even happen outside of camp if they don't need a cutscene (right after a short rest?), and it would be helpful if companion cues could be more obvious (e.g. say something to you without forcing you into a dialogue).

On a side note, this would be a "nice to have" feature to increase immersion: instead of big yellow exclamation marks, companions could do something else to attract your attention in camp if something is on their mind. Like pace back and forth or have a very different sitting or standing pose than their default. If their dialogue would lead into a more involved dialogue/cutscene (e.g. Gale admiring his double or Astarion looking up at the stars) then perhaps they could be in their starting pose for that (which would suggest that you to go over to them to see what they're doing).

"Time limits" (or to more properly call them, "timed restrictions") if generous enough to not force a player to skip content can make a game of this kind.

One of my favorite examples (and one i already mentioned countless times in other threads, but redundancy is a bit of a second nature of every forum) is the first act of Pathfinder Kingmaker: you have a "soft" deadline of a month to accomplish the first major goal (getting rid of a Baron Robber) and a hard deadline of three months.

Achieving the first is reasonably challenging but it's entirely possible while still completing 100% of the content if you travel light and avoid resting TOO often. But accomplishing this goal rewards you with the best magic sword up to that point into the game.
Achieving the second is trivial. You'd have to go out of your way to waste entire weeks in the most unproductive way to not get rid of the first minor villain by three months.

It's a simple mechanic, but it manages to achieve several goals:
- it gives MEANING to the rest and encumbrance systems rather than making them just a negligible minor annoyance.
- It gives a reasonable sense of urgency while being more than forgiving enough to not rush the player too much.
- It offer an optional additional challenge if you want to go for the "hard goal" and it rewards you appropriately for it.
- It surely as fuck makes a lot more sense and offers more internal consistency than the trite "You have to hurry, it's NOW OR NEVER" only to follow with "Lul, just kidding. Take all the time you want".

It's also a mechanic that works exceptionally well when it comes to secondary, optional goals. At very least in terms of having less people bitch and moan about it on mere principle of "I don't like being rushed" (when in reality they haven't been rushed at all, just asked to not spam a long rest every two goblins and cobolds).

No time limits. This was already annoying with pathfinder. I don't care how much time I have, the mere existence of time limits makes me rush instead of enjoying the game.
Fortunately, time constraints aren't very popular and generally disliked, so there is no chance that Larian would try it.
Pathfinder is practically the only time-limited RPG game, and it better keep it that way.

Nah, it wasn't.
You did find it annoying, which is a different claim to make.

Yeah, popular consensus seems to be the BANE of sensible game design.
People hate restrictions even when they make perfect sense and enhance immersion. Hell, even when they actually improve things mechanically (see XCOM 2). They want convenience above quality of experience, they want flashy question marks above quest givers, instant fast travel from anywhere to everywhere taking away any sense of scale and pace from the game world, they want minimaps telling them everything is going on on a 50 meters radius and omniscient GPS driving them with military-grade precisions on their targets without a single need to having to figure out a thing by context.

And modern mainstream game designers are absolutely terrorized by the idea of daring giving to these people the middle finger they deserve and stick to what actually works and makes a game mechanically more interesting.

I like time constraints as long as they're fairly lenient (like Kingmaker's). They add tension & immersion while still, in PKm's case, allowing the player to complete most if not all of the content. I could type out all the reasons why, but just go up 3 posts to read everything @Tuco said.

If Larian's not going to make changes to class balance, then there should to be some type of time or resource constraint to limit long resting. This can be any of:
-large-scale time constraints (7 days until you're turned into a mindflayer, possibly with each "healer" NPC slowing the transformation and adding a day or two)
-quest-based (various quests that progress when you long rest: e.g., Hag, Waukeen's Rest, Druid Ritual)
-daily constraints (you literally cannot long rest until X in-game hours have passed and/or you've taken Y short rests)
-resource (gold or ration requirement for resting)
-location-based (Cannot long rest in Hag's lair, the underdark, any dungeon, and you can only fast travel to designated waypoints. No clicking a button, teleporting to camp, then returning to exactly where you were)

And of course, camp cutscenes need to NOT be tied to long resting. If you're not going to put a restriction on resting Larian, at least don't require long-rest spam in order to get all of the story and companion dialogues.

I seriously wonder if Larian even considered how the resting system impacts the class balance? Like with warlocks and monks and fighters, largely centered around short rests for instance. As it stands now there is zero reason to take short rests when you might aswell spam long rests. It completely screws up the class balance, but... do they even know that? I mean, they MUST know it, right?

The question is never if they know (it's generally assumed they do) but if they care and if they are attempting to address it.

When the game launched you were only allowed to take 1 short rest in between long rests.
In Patch 3 they changed this to 2 short rests per long rest with the following reasoning: Make of this what you will.

While I might not approve of the tone Tuco sometimes have (although, I know why you argue the way you do from time to time, Tuco :p I've read those posts too!) - but hands down, I am actually with Tuco on this one.

While I do not necessarily feel like it would ruin the game by not implementing it - time limiting, when done right, is not at all the kind of rush-feast that people think it is. Maybe it is because I played a LOT of Xcom 1/2 (and other strategy games like Civilization that does not allow one to dwell for too long) before I even began with CRPGs, but I simply feel like it adds some realism to the matter. They say it is urgent, but this is demonstrated in no other way than in words.

Anyhow - while on the matter, I was very hesitant about buying Pathfinder: Kingmaker because of all the nay-sayers on Steam. I was nervous about the difficulty and I was *VERY* nervous about the time-limited aspects - especially since Pathfinder is it's own game and not following the same ruleset as many other CRPGs. But, when all was said and done, I bought it - while still reasonably fresh to the CRPG genre - and I enjoyed it very, very, very much. Tuco is 100% right in that while you might feel rushed when entering P:K and they say "You got X amount of time before this is all over" and actually see the count-down in your journal - you very soon realize what an insane amount of time you actually have. I could with ease make it within the month (that would be the more difficult reward, as Tuco mentioned) while doing everything I wanted to do - and I had sooo much time to explore the entire game, while still leaving room for mistakes like non-optimal pathing, running back and forth etc without being hindered. Granted - I played it on easy because... Well, the P:K rumors scared the crap out of me - but I feel no shame about it. I mainly play CRPGs for the story - not to get stuck on particular encounters. Running the game while enjoying the combat challenge is for my second/third etc playthrough, not for my first run. :]

So - while I doubt Larian will add a time restriction now, I certainly think they could have - or should, in future games. It doesnt have to be merciless, it doesn't have to stress you to the point where you do not dare to waste time on anything optional... It is just to increase the immersion and actually grant a more believable feeling of time passing. PoE2 also did this to an extent, and I did enjoyed it there as well, although certain time limited aspects (like chasing that damn ship) made my heart skip more than just a couple of beats (but that was because I screwed up big time and had to rush in an attempt to make up for it).

What I am trying to say is - even people who play like me can play with time limits. I am going to make a guess that Tuco is more of a min-max player than I am, since I am very casual and hence enjoying a huge chunk of comfort into my roleplaying experience - but that did in no way hinder my experience in P:K. It is not as dreadful as it may sound to those who are not used to time limiting aspects - and, when implemented properly, it is true that you literally have to waste time in a way that is simply not appropriate in order to fail on easier difficulties.

I'd even go the step further than Tuco above. If Larian implemented the same kind form of time limiting that "Story time"-Pathfinder has (easiest difficulty there is), then you could rest after every, single encounter - if you wanted to. You could even take an extra rest every now and then, just for fun. You could backtrack, run around in circles and do all side quests. You'd still make the hard-limit, no sweat. And you would easily make the soft-limit by just resting every second camp while still doing a through search of each and every area you go to - even with a comfortable amount of time left to explore the surrounding areas, if you'd like.

The biggest argument I'd see against time limiting in BG3 is the fact that our current system regarding companion conversations demands us to "waste" time resting (a lot) even when it is not needed nor appropriate. You also have to "test-rest" often in order to double-check that there has been no conversations triggered, as our companions rarely tell us when they want to talk. I mean - I rest *A LOT* on my current play through, and I STILL managed to miss multiple conversations...... This system does not match well with a time-gating system, but that does not make time-limiting aspects bad in general.

I agree as well that time limits can and do work very well if implemented right.

In Disco Elysium i feel time limited quests are not strict at all (but they add a sense of urgency) and they are communicated well once you accepted them. Having them adds tension, immersion and dynamic to the world as things are changing while you play, it lets you explore freely but it doesnt wait for you with everything.
I think one key is that the game should be really clear in giving the feedback to the player - preferably BEFORE or at least AFTER accepting a time-limited quest - that this is a timed quest and you need to prioritize your to-do-list a little bit to get a certain result. In DE, the game cleverly share you these hints via your thoughts but this can be done in any game.

I also like how immersive the flowing of time for example in Kingdom Come, if you take certain quests (but never felt it rushed or too strict again). I remember there was one occasion my journal mocked me, saying hey while you were taking a rest right after accepting this pretty urgent quest - because its just a game, what can happen, right? - your companions did not wait for you and they started to travel already to the quest location. It was fun, they even had some things to say when i was able to find out which direction they went and caught up to them, showing real reactions to my lazy thinking. The quest was still solvable, but all this added a nice flavour to things.

All in all, if its cleverly done, it can add a lot to the world. Implementing extra challenge (and reward) with hard goals is a cool idea as well.

1. Time constraints will ruin the game for some people, it's just a fact. Many people hate rush, or even the illusion of it, because it causes them stress.
2. Obviously, at this stage, there is no need to rush to BG3, because at a certain stage npc are told you "you have time". Of course, at first it does not seem so, you will most likely try to find Halsin as quickly as possible or Nettie, but as soon as they tell you that the transformation will not come immediately, then the "stress" mode goes away. And I think that's a good thing.
Perhaps some of you like the feeling of "rigor", even if it is an illusion, but personally I do not, and if dev add this to the game, then I will not be able to play and have fun. When game says "You need to be faster", there is no more fun, only stress. And I don't think I'll be able to turn it off somehow, lol. So technically, this is a bad idea. Especially for rpg genre.

Do you need time limits? So create them for yourself! The joke is that you won't lose anything if they aren't added to the game. This will not spoil your game, because you can run forward at breakneck speed, who will stop you. But don't force others to play the way you like.

I'm not talking about the problem with the camp and the cut scenes, they really are, and I would like to change that, just because even I don't need to rest so many times.

Again, the most problem is the rest system is that Larian designed the game with all the major cut scenes and story progression to happen at camp or right before and after long rests.

This was so that you are almost forced into doing so, manipulated into resting more than you need to in order to get the full experience and story of the characters. It ties back into Larian designing the game for the lowest common denominator and adding so many training wheels facets to the flow of the game.

If you follow the long rest regimen set by the game in EA, you will have your spell slots available roughly every other fight.

Exactly! It breaks class balance and immersion.

Although admittedly, I am a big fan of XCOM2, and I do also like the timer on that game which matches with the stress of an alien invasion, and it really worked in that game. I really don't see any kind of timer working in this game. They are two totally different types of game. Not to mention, we have no idea what is going to transpire after the starter area (the EA).

Considering that originally (as quoted by a poster above) Larian actually increased the number of short rests to streamline adventuring time, I really don't see them just doing a reverse course, and putting some kind of time restraint or any other mechanic that would limit the amount of time you can go to camp for a full rest now. They have never had a day/night cycle, maybe that is an engine limitation, I don't know. But it would be cool to have some "night missions" when we reach Baldur's Gate. I am assuming even if this was done, it would be a loaded instance of the quest area, and not open world.

Yeah, they COULD put a day/night cycle in if they wanted, it certainly is not beyond their abilities; and that would accurately solve the "rest when you want" problem because long rests are ( at most ) once per 24 hrs. Actually having to wait in-game before you can rest would definitely promote the proper consideration of when you use per-day resources.

But there are 2 problems with doing this. First, Larian's co-op play model ( which is apparently very popular ) relies on time being an illusion. And second, most people that buy the game would hate being made to wait and, therefore, complain; this would be a valid complaint, since having no respect for wasting your customer's time is always a bad idea if you want them to buy your product.

It seems to me that it is simply a result of a bad system design in DnD, right from the first edition, really. Resources are limited by passage of time, but passage of time can only be made important in a specious or contrived manner.

The best way of moderating resting in the field remains the original idea of random encounters; but that gets boring quickly. The alternative is to do what Larian have, and assume that resting occurs often, and construct the game on that basis.

The issue is that Larian has only done ~half of what is needed to construct the game assuming resting occurs often.
Aspects that complement or encourage frequent resting
- Combat encounters seem to be constructed assuming you have ~full resources for each fight.
- Long resting is encouraged via the camp cutscenes (although Larian obviously needs to put more emphasis on this, given the # of players who don't rest and miss a significant chunk of cutscenes)
- You can fast travel from almost anywhere directly to camp and then back to where you teleported from, and resting doesn't require resources or provoke random encounters.

Aspects that aren't constructed for frequent long resting
- Balance between classes. Short v long rest-based classes are a big thing in 5e, and most of Larian's changes haven't addressed this. Long rest spellcasters are relatively much more powerful in BG3 because they can afford to use all of their spell slots each fight.
- Prevalence of consumables, food in particular. You would think that, since long resting fully restores HP, a 5e game with unlimited resting would have less healing consumables. However, there is a ton of food & potions in BG3 which discourages long resting because you can just heal by using these. There is also a ton of scrolls, flasks, etc which everyone can use (I suppose this actually helps to balance martials vs casters, but at the cost of class-uniformity), allowing you to do more fights before needing to rest.

I think a fairly good compromise would be to introduce a PoE2 system with some modifications.
In PoE2, the spell slots automatically returned after the fight was over, while rest was needed for healing and also gave some bonuses.
One could try to introduce this system by making the classes based on a short rest regain their slots when the fight is over.
Characters based on a long rest to recover any slots normally.
While resting, you can use food that gives you various bonuses, the more powerful the rarer, of course.
When you rest again, you lose the bonus, which would encourage you not to rest (provided that it is powerful enough)).
The food itself could even be an optional item in such a situation.

What I would like to see you for camping and resting is:

1. Make sure that dialogues do not get overwritten bye future dialogues. All dialogues should exist in some sort of order and triggered whenever you go to camp. Some exceptions may apply. For example, if you go for a long time without long resting you might still trigger the Raphael dialogue after meeting Netti so that you keep the story on track. However, you could then still trigger dialogues like Gale's Mirror Image dialogue after Raphael.
2. I would like to see more group dialogue where all the characters are discussing things together as a party whether it is a group of customized characters or origin characters. For example, when we first find out about Astarion's secret we should have an entire conversation between all party members together not just between the main and Astarion. The group dialogues should be more for discussing where characters are going to go next and how they are going to handle their current situations these are things they should be deciding as a team.
3. I would also like to see one-on-one dialogues in a more intimate setting such as down by the river when we are attempting to pursue romance options. Right now all dialogue at camp seem to be in front of everyone yet not really including everyone. So some dialogues should be more intimate where two people are alone.
4. I would like resting and camping to be more time sensitive. If a long rest is the end of a day then players should see things changing as each day passes. When I go to the Grove, for example, after long resting I should hear different conversations instead of always seeing the same people having the same conversations etc.
5. Along with number 4, events should occur that move the story along. If three days pass, and I haven't exposed Kahga or rescued Halsin, the druids should complete their ritual...or maybe four days or five days...whatever. The point is that some events should be triggered if you take too long, thus keeping players from spamming the use of Long Rests.
6. I would like a Day/Night Cycle, if possible, and this could be accomplished via 2 Short Rests or just giving a player the ability to do 2 Long Rests per day. Yes, a Long Rest is supposed to be ending your day, but if I want to trigger a Day/Night cycle, we could just make a Long Rest an 8 hour period instead. Thus, if I Long Rest once, it moves from Day to Night. If I Long Rest again, I move from Night to Day. Sure, it goes a bit against the D&D 5e rules, but the point is that you are offering players the ability to trigger Day/Night cycle.

Um, not sure what your trying to say here. The TT rules for resting are largely irrelevent, and always have been. You rest as much as you want and as often as you want. If this requires going somewhere safe, and you choose to do it, then you do it.

The cost to the player is exactly what the DM chooses. The standard trade-off used to be the chance of "wandering monsters" while asleep. But all this achieves is to ensure that resting occurs even more frequently to ensure you still have spells for attacks while resting.

One of the early sets of modules D1-D3 that introduced the Drow, actually denied arcane casters ANY spell recovery when in the Underdark. So guess what; when the arcane users ran out of spells ( or had used a certain portion ), the whole party trooped back to the surface to rest.

And yes, you have reasonably analysed where Larian sit as DM. They know there is no point in trying to force any particular resting cadence ( which would be wildly unpopular ), so they design on the assumption you will rest as needed. Typically, I find I get through 2-3 fights before needing a long rest, due to the choices I take. But if I needed ( or wanted ) to long rest after every fight, that's exactly what I would do.

The only thing I would disagree with is that there is any real or implied relationship between "balance" and the TT resting rules. Nothing in the resting rules forces any particular behaviour upon the player, so any intent to use the resting rules as a "tool" for class balance woud be an astonishly poor design choice. I suppose that is possible, but if so, I don't see that it should be Larian's responsibility to fix it.

My point is that Larian, if they want to allow unlimited resting and/or not implement a day/night cycle, should more fully commit to this.

They have achieved arguably the most important thing, which is balancing encounters assuming players will rest as often as possible.

But they need to do a lot more work on
1) the camp cutscenes that only occur during long rests and can be missed if you don't long rest frequently enough.
-Option A: More strongly encourage long resting. Companions could say "let's return to camp; I have something to talk about" instead of just saying "I'm tired." Alternatively, some sort of light penalty should apply when companions start saying they're tired. Maybe a -1 to skill checks...not enough to force a rest, but enough to more strongly encourage it
-Option B: Untie these long rest conversations from long rests, and allow them while traveling or while short resting

2) Consumables and Food could be reduced, so that it becomes more necessary to long rest frequently. This, again, encourages players to long rest without explicitly forcing it

3.) If we are expected to long rest frequently, then honestly it wouldn't be bad to make some class changes. Give warlocks more spell slots or wizards less. Maybe adjust abilities that recharge per short rest (e.g., Action Surge) to have more uses. This would have a similar effect as allowing wizards to use all their slots in 1 encounter.

And in PnP you can't always just rest whenever you want; as you say this is up to the DM who sometimes declares that you cannot long rest. Or you can, but the DM imposes some penalty, like enemy reinforcements arrive or you have to waste time in which brings you closer to some deadline. Larian as the DM is allowing unlimited long resting but rarely imposes corresponding penalty.

An easy way to have this for multiplayer would be for all party members to have to agree to rest at the same time (maybe a voting system.) I am not sure what you mean about people complaining about being made to wait though, all the multiplayer games I have played require some sort of communication and agreements between players and this should be an expected thing here.

Wouldn't even need to be a voting system. All they have to do is make it so that if one person selects End Day then a message pops up for all players saying that the person is waiting at camp to End Day. Only if all players select End Day will it actually end.

1. Certainly agree the linkage between long-resting and plot-related party conversations is sub-optimal. This is particularly true as the (seemingly) very non-linear story leads to a difficult tangle of subsequent conversation triggers, some of which can invalidate earlier conversation triggers before they have a chance to activate.

I understand the production reasons for wanting an invariant camp backdrop when enacting these hi-res cut-scene conversations. As you say, it's usually better not to force players into any particular behaviour, so I would prefer they find a way to allow conversations to trigger "in the field" where possible, rather than contrived penalties, which tend not to be popular.

Of course, if Larian choose to add the passage of time to their game, the reasoning changes; but I don't think that is likely.

2. Quantity reduced, or heal values lowered or weight increased could all achieve the nudge towards long resting, but at the expense of reducing player choice. Can't say I care much one way or the other, but as with other player choice limitations, this can often prove unpopular. And, of course, not needed if you can trigger conversations in the field.

3. Yeah, why not ( apart from the fact it will induce apoplexy in some people ). I really don't care much about ability balance in games. As long as I can see upfront what I am going to be choosing between, I can make my choices from whatever the game maker offers. As with most design decisions, whether changes lke the ones you propose are necessary or desirable is probably a matter of personal opinion. Most BG3 players probably wouldn't care, and those that do would turn to mods.


As for BG3 long resting, I think Larian's current decision to allow long rest at will and with no penalty is fine. There isn't ( tadpole notwithstanding ) any obvious time pressure present in Act 1, which is more useful to gain experience,build up knowledge of the situation, and establish relationships with other actors in the story.

Later, the story may have time pressures or penalties that will cause players to think twice about a long rest. Or not. There shouldn't be contrived reasons that the story doesn't need.

No obvious time pressure in act one? You have Druids performing a ritual that will seal off The Grove, goblins have found at the Grove and are going to attack soon, and yeah you have a tadpole in your head that everyone is saying that you need to get out as soon as possible before you turn into a mind flayer. Even those who say that it is not acting normal will tell you that you could still at any moment. Add to that that Zorru saw Gith just recently and they ain't gonna logically wait around all week for you and Halsin was kidnapped and the goblins aren't gonna keep him alive forever and the cult is searching for you...

Sorry. I have to disagree when you say that the story is not time-sensitive. In fact one of the biggest things I have a problem with is that the story seems very time-sensitive. Everything about the story is you have to hurry before the tadpole takes you over, The Druids kick everybody out, the Goblins attack, Etc. Your party members even nag you a lot about getting your butt moving. Besides reminding you a lot about the tadpole Lae'zel also reminds you a lot that you need to find the Gith creche. Then, once you find out about Gale's condition you feel even more like you have to race against the clock before he explodes.

But then, the game designers make it so that you have unlimited rest. That doesn't make sense with the story then you should be able to just end day all the time. It is like The Druids are going to take 2 weeks or something to finish the ritual and everyone else is just waiting around for you to do what you need to do. So go ahead and take your time, that is what it seems to me that the designers have done. The game says hurry hurry hurry but the game designers say take your time it's okay. On top of that the game designers encourage you to rest a lot in order to get all the dialogues. It just makes no sense to me.

Totally agree with this.

There are a lot of inconsistencies between writing and game design. GM4 gave very good exemples related to the rest mechanic but it's something that is in many aspects of the game.

I'm just saying, there needs to be some measure of time in the game. They have some of this already in place. They just need more of it. For example, after I talk to the adventurers in the Grove, the next time I return to the Grove they are gone. We need more of this kind of thing related to Long Rests. The Druid Ritual, for example, should not be in a constant state of NOT happening, as if the Druids are waiting around forever for you to stop them. Even if you want to give players lots of time to stop them, you need to do something to have it make sense.

For example, let's say I arrive at the Grove and find out about the ritual. The game allows you 2 Long Rests after that before something happens. That means that 2 days go by after you arrive at the Grove. They are nearing the completion of the ritual. Someone even mentions this as you return to the Grove.

But then, (again, this is just an example), THAT is when Arabella steals the statue, forcing them to start the ritual all over again. Now you've been bought another 2 days at least. You take 2 more long rests, so another 2 days go by. The ritual has been interrupted AGAIN. Kagha is just not having good luck. This time, goblins attacked the Grove while you were out, and the Druids were forced to abandon the ritual just to help the Tieflings ward off the goblins.

These are the kinds of things Larian could do to make things time sensitive based on Long Rests used but still buy players enough time to explore the whole map and enjoy the game. Still, it provides players a sense that time exists and things aren't just waiting around forever for you to do whatever you like at whatever pace you like.

Similarly, Lae'zel might not nag you at first to get to Zorru and the creche, but then after maybe 2-3 Long Rests she starts getting antsy. She maybe even threatens to leave the group if you don't take her seriously. It may even be just a bluff and she isn't going to leave you even if you take forever, but at least you are experiencing negative repercussions for taking too long to do certain story things that should be time sensitive. It at least is consistent with the story to have certain events triggered if you are abusing the Long Rest system.

And we need some sort of log to tell us how many days we've actually triggered. That would help too. Instead of the Time Sensitive Dialogue Log, which makes no sense at all to me because some dialogues only take 2 minutes to do but the log makes it seem like 30 minutes went by, let's have a Day Log letting you know what basically happened to you and your party each Day. Day 0, escaped from Nautiloid and the Hells. Day 1, met Shadowheart, fought Devourers, met Astarion, met fishermen, met Gale. Day 2, fought rogue adventurers, discovered Dank Crypt, met Lae'zel and freed her. Day 3, entered Druid's Grove, lists everything I did there, fought Harpies, etc.

That is more helpful to me and even helps me have a better sense at how much time is passing in the game. Then use this log to manage Time Sensitive Events like I described above. If I entered the Grove on Day 3 and learned about the ritual, maybe on Day 5 something happens like Arabella stealing the statue and buying me more time. That kind of thing. If I freed Sazza on Day 3 and helped her get to the goblins, maybe on Day 6 the goblins attack and disrupt the ritual again because Sazza told them how to find the Grove. Instead of sending a full force, they underestimated the Tieflings and Druids and sent too few gobbos.

Then, to add to this, if I talk to "I care about our lives, our FUTURES," on Day 3, then maybe on Day 4+ they are discussing something different, like how they are going to help the Tieflings if the gobbos attack, or maybe discussing the hopelessness of their situation, or maybe discussing how they might disrupt the ritual to buy them more time. Things like that so I'm not hearing the same darn conversation 4 days after I first heard it every time I'm in the Grove. This would go for every other character in the darn Grove who says the same exact thing constantly and every darn character throughout the entire game who says the same darn thing constantly. Either they don't talk, and there's just ambiance mumbling in crowded areas, or they just don't talk at all, cause that repetitive chitchat is killing me.

I'm just saying, mix it up. As days go by, have different people be in different places having different convos or just not there anymore or something. Right now, I feel like BG3 is mostly Groundhog's Day until you trigger certain events.

I think these kinds of things would make the game SO much better.

Again, you are talking about controlling the decision making and play time of the player and how they play their adventure. Honestly, what your asking for is a terrible idea, and is not even done in time sensitive games like XCOM (unless you actively choose to not participate in an emergency mission maybe, but besides that, there is NO play mechanic that limits or controls how events in game happen.

What your talking about is the classic definition of an amusement park "on rails" game, trying to demand in what order you play the game, and how . I seriously do not see Larian EVER doing something like you are describing, and more than likely it falls perfectly under the "You think you want it, but you don't" meme.

I'm not trying to control decision making. Again, my point is that the world right now is very static. This is an RPG. It is supposed to be story driven and the story right now says hurry hurry hurry but the gameplay says chill. It makes no sense.

What I am suggesting is that Larian implement time sensitive changes. Make things less static. Have things happen to explain why the druids haven't finished the ritual if you've spent 7 days exploring the map. Tell me what happened to delay them. Maybe there was an argument between Rath and Kahga. Whatever. Just explain why things aren't happening when they logically should if you are wasting 7+ days completing act 1

No, it's definitely NOT.
But setting the limit to "two long rests" may be pushing things too far.

We already argued that timed restrictions should suggest a pressure while being forgiving enough to leave to the player room to do side activities as long as he doesn't deliberately waste tons of times.
Asking to solve all the druids problems inside TWO long rests is basically punishing anyone but people going for an optimal path.

Even as someone who uses the rest as little as possible I'd be against it.

But I definitely wouldn't be against setting that limit to, say, ten full days. Once again, the ticking clock doesn't need to be there to actively punish a player, it just needs to set a limit to how indecent he can be with wasting time ignoring any remote sense of urgency.

I'd be fairly confident basically anyone could make to the goblin camp and back with Halsin inside a limit of 10 long rests, no matter how utterly incompetent with resource management... But at at least that would prevent a downright exploitative behavior like "Yeah, fuck it, I'm going to do a long rest every two goblin killed and blow my entire load of spells every single time".

If we may not agree of timed quests... I think we could agree on timed "events".

I'm definitely with Nyloth and Pandemonica on this one - not on every words but on the idea (rare enough to say it).

I don't want timed quests and I hate that it can lead to a game over in Kingmaker. Really. I hate it and I hope it won't ever happen again in a game I like (because despite it I like kingmaker).
It was ok at chapter 1 because you had to go into a "dungeon" and kill the boss but it was terrible when it comes to kingdom management and the main quests. Idon't remember the name - the thing that could lead to a game over if you were not strong enough or if you're too far to come back before the end of the timer - the thing that can screw your 20 hours games because of THE random encounter or THE rest you would need...

On the other hand the lack of timed events looks a bit ridiculous in BG3.
Just re-read GM4's exemples... The writing ALWAYS throw you in the face that there's urgency... But notheing ever happen if you rest 500 nights because YOU haven't triggered the events.

It just doesn't works and there's a problem OR in the games mechanics OR the writing but both doesn't work well together at all.

Druids rituals ? Just let them end their ritual.
Finding Halsin ? He's litterally waiting for you before wildshaping in a mouse to escape...
Turning into a mindflayer in 7 days ? Just give all of us the information that it won't happen rather than this fake sense of urgency...

I really think there's solutions for anything. The easiest issues would only require story adjustement but other would require new quest lines.

I don't like saying this but honnestly I'm not sure coherence is something Larian really care about...
The games mechanics and the writing doesn't work together at all and you can literally jump like mario or dip your wooden bow (and flesh hands) in fire when it's time to fight and the next second the story try to be serious...
Larian syndrom.

Oh, sorry. What I meant was that MP is the main reason why there is no concept of the passage of time in BG3 ( and D:OS games) because each player can go in and out of TB mode independently; as SP uses the same engine, it inherits this behaviour.

But, if the game did implement passage of time at, say, 5 real minutes per game hour, then per 5e rules you would need to wait 2hr real play time between long rests in SP, regardless of your situation or playstyle. That would definitely provide a barrier to frequent resting but it would not necessarily be popular to do nothing for that time, while waiting to recover your spells and abilities.

A very sensible timed event in BG3 would be the raid on the grove. If you tell Minthara where it is and she leaves to go raid it, then long resting afterward should result in you missing the raid entirely. Or at very least the raid is already in progress when you arrive, with Minthara+goblins just having broken through the main gate.

This retains player agency by letting the player determine when/if they tell Minthara of the grove location. There is little risk of missing out on other things because the ~rest of the world remains the same whether you go to the grove immediately or long rest. But it also adds to the immersion of the world; things can and do continue without you and you should keep this in mind for future events.

The only downside is that players might be forced to go into a fight without full resources, which is fine. Aside from resource management being a generally good thing, BG3 offers more than enough consumables to make up for missing abilities/spell slots.

I really do not want real time clock at this point. After some of the discussions out here I realized that real time clock would not make the game fun. I am not talking about unrealistic timing in the game. If you read my posts again I even said that I just want some sort of sense of time.

So say they give us 5 days to stop Kahga from the ritual and 7 days to stop the goblins and the Grove ritual, this being 5 and 7 days after you first arrive at the Grove. You long rest 2 times, so 2 days to by. It is then that Arabella steals the statue, buying you 3 more days before the ritual is done. You rest 2 more time, a Tiefling arrives at camp in the morning. "The Druids are going to complete the ritual. Help us." You decide. Kill Kahga and druids? Save Halsin real quick that day? Find the evidence that day to dethrone Kahga? See? Multiple endings to that 1 potential scenario. Not game over but multiple paths to choose based on time actually transpiring.

2 more long rests. Goblins gonna attack the grove. Again, you have a choice. Help fight gobbos or use it as an op to raid their base while they are away. Again, not game over. Just different results because time exists and is happening.

The exact timing is not the point make it 7 and 10 days. Whatever. The point is events are triggered and your decisions and how many days you spend make a difference in what paths you can take.

When I say there is no obvious time pressure, I mean that nothing ACTUALLY happens if you ignore the game's imperatives. Obvious time pressure is when you have a little countdown on screen somewhere and/or something horrible happens should you not follow the game's imperatives ( example, Garrus dies in ME2 if you don't follow the game imperatives ).

In common with many games, BG3 gives you the narrative reasons to behave in a particular way if you want to, but does not force you to play the game that way.

You can choose to feel time pressure in BG3, because there are many cues that you should, and play the game at speed by following only a main path, and feel satisfied for having resolved the narrative in a manner that appeals to you, and is "as designed", if that's what you like.

But not everyone wants to play games that way, and as a result, many games will allow you to work through them at the pace, and in the way you choose. Usually I play an RPG according to narrative cues on the first run, then in a different manner on subsequent playthroughs. More often than not, ignoring the narrative cues, to some degree, provides me with a more enjoyable game overall.

This isn't wrong, and isn't a design fault. It's a recognition that the potential audience has many different desires when buying and playing the game. Many of the aspects of the game that Larian are criticised for are like this. Their changes or additions are designed to appeal to the widest possible player base, often following industry common practice, while still providing their core game vision.

If anyone chooses to criticise Larian on the basis that there is only one "right" way for an aspect of the game to work, then honestly, that person has no understanding of the videogame industry.

Time limits are a bad idea. How many really do you remember the role-playing games that actually have them?
I also do not understand the complaint that the game is not consistent in this respect. I guess some people here have never played any role-playing game. There is something like this in practically every game.
No matter if you are stopping a rebellious specter / mad mage / darkspawn invasions / destructive god etc. you can always ignore it for some time and every time the game will wait for you.
This is practically an integral part of all RPGs for as long as I can remember.
The time limit that some people propose, the only thing that would bring to the game is that it would spoil the enjoyment of playing a huge crowd of players. How popular was Pathfinder with its limitations? I don't remember that it somehow stood out for sale.
I don't believe some people propose even more restrictive restrictions.
I don't feel like playing a game that practically forces you into a metagame.

The point is that a long rest is the end of a day. So time passes. I end day, 1 day is over. That is what they instituted.

I arrive at grove. Ritual is being performed already. They say its a big ritual and will take time. That's good. They don't say how long. Fine. So I just know I have some time.

But how long would a ritual like that realistically take? If I Long rest 10 times, making 10 days go by, does it really make sense that the ritual is STILL not done?

Same with the gobbos. They want to kill the grove. They now know where it is thanks to the adventurers. I long rest 15 times. Does it really make sense that the grove is never attacked?

The amount of times you have is not the point. I am NOT saying they should rush players through the game. Im saying that after maybe 2 long rests something happens to explain why you have more time. Again, Arabella being an example. Instead of her stealing the statue and disrupting the ritual right away, she steals it after 2 days, delaying the ritual. Then 3 days later, Rath disrupts it, getting in trouble with Kahga or something, delaying the ritual again. They have too start over. Just something that makes sense as to why they havent completed it and are STILL just chanting after Ive been roaming around for a week.

That's the kind of thing im talking about. Just add some flavor to the game and explain why, if you are spamming long rests, the world isnt ending like the story says it should.

And im talking about characters doing different things each day instead of always in the same spots having the same questions.

And yeah, if you take an obscene amount of time, SOMETHING should happen. It only makes sense that it should. Dont you think after 2 weeks at least the ritual should be completed?

Just because someone has a different opinion (and/or taste) than you, does not mean they necessarily are less experienced in any way.

I mean, it is absolutely fine and all to not agree on time restrictions and prefer them out of the game - absolutely. But to tell the people who advocate for it that they "never played any role-playing game" and then proceed to say that Pathfinder Kingmaker wasn't very popular (I mean, if you read around a bit, you'll see that a lot of people appreciate P:K here)... Degrading your opponents is not gonna do much good for your cause...

I personally do by no means belong to the veteran crowd here, so I am not one to start barking about how many popular / classic RPGs run with time restrictions - but as I've understood, a lot of people here that do advocate for time restrictions - in some form - ARE, in fact, veteran CRPG players and it feels very unnecessary to start a "my opinion is right because I am more experienced than you"-debate.

Besides, time restrictions =/= forcing you to meta game. There are so many different ways to implement it without "forcing" the player to do anything else than just... Play the game? Hard-set timers - like P:K, time-limited events - like PoE2, "hidden" (or rather logical) priority system (aka, you get locked out of certain side-content if you proceed too far in the story quests) - like ... Well, a lot of RPGs. There are probably many more ways to do time restrictions in a kind way just to give the game a sense of time moving forward without stressing the player out, but those are the ones that I came up with just on the spot.

I personally don't really mind either way. I've played games that do all of the above, and some with other unique systems. I do, however, agree on that there should be *SOME* kind of time-line that moves forward, even if it is only through the main quests (like villages being permanently destroyed after certain quests, like in DA:O). As long as Larian dedicates themselves to whatever system they choose and do their best trying to make it as good as possible, I am sure I'll be satisfied. After all, their game is what brought me into the CRPG-community. c:

Here are the reasons for Long Rest Times Sensitive Events:

1. Story pushes time sensitivity. Again, Druids will sit and do nothing for 20 days if you want, never completing the ritual that's should only take a few days and gobbos never attack either.
2. Unlimited Long Rests make most items you pick up pointless. If I can long rest as much as I want the only use for healing items is as extreme emergency items. I don't need food, potions, etc. hardly at all because I can long rest after every battle.
3. Short rests are pointless too. Why Short Rest at all when there is not penalty for Long Rest?
4. The world is almost totally static. How long does the Tiefling girl need to pack for their trip to Baldurs? How long are the trio going to discuss their lives and futures? How many days are the gobbos in Blighted Village gonna pick through the same garbage if I don't kill them?
5. No sense of time in the game. And yet, Long Rest is clearly defined as end day and thus the passing of time. So the system is built to be time sensitive, but then there is not real time passage in the game. NOTHING changes. Ever. Even in BG1 and similar games they had a journal that told you how many days you spent doing different things. In this game, totally nebulous. Again. It's like Groundhog Day, reliving the same day over and over again doing different things each day.

Look. I get that OTHER video games don't care about these things, but this is D&D. It is THE RPG. The Original RPG. The whole point of an RPG is to immerse yourself into the role of your character. The story, the environment, everything, should simulate reality. If the story says move your butt, you should move your butt. If you don't, then DM is supposed to do things to nudge you back on course. Good DM's nudge players in the direction they should go.

So my idea is, you do 2 long rests, or something similar, and the game nudges you by reminding you that you need to: rescue Halsin, save the Tieflings, get to the creche, kill the gobbo leaders, etc. I'm not saying that you only get 3 days to stop the druids or kill gobbos. Im saying after 3 days SOMETHING happens to say "Hey. You know. You don't have forever to do this thing." Then give another couple days and say "Im...seriously. If you don't do something soon..."

Then, after x number of days, whatever Larian decides makes sense, then maybe some side quests trigger for you. Gobbos attack, druids kick people out, etc., but only AFTER a lot of Long Rests. SOMETHING to give other items and game functions purpose and meaning and to be consistent with the story.

1. Yes I understand what you are saying. But you are trying to place a linear restriction on a non linear game. What if the player wants to investigate the owl cave, or the spider cave before this? What if they rather investigate the bog? Each have heavy combat, therefor the need to rest to recharge your abilities. Maybe run around and get in some more conversations to trigger the dream and possibly use your illthid ability? This is a totally different game than say XCOM where the entire game is basically based on the use of time.
2.So? Not to mention you are trying to say this is going to happen after the starting area? Maybe the combat will get way more difficult once you leave the starter area and potions and food will be more important (which Larian is known to do just look at DOS).
3. Short rest is 2 chance to quick recharge before needing to long rest.
4. Seriously, do you think that the majority of players give their tertiary NPCs much after thought? I mean they don't even leave until after the main battle and finishing the Druid questline. I am also thinking, they are another side quest once we leave the starting area.
5. I know that is seriously important to you, and that is cool, but I am sure there is plenty of players that it is not a game breaking loss. More of a cherry on top.

I get what your saying after this list, but I just don't agree. That seems like something that I would find restricting. Every RPG is different to some degree, but I do not think there is some epic difference between this RPG just because it is based off of WoTC content.

Let me try to reword what I'm suggesting.

Picture this: First Playthrough. New player.

Day 0. Wake up in nautiloid. Escape hells. Land on beach. Nee day dawns.

Day 1. Explore beach. Meet Shadowheart. Fight Devourers. Meet Astarion. Fisherman encounter. Meet Gale. Encounter Gimblebock. Fight Marli and Barton and crew. Long Rest. End day 1.

Day 2. Beat Dank Crypt. Save Lae'zel. Get to Grove Fight. Meet everyone in Grove. You learn about the ritual and Halsin needing rescue and such. Long Rest. Day 2 ends.

Day 3. Fight harpies. Explore. Meet Ed's sibs. Fight owl bear. Long rest. End day 3.

Day 4. Meet Scratch. Arrive at Moonhaven. Fight gobbos. Explore a bit. Long rest. End day 4.

Day 5. Wake up at camp. Tiefling is there sent by Zevlor. "Quick. Come to the grove," he says. "One of the Tiefling children stole the idol. The druids are judging her right now. Will you help?" Astarion says, "Don't be ridiculous. How does this effect us?" "Agreed," says Lae'zel. "The Tieflings are of no concern to us." You agree to go. You save Arabella. The ritual now must start over. Kahga is fuming. You now return to Moonhaven and explore. Lae'zel stops you. She complains that you are wasting precious time. "We need to find the creche already. Do you think my kin will wait for us to show up?" You ignore her and explore the town, save the gnome, explore Spider Lair. Long Rest. End Day 5.

Day 6. You return to Moonhaven and the gnome is there. "Goblins are preparing to attack some sort of grove soon. I heard them talking about it. I'm trying to find the best route out of these parts. Goblins west. Gith watching the road north. Gnolls everywhere. It's nuts!" Then he leaves. You head north. Fight gnolls. Deal with Tyrite issue. Long rest. End day 6.

Day 7. Waukeens rest. Gith. Long rest. End day 7.

Day 8. You receive word from Zevlor. They just repelled another goblin attack. It was larger this time. They were testing defenses. Druids were forced to help. The ritual has to start over again. You explore south. Face hag. Long rest.

Day 9. Find stuff in bog. Face Kahga. Stop ritual. Long rest.

Day 10. Tiefling at camp again. Reports goblin army is ready to attack soon. Scouts report it could be any day now. You set out to the gobbo base. So some stuff. Long Rest.

Day 11. Face gobbo bosses. Celebration at camp.

Day 12. All is well. Set out for underdark. From there, any places you didn't explore you could now explore at leisure before going there.

Now let's say in the second playthrough, the player takes 15 days. On Day 15, they wake up to hear marching and horns. Player has a choice. Gobbos are attacking the grove. Either you help defend it, like you might during evil playthrough, or you sneak onto gobbo camp to save Halsin. You save Halsin. Return. Gobbos are still fighting the Tieflings and Druids. They are holed up in the area with Kahga and Nettle. You must save them with Halsin's help. You do. Celebration. Next day, explore any other areas and head for the underdark at your leisure.

Different game experiences based on timing. Long rest has more meaningful. Time exists. The world is not static. Players are encouraged to use items and maybe rest less.

They could just make it an option now that I think about it. Time-constraints that is. Allow players to select in the options when making the game whether or not they want quests and world elements to have timers. Would please both groups and add a layer of customizability where people get to tailor their game to what they want, like how some tables love time constraints and things happening because they didn't engage with x NPC yet while other tables loathe it. Basically, add options like how we can choose to have loaded dice or not.

Yeah. I don't know. It seems like every conclusion we come to on these forums is: Make it and Option that we can customize.

Larians gonna explode from all the customizations we're asking for.

The bottom line is that unlimited Long Resting throws other game elements out the window. I don't need potions, food, short rests or pretty much any of the items I find in game of I can just Long Rest after every battle. So what's the point?

If Long Rests at least trigger different events, then every time I play, I will probably have a different experience with the game based on how many Long Rests I take and when I take them.

So to summarize. No limits too long rest, all healing items etc are pointless. Make Long Rests trigger time sensitive events, now the items have more meaning and different events are triggered based on how many long rests I do and when O take them. Know, everything has purpose and meaning.

I don't really know how this could be an option except if the options are :
- timer and game over
- no timer no game over

I'd definitely love timed events in the world for the sake of a living world but these 2 options wouldn't be interresting at all according to me.

The story is something else and we don't know it at all but I assume no one is really going to become (and play) a mindflayer.

It could be interresting if in exemple : the more you rest, the more the tadpole takes control, leading to specific interactions/dialogue restrictions, quests resolution and so on.

Something like a tadpole influence gauge that fills up when you rest. I think this could be amazing.

Well, I agree. That's why I said that it wouldn't be about Game Over. Timed events would be about making the world more alive and offering different story paths based on how many days you take to do things.

Man, talk about making baseless claims that are also a complete logical non-sequitur.


It was one of the most surprising success stories of the past few years and it's especially impressive given its TIGHT overall budget.
In fact its popularity dwarfed the far more expensive Pillars of Eternity II Deadfire (which was notoriously a poor seller even compared to the first, despise being arguably an improved sequel in many ways).

It managed to create a large fanbase despise coming off as a technical mess and taking several patches to reach maturity.
Also, on a personal note, it took a turn-based mod (which later became a native optional mode) to be finally enjoyable even in terms of combat. But I'm sure there are people out there that love that wishy-washy half-assed mess that is RTWP combat, so this is pretty subjective.

Still, I havent seen a fix yet for long rest not overruling and nullifying short rest and healing items etc. Except to put limits on it of some kind. As long as people can long rest the game away without anything happening, potions mean nothing, short rests are pointless, etc.

The amount of resting is not realy a thing in a lot of games.

Short and long rests are not an issue at all when there is no time pressure.
Game story implies that there is some kind of pressure in early game until we find out that the tadpoles seem to be asleep.

In pathfinder kingmaker the constant time pressure was a bit annoying, when you tried to do all the sidequests and build up the kingdom.
The thing in kingmaker was that the time pressure did not stop. Every single chapter in the game triggered another main questling with time limit. I would have loved to build up a prospering kingdom, but due to constant time limits this aspect of the game had to be ignored up to some degree.


Time limits are a thing hard to do right. Having them only story driven will result in some logic gap at some moment. Nagging around companions is (in my opinion) propably the easiest way to have some kind of "pressure" until the party realizes that the change to mindflayers seems to be paused.

But the time pressure is more than the tadpole. That's my point. You should have some sort of something happening in regards to using too many Long Rests because:

1. Goblins know, now, where the Grove is and are planning to destroy it any day now. Aradin led them to it.

2. They Druids are doing a ritual to seal off the Grove, and what ritual would realistically take more than a few days?

3. Gith were seen on the Risen Road. Are they just gonna wait there for you to show up? Lae'zel would probably not let you dawdle because she is anxious to be cleansed by her down people.

4. Wyll REALLY wants to get revenge on Spike.

5. Gale has his other ticking time bomb condition.

6. Astarion wants desperately to remain free, so he really wants to find a way to control the parasites.

7. Shadowheart has her own Share quest she desperately wants to complete.

8. Oh, and yeah, you have a TADPOLE in your brain and even after they tell you it is dormant MANY people tell you that you could still start turning any day.

Story-wise, the game as 100% time sensitive. Over and over again they tell you that it is, but then the DM is like, "Nah nah. Don't worry about it. Long rest a lot so you can get all the cutscenes and character development. I know I said through all the gamr elements that you really have now time at all to do anything, but you do. Everything will wait for you until you eventually get to it."

But see, that's why I was proposing that they make it time sensitive in a way that isn't Game Over. The time sensitive solution I'm offering isn't a penalty to players but more like taking different pathways to the same basic conclusion depending on how much you use Long Rest.

Rather than a traditional "time limit", if long rests could only happen on a few set locations, and certain cutscenes and story developments were to happen after key quests, the "time limit feel" would still be present without having an actual time limit. This probably also means that character progression has to occur outside of camping too, but why the heck wouldn't it?

What is the logical sense of limiting rest to specific locations in a situation where you have fast travel available with points at every step.

You could also limit fast travel to also be in set locations to make this suggestion work, like how BG1 made it that you had to leave the Map at the edge to fast travel.

Personally I don't think Timelimits would work for BG3, for them to work for me it has to be a core part of the experience, like in say Deadrising, but with BG3 I feel like it would feel almost tacked on and stifling. But I suggest it as an options that it would work for cause a lot of people want it.

Only if you limit fast travel to the current fast travel points it still won't matter because they are close enough to each other that you will lose max 1 minute more.
This method of restriction will not change anything.
At most, the game will get a little more annoying the moment you have to step back after each underdark fight.
For this to make any sense, 2/3 of all runes would have to be removed, which unfortunately would aggravate another problem, namely backtracking on empty maps.

Of course you also have to redesign a large part of the fights

Well, that's the THING though. If it's too freaking annoying to travel back to a camp spot, people wont do it all the damn time, and instead will actually start planning for a few fights ahead rather than spamming the long rest button after every single encounter. However, you could also make it so that you always HAVE to find NEW camp sites, the old ones perish once you have used them once or maybe twice. =)

Let me propose the following:

No time sensitivity from the moment you start the game until you reach the grove. (Again, though, unchain dialogues so that they are in order so that you don't miss any whenever you Long Rest. Otherwise, you are encouraged to Long Rest a lot in the beginning just to get cutscenes.) Everything is as it is currently. Then, you reach the grove and learn that Aradin led the goblins to the grove and now the goblins know where it is and are going to attack it within a few days because they now know where the grove is that they've been wanting to destroy. You also learn about the ritual, and you know the druids are going to kick everyone out in a matter of days. Once you talk to Wyll and Zorru, you now also have 2 more sensitive events. Lae'zel will want to hurry to the Gith on Risen Road and Wyll will want to hurry to kill the gobbo leaders.

So you have the following time sensitive events:

1. Goblins will attack in 14 days (14 long rests or 2 weeks). You have 14 whole days to make your way to kill the gobbo leaders.
2. Druids will kick out the Tieflings in 3 days.
3. Lae'zel will get antsy and pressure you if you don't get to Risen Road to the Gith, and she'll start bugging you if you don't get there within 3 days.
4. Wyll will get antsy about going to kill the gobbos, and he'll bug you in 2 days.

You use 2 long rests. When you wake up, Wyll bugs you about going after the gobbo leaders. "If we don't hurry, the Druids are going to complete that ritual and kick everyone out." But then, at the end of the cutscene, Arabella's parents come up to you begging for your help. "You were able to get close to Kahga earlier. Our daughter stole the druid's idol and disrupted the ritual. Please go and talk to Kahga and intervene. We beg you! She's being judged by a bunch of druids who hate us." You go deal with the situation or not. It doesn't matter. The point is that after you make your choice, someone in your party points out that the ritual has now been reset. That means you'll have at least another 3 days to stop the ritual.

You use another long rest. The next morning, Lae'zel nags you about going to her creche. "I'm not going to wait around all day. The tadpoles may be dormant, but they could begin at any time to turn us into mind flayers. Does this NOT concern you? If they are not acting normal, then we cannot rely on them slowly turning us into ghaik either. That means that once they start to turn us, we may have less than a week to be cured before it is too late. We NEED to be cleansed. Now!" Ignore her or not. Your choice.

You've not spent 3 days since you reached the grove. The druids are still performing the ritual, Wyll has bugged you to get moving and so has Lae'zel. You can still go about and explore the map all you want. There are not time limits or consequences so far. All that's happened is you've been warned. So the time sensitive events now are:

1. Goblins will attack in 11 days. You have 11 more days to make your way to kill the gobbo leaders.
2. Druids will kick out the Tieflings in 2 more days.
3. Lae'zel will get antsy and pressure you if you don't get to Risen Road to the Gith, and she'll start bugging you if you don't get there within the next 3 days.
4. Wyll will get antsy about going to kill the gobbos, and he'll bug you in 2 more days. He is worried so much about the druids kicking out the Tieflings, and he knows that if you don't do something in 2 days the Tieflings will be doomed.

You use 2 more long rests. Wyll urges you again to kill the gobbos or do something to stop the ritual. "Screw it!" He says. Then he walks over to Astarion and the two talk in low tones. Both leave. Cutscene ends when they return. "We bought us more time," Wyll says. "I offered Astarion a chance to suck my blood from my arm if he'd slip in and steal the idol again. He shot it with a bow from hiding and we bolted. It was enough to mess up the ritual again. Druids are pissed, but who cares. We have 3 more days now." Astarion grins wickedly. "It was a win-win for me, Darling. I got to suck his blood AND piss of those wretched tree huggers."

You long rest again. Lae'zel approaches you that night at camp. "Do you WANT to turn into a Mind Flayer? I'm pretty sure you do. We STILL have not gone to my creche to be cleansed. I'm not sure you're taking this seriously. I will give you 3 more days. If you don't get to the spot Zorru put on the map, I will leave and go there myself."

You now have the following time sensitive events:

1. Goblins will attack in 8 days. You have 8 more days to make your way to kill the gobbo leaders.
2. Druids will kick out the Tieflings in 3 more days.
3. Lae'zel will get antsy and leave the party if you don't get to Risen Road to the Gith, and she's only giving you 3 more days.
4. Wyll will get antsy about going to kill the gobbos, and he'll bug you in 3 more days.

3 more long rests later, you suffer your first consequences for taking over a week to do any of your primary quests in the game. So it's been, just to be clear, 9 days since you arrived at the grove, and you have 5 days left before the gobbos attack it. You don't really know this, mind you, unless you've played it a lot, but ultimately that is what you have left. So after 9 days, Lae'zel finally gets fed up because you still haven't prioritized what she wants you to prioritize since you first met her on the Nautiloid, and Wyll is also fed up because you have not done anything to save the Tieflings. So both Lae'zel and Wyll leave the party unless that very day you agree to do their quests. The crap has hit the fan. Once you long rest again, if Kahga is not dethroned or dead or Halsin has not been returned, the game is not over. No. You can still keep going. The only thing that happens is the Grove is sealed off. The Tieflings are kicked out.

So, to recap on day 9:

1. Wyll leaves the party IF by this point you haven't killed the gobbo leaders and brought Halsin back, OR if you haven't dethroned Kahga. If you do either of these things, Wyll remains in the group. As long as the Tieflings are safe in the Grove, he will remain with you. So, time sensitive event isn't game over. Shoot! Larian could even make it so that once you actually do start up the quest to take out the gobbo leaders, you bump into Wyll again somewhere near their base and he can rejoin. It doesn't have to be a permanent time limit penalty situation. Just something that makes sense from a story perspective that kinda urges players to move their butts because Wyll isn't going to just follow the main character around for 3 weeks while the goblins plot to kill his beloved Tieflings.

2. Lae'zel will leave the party. She's naturally tired of waiting because she wants desperately to be cleansed of her arch-enemies' taint. You have ignored her for over a week. Naturally, she's going to want to go. That said, again, it doesn't have to be a permanent thing. When you actually do get around to heading to Risen Road, you could meet up with her again. "My people tried to kill me," she explains. "They weren't going to cleanse me. They were going to kill me!" Then, the Gith, who have been searching for her to complete the task, find you and ambush you while you are talking to her. You took a long time, so it isn't game over or a permanent penalty. It is just a different path to the same conclusion; a path that makes sense from a timing perspective.

3. The druids kick the Tieflings out. Now, instead of them being in the Grove, the Tieflings are gathered all outside the main entrance. They don't know where to go or what to do because the goblins and gnolls and Gith are still out there. Again, not a permanent ending or penalty. Maybe Larian could have them take up residence at the Old Ruins where the Dank Crypt is for the time being, or they all gather at your camp because they have nowhere else to go. You would still have a merchant to buy and sell things with, etc. The ONLY thing that has changed is that they are no longer in the Grove, and the Grove is now no longer accessible to you...or is it! You found several secret ways into it. Maybe the ritual did not cover all the secret entrances. Maybe once Halsin is rescued, you can return into the grove and still save the druids within and with Halsin's help undo the rite of thorns. So again, it could only be a temporary penalty or situation.

4. Gobbos will still attack in 5 more days. Now, however, if the grove is sealed off and the Tieflings are outside, they will attack the Tieflings in a more vulnerable location.

Now let's say you are REALLY dragging your feet to get to the gobbo leaders. You use up those last 5 days. Still not a permanent ending. Nope. You awaken at your camp and are summoned to help save the Tieflings. Either you do so or you don't. Your choice, just as if you were playing the evil path. You have a big, challenging fight against the gobbo army wherever the Tieflings have taken up residence, and/or you abandon them and go about your business. Your choice. Even this doesn't have to be an end game permanent time sensitive thing. You long rest again and learn that somehow the Tieflings won, with or without you. Maybe some of the druids who didn't agree with Kahga went with them and helped turn the tide of battle, and the gobbos underestimated them. Whatever. The point is that SOMETHING happened because you took a long time. The world is moving forward and is active and things happen and aren't just waiting around for you.

And then, on top of it all, AFTER you finally do rescue Halsin, you can go and do whatever quests you want at that point to wrap up the first act. Once Halsin is saved, you visit Risen Road and fight the Gith, or whatever, you can, if you haven't already, then visit the hag, the Tyrites, the spider lair, etc. and do every last quest in the game and explore every last area of the starter map you want because after the time sensitive events are done nothing is necessarily driving you to move to the next part: the Underdark. The only thing, at that point, that would drive you is the tadpole, and as many have pointed out, they haven't started to do anything yet to the characters. So one could logically then take their time, trusting that they don't have to necessarily hurry as much...

...until the next set of timed events perhaps...

Either way. That is what I'm suggesting. It isn't time limits like the game is going to be over or there is going to be some major game crushing things that happen if you don't do things within a certain amount of time. It is more of a logical timing of events so that the world is not static but fluid and alive. It doesn't have to be the exact timing I've outlined. This is just an example of what I'm talking about. They could set the times as 1 day, 4 days, 6 days, 15 days, 20 days, or whatever. That's not the point. The point is that in x number of days something happens. In x number more days something else happens, and so on so that different paths are taken depending on how you are playing, offering different choices and so on and making it so that Long Rests MEAN something and so do potions and short rests and so forth. Again, if I can Long Rest however much I want, then potions, food, short rests, etc. mean absolutely nothing in this game. You might as well sell them like you do 99% of the items you pick up because it won't matter to keep them around except maybe just a few for emergency in combat healing purposes. The rest of the 15+ potions you get, just sell them. They're meaningless because after every battle you can just Long Rest and get all spells and health back anyway. And forget Short Rest altogether. What's the point if you can Long Rest however much you want. Short rest doesn't give you back full spell slots and health, and you can do Long Rests just about everywhere. So Short Rests are totally pointless.

However, if I know that I have 3 days or something before something is going to happen, I am going to utilize my potions and food and short rests a WHOLE lot more. That makes them meaningful and worth something to keep around. THAT is the whole point in even having them in a game like this. They are meant to be used so that you WON'T use Long rests too much. You completely nullify their value altogether if you have absolutely nothing happen when you use too many Long Rests.

Besides the obvious issues with interactions and resting that are specific to BG3 (and need to be fixed), the problem with time limits is that how long is "reasonable" to do a task is completely subjective.

I actually don't like camping frequently (and missed a ton of interactions on my first playthrough because of it), but I do like to explore every tiny corner of the game world, obsessively organize my inventory, and mess around seeing how the game reacts to things that have nothing to do with the story, so I always take longer than the estimated time for quests. For me that's fun, and that's how I enjoy the game. As a player, I am curious; I like sightseeing and experimenting (even though my character wouldn't be doing that). I manage timelines and urgent tasks enough at work every day that I don't want to have to do it when I'm playing in a story-rich world.

I understand that some don't like the false sense of urgency in games, and I find it highly overused as well. However, perhaps the solution is not to create real urgency, but to adjust the story so that it's not overplaying how urgent everything is. If everything is urgent, then nothing is urgent. For example, in the druid grove they could be preparing for the ritual instead of having already started it. So there is still an ethical dilemna, but it's not as seemingly time-sensitive. If you do nothing, there will still be consequences, but less urgently. I'm sure that could be managed for many of the other story elements as well.

That said, I wouldn't have a problem if timed quests were an option that could be turned on or off. If someone else chooses to turn it on because that's what they find fun, as long as I don't have to, it doesn't affect me.

But my suggestion allows players to explore every nook and cranny. After you save Halsin, or whatever, if you still have quests to do then you can do them before moving in.

Again, my whole point is long resting heals completely. So of they don't do something about allowing players the ability to long rest after every battle, potions and short rests are meaningless. Just take oit short rests altogether, and you only need maybe a few potions at most. Forget food altogether too.

Time sensitive events dont need to be so absolute and drive players to chuck side quests. They can be used as a tool to make the game more enjoyable and repayable.

Actually yours feels like it creates hard time limits on everything, and on reading it I immediately imagined a route I would have to do to be able to do everything the game is offering. And the enjoyable part is subjective cause some people likely will despise those limits and you'd find one of the most popular mods would be "remove quest timers". Under your suggestion players have 2 days to resolve one of the biggest conflicts for example, that means you have to avoid nearly every fight in between finding the note and dealing with the shadow druids to get the Karlach redeemed ending. That to say the least is difficult and honestly way too little. With the events you set, there would be no redeeming her cause she'd meet the druids before the ritual is done, and now she is set on her path.

For me, wanting no time limits has nothing to do with managing resources, as I tend to be pretty strict with them (and unsympathetic to my spellcasters) anyway.

But if I see something interesting, I want to be able to investigate it at that time, not try to remember to come back later after a timed quest is over. I ended up exploring all of the Underdark before rescuing Halsin on my first play through because I got side-tracked when I was exploring the goblin priestess' quarters. I loved that I could do that. I like the flexibility that no time limits offers. It allows me to truly get lost in the world and not miss anything.

I do agree that a dynamic world where people change what they're doing as you come and go could be interesting in some ways, but I hate feeling like I'm missing out on something. I have mixed feelings about that. I rarely play a game of this scope more than once, so it would have to be interesting enough to redo all the non-dynamic parts over. However, that could also tie in with giving the player greater flexibility in overcoming obstacles. So even if you do encounter some of the same obstacles the second time around you can get around them in very different ways. But, maybe I'm getting too off track here, as this started about camping and resting.

Regardless, I think everyone would agree that the companion interaction timing with resting issues need to be resolved.

quoting GM4Him and CJMPinger: 2 days is way too short. Something like 7-10 days for the tadpole is much more reasonable. And perhaps the timer could be extended via Nettie/Hag/Halsin/etc, maybe 1 day each. Something like 5 days until the ritual happens, beginning the first time you talk to the druids. A time component shouldn't force you to skip content, but instead give you a sense of urgency while still allowing to you to complete most if not all of the content with proper time management.
This type of timer would be based on long resting so (assuming cutscenes stop being tied to long-resting) you can always just not long rest. Use any of the ~infinite scrolls, potions, food, grenades to keep your party in fighting shape. As long as investigating an area doesn't deeply cut into your long rests, then you can investigate away! There's no in-game or real time clock that's ticking down.

@Miandra and CJMPinger.

You seem to still be missing the entire concept of what I'm saying.

I'm not suggesting that players only have 2 Long Rests to complete ANY quest. The game already suggests that you should only have that. It should not take any ritual more than a few days to complete. So the story itself is already setting everything up as being on a time table.

So, the story is already telling players that they:

1. Have 7 days to get cured, and that's 7 days after they escape the nautiloid. Yes. They find out that's not necessarily true, but you still think it's true to begin with. So the story is telling you that you have a time limit.
2. Have MAYBE 2 days before the ritual is completed to stop it.
3. Have MAYBE a week at best before the goblins return and destroy the grove.
4. Have MAYBE a day or two to get to the Gith before they might not be there anymore.

So the story is putting time limits on players. I'm not suggesting that they put these same time limits on players. What I'm saying is that the game gives us explanations and story pathways to explain WHY these limits aren't taking place when they logically should be taking place according to the story.

So let's just take the ritual as an example. Since we would expect, based on the story, that the ritual should probably be concluded in 2 days-ish...because we don't REALLY know when it is going to end... if I Long Rest 2 times, SOMETHING should happen to explain why the Druid Ritual is not concluded yet.

So, let me make sure I'm clear here, because I am often not clear, so I'm not saying anything against anyone else, but I'm just wanting to make sure I'm clear because it's a problem I have. I am NOT putting a time limit on the game. I am merely putting a time sensitive event onto the game to explain why I DON'T have a time limit on the game. The story puts the time limit on the game already, but I'm suggesting that we have a time sensitive event to explain why that story time limit isn't happening.

So, again, just the Druid Ritual situation. What I'm suggesting is that instead of meeting Arabella and her parents when we first arrive at the grove, after 2 days, rescuing Arabella becomes a time sensitive event that occurs. We could even be introduced to Arabella and her parents when we first arrive, but maybe we're just talking to them and getting to know them. Then after the 2 Long Rests, 2 days have gone by, the parents come to my camp when I wake up the next morning, and they tell me that Arabella is in trouble. She stole the idol and interrupted the ritual. Now a bunch of angry druids who hate them are going to judge whether she lives or dies. Now you have a choice, the same choice you had before, mind you, whether you are going to help Arabella or not. If not, it doesn't matter in terms of the entire plot of the entire side quest. Arabella still disrupted the ritual. It's starting all over again, so you're good. You just keep going on with whatever you were doing before.

So, you can explore the entire map, ignore the ritual, etc. for days upon days.

But, again, if you take an obscene number of Long Rests, then yes. Eventually, Larian is going to run out of ideas on how to make it plausible that you didn't do something to stop the Druids from sealing the grove. But they SHOULD do something like that. Why?

Because if you have infinite Long Rests, like you do now, there is nothing to stop players from Long Resting after every battle and gaining back all their health and spell slots. Thus, potions, food, and especially short rests are completely and utterly useless except for emergency healing purposes during really tough combat situations. If you have a really good cleric in your group, even Shadowheart, you don't even really need that.

But I'm talking an obscene number of Long Rests. Naturally, I'm not suggesting that Larian try to force players to rush through the game and not explore everything. I want to explore the entire map too; every little detail and trigger every little dialogue and so forth. But like mrfuji3 said, you can do this by managing your items well and not long resting so much. The game right now gives you a million potions, food, etc. that you can use to heal and recover. They give you lots of magic scrolls so that if you have run out, you can use a scroll.

Right now, I hardly EVER use scrolls for spells, and I sell most of my potions and ALL food, because food is so heavy, doesn't heal much, it's unrealistic to use during combat for healing, and it's senseless. I keep a few healing potions on hand for each character just in case a big boss like the spider queen wails on a character, and I Long Rest infinitely after every battle so that I fully recover. I never need Short Rests at all. Why? Because why Short Rest and just get back a few HP when I can Long Rest without restraint and get back all HP and spell slots?

So NOT limiting Long Resting in some way, makes all these other things pointless and stupid. Why even have to pick up all the senseless junk the game gives you if you're just going to sell it all anyway and not use any of it? Why not just give the player's character money instead of useless junk to micromanage in the inventory? But then, what do you need money for if you aren't going to spend it on items that you will need for your adventure? And what else is there to buy right now but potions, scrolls, etc.? Oh sure, you can get some armor +1 and weapons +1. Yep. That's nice, but that's not very fun or diverse. No. A person should be spending their money on buying potions because they need them to get through the game AND weapons +1 and armor +1 and scrolls and so forth because the entire point is that you need to have said items in order to complete your quests. If you don't need those items to complete your quests than why have them in the game at all?

But, again, I'm not saying that Larian should put hard limits on anything. What I'm suggesting is that they make things happen when you use Long Rests too much. So, with the ritual, after 2 days, Arabella steals the idol. After another 2 days, maybe goblins attack the Grove, causing the Druids to stop their ritual to help defend it. After another 2 days, maybe Rath does something like disobeys Kahga and stops the ritual. This could even be a new side quest for players. Rath disobyes Kahga and she has him locked up. Now you can sneak in and free Rath from the cell. Then he'll help you find a way to dethrone Kahga.

THAT'S the kinds of things I'm talking about. Larian could even implement new and fun side quests because you took more Long Rests. Maybe if you take too long, Lae'zel leaves to go to the Gith herself. Later, as you are exploring, you find her down by the river bleeding to death. Just as you arrive, the Gith have found her. "My kin are trying to kill me. This is all your fault. You will now assist me in recovering so that I can take their heads and lay them at Vlaakith's feet." Then you can take her back in the party or leave her. Your choice.

Or maybe Wyll leaves your group because you Long Rested too much. But then you find him amidst a bunch of gobbos. They are taunting and mocking him, like with the gnome guy. So you now have to rescue Wyll. A new side quest and story element because you Long Rested more than it makes sense to in the story.

So, again, not hard limits. Not game over if you don't stop the ritual in 2 days. Not killing off all the tieflings in a week if you don't kill the gobbos. Just story elements getting triggered and maybe even providing new side quests and events and such because you did take too many Long Rests.

This solves a lot of issues. If you use too many Long Rests, negative things happen. Arabella gets arrested and you have to rescue her. Then some Tieflings die because gobbos attacked the grove. Maybe Larian could even make this an optional side quest too where you help defend the grove from an initial attack. Then Rath is captured and locked up. Negative consequences that can actually even create more fun side quests, but the point is that they are consequences for not using your items and short rests more wisely and spamming Long Rest. If you don't use too many Long Rests, and you use your items and short rests wisely instead of spamming Long Rest, then you are able to prevent Arabella from getting arrested, Tieflings from dying and Rath getting locked up. Maybe Larian could even reward players who do use less Long Rests because they succeeded in using their other items and short rests more wisely. Those who actually manage to do certain tasks in the time frame that is originally laid out get an extra magic item or something because they DIDN'T spam Long Rest. That way if you don't spam Long Rests, you don't feel penalized but you feel rewarded, because the whole point in giving potions and such is that you should use them. If no one ever gets rewarded for using potions and such instead of Long Rests, then Long Rest away because there is no reward for not Long Resting and there's no penalty for Long Resting.

See what I'm saying?

I don’t know if this would be even possible or if anyone else thought of this idea first but i thought i should throw this suggestion out there to see what anyone else thinks about it.

What if short rests were mandatory before taking a long rest as to put more importance on short rests, however the caveat would be that you now can get all level 1 spell slots back after a short rest, so that way you can keep going through dungeons with at least a minimal amount of utility and power without taking away the importance of high level spells and abilities?
I believe this would make the resting problem disappear yet still have the dnd vibe people crave for. This would also buff cleric and other somewhat lackluster spellcasters as they would no longer feel as though they have to go through the whole camp scene just to be able to fight on even terms (damage wise) with melee combatants. And cantrips would be less spammy turn wasters and more of a last resort to finish off an enemy who just barely lived your best spells. It would also allow more freedom in choosing between healing or damage, as it currently stands healing feels like a waste if your party isn’t near/already dead!! And if the changes make the game too easy for some of the more hardcore dnd players out there you could add the OPTION of no long rests in hostile areas without clearing out the enemies first!

So only casters would have timed quests since other classes don't need to rest!!!

Essentially, yes. In D&D, the whole entire purpose for scrolls is to help provide magic users a supplement for spell slots. They are vital to a magic user so that they can continue to use magic even after they have used up spell slots. The whole point of this is to balance spell casters so they are not carrying the entire party. If you do not limit Long Rest at all in any way, shape or form, Spellcasters wind up becoming an OP member of the team especially at higher levels.

Again, you have to think about all this from a long term perspective. Once the spell caster is able to hurl fireballs and chain lightning all over the map, you NEED to have restrictions in place so that they aren't AOE'ing every enemy in a battle, Long Resting, AOE'ing every enemy in the next battle, Long Resting, AOE'ing every enemy in the next battle, Long Resting, AOE'ing every enemy in the next battle, etc.

Larian has to has to has to correct Long Rest abuse. If they don't, wizards become the MVP's of the game and all other classes become almost obsolete.

So besides it making sense from a story perspective to limit tons and tons of Long Resting, it is vital to game balance to limit Long Resting. The wizard has always, traditionally, been weaker than all the other classes at Level 1-4-ish. As they increase in level and gain more spell slots and such, they become WAY more powerful and WAY more essential to defeating more powerful enemies.

In previous D&D games, my party was carrying the wizard for some time. Then, as the game continued to progress, the wizard was the ONLY way we could defeat enemies. While most of the party was trying to just keep the enemy off of the wizard, the wizard would pummel the enemy with spells.

THAT'S how D&D is supposed to be played. The wizard is a tactically valuable class. You need to wisely use their spells and manage them carefully so that you save your best spells for your worst enemies. You aren't supposed to spam spells every battle on every pathetic minion. The wizard is supposed to help support the other members of the party when fighting minions, but then they go all out on bosses.

So, again, spamming Long Rests just throws all that out the window. Wizards can just spam Magic Missile every battle and always hit and always wipe the floor with enemies. Especially at Level 4, where my characters are right now, I get more slots, so I can have Gale just blast this enemy and that enemy and the battle is over much quicker. Then I can Long Rest, and Gale has all his spells back and on to the next battle. Gale can then spam his spells again and wipe the floor with enemies and Long Rest and so on.

I'm telling you, once you are able to get Fireball, massive groups of enemies will be wiped out like they are nothing, and if there is no limit to the wizard for Long Resting, the game is going to get REAL boring REAL fast. You'll start a battle, Fireball a massive number of foes, clean up the rest with the other party members, and the battle is over. Long Rest, rinse and repeat.

I know this post is not about Solasta, but again, Solasta does this well. You have ONLY select areas where you can Long Rest. So if you spam Fireball and you run out of spell slots, you have to try to get back to some place where you can Long Rest, and Solasta limits your ability to fast travel to Long Rest areas so that you are forced to press on without recovering spell slots. Your fault for using up all of your spell slots, but ultimately the point is that the wizard isn't blasting the crap out of everything every battle. You have to plan out and carefully determine when is the best time to use your spells. The whole point is that you have to carefully manage your resources.

And that's one of the fundamental points of the entire D&D game. You need to carefully balance your resources. That's part of the fun and balance of the game. The point is that you are meant to gather many different types of items for the whole purpose of using them to help you manage everything carefully. Potions, scrolls, magic weapons, etc. are all additional ways that you manage all that you need to get through the quest. You are not supposed to Long Rest after every battle or even all that frequently.

When playing normal D&D, DM's do not typically allow players to fight a battle in a dungeon and then shut the door and Long Rest for the remainder of the day. They fight a battle, if they need it they take a short rest to recover a little, then they move on to the next room in the dungeon. They fight another enemy, take damage, use potions, and move on to the next room. They fight another set of enemies, use spells, heal using potions, etc. and fight the next room full of foes. Ultimately, the entire concept is that you shouldn't actually Long Rest until AFTER you have completed an entire dungeon, and if the DM is a good DM they will build the dungeon in a way so that you don't need to Long Rest until you have completed it. If he sees that you really need a Long Rest, because a battle went particularly wrong, he might create a way to provide you with a Long Rest opportunity at some point just so that he/she can make sure that the characters don't die.

In a video game, this can be done, just as Solasta has proven. As the characters are dungeon crawling, they find an area that is designated as a Long Rest zone. At that point, the characters can Long Rest and recover and then continue. Larian could do something like this as well, but then they'd have to do away with the whole Fast Travel to Camp and Long Rest wherever you feel like it and whenever you feel like it mechanic. This would be harder for them to do because unlike Solasta, BG3 is much more open-world. You can go anywhere whenever you want, which is much more fun to me.

But the tradeoff for having a more open-world is that you need a whole new way to limit Long Rests. The only way I can see that they can limit Long Rests is to have SOMEthing happen if you use too many Long Rests. This brings me right back to the whole concept of the Time Sensitive Long Rest Mechanic that I proposed. You can still Long Rest as much as you want, and explore at your own pace. But the more you Long Rest, which is ending an entire day, the more things move on without you in the world. Things will happen if you Long Rest too much, and negative consequences may occur if you take too many days to complete certain quests.

Honestly, I can't see any other alternative to limit Long Rests, and even in my suggestion I am not truly limiting Long Rests. I am simply proposing that different things happen if you Long Rest more. The fewer the Long Rests you use, maybe the more rewards you get, but if you Long Rest a lot, you may get new side quests and complications in your quests because you took longer to complete them.

So with my suggestion, the idea is that you are technically rewarded either way. If you complete quests with fewer Long Rests, managing your resources more carefully, then you get bigger rewards. If you use more Long Rests and don't manage your resources as well, you get maybe some more fun quest options and see some different events triggered that maybe you wouldn't have gotten if you Long Rested less. In other words, less Long Rests, more rewards like better weapons and armor while more Long Rests things happen like now you need to save Rath from being executed by Kahga, or now you have to help defend the Grove Gate against an attack from goblins or now you have to try to save Wyll from goblins because he foolishly tried to complete his quest without you, or whatever.

In this way, people can still play the game however they want, and they will have different results based on how they play. If they long rest more, they get more complications that they have to solve. If they long rest less, they get more cool items. Either way, the game has WAY more replayability and it is fun either way AND you provide more value to items and short rests and so forth.

So, in my first playthrough, I might try to really go for the no Long Rest approach. In that playthrough, I would get a lot more cool items, but in my next playthrough I might spam Long Rest more and get more fun story quests, because my spamming Long Rest created more story complications...like it should.

This is how the classes are balanced in D&D, yes. Long-rest casters are not expected to be able to use all their spells every fight. Depending on their difficulty, you should get through 3-6 fights per long rest. Part of playing a caster is making judgements about what spells you can risk using during a given fight that you then won't have for later fights.

Right! Exactly! And again, the whole point of scrolls DEPENDS on spell management and limited Long Resting. Same with potions and many other items.

Thanks mrfuji3 for summing up what I was trying to say.

That's why I hate DnD system... Why be a mage if you can't do magic? Ugh. Seriously, I went through PoE2 and then PoE1 and it was a nightmare for me. Omg how quickly I got bored of playing as a mage because of skill slot system. It was a real disappointment for me.. :< I'm willing to accept it, but I'll never consider it as plus. In my understanding, support and mages classes should do magic, not swing a sword or shoot a bow. Otherwise, how do they differ from archer or warrior in the gameplay? I almost don't see the difference because "oh yes, I have skills, but I can't use them, I need to wait for a special battle!!!".

AMEN! Precisely. People are lazy and they want all things to be so damn easy, but the truth is stuff like that gets old real fast. There has to be challenges and you have to learn to prioritize and manage, it's part of what makes overcoming challenges FUN!

That's a somewhat fair criticism but definitely exaggerated. You always have access to cantrips so your mage should really never have to swing a sword or shoot a bow. Especially since cantrips deal more damage than non-magic weapons at 5th+ levels. Additionally, past 4th level I've found that it's rare to actually run out of spell slots before a day ends. Sure, sometimes you have to be conservative, but in most fights you'll be able to cast at least 1 of each level of spell.

A cooldown-based system might work better for D&D video games; it'd at the very least be easier to balance resting, the classes, encounters, basically everything. But, BG3 clearly doesn't have a cooldown-based spellcasting system and not enough effort has been put in to account for fact that D&D classes are based around resting. Although...I guess Fighters' Menacing strike has been made OP and everyone can use spell scrolls?? But the latter doesn't increase the effectiveness of the Fighter class, it just makes all classes more like wizards.

There's a fairly active Mega-thread about camping and resting here if you wanted to suggest your idea there https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=752528

While some people have suggested making short rests mandatory, I don't think anyone in that thread has thought of your "1st-level spells restore after short rest" idea. I don't particularly like it, as it seems like a band-aid fix that also significantly changes how spellcasters work. These types of fixes are the sources of a lot of the issues with BG3. But I also don't hate it; it's a compromise between unlimited resting and 5e restrictions on resting.

The former aspect would require untying camp cutscenes from long rests, but that should be done anyway. I'm not sure how frustrating it'd be to need to short rest twice before long resting though...

Just thought i might toss this idea out there and see what everyone thinks about it.

What if shorts rests were mandatory, and yes i know that sounds annoying given how useless they currently are, but the caveat would be that they now give all level 1 spell slots back so that way you wouldn’t be inclined to just use them all up to long rest instead. This would make short rests have value while also putting stipulations to long resting without forcing one or the other to be wasted. As it currently stands long resting is just broken due to the fact there are no downsides or stipulations that make it less frequently used. I would also put in an OPTION to make long resting only available in either safe areas or cleared out hostile zones. This would help the hardcore dnd players get that same feeling from tabletop dnd without forcing annoying mechanics on some of the more casual players. I also believe this would buff some underwhelming classes such as cleric and arcane trickster. It would also allow for some more utility and damage from spellcasters without the need to constantly long rest and would incentivize saving those long rests and high end spells for the tough fights. It would also make cantrips feel less like spammy (i ran outta spells) spells that are basically pointless (and you would probably prefer to just to use a melee attack instead). This would make level 1 spells a lot more common and easier to obtain and maintain but i also think that it gives more value to high end spells and cantrips allowing cantrips to be what I personally think they are for “finishers”, and high end spells would be much more difficult to keep around unless you waste all your short rests which would be pointless given that most fights don’t require you to use level 2 or higher spells as most enemies in EA are quite easy if you play your cards right. And because spamming through short rests can be mildly annoying, you could implement a system that allows long resting in safe areas (non-hostile areas even if the enemies are cleared out it wouldn’t work in a hostile environment) without using all of your short rests!

I agree it would definitely change spellcasters, but i think overall they would still have the same relative strength but would allow more flexibility and utility in a fight. I personally don’t like wizards and stuff due to 2 reasons, one would be that they are usually hard targeted by the AI of the game (which i think the developers know and will probably fix), and the second reason is because they require all lot of micromanaging and resting to recover which heavily hinders their utility (part of which makes the cantrips in the game your only constant source of dps), it also makes healing way more important in a party as you don’t feel like you should only heal if someone is in dire need otherwise your wasting your spell slots which could’ve been used for more important burst damage against tough enemies and bosses.

Our (@XxAnonymousxX) Convo from other thread: I agree with you about the healing. Healing is already pretty weak in 5e: basically the only time it's worth expending a spell slot is for Healing Word on an unconscious party member. Allowing casters to feel more free to cast healing spells without worry about wasting slots isn't a bad idea.

This would also enable casters to be more liberal with the cool but risky level 1 spells such as Command. RAW I'd almost never use this spell, because if the enemy passes their ST I lose both a turn and a valuable spell slot.

@Nyloth

I'm glad you bought BG3 and all, but if you hate D&D, why did you buy a D&D game? I mean, why are you playing a D&D game and then upset that they made it based on D&D rules?

Support and mages classes do magic, but they also need to swing weapons and shoot with crossbows. They differ from archer or warrior in the gameplay because they aren't as good at these things AND their magic makes them more potent when handling bigger enemies. As you gain levels and become more powerful, they become VERY powerful especially as AOE and Damage Mongers. They need to be limited so that they aren't overpowering the rest of the classes.

You know what's fun? I never knew this was a DnD game. Unlike the others, I didn't follow the game, I was just looking for a new RPG, I had played DOS2 before, but I didn't know that Larian had a new project. When I found out, I immediately tried it and liked it. At that time, I did not read interview or detailed description of game.

I love RPGs, unfortunately (for me) many rpg games (like PoE1) use DnD system for skills. I don't drop games because just cuz they use this system, I say I can accept it, but I will never consider it as plus. This makes their gameplay similar to that of other classes. Yes, of course, you have "normal" skills that do not need slots, but, for example, Cleric skills at this moment in BG3 are simply terrible. I don't see the point of using them, because it's much more profitable to shoot a bow. This makes my experience on cleric exactly the same as my experience on ranger. I just shoot bow until there's a boss or something like that. What I really love about DOS2 is that every battle you fight (unless you're a barrel fan) is magical, literally.

But like I said, I accept it. Because I love story and role-playing moments more than gameplay.

@Nyloth.

You know, I can not only respect that, but I get it. Taking a step back, if you aren't familiar with D&D, and you are only familiar with other fantasy RPG's, D&D will totally seem too limited and such. I'm used to all sorts of RPG's. I've grown up on them, so for me, D&D is still probably the best RPG ruleset out there. I've played Star Wars from West End Games, Lord of the Rings from Decipher, Star Wars from WOTC, Star Wars from Fantasy Flights, Legend of the Five Rings from Fantasy Flights, Battletech, Mechwarrior...I've played lots of tabeltop miniature battles games, and so forth. So I'm used to all this stuff, and seeing Larian not put the rules of 5e in place more accurately is driving me crazy because I'm playing 5e now with others, and I find it more fun than past D&D rulesets. I like that wizards have Cantrips now, for example, that they can use without limit. It used to be that you only had a certain number of Cantrip spellslots too in order versions. I like that they simplified a lot of things so that I don't have to memorize all sorts of feats and abilities to make sure that I use them and play my characters correctly.

But thinking about other fantasy RPG's, even games like Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance 1 and 2, wizards and clerics spam spells, even having Mana Points that they use to be able to cast them. They can drink Mana Potions to regenerate their spells, and so forth, so that they can keep running around hacking/slashing everything. The gameplay is more video game oriented and so on.

That said, I was most excited about BG3 being a true D&D 5e experience because NO ONE has really ever made a true D&D video game that abided by the rules of D&D; at least not very well. I have always wanted a D&D game where they truly took the D&D ruleset and implemented it well into a video game format so I could play D&D as a player, not a DM, and the computer would do all the painful calculations and such for me. So I was really hoping BG3 would be that game, and my disappointment has to do with the fact that it isn't. They are not really implementing the 5e rules very well.

Solasta, on the other hand, has satisfied this for me, but Solasta is in no way as exciting and epic as BG3 seems like it is going to be. I enjoy BG3 so much more than Solasta, not because of the combat and gameplay, but because of the story and characters and dialogue and the replayability and the graphics and the fact that Solasta is more linear while BG3 is more dynamic and open-world. I get a whole different emotional feel for BG3 than Solasta, and I want it to be the best game it can possibly be.

That said, I still hope they do a 5e Core Difficulty Mode or something. I still hope they have something to limit Long Rests because it truly ruins the entire experience and balance of the game to be able to spam Long Rests after every battle. It also just doesn't make sense from a story perspective. They set up all these timed quests, for that's what the story truly does, which is exciting and all, but then they don't follow through with it. Very disappointing!

If you want to put a better balance to camping and resting a more effective way to do it might it you really wanted to make it not always work out the way you want it might be to have random encounters happen when attempting to return to camp maybe adding several mini encounter maps where a random assortment of npcs may spawn with like a random chance of getting one of those encounters when going to camp. This would give an opportunity for random loot encounters as well but that is just an idea. Not something i could see in early access but it would be a good idea for long version of the game a semi random encounter chance. This could carry over long term in the game to a reasonable value incentive to characters even after the parasite is removed assuming it happens before the end of chapter 2 or along those lines. It could be like a 5% chance of an encounter like that occuring but it would make for an interesting situation where using your short rests and long rests matter more and planning your thoughts on when to do so meaning more. But its just a thought.

Random encounters are a bad idea or they are easy enough that the player is able to deal with them when they are half-alive, which means that they are only a waste of time or are so dangerous that they can easily kill a team that has been badly injured, which further encourages you to rest after each fight .
Of course, it doesn't matter as long as you can do the quick save + quick load combination before each rest and people will end up getting irritated and loading the game until they finally have a rest like in older games.
Random encounters are a really bad idea that will do much more harm than good.

Current resting system is totally unacceptable. I am sure this was already discussed to death, but such awesomely designed levels as Underdark suffer the most from it. A moment ago you was surrounded by danger but simply push the button and you are safe.

+1

Random encounters has been proposed, but ultimately I think it would just bog the game down and not really solve all the issues with Long Rest and the fact that the story has already put time limits on things.

In telling you, the only solution is to implement some sort of timed events that explain why the druids don't finish the ritual, and why the goblins don't attack not matter how many long rests you use. It least if the do timed events triggered by too many long rests, they can explain why these things havent happened and provide some additional side quests and such for "taking too long". Side quest complications would make it more interesting and fun.

But if you do this, you gotta reward players still for NOT spamming long rests. In this way both are rewarded, just in different ways.

Except the story removes that time limit immediately in regards to the parasite. And I think time limits will bog the game down in a different way cause then you reward people for never long resting and not engaging with the camp activities, there needs to be a balance where players don't or can't long rest after every encounter but also players can long rest when needed and actually are able to engage with events and activities in the camp. And also to certain players time limits just don't feel liek they would fit BG3 and if added will actually detract from the experience and become too restricting.
I do agree there should be side quest complications, but I think they should be tied to events that are clearly related and not to X Long Rests.

True but i also think that short rests are just as important, yet they are only spammed for healing which makes me wonder why they even put that feature in the game.

If i had to give a solution to short rests and a stipulation to long rests it would be to make shorts rests in some way more valuable (ie: gives all level 1 spell slots back for short rests or something) and would then make short rest required before long rests. This would incentivize both smart uses of short rest to allow you to have plenty of level 1 spell slots all throughout the fights you encounter while using cantrips to finish off small or annoying mobs, and also limiting long rests until short rests are used up. It would also allow healing with a level 1 spell mid fight on allies who aren’t down not feel like such a waste! Also they could possibly add an “option” to only be able to long rest after you reach a certain distance from enemies (ie: clear out the area you want to rest in) or arrive at a non-hostile area, allowing you to bypass the short rests entirely if you are in a non-hostile area, and would hopefully put more emphasis on saving those rests for when your party really needs those spell slots while also allowing wizards and clerics to feel a bit more magically useful.
IMHO this is a relatively small change that would hopefully make both hardcore dnd players and casual players alike have a more smooth experience. Also the short rests giving level 1 spell slots is already partially in the game (ie: Warlocks), so I don’t believe it would completely change spellcasters, it would mainly improve their flexibility!

Thing is Short Rests are supposed to be important for many classes. Class features often recharge on Short Rest. Warlocks regain all spell slots on short rest. Wizard can recharge a select few spell slots on short rest. Fighter gets their Action Surge and Second Wind back on short rest. So on and so forth, Short Resting already gives players back the resources it is meant to. However, if players can long rest freely it immediately undoes what a short rest can do cause you already get that back and more via long rest so most don't see a need to click the short rest button. I do agree that there needs to be something that limits the ability for players to long rest freely (also I'd honest just tie the amount Players can short rest to hitdie/level maybe?), but allowing every class to recharge all Level 1 spell slots is a very very large change to the balance for many classes that are sup[posed to be somewhat limited in how many they can cast a day. I do think you have something about how players are in a hostile area, perhaps there could be specific areas on the map where we can go to the camp, and they are most plentiful in Act 1 as players get their bearing but as we progress to more dangerous areas they become fewer and farther between maybe with some areas only having short rest abilities, as in more areas being marked like the area with the hag?

Thing is Short Rests are supposed to be important for many classes. Class features often recharge on Short Rest. Warlocks regain all spell slots on short rest. Wizard can recharge a select few spell slots on short rest. Fighter gets their Action Surge and Second Wind back on short rest. So on and so forth, Short Resting already gives players back the resources it is meant to. However, if players can long rest freely it immediately undoes what a short rest can do cause you already get that back and more via long rest so most don't see a need to click the short rest button. I do agree that there needs to be something that limits the ability for players to long rest freely (also I'd honest just tie the amount Players can short rest to hitdie/level maybe?), but allowing every class to recharge all Level 1 spell slots is a very very large change to the balance for many classes that are sup[posed to be somewhat limited in how many they can cast a day. I do think you have something about how players are in a hostile area, perhaps there could be specific areas on the map where we can go to the camp, and they are most plentiful in Act 1 as players get their bearing but as we progress to more dangerous areas they become fewer and farther between maybe with some areas only having short rest abilities, as in more areas being marked like the area with the hag?[/quote
I agreed that it would change spellcasters and even some other mechanisms in the game but honestly short rests giving lvl 1 spell slots is very minor given that most of the current lvl 1 spells are either rarely used or never used due to the over importance of lvl 2 spell slots and long rests, not to mention that there are only a handful of strong lvl 1 spells in general and even less in the cantrips, Lvl 2 spells and above are where most of the real damage comes into play and i think it make sense to keep those for the most difficult fights. However if this system is a little to much for most people you could even dial it down a notch or 2 depending on how it affects gameplay, but as i said it is already implemented on Warlocks and some other spells and spellcasters so why couldn’t it be implemented on all spellcasters and spells instead, and give the spells who are unaffected by the change a bit of a different buff or ability to make up for the loss in utility. I personally just think that certain spellcasters lack way to much flexibility and need a buff to allow people to use the underused spells more frequently.

Again, the STORY puts time limits on like everything, but then the mechanics don't follow through. It's not just the tadpole, though that is still the biggest one even after they tell you it's not acting normal.

And Im not talking about Time Limits as in, you have to complete certain quests in 2 hours of gameplay. I'm talking about Timed Events that take place after every x number of Long Rests that buy you, the player, more time to complete the quests because you are taking longer to complete the quests than the story would allow.

Story Time Limits
Tadpole = Unknown, but could start changing ANY DAY, multiple people tell you this

Druid Ritual = just started because Arabella stole the idol. Time limit unknown but ain't gonna last more than a week tops. Anything more than a week would not make sense and even a week is a stretch to me.

Goblins Attack = Aradin leads them to the Grove. Again, they could attack any day, but time limit is unknown. They've been looking for the grove for awhile with a mandate to wipe it put. Assuming they, for some reason, need some time to prepare a full on assault, would it really take more than maybe a week...2 tops?

Lae'zel Wants Cleansing = Unknown time limit, but again, how long do you think she's going to realistically stay with you if you ignore her wanting to get cleansed. It is her number 1 priority, and she is more than happy to tell you this again and again.

There are more, but the point is that there are MANY game elements affected by not limiting long rests. I agree, putting a long rest limit that is too short would ruin the game, and that's why I thought that the timed events idea would fix this.

So, say you dethrone Kahga after only using 2 long rests after you first learn about the ritual. The reward for completing the quests in a timely fashion is and awesome weapon...not that cursed druid staff but a genuinely cool flaming scimitar or something.

However, let's say you take 3 long rests and still havent dethroned her. Something happens to stop the druids and the ritual starts over again. You have three more days. Now you beat Kahga within another 2 days. You get a slightly less cool things, like a cloak of cold protection.

But lets say it takes you 6 long rests from when you came to the grove the first time and still the quests is not done. Another timed event happens to star the ritual over again. This one is Rath locked up going to be executed for interfering. You have to sneak in and save him. Either way, ritual now wont be completed for 3 more days.

This provides more interesting gameplay and rewards players for succeeding quicker and explains why events aren't completed in reasonable timefranes.

Thing is timelimits tied to a mechanic like resting doesn't sound enjoyable to me as a limit.

Tadpole, yes unknown, but over time your characters would become used to it, still looking for a cure but less fervent and terrified. Constantly worrying and rushing would wear them out and cause them to die.

Druid Ritual, also unknown. A ritual on that level in dnd could be very variable, all depends on the writer. It could easily take only days, or weeks, months, or even a year to permanently seal off the grove. Move in faerun can be like that, and this seems like a very largescale ritual.

Goblin Attack, something I am actually more surprised is that there is not goblins laying a siege and trying to starve the tieflings out at some point. Its kinda the basics of warfare and the goblins could easily have done it. Though prepping for a raid to exterminate could take week.

Laezel, she begins to have her doubts over time, and she does talk about needing to go to the creche a lot, and even then there are cases where she can leave your group or try to kill you without timelimits.

And again 2 long rests are very very little, considering how many encounters are on the way to khaga, unless you are abusing the game systems or really really skilled, you will have to use at least one of them, but considering there is the goblin battle and a whole other dungeon you are intended to do before, then you are likely to use up your two just by playing the game normal. And that goes into an issue, how do you telegraph this to a player without them feeling like it is unfair? With no clear indicators of time in the current set up, you would have to add very very clear indicators of how much time which can then detract it in a different way. Like if every side quest giver tells you exactly how much time you have it would feel less like a living world and also would feel draining.

Another idea I had was that they could limit Long Rest by having characters refuse to do it unless there is a significant need. Basically, instead of them saying they are tired for dialogue triggers, they say they aren't tired when you try to Long Rest unless you meet the prerequisites.

What would be required for a Long Rest is the following:

1. Short rests all used up.
2. HP less than half collectively. So if all party members have a total of 80 HP and together they have less than 40.
3. 1 or more characters with no more spell slots and/or special ability slots
4. Not in a dangerous location like Hag's lair or gobbo base
5. 1 Food item per character in the camp.
6. 1 Drink item per character in the camp.

Doesn't have to be this exactly, but thinking something like this. Than restrict short rests a bit too. Short rests would require:

1. HP less than half collectively. So if all party members have a total of 80 HP and together they have less than 40.
2. 1 or more characters who have used 1 or more spell slots or special ability slots
3. In a safe location where no enemies could wander about and find them. So Larian would need to create Short Rest Zones and limit how many there are.
4. 1 Food or drink item per character in party, so probably 4.

Short rests would then be used to recover HP, 1 Spell Slot for Mage and maybe even Cleric, and Superiority Dice, etc. Something like that.

That is something that is basically supposed to be exclusive to warlock, the classes in 5e are fairly balanced to eachother. Warlocks get less spell slots but recharge em easier. Wizards get way more but harder to recharge them. Allowing every class to recharge level 1 spellslots freely would power encroach on the special thing warlocks have and make em all more samey, also it really would push the balance badly. Level 1 spells are fairly strong if one knows how to use them, and in tabletop spells are more important for their utility than their damage sometimes, but looking at just level 1 wizard spells, most any of them are useful, and many are damaging in their own rights. Also this would move a lot farther from 5e when I think moving closer to 5e would actually make the game more balanced and fun.
Also cantrips only feel useless cause we were cut off at 4, cause at level 5 they all get an extra damage die and a cantrip like Eldritch Blast starts to become a powerhouse.

Forget 2 long rests as a time limit. That is not what Im saying. 2 long rests was an example. You are focusing on the specifics, not the concept, My proposal is that you would still have lots of long rests before something truly bad would happen.

What Im actually saying is:

Complete the quest in x days, get the best reward
Complete the quest in y days, get not as good reward and trigger a cutscene to explain why event has not yet happened
Complete the quest in z days, get an okay reward and trigger another cutscene buying you more time
Then, after much time goes by, if you still ain't done the quest, something bad happens.

That was the idea.

This I greatly prefer. though i think shortrests shouldn't be restricted too much, even in tabletop they are meant to be used freely. I think they should just depend on how many "hitdie" a caster could have, so level. So a level 1 party can only shortrest once and a level 4 party could do it four times. Shortresting in quick succession only means they heal more cause most characters can only take advantage of X on Shortrest once or it falls off on shortrest. Just keep things as they work in 5e for shortresting and give some limit to longresting like how you mentioned needing a resource and the characters to be tired. Also long resting needing food actually is in line with 5e as characters are supposed to eat rations to avoid exhaustion.

I disagree entirely, that suggestion would make the game significantly less fun, albeit more like dnd 5e in some aspects, but overall I don’t think most people want 4 or 5 restrictions on the ability to get some spell slots. In fact I don’t really understand why even hardcore players would want that, the game by its self on normal when fighting 5 or more enemies is already a huge pain but the payoff is usually worth it and you can rest and recover after to at least have your melee fighters in tip top shape as it currently stands, but that change would neuter wizards as a whole for me personally as it would be no different than POE which i loved except for the fact wizards were 99% of the time worthless, and only cause further annoyance when they died after being useless (when they ran outta spells). I don’t want a repeat of that. Personally i want to see wizards in a better spot than right now as currently they are Imo the weakest of all the currently available classes, and no I don’t think that the individuality of warlock would be ruined as the main draw for me and probably some other people is the pet and evil eldritch feel of the spell warlock has that wizard can’t even get, the only class wizard can really copy somewhat is cleric but even then it is completely subpar because the wizard usually lacks wisdom to cast good cleric spells. This loss of identity for other classes from what i can tell would be non existent because the identity is based on what spells the spellcaster has and then the next defining factor would be how effective those spells are on said class. Also cantrips getting an extra die still would make them subpar on most classes as their damage (other than a few exceptions) is already low and the boost they get would barely bring them to lvl 2 eldritch blast territory. Also one of the only ways you can resurrect a party member is at the camp so multiple restrictions would hamper that as well.

Well, I personally like the hit dice aspect of 5e. Ironically, I've suggested that before and people hated it, but that would certainly limit short rests.

Listen, you have to limit Long Rest and Short Rest somehow. That's why WOTC did in the first place for 5e. Hit dice limited short rests, and the fact that a long rest is end day is supposed to limit it in the game.

So, either Larian needs to put SOME sort of timed events in the game based on how many long rests you take, which makes sense based on the story, which is what a normal DM would do, not letting their players just spam long rest without consequences, OR you have to put some kind of prerequisites on long rest.

If you don't limit them, you can abuse them, and other aspects of the game become meaningless which is what we have now.

One of my biggest issues with resting right now is just how much the character / story cutscenes are tied to it being at specific moments. I often end up long resting purely out of story purposes rather than having expended my characters. That for me is the biggest obstacle for figuring out long resting. I like the idea of having consequences for not completing certain quests on time, but it's also a real pain to get some of the character's cutscenes when they're tied to specific moments and / or override eachother. I would really like to see no overriding at all of character scenes. If Shadowheart wants to have her moment, why can't Astarion also have his moment? And for a lot of people, Gale's scenes have been a complete enigma to unlock. I dunno how I managed to get all his scenes first playthrough without even trying, but it really shouldn't be such a puzzle for those that want that experience. I'd really like to see some of the things you guys have mentioned, but I'm worried about what kind of problems it would cause with the current implementation of camp cutscenes.

Oh yes. Current dialogue scenes need to be untied from Long Rests. In other words, Gale's Mirror Image Dialogue, as I call it, shouldn't be thrown out the window if I don't Long Rest before I meet him. In other words, to see his Mirror Image Dialogue, you have to make sure that you pretty much Long Rest when the game's tutorial pops up and teaches you to Long Rest just after the Devourer Fight just after you meet Shadowheart.

That's not cool. Not only does the game NOT limit you on Long Rests, but it also promotes Long Resting frequently which is totally contrary to the story.

So they need to untie Dialogues from Long Rests so that Dialogues are triggered in some sort of order no matter when you Long Rest; whether frequently or infrequently, so that all players are able to trigger those cutscenes.

What I mean is, regardless of when you first Long Rest, you should get Shadowheart's "I'm not sure this is such a good idea," dialogue as long as she has joined the team. Then, the first time you Long Rest after meeting Gale, regardless of when you do it, you get his Mirror Image Dialogue. Then, regardless of when you Long Rest again, after this Mirror Image Dialogue, you should get Gale's "Go to Hell" Dialogue. Maybe even during this same Long Rest, you could then see Astarion creeping out of camp. In other words, multiple dialogue cutscenes could even be lumped into a single Long Rest, as long as it makes sense to do it, so that whether you Long Rest a lot or a little you still get all the dialogues.

So let's not get confused here. I realize that on the one hand I'm saying that dialogues should not be tied to Long Rest. Then, on the other, I'm saying that events should be tied to Long Rest. So let me clarify.

The difference between what I am saying in this post and what I have said in previous posts is that when it comes to Story-Driven Time Sensitive Events, THOSE should be tied to how frequent or infrequent you Long Rest. So, again, using the Druid Ritual as an example, if I dethrone Kahga in less than x number of days (say 2-4 or whatever Larian decides makes sense in terms of how long the Ritual of Thorns should realistically take) then I get some awesome weapon or armor as a reward for doing the quest with only a few Long Rests. Yay me! I'm rewarded for doing it in a very few days. If I don't dethrone Kahga in that amount of time, then I trigger a new cutscene based on the fact that I took more Long Rests than the Story-Driven Time Frame suggested that I had. Then, this new cutscene that is triggered, that I would not get if I completed the quest sooner, would give me a reason as to why the Druid Ritual is not completed yet. This new cutscene would buy me more Long Rests to use to complete the Kahga Dethroning before the Ritual is complete. Thus, I might not get as cool of a reward, but my reward is that I get additional story and cutscenes and maybe a cool item that is not as cool as the item I would have gotten if I had completed it faster. THAT's the kind of thing I mean.

Either that, or just limit the Long Rests like I just posted more recently with prerequisites that need to be met in order to actually Long Rest. I like that idea too. In that idea, people can Long Rest as much as they want to, but they have to meet certain conditions to do it. I like that idea almost more than Time Sensitive Events because in that suggestion characters won't let you Long Rest unless THEY feel they need it. So, if after a fight, you haven't hardly used any spell slots, Short Rests, you still have lots of HP, etc., the characters will be like, "What? Rest? Already? We've hardly begun our day. I still have a lot of fight left in me. Let's just keep going."

In that way, if you do get hit hard, unexpectedly, for a particular battle, then you can Long Rest without fear that something might go wrong from a story perspective. It should also help limit people from using Long Rests so much since they won't be able to unless they have enough food, have used enough short rests and spell slots and HP, and so forth, and everything should all kind of work out better...provided that what I just put in here about untying the dialogues so they can't be overwritten, is applied as well.

So I like both ideas. Either one would work for me.

Arguably, right now, Wizards are actually stronger than they should be if all you care is about damage/evocation (if it's concentration this game messes that up with surfaces a lot.) With how resting is currently constructed, a Wizard genuinely can use all their spells lots in a fight, every fight. This means they can spam all their non cantrip spells, when cantrips are supposed to be a wizard's basic attack. Also loss of identity is very major cause Wizard, Warlock, and eventually to be added Bard and Sorcerer (and maybe Artificer, a man can hope) have a large amount of overlap in their spell lists, so their class mechanics help greatly in making each unique. And being able to recharge spells lots so freely is the exclusive thing for Warlock.

Also, I quibble greatly with the idea that cantrips are useless, even in BG3. Cantrips are great if you know what you are doing with them, with no resource cost a caster can exploit elemental weaknesses, target what they think would be lower to hit, and inflict status like being unable to heal. Cantrips are the wizard's bread and butter since due to inscribing they can get so many of them (only Tome warlock in 5e being able to compete imo). Cantrips are the wizard's longsword, doing a similar amount of damage, but they have a variety of longsword that while not getting a stat bonus to damage can interact with combat in many different ways. And ooc, I actually love that larian removed the negative from friends making it no longer just an ok cantrip to a very useful one.

Because of cantrips, the only time Wizard is useless is if Silence is up or if they got hit too much, otherwise a good wizard always has a tool for the situation, even when out of resources.

@GM4Him: I can't type out a big thing right now but I completely agree with you!

I completely agree with your long rest model. But I'm with CJMPinger on short rests.


Then you're playing them wrong. Wizards are by far my favorite D&D class. I've been playing them 40+ years. From the Basic and Expert Box sets, AD&D, 2e, 3e, and 3.5. Wizards are about strategy. Having the right spell at the right time. Managing your spellslots, picking the right spells for your spellbook. Wizards are not suppose to nova every fight, that just turns them into a second rate Sorcerer. They are suppose to control the battlefield, not be blasters. That's for Sorcerers and Warlocks. Don't get me wrong, they can blast too. But that's not what they are best at. That's why I push so hard to get the Abjurer fixed; and am pushing for the Enchanter, Diviner, Necromancer, and Illusionist subclasses. If played right Wizards are the MOST POWERFUL class in D&D, and BG3. Clerics while a lot of fun, burn through their spellslots much quicker, with useful spells like Bless, Aid and Healing Word. When I add a Cleric spell to my Wizard spellbook, I go for the ones that Wisdom doesn't matter as much. Shield of Faith is at the top of the list, and it makes an Abjurer very difficult to bring down. It's an acceptable tempary replacement until the Shield spell gets added in.

Like i said before the cantrips are generally useless unless very specific scenarios happen and even then most other spells do the job better, also the affect to prevent healing rarely matters due to the fact that you would have to constantly stay in range of the enemies you want to inflict with that and thats only for 1 turn, most enemies are to aggressive right now to make use of that and even worse yet is the fact that cantrips do very little damage which is a bummer given that the fireball cantrip is so significantly better since you can either affect environmental oil and grease(or poison) or do great damage to most EA enemies (aka its way more versatile in most scenarios). Eldritch blast is great due to damage and optional push back which does even more damage on top of all the modifiers. The identity of the wizard is being able to learn all spell yes but as i said before how effective is a wisdom roll spell on an intelligence wizard? The same is true for any class, and maybe the spells do overlap but thats obviously intended and clearly is studied by both classes, which is also (from what i can tell) part of the lore. Yet nowhere in the lore that I’ve looked at has there been any mention of getting spells back easier being warlock exclusive, and I don’t see how that would hurt the warlock in any meaningful way? They still have multiple spells other classes can’t get at all which make it plenty unique, and it also is partially a conjuring class given the unique familiars and such which make it even more unique! Wizards are imo the least unique with the only ability (albeit powerful) being to learn any spell, but most spells from other classes (unless you build towards it) are generally useless. Wizards also have the huge downside of have the worst health pool of all classes, and literally no proficiency’s which hamper it even further! Its only strength is the ability to cast amazingly strong lvl 2 spells, no not lvl 1 spells as many of them are weak or situational at best (no not all of them but many), and I’m not suggesting that it should be easy to long rest, however you are in the mindset that there needs to be to many conditions to be able to long rest which negatively affects wizards and clerics the worst which are already a difficult class for new players and casuals to enjoy given their obvious limitations, in short only hardcore players can take true advantage of wizards. My suggestion is to either give all spells slots back on short rest yet make them mandatory or give back some spell slots after a short rest if the previous suggestion was a little to much(but the short rests need something to make them enticing other than healing), currently there are so many ways to heal outta combat that short rests are generally useless for me, but I personally don’t think most people (even you guys I suspect) use anything but maybe the same 3 maybe four spells on the wizard which is sad to say the least as the whole shtick of the wizard is best of all worlds but master of none, yet most people can barely take advantage of that and even fewer can effectively pull it off in a super difficult scenario. You guys need to remember that people (admittedly like me) who are new to dnd games and the lore aren’t here to be limited on the flexibility of our spells and in fact would like more awesome spells that they can cast without worrying that they won’t be able to complete an encounter due to spell restrictions and limitations. Hence why I personally love the warlock but dislike playing the wizard (though the other reason is because they are hard targeted by AI). I do agree that there could be some faults with my suggestion and honestly I don’t think its a fix all but imo it is a step that would placate both sides to this debate and would have optional difficulty/realism settings that would go even further to make long rests like dnd 5e. I don’t think that the other suggestions made are bad for all players, but if they were to be forced on casual or new players they probably would stop playing wizard or possibly even the game as it restricts creativity too much. If the suggestions were optional settings (like the loaded die) then i could see it being added without too much fuss, but I don’t see many players here or anywhere really talking about the restrictions being optional.

If the wizard had more subclasses or spells maybe the class would be better i agree but as it currently stands with the build of game, the wizards are the weakest in my opinion. The one thing they got going for them is basically useless currently (though it might get better but nobody really knows) and they feel like a one and done for the day class for some players which is a bad feeling because in many other games your can go ham with your spells and dish out insane damage each fight, but in BG3 only melee characters in the demo (and the warlock in some cases) deal huge amounts of damage while the cleric and wizard are basically set to heal and occasionally cc’ing enemies due to the limitations of spell slots and the ability to get them back without long resting. This is more then likely going to get better in some way but right now you either have a wizard who does amazing for maybe 1 or 2 fights then is tuckered out for the day, or you have a crowd control only class who dies in a single hit when targeted (which also ruins the cc due to concentration).

Concentration spells do have their problems, hopefully that gets fixed. The Warcaster and Resilient feats will help a lot, when they get implemented. I use mods, so I already have access to them. Warlocks are meant to be single enemy big damage dealers. Sorcerers are meant to cause big damage to large groups of enemies. Clerics buff their allies, inhibit their enemies, and bring up fallen companions when needed. They all can get closer to combat than most spellcasters due to armor and shield proficiencies.

Wizards are meant to control the battlefield. Selectively using their spell slots at the right time. A well place Sleep spell or Grease can change the tide of battle. I'll use Shatter + Sculpt Spells to soften up enemies, and Protect my allies. Web can be very useful to take enemies out of a fight. Also Magic Missile to take down multiple opponents, that my companions have damaged. When the full game releases, and we get 3rd level spells, that is where the Wizard will really shine. Hypnotic Pattern, Fear, Counter Spell, Haste, Slow, Fly, Dispel Magic, not to mention Fireball. More subclasses like Enchanter would be great, but the Wizard is already a very good controller.

Ok, so, I disagree heavily and going to break down why on each part, this is not meant to come off as confrontational, I am just passionate about Wizard and Warlock and I think at least looking at things thoroughly would be good for the overall discussion.


Cantrips are by far not that situational, and even if they were, a wizard can typically end up learning all of them meaning they have a cantrip for every situation. Yes they are supposed to be generally weaker than what you would spend a spell slot on, that is because they are an infinite resource and are meant to be the wizard's basic attack, magic they can do constantly. You are meant to spend a spell slot when you want a little more, the issue is concentration can be broken by a goblin throwing a bottle and missing the player so the optimal damaging spell right now is one and done type spells like Magic Missile. But that still does not devalue cantrips at all. I will go through each one currently in the game (not just wizards) and actually give my opinion on them.

Acid Splash: Has been made into an aoe and can potentially do aoe damage, it is only 1d6, but that 1d6 is aoe at ranged, and it goes off of saving throws, which in some situations is easier than trying to hit AC. Acid damage is not that resisted, and BG3 has added the acid effect for -2AC which kinda buffs this cantrip too much.

Blade Ward: never has been that good of a cantrip EXCEPT for Eldritch Knights who can use it then action surge to do their attacking. On that role it allows the fighter to really soak up damage, which becomes noticeable with how aggressive the AI is.

Chill Touch: Again a saving throw which is generally good. It does 1d8 which is actually decent damage in 5e, equivalent of a longsword. Cold damage is resisted by some enemies but also some enemies are weak to it. Stopping enemies from healing is very noticeable in fights where they will chug some potion or there is a cleric trying to heal them. Undead creatures getting disadvantage is a little situational, but in fights with stronger undead can be very very useful, just so far the undead in the game have been weaker end.

Dancing Lights: This cantrip has been nerfed a little bit, always been one that benefits from player creativity which is hard to translate into a computer game. But at is base, being able to provide light is useful for if a character does not have darkvision.

Firebolt: A reliable cantrip, roll vs AC, 1d10 fire damage, one die better than a longsword. Fire is often resisted but also is often the weakness of enemies. Added ability to ignite flammables is a strong buff. Is really the basic attack of wizards.

Friends: By removing the clause that the target will become hostile this cantrip has been really really buffed and I like it, advanatage on charisma checks is useful and justifies having the Wizard or Warlock be the face sometimes.

Light: Similar to dancing lights though less nerfed, just helpful for if a character lacks darkvision.

Minor Illusion: More useful in tabletop, but being able to distract enemies before getting the jump on them is always useful, with creative use of turnbased, this can be used to enable your rogue.

Poison Spray: Closer range, poison damage, best damage die at 1d12, constitution saves are a good save to force, is just a good damaging cantrip.

Ray of Frost: 1d8 cold damage is good, useful for if saves are less likely to land, reduces target speed which is useful for controlling the battlefield and keeping melee characters from rushing the wizard. Being able to make ice terrain on hitting enemy is arguably too strong a buff, should have been if the wizard targets the ground, similar for fire terrain and firebolt.

Mage Hand: Ok so, right now this cantrip is basically the most OP but in all the wrong ways. I HATE how they implemented it. It shouldn't take concentration. It shouldn't attack enemies. It should be used creatively, and Arcane Trickster Rogues should be allowed to pickpocket and lockpick with it. But as it is, arguably the most OP cantrip by abusing the push ability in BG3.

Shocking Grasp: Arguably a more situational one BUT still very useful. 1d8 lightning damage is good and being able to stop an enemy from taking reactions is a very good get out of this enemy's range ability. Also I think right now it can electrify surfaces, I think that should only be if you target the surface.

True Strike: Basically the worst cantrip in tabletop, but in BG3 it is Very Good if you cast it before a battle. Put this on an Eldritch Knight or Arcane Trickster and get easy advantage for when you start the battle with them if you lack something like highground.

Eldritch Blast: The king of damaging cantrips. 1d10 force is good, really good. Very very few things resist force, and many are weak to it. Warlock riders if gotten normally through warlock make it even better, a warlock can legitimately outdamage a fighter in the right situations just with Eldritch Blast. Being able to push enemies with that rider is strong in the context of BG3 with so many places to push enemies off, slowing them is good, and extra damage is extra damage which starts to add up. And while I could have said for all of these that they get really good at level 5, EB REALLY gets good at level 5 cause you get a second blast that can be targeted anywhere as a separate attack, which also gets all the riders separately. In tabletop, EB is a common reason for people to take a 1-3 level dip in Warlock or Arcane Initiate Warlock (funny people sell their souls for a cantrip), and even without the riders from Eldritch Invocations, this cantrip is arguably the best cantrip a caster can have.

Guidance: Super useful outside of combat. 1d4 to a check can make or break it and I use it constantly. And even in combat it can be helpful, guidance someone so they can do the critical thing they need to do better. Also some may thing it becomes obsolete if you remember the help action BUT it can stack with help action, so if Help is properly implemented this cantrip will be nuts.

Produce Flame: Is basically firebolt and light rolled into one. You lose the light when you throw it, but that makes sense. Honestly, opions on firebolt apply here. 1d8 fire damage good and reliable. A druid without darkvision can basically ignore darkness penalties by using this as the attack.

Resistance: honestly this one can be situational but even then far from useless, use it when you are about to do something that will probably require a saving throw, with surfaces this thing is super useful and helpful.

Sacred Flame: Feels weak on shadowheart, but is not a bad cantrip. Elemental damage is something I like, and radiant is one of the better ones. Essentially doesn't require line of sight as long as in range, you ignore cover. Saving throw is good.

Shillelagh: Makes a club/staff the equivalent of a martial weapon, damage improves. Is just good. Making a weapon magical is good in melee situations.

Thaumaturgy: Arguably the weakest implementation of a spell right now, but still has uses. Friends does what it does but better right now but there are times Intimidate and performance are needed, a cleric or tiefling would use it cause they are not a wizard or warlock, simple as that.

Thornwhip: Fun to use, 1d6 piercing damage is fairly good (a cantrip doing a physical damage is rare), pulling targets is strong and arguably can be op if they are on a highground cause now they fall. Super reliable imo.

The closest to being a bad cantrip is Thaumaturgy, and thats just cause it was implemented poorly. Most all the cantrips in BG3 are genuinely useful in combat and are fun to use if you know how to use them. They are always why a wizard doesn't need to blow all their slots in a fight and while weaker than a slotted spell, they are still strong and remain strong through the whole experience. My main quibble is how some were implemented (and that they need to fix my main Mage Hand), but overall cantrips are in a strong place balance wise, and most don't suffer from the fact concentration is being broken by surfaces constantly.


It hurts class identity greatly. Warlocks get their spellslots because of how they got them. They were granted to them by their patron, magic that was unlocked by a higher being. They are meant to have fewer spell slots, but these spell slots are always the strongest they can be (up to spell level 5), and recharge on shortrest. This means a wizard can cast more spells in a single fight, but a warlock can cast more theoretically in an extended dungeon. By giving other classes the exact same treatment, just to their lowest spell slots, to where they can every shortrest regain them immediately encroaches on the fact the warlock IS the only class that can do that. Wizard can regain a few, and in Tasha's a divine class can regain a few by praying I think, but they can not just regain all level 1 spells. In fact, if every class could blanket regain level 1 spell slots, you would be having a self fulfilling prophecy where cantrips become meaningless until a much higher level, which then ruins all their identities with being to freely cast certain kinds of magic in different ways. And perhaps the biggest reason is balance. If every single class could regain spell slots like a warlock, it would actually make the warlock worse cause everything else they got is to make up for them having fewer spell slots that recharge more often. In fact, it'd make Cleric king, no one would ever need to long rest because they could just level 1 spell heal again and again. It would simply break the game. And if you only extended this priveledge to wizard, it'd still break the balance cause the wizard is balanced around the idea that they don't constantly blow their spells, but being able to constantly blow level 1 spells like fog cloud or grease would essentially destroy combat and we'd be left in the same spot of people resting just so their wizard can ruin combat.
And on conjuring, larian didn't even halfway implement conjuration correctly, which is my favorite school. I play summoners. And right now, summoning is all wrong. While on the surface I like how the imp has its own turn to attack, that is not how it is supposed to go. In fact, arguably post tasha's it is stronger the other way in tabletop. Because you can theoretically attack twice with a familiar and then give the help action to an ally when it gets to the familiar's turn. But that isn't the main point I'll make about conjuration, my main point is that the Wizard already encroached on warlock's style of conjuring. Both are meant to be able to be conjurers and summon creatures, but the main difference is that a warlock's familiar can attack. A wizard's can not. However BG3 gave wizard familiars the ability to attack which really encroached on the warlock's early game identity. While I love that they gave every familiar something special ability wise, being able to attack with them shifts the balance, making it even less appealing to play warlock over the wizard cause the wizard ends up enveloping everything the warlock could do.


Wizards are far from not being unique. being able to inscribe so many spells is huge, they end up having a tool for every situation and the only thing they can not do in normal tabletop is heal. They have the most spell slots of any class, which is also really really big, it means as they level up they can cast more and more, and in the right hands their growth can be exponential. Intelligence and Wisdom saving throws are actually really good at surviving enchantment and illusion spells, which can arguably be the most dangerous to a wizard. No proficiency balance them cause of the sheer amount of spells they get, and in normal 5e many of them can be cast out of combat with no spell slots, meaning once ritual casting is properly added, the wizard will be able to dominate in certain regards. Arcane recovery allows them to recover a few spell slots once a day, and this on its own is actually strong because it means a wizard can immediately in the next fight cast their strongest spell again. And wizard subclasses are generally good but looking at only whats in BG3, they are fairly strong. Evocation is busted because it removes friendly fire, a Wizard can almost always not hurt their ally as long as their isn't a barrel ready to explode or such. A wizard can target their allies and the enemies near them, and blow away only the enemies. That is plain strong and useful. And abjuration is designed to solved that health weakness you cited because it give the wizard an easy source of temp hp, the flat 3 is not a good implementation but with a mage armor cast on, the wizard becomes surprisingly tanky, which enables them to be more frontline and aggressive. The wizard is not weak, and it is unique.

Also arguably Wizard is the easiest class next to Fighter to play. The only confusing thing is needing to learn how spells work, which the wizard is the best class to do that with. They are straightforward, their abilities are strong, and the sheer amount of spells they can get encourages experimentation, and even in BG3, Gale tends to do the best in my team as long as I am aware of his squishiness. A player character made wizard can do even better, and one of the best parts of Wizard is they are easy to pick up yet also have a high skill ceiling cause there are so many ways to use them correctly, and even if a player blasts all spells in one fight, it can be argued they are not playing the wizard too wrongly. And in tabletop the wizard has a lot more going for them, and so does the warlock. In fact, to new players of BG3, I would actually recommend the wizard, either as a player or through Gale, so they can learn D&D spellcasting and how it functions in this gameworld.

Also I won't list out every 1st level spell and how they can be strong, but rest assured. I genuinely believe every 1st level spell that has been added is genuinely useful and has a place in the spell list, and that if they could be cast freely like cantrips without some limitation like ritual casting it could break the game.


The main problem with out of combat healing right now is that food is kinda broken and longresting can be done anywhere at anytime. If you limited longresting, shortresting would become more appealing. If you keep the current spell slot recovery that exists (and maybe add the Tasha's ones for Divine Casters), things would be balanced and it would be appealing to shortrest. Also I'd recommend looking up the spells for 5e on dnd beyond, there is no shortage of spells that may get added to the game, and many of them have very fun and interesting effects. Even on first and second level. I doubt larian will add it, but for the sake of my Warlock I really really want them to add Flock of Familiars just for a fun time of an Imp, quasit, and Pseudragon. Spells are only really restricted by spell slots, but for Wizard even that becomes a non issue as they level. Wizard has a lot, at level 5 they can cast 4 1st 3 2nd and 2 3rd, which when managed correctly can be more than enough for encounters. especially since if they remove surfaces breaking concentration, you will find the main issue of wizard losing their spells all the time go away just a little bit. Cause the best wizard spell imo are the ones that stick around to do even more. And even in BG3 I find that I may only cast one spell on Gale (actually rarely I just use cantrips cause goblins go down really easily). Wizards in dnd are not meant to be like Wizards in other RPGs that have mana bars that recharge over time in combat, they are meant to be just a little limited but slowly push their limits further and further until they approach godhood. Even older dnd worked like that, where there was some limitations on just how much a wizard could cast. But I don't think I ever have felt like I could not complete an encounter, in tabletop or BG 1 2 or 3, because of the limitations on my spells. (In fact in 4e my DM might have hated how I played my Wizard cause my summoning kinda got a little too strong, and I effectively found ways to circumvent or partially nullify the penalties for intrinsic nature meaning I was being a controller while also dealing out damage like a striker...). Also the spells without limitations are the cantrips as I said before, and when we finally get to play with level 5, those cantrips will become a powerhouse and your wizard will feel just a bit closer to how you want a wizard to be.


I will agree the AI kinda focuses the wizard a little too much but as a wizard you have tools to deal with that. I find if I have something cast like Mage Armor, or am concentrating on something like Blur, or even just have the high ground, the AI immediately wants to focus Astarion or Shadowheart. I do think the AI needs to be tweaked with just a bit so they don't always seek out the optimal course of action and instead act like how they would, cause arguably Goblins would initially charge the fighter with armor first cause he looks like a threat, and then only shoot arrows at the wizard once they realize he is in fact a wizard and just firebolted one of them to ashes.


I mean this is a place for discussion, I am not trying to pick your suggestion apart because I hate it and think my solution is the end all be all, cause I don't. Others have pointed out that my suggestions have flaws, and mainly I am seeing the flaws in yours from the perspective of a longtime DnD and RPG players. I actually welcome your perspective, even as I am picking it apart. Also I think by nature the game sadly has to constrain creativity, cause the biggest strength of casters in DnD IS creativity. It is being able to use something in a new way and use your brain to apply the tools you have to overcome problems. For example, something I saw someone else think up that I never would have thought of is to use the Conjuration Wizard Minor Conjuration ability to conjure a piece of the sun. Wizards in the hands of those who love creativity, are by far the most flexible class in table top. Unfortunately a computer can not account for every case like that. For say minor conjuration, I don't think they will implement uses like filling a lock with wax to unlock it or conjuring a piece of the sun to cause damage to everything or conjuring a seemingly rare and valuable artifact to trick someone to let go of their captive. Wizards likely will be hit hardest by the limitations of a computer game, but ultimately I don't think that justifies buffing them because even if a wizard is hurt the worst by it, every class is hurt by it.

Again, wizards are supposed to be weaker in the beginning. We have not gotten to higher levels. When we get to higher levels you will suddenly find that wizards are the MVPs. Enemy wizards at higher levels need to be hit first and killed BEFORE they get their spells off, and you will need to protect your wizard so YOU can get their spells off.

That is the trick to wizards. As they become higher levels, they become VERY powerful, so you need to learn at lower levels how to manage them right so that you are most effective with them later.

And limits HAVE to be in place at lower levels so that you get used to them for higher levels when they will be even more of a must for gameplay.

That's why Im hammering this point about long rest so much now. If you can long rest indefinitely at higher levels, wizards will make all other classes totally pointless.

CJMPinger

I do see where your coming from and I understand this game is based off dnd 5e, however most newer players would have a terrible time trying to figure out wizard nuances and perfect positioning. Which is entirely my point, it should be more new player friendly, yet most of the time (especially with me) my wizard, gale, never even last through out the whole fight without constantly micromanaging his position with my warlock protecting him 99% of the time by knocking enemies away when he runs outta spells, and as i said before maybe that will change when new spells and/or subclasses get added but as it currently stands they are more of a liability, especially since concentration ruins a lot of the fun spells that make my melee fighters and warlock happy (lookin at you fog wall).

Also, cantrip wise you kinda of just proved one of my points (and yes i know they are meant to be weaker and they are, that wasn’t my main point). Chill touch has to be constantly spammed to have any affect which is a loss in damage (chill touch is a d8 while firebolt is a d10 with the ability to target surfaces), poison spray you need to be right in their face which is not where most (if not all) wizards should avoid, and ray of frost can make a surface similar to grease but requires water or grease to be there and even then the enemy can just roll a saving die and then you just lost 1/3 of the effect of your spell. Also for reference I didn’t really consider druid a spellcaster class as most of the cantrips are buff based not damage based, which is what I meant by relatively useless in a fight spell wise, but even then firebolt does the most damage behind eldritch blast (which i already admitted was one of the best cantrips along with firebolt) and also creates surfaces that are difficult for enemies to avoid causing 1 d4 of extra damage making it still one of the best cantrips in the game damage wise, while thorn whip is only situationally useful if an enemy is on a ledge. I personally don’t count non-damage cantrips as the most useful because for all intents and purposes damage is usually the way to go unless your setting up an elaborate trap which as i said earlier is done way better by lvl 1 & 2 spells, not to mention that from what I’ve seen most races have dark vision or are mostly built towards melee if they don’t (the exception being humans) making dancing lights useless on most casters that i have played excluding gale/wyll. Conversation buffs are mainly for the face of the party, aka the warlock, and are more useful on the warlock as they already get their spells back from short rests as is.

My final point is that making lvl 1 spells more accessible through short rests whether fully or partially would simply make wizards more fun, however i do concede the fact that making concentration less annoying as a whole would also do wonders, but i still strongly believe that most lvl 1 spells are hampered by the niche areas that they are actually useful in, and even then damage is usually preferable to me given the enemies usually pass the saving throws then proceed to one shot my wizard. I don’t know if thats an intentional thing in the game but I rarely get the enemies saving throws to fail (except on my warlock who is my current favorite). Thats why i would like wizards to have a semblance of the power wielded by warlocks or something possibly to make them more enjoyable and less of a liability (though it is early access so things will probably change). I know your passionate about wizard and you don’t want the balance broken but i hope you understand the frustration (as a newer player) that i have towards the current wizard iteration. It feels one offy and lame to run outta spells after one fight (maybe two if you play your cards right) and then be stuck firebolt spamming till gnolls run home. I would also like to say that some spells are only super powerful due to the option of throwing someone off a cliff but that won’t always be an option and in the later game I suspect that those spell will be used the least if creatures like the bulitte are to be the norm!

As i said my solution probably is just a fantasy for new players and a dread for dnd 5e players, but i think there is a middle ground to be had. As some said and i agree short rest should not be limited (by adding stipulations) at all, even in the table top dnd 5e they aren’t so why would they do that in baldurs gate? However I disagree that long rests need 4 or 5 conditions or stipulations, 1 or optionally 2 would be plenty and most of the suggestions above are great but i would limit it to 1 with the option of more instead of forcing new players to have to deal with the headaches that would inevitably ensue. If this wasn’t the case i would only use melee classes, warlocks and maybe clerics/paladins and forgo all casters who are limited in that sense, and instead heal from the plentiful amounts of food and potions that eventually come my way. I don’t want that though because it would be a repeat of pillars of eternity, and while i loved the world and my character in that game, the wizards were the worst thing I’ve ever seen in a video game since skyrim (after the neutering of the spell system from oblivion).

Yeah, unfortunately when a person is used to video games where wizards don't have many limits, playing a wizard in D&D is a bit of a learning curve.

But honestly, it is the most tactical class in the game. You have to play your wizard wisely. It is vitally important to the entire game that wizards be sufficiently limited. If they aren't, im telling you backstab nerfs and high ground nerfs will seem like child's play to a wizard at higher levels who is always able to cast all their spells every battle, and trust me based on experience, the game becomes real boring when wizards aren't limited.

You have to get used to buying and using scrolls, potions, etc. That is the WHOLE point of those items. Wizards are the ONLY class who are supposed to be able to use mage scrolls and clerics are the only ones who can use cleric scrolls (some exceptions apply like Druid, Eldritch, Warlocks). Their purpose is to give spellcasters more spells then their slots allow. Long rests are NOT supposed to be used so much to recover slots so that you will use scrolls as a supplement.

So again, they HAVE to limit long rests not only for story but also to give value to scrolls, potions, etc. I know you might not like it, but the whole game is ruined, literally, if they don't.

GM4Him

I agree there needs to be some restrictions to long resting as overpowering everything isn’t even remotely fun, i say this as a dark souls veteran, but I don’t think 4 or 5 restrictions that are non optional is a good idea as it would bend the pendulum way too far in the other direction. However 1 or maybe 2 (with this one being optional) wouldn’t be so bad and might even make some of the game more fun story wise and immersion wise, but i do think there needs to be an incentive to short rests as well. As inexperienced as i am i do think maybe a couple lvl 1 spell slots would be okay, though i would prefer all of them, and I personally think healing through food and short rests could be toned down slightly to compensate for such a buff. Or maybe there could be an entirely different buff to them like a well rested bonus to charisma checks and saving throws for awhile (I’m not sure how long as it could be OP if its too long). This would be cool too and would also help wizards defensively and possibly make other classes less annoying to use in conversations with charisma checks without the need of spells, indirectly making spellcaster who don’t wanna waste spell slots have multiple options. Idk though honestly, those are just my thoughts and i hope the game turns out to be more fun in the late game with wizards, even now i use gale trying to figure out how to keep him alive without putting him 5 miles away from the fight, and i have no doubt that my favorite class (Drow Warlock) is gonna be even stronger come the full release and I can’t wait!

I have been playing Icewindale recently, one of the older d&d games. My elf mage at level 1 had 4 hp and the ability to cast 2 spells. After using those spells, all that remained was to throw daggers at foes until I could long rest. By level 4, I still only had maybe 4-6 spells I could use. No unlimited cantrips. Her hp was still only 12.

In BG1 and 2, I played a sorcerer. You know, they really need to get the sorcerer class out for BG3 soon. That might help peoples perceptions of spellcasters. The sorcerer differs from the wizard in that you get more spell slots but the tradeoff is you can't learn as much of a variety of spells.

By level 10, my sorcerer had like 45 HP and could hurl tons of spells each day. I was casting fireball on everything, and I made him more of a summoned, wiping the floor with enemies left and right and summoning wyverns and goblins and ogres and such to fight for me.

But in those games, every long rest in the wild was a chance random encounter. That's how they limited it. The only safe place was an inn at a city.

I don't particularly care how they limit long rests. They just need to. So far the best methods that I've read are either:

1. Story Timed Events, as I detailed in previous posts
2. Prerequisites, as Ive detailed in previous posts
3. Random encounters, as many have also suggested
4. Severely limit fast travel and make only certain areas rest zones

The problem with 1 is people don't want to feel limited or rushed. People are resisting it because they want to be able to spam long rest as much as they can without consequences.

The problem with 2 is if you really need to long rest in order to beat a boss, and you don't meet the requirements, oh well. You're out of luck.

The problem with 3 is that it is pointless unless you severely restrict fast travel. Otherwise, yoy can always annoyingly fast travel to camp and then long rest and then fast travel back. All this does is make you do more work for no reason.

The problem with 4 is that fast travel is nice and really cut down on senseless running through map locations you've already cleared. If you restrict fast travel, it just annoys players rather than prevents long resting. Instead of fast travel to a rest zone, now they have to manually run there. This was an annoying aspect, frankly, of the older games.

My favorite is 1. My second is 2. With 1, you can have more diverse gameplay with different endings and rewards based on how many long rest you use. 2 is more like Solasta, where I got the idea, and it could prove annoying if they do it wrong. I don't really care too much for 3 and 4.

Most of those encounters really weren't that dangerous. I've found scroll availability to be more limiting when playing BG1 for the first time, considering the original didn't have the sorcerer class and high level scrolls were rare. But once you find a few wands, it doesn't matter anymore, because both BG1 and BG2 let you recharge wands in shops, so mages don't have to rely on their spellbooks for offensive spellcasting.

Actually, the amount of scrolls littering the world of BG3 actually make the worry of spellslots mostly irrelevant cause a Wizard can always opt to use a scroll, especially for spells they don't have prepared, making them very flexible. Also I tend to use Scrolls exclusively on my Warlock and Wizard cause I don't like everyone else being able to use em.
Ultimately, if the volume of scrolls stay the same, most players can really play a spellslinging wizard who constantly casts without feeling like they need to rest after every combat or feeling that with a restriction on longresting they can basically never cast spells.

Exactly. That is the point of scrolls and wands. So they need to restrict long rests now and guide players to use items more so that later in the game we aren't experiencing OP wizards.

Clerics can also become OP in later levels if allowed to long rest infinitely. Once they learn really powerful healing and protections and even Raise Dead...

I like how it is now with no restrictions. They can balance it so that nothing is too OP without adding restrictions.

Not later in the game. Im telling you, they might as well throw D&D out the window if they'd don't do something to limit long rests.

Yeah I am with you. Personally, I think the QR system is fine. I am not a fan of any artificial limitations to how you play a single player game. I am perfectly fine with a game being 'Based" off of 5e and not meeting every little rule. I am ok with the idea of separating companion convos from camp, but not with telling me when I can pop to camp to either save for the evening, or rest to open my abilities again. Not to mention, I think they should make this game to cater to the widest possible audience, I am sure there will be mods within the first week out there for the hardcore D&D enthusiasts.

This thread is not talking about "a little rule" lol.
Long and short rests are the base of the entire game's action economy (spellslots, features recovery and so on).

The system is broken without a consistent resting mechanic and when we'll have a decent number of spellslot (and powerfull spells/features,...) at higher level, it's nearly gonna be like playing DoS without any cooldown^^

Thank you Maximuus. That is the whole point of me saying you might as well throw 5e out the window entirely if you don't limit long and short rests. It is just that vital to everything.

If you don't, just throw out potions, scrolls, wands, and every class other than wizard because they will ALL be useless especially later.

GM4Him

I agree with your number 2 solution, however I don’t believe 4 or 5 restrictions are necessary for balance, small steps go a long way, a possible solution is 1 with the option of more for dnd 5e fans. This would slightly rebalance the based game for everyone and would allow dnd 5e players to get that fun dnd tabletop kind of feeling that I assume there is. Also people need to remember that short rests are currently useless and are also in some need of help, i have actually switched my mind on it recently and think that a well rested bonus would go a long way to make short rests more useful. But thats just my opinion, I haven’t seen many other comments about short rests fixes.

The main reason they are useless I feel is because of how easy it is to Long rest. Their usability I think would rise drastically just by what you said, a few small steps to limit long resting.

I actually think the game would be better with both solution 1 and 2, though for solution 2 I'm not saying it has to be those prerequisites. Im just saying some sort of prerequisites so that characters are not using rests unless they are truly needing it.

So maybe it isn't half health but maybe 3/4 health. Maybe not both food and drink are required but just food or drink. Maybe not all spell slots but more than half. Just something so that characters are urging players to NOT rest unless it makes mote sense to rest...both short and long.

And then, if they'd use too many, the story triggers an event that explains why goblins arent attacking or druids kicking people out, etc. And maybe even providing additional story quests, etc.

I agree that it is weird that the story doesn’t progress, and an explanation would be of great help (idk about the quests because it depends on the implications and impacts on the combat of the story quests themselves if you choose to ignore it), but i think maybe just food or drink and then make short rests mandatory before long rests would be more than plenty to steer the player away from spamming the long rest button.

Hmmm...I would agree with you there.

I give some level 5 spellcaster stats in the spider lair thread if interested. You'll see just how powerful a mage can be at level 5 with just the Dragon's Breath spell. I didn't even have her use lightning bolt or fireball. 😁

The higher the levels, the tougher they get. If you don't limit long rests, they become OP.

Prepare to be disappointed because so far all signs indicate that Larian is not going to do this.
If you look at all of the most popular D&D games, none of them had limited rest, and for no reason.
The game is clearly not designed for limited rest along with the fast travel system, camp, talks or even the balance of fights.
It is unlikely that they would suddenly change direction by 180 degrees.
Players do not like to manage resources in rpg games for a long time and if it were not for the fact that the presence of rest is the core mechanic of D&D, it would most likely be removed.
The fact that the game will not be balanced, really hardly anyone cares as long as the game is fun and there will be no situation when the character will be useless.
The D&D balance actually died when they decided to make the AAA game.

Ah whatever. I'm out here to give suggestions that I think would make the game better. Do I think they'll listen to me and even do a small portion of what Im suggesting, probably not.

I mean, the whole point of EA and a suggestion forum is to allow players to offer advice and suggestions on what they think will make the game better.

So here I am making suggestions because I am an experienced DM and I hope they listen to my advice and I love the game and think it could be even better. If they don't, that's up to them and Im not here to get all upset if they don't. They have to make money in the end and if they think they will without implementing my advice, I respect that.

Ok. Check out my posts on the spider lair thread for how a short rest is supposed to work on 5e. See how the actual 5e system limits their use. It could easily be implemented for BG3.

Do maybe if Larian does short rest like they should and then implements more of the prerequisites for long rest, that might really fix the broken system.

I'm not sure limiting the rests in the way you've described would work. If my companions have to be at half health, I'll just beat them up until they're ready for bed. It's still cheese, but with extra steps.

Def should limit it by area. It's kind of silly that I can just leave the goblin fort and go back to camp, especially when the front door is goblin is guarded by hostiles. Maybe guest rights are sacred in Faerun?

I think it should definitely be limited by resources. The problem then comes at later levels, when characters are absolutely loaded. If they have the money, what's to stop them from spamming long rests?

You could have things cost more in the city. Even the cheapest room would cost more than a night in the wilderness, and cheaper rooms could be less effective

That leaves an awkward spot in the middle game, where you're not too poor to worry about resting too often, and you're still in the wilderness where camping is the norm.

Larian has their work cut out for them if they hope to balance the game.

And on that note, cutting players off from content because of in game time restrictions is stupid. If you want to feel the pressures of limited time, suspend your disbelief and pretend they're there, like in most other games. Earth may be under attack by Reapers, but they'll wait until you're ready to commence the final battle. No need to worry about being cut off from certain missions just because you wanted to goof around.

I mean this is pretty much the perfect comment for me. You make a perfect point about the Reapers, it is that way in EVERY RPG game pretty much, there is. That is why I think it is so strange when people carry on about the tadpole etc. Every RPG game has some time sensitive, save the world mission. Through story, and the creative use of drama, they relay the feeling it is some rush to save the world, but hey, here are 2 companion missions you have to do first before your compatriots will fight effectively or even survive the battle.

The sense of urgency in every story RPG is always basically the same. With pretty much cookie cutter similarity. Mass Effect, DA, CP2077, Red Dead Redemption and so on and so on. So why do I see people posting confusion about the way this game plays out in regards to the tadpole not immediately taking over your body. Or put some time crunch on events in the game....It is called Plot Armor for a reason. It is the same in all of these games in one way or another.

People have a fetish for realism. If they're going to put on time limit for the sake of realism, why stop there? What if your party is arrested for vigilante heroism, charged as felons, and forced to work as desk clerk's because their felon status prevents them from getting a better job? Don't like it? Tough, that's life bitches.

Nah. I want the game to be fun. I also want the game to stand out.

You are right about how so many video games just let players do whatever they want and the story just waits for them to finally get around to doing something about it.

That's, again, only 1 small part of this. The true issue is around mechanics. In order for the game to work, you have to provide some sort of consequences for long resting all the time. BG1 and 2 and IWD used random encounters with no fast travel. NWN 1 and 2 didn't really limit it took much, and it hurt the gameplay considerably. Good game, mind you, but being able to heal after every battle had the same effect as BG3. I didn't need potions and healing spells as much, and when I got tougher I could spam really powerful spells like crazy.

But yes. I like stories that make sense. I don't like reading books where the story is flawed, I don't like movies with plot holes, as much anyway, and I don't like when video games just don't make sense. I would LOVE for someone to start creating video games where they actually make sense and maybe, just maybe, I could play through on the first time through without having to save scum my way through the whole game. You know, a game where I could actually BE the character and try to make it without dying the first time through without knowing where all the bad guys are and tricks and gimmicks just like a genuine, real RPG. Because in a true RPG, you only get 1 shot to get through the story. You cant save and reload.

But instead, we keep getting these same old gimmick games with impossible encounters that you cant beat unless you know your enemies' weaknesses and the game gimmicks by fighting them 10 times save scumming each boss fight.

100%.


This game can be played to the end without dying, even on the first run. My first run I died once. I don't even remember how, lol. I take a very cautious approach to new encounters. I take my time during my turns, weighing all my options, considering what I want other characters to do on their turns, noting who's turn comes when, both mine and my enemy's. Maybe I got lucky. I encountered the hag at level 4, so I was as prepared as a could be. The beholder almost killed me, but I pulled out some cheese. I cast fog and hid in the cloud. Most of the enemies durped out, and I was able to pop out, shoot 'em, then hide again. The phase spider matriarch I encountered at level 3. She almost wiped me out, but I was able to get away. It was an epic battle of inching further towards the exit while being swarmed by her children. It's sad that they don't respawn. What should be an epic encounter is made simpler with cheese. Oh well. That's the spider queen in a nutshell, I guess.

OMG, man. You think I didn't play this game carefully when I first played it? I was trying so hard to play it in a way where whatever happened to my character happened. If people died, they died. If I failed rolls, I failed. I wanted the full blown experience of being immersed in this world and pretending like I was actually my character. For better or worse, I was going to play through without game over and whatever happened happened.

That's why I used as few Long Rests as possible, I collected and stored all the food and water and such so I could steadily use them to survive because I thought I had to. I was afraid if I used long rests the tadpole was going to turn me and/or goblins were going to attack the grove and/or the druids were going to kick the tieflings out any day and/or Lae'zel or Wyll were going to leave the party. Based on how the story went, as a First Time Player, I was playing this game thinking everything WAS timed and if I long rested too much I was going to fail everyone.

Yeah. Then I read some of the posts and realized that there was no time limit. It was all an illusion. You can long rest as much as you want. In fact, I missed out on all sorts of dialogue because I DIDN'T long rest a lot which is totally contrary to the whole story. So I was a bit pissed that that was the case. Not only was there no real time limits but the game encourages using lots of long rests. It's dumb and makes all potions and scrolls and pretty much EVERY item you pick up utterly pointless. There is NO strategy in that. This game is supposed to be about trying to manage your resources and use them wisely in strategic ways and such. Not limiting long rests and such just utterly destroys that. Why even bother making us pick up all the items we do if we're just going to sell them all anyway because we don't really need any of them because they're all only good for gold so maybe I can buy some +1 weapon or armor? I've gotten to the point in the game that I literally have to stop myself from just selling all the stuff I pick up so I can buy the best armor and weapons because it's all junk anyway. I can long rest whenever I want, so I don't need scrolls, EVER, and I only need a few potions for emergency healing during fights like the spider queen or hag, but hardly ever for any other fights. So why bother with food or drinks or potions or scrolls or anything?

All you need in this game is to learn how to cheese it. You don't need anything else, and that's what frustrates me so much. That's why I fight for the limits and consequences. I know some players are like, "We don't want limits because we want to roam the map and carefully explore everything and if you put limits on my long rests I can't do that," but that's simply not true. You can have realistic limits and timed events and such without inhibiting the game so much that you can't explore all the fun and incredible places on the map. There is an in between. I gave plenty of examples of what they could do. I even gave examples of them giving players like 15 long rests or more to complete certain quests. How many long rests do you guys need? If you are using that many long rests, I'm sorry but that's excessive. You need to learn to use items and short rests more if you are using that many long rests to complete the EA. On my first playthrough, I was able to save Halsin and do all the side quests on the map prior to going to the Underdark in 7 long rests (days), and I didn't even know all the Larian homebrew cheeses and such. I had to save scum a few times because of fights that were ridiculously hard like the spider lair, but I did it.

How did random encounters in BG limit resting? It's not like you could have skipped all of them just by using the simple in-game load save function.
All the random encounters did was make the game more irritating.

You've inspired me to complete the game using as few long rests as possible.

And so begins the run of Lady Tryhard.

Lol. Go for it.

I've been doing pretty much the same thing again. I'm working through the game and monitoring how many Long Rests I've used. Here are my results so far:

Day 1: Got through the Dank Crypt. End Day after Dank Crypt was over.
Day 2: Got through the Grove and even the Harpies fight and all the events in the Grove.
Day 3: I met Scratch, Ed's siblings, the Owlbear Cave. Ended Day just before going into the Bog.
Day 4: Beat the Hag and the Bog and dethroned Kahga. So 2 long rests after the Grove, I stopped the Ritual.
Day 5: Explored Bogrot and saved the gnome at the windmill. This leads to Wyll's quest, so it would maybe be reasonable that Wyll is feeling like we're doing his quest. So, by doing this, he probably wouldn't feel like he needs to threaten to leave if we don't beat the goblins anytime soon. Lae'zel, though, might be getting antsy. Since I have a Drow in the party, I didn't have to fight the goblins, and I also paid the ogres to serve me. So I might have had to do a long rest after all this if I was doing a different playthrough. Since I used my Drow, I was able to go into the Spider Lair and complete it. End Day.
Day 6: I get to the Tyrites and do that whole side quest and defeat the gnolls. Haven't ended day yet. This is where I am currently.

So, since I found out about the ritual and the future goblin attack on Day 2, so far I've used 4 Long Rests since then if you include Day 2's long rest. That means, in truth, it has only been maybe 3, almost 4, 24 hour days since I entered the Grove. So let's say I didn't dethrone Kahga on Day 4. Maybe on Day 5, someone does something to delay the ritual. So, like I said in a previous example, maybe Rath stops the ritual and gets thrown into a cell. Kahga is thinking about executing him for treason against the Grove. You can either sneak in and free him, and maybe even get him to join your party, OR you can ignore it and let him get executed, OR you could hurry to do something to dethrone Kahga. Either way, maybe you get another 3 days to complete this quest that you should have been able to realistically complete in 2-3 days. So, instead of only having like 3 days or something, you get like 6.

Honestly, I'm doing everything in the game, and I'm almost done with all the side quests on the surface. I have to do Waukeen's Rest and the Gith. Then it's straight to the gobbo camp. I'm fully anticipating doing Waukeen's Rest and then maybe Long Resting and ending Day 6. Then do the Gith on Day 7 and move on to the gobbo base. I might, maybe Long Rest just before going to the Gobbo Base, which would put me to Day 8. I should then be able to complete the Gobbo Base on Day 8, and if I can't then they clearly need to rework the Gobbo Base so people can beat it without having to do Long Rests because once you enter the Gobbo Base you shouldn't be able to Fast Travel out, Long Rest after you kill one of the leaders, Fast Travel back, kill one of the leaders, Long Rest, etc. It doesn't make sense to allow people to spend more than a day killing the leaders. It should be an epic, challenging battle that you do in one pass. After you kill one of the leaders, the place should be on full alert and ready to kill any outsiders.

But even all that aside, if I can beat the entire upper surface of EA in 7-10 days, then the maximum time frames that players should get should be something like 14-15 days. This gives players almost twice as many Long Rests as they should need.

Oh, and I did this run using as much of the D&D 5e rules as I could, limiting myself so I didn't use potions as bonus actions or shove as bonus actions, and I tried really hard not to use backstab and height advantage etc. So if I can do that with all these non-cheese rules, avoiding Larian's homebrew, then certainly new players could do it and still not feel rushed and so forth.

Again, my suggestion isn't so much to give hard limits as it is to provide SOME sort of events to happen as Long Rests are used, and SOME sort of better rewards for those who do the game in less time. Thus, rewarding those who play the game in less long rests by giving them better stuff while those who take longer still get a prize. It just might not be as awesome as those who beat it using less Long Rests.

Not EVERYONE can be the Gold Medalist in the Olympics, and that's probably the best way to explain this suggestion. Everyone still gets a medal, but the one who bits it using less Long Rests gets the Gold. Those who take forever, get the Bronze. SOMETHING to push players to challenge themselves more, but still offering an option for those players who just want to play the game casually and don't care about pushing themselves.

You're thinking of 2e, 3e, and 3.5. The only way in 5e Sorcerers can get more spell slots, than the table allows per long rest, is by trading in Spell Points. Not a good trade once you hit 3rd level and gain Meta-Magics. All full casters, except the Warlock, have the same base spell slots. Wizards can recover some of these slots per long rest as well.

Sorcerers don't need to prepare their spells, and have all of their spells available. But they are very limited in spells known 1 + level. Wizards can prepare a number of spells equal to their level + Intelligence modifier. Clerics have the best prep list in the game, they prepare level + Wisdom modifier + Domain spells. But Sorcerers have Meta-Magics which make up for their deficiencies.


I'm partial to # 2. Out of Short Rests, plus 1 food item per party member. I'm not opposed to random encounters, though I'm not sure how that is supposed to discourage long rests.

Random encounters never discouraged long rests according to me. Random encounters encourage the ressources management which is a core mechanic of D&D.
As a consequence you usually have to rest less often because you're less likely to burn your ressources.

You can still do it but at your own risks because you may need something to travel to your camp or resting in a dangerous area.
It's up to the player to think about and to manage the risks/benefits rate. No one like dying and reload, players have to be carrefull.

On the other hand it's never the end of anything because you can eventually reload if necessary and players that don't like random encounters can usually disable them in every games these days.

Ofc I'm talking about random encounters when resting or fast travelling (i.e BG1/2)
Not random encounters when "real time" moving on a worldmap (i.e Pathfinder/Solasta)

Yeah, I personally don't like random encounters. I prefer reasonable timed events. They make more sense and provide more in game dynamics and variety. Plus, as a DM, that's what you do. You urge players via story to do things.

But maybe a mix of story and prerequisite would be best because it doesn't really make sense to end day if you still have a lot of fight left in you. So maybe some prerequisites and also some timed events.

Just way way way too many cutscenes...I thought I had bought a game but it's turning into a movie...

Hello !

I'll share some feedback and suggestion regarding camping and resting. I played the EA at the start a bit then only Patch 5 (30hours) after that, so I could see the leaps of improvements.

First part about the camp itself
-I may not have met the character, but a trader at the camp would be nice. I have plenty of wares I just don't sell because it is a hassle to get your wares from the stash and then go to a trader. The camp would be a perfect time for that. They don't need to be there each time, which would make trading with them an opportunity more than guaranteed service.

About food. This is a great addition from patch 5. There many things that could improve on the principle
-Perks for the following day. Depending on the food you choose, you get related perks such as (extra spell slot, extra HP, extra what have you). It could depend also on the characters. Limited Status ailments could also be fun (hangover until next short rest if you just had wine for instance).
-It has been said multiple times, but food stored in cache should be available in the camp selection.
-Kitchen ware (plates, forks, pots, etc.) could be collected and used for the camp to increase food perks.
-Seeing characters eat food together would create a sense of bonding between them I believe. Reacting to what is eaten would be very fun (Astarion in front of juicy meat or just vegetables)... At least seing the cooked food would be very fun.

I don't mind not having a trader at camp. Most people wouldn't when adventuring. If item management was better, going to the druid grove wouldn't be that much of a pain.

As for the extra food mechanics, I think it might be too much; too complicated. It's not that I think your ideas wouldn't create extra flavor to the mechanics, pun intended. I just think it's too complicated for most people's tastes. As it is, there are a lot of people resisting the food mechanics and saying it's too much realism and it slows the game down and they hate it. Making it more complicated would only make more people scream, I think.

I also am not sure the buffs and debuffs would work well too. The cutscene of them eating together might be fun, but again I think it might annoy too many. I, personally, like any cutscene showing the party doing things together. Makes them feel more like a team.

At camp you can sell stuff to either Volo or skeleton.

I thought Barcus Wroot, the Deep Gnome you rescue from goblins, would make a cool camp merchant. Perhaps he still will reappear later, would be odd not to see him again after the event.

The skeleton hanging around at your camp as a vendor is just too camp. All mystery surrounding him after he spookily rose from the crypt... gone. It's a freaking OOC convenience feature. And he doesn't sell anything that wasn't already available from other merchants or temples or whatever. Please, just rather put it in the difficulty settings that PC's can't die and remove this camp skeleton from the camp if you're planning to do something plot related with him. Casual undead characters belong in DOS rather than Forgotten Realms where undeath is a more serious concept. Maintain the mystery. I've never needed his services.

Im affraid that Swen have some (quite unpleasant if you ask me ) plans with him ...
They are not yet implemented, but it was datamined ...

We definitely need it. Right now, it doesn't make sense to have your inventory completely filled with different types of food if they all do the same thing. Either they differentiate the items in some way, or they reduce their variety.

The food mechanic slows the game down? This is a strange claim to me. Every party member joins with enough food for a night, so you start the game with almost a week worth of free rests. In the course of just wandering around, I easily acquired enough food that I never had to even use the resources from my party members. I would think that food would speed the game up by discouraging you from resting every single time you use a daily spell.

I think food should be kept simple. I should not ever have to fret about food except in dire circumstances or because a map is specifically designed around the lack of food, just as most of the time players don't have to fret about rations unless it's a specific challenge of the journey they are on. Having food to prevent infinite resting is good, but it should never ruin a game.

Pillars of Eternity Deadfire has about 30 food items each with different properties. You can go find ingredients and prepare your super food if you want (and then likely end up resting again nearly immediately to clear an injury or somesuch and losing all of those bonuses). Most of the time I just end up giving everybody mariner's porridge because it is easy to get. I think putting the idea of rations in the player's head is good. I think having a situation where a player feels like they need to start over or reload an old save because their character is starving to death and can't recharge spell slots is bad. You want food to be enough of a burden that the player thinks "Hmm, I'd better press on because I haven't used enough spells to be worth a whole night of food," but never "I will never be able to feed myself tonight."

Again, this is Inventory Management issues, not Camping. The camping mechanics themselves are straightforward and simple. You collect food. You long rest. Click auto-select. Boom. Done. Simple and easy.

The issue is that Inventory is slow and clunky, so sorting food and sending it to camp and so forth is a huge pain because you have to right click on every item separately and Send to Camp or you get weighed down by food, of all things.

But again, this is the same issue we run into with ALL items.

If we really have to collect and manage food items, they should use Rations.

A single stackable food item in your inventory instead of 30 different ones. You could see at a glance how many long rests you can do. Larian's inventory UI is hideous, and the billion different food items and myriad worthless collectibles is really weird game design. Who enjoys dealing with all that junk filling your inventory??? How is choosing whether to eat an apple, potato or cheese interesting gameplay?

When the party finds a place with food, they could rest there without expending their rations or perhaps convert different suitable long lasting food items into rations.

+1 There is no point to having different types of food in the current camping system.
- We can no longer eat food to regain food, which means that having different food that regains different amount of hp is worthless. This is good; please don't bring back eating during combat
- Different foods don't give different effects during long rest. It'd be interesting if the most common food used gave slightly different bonuses. Though i'm not sure this benefit would be worth the hassle of inventory managing the different food types. A better solution is to just use rations, but allow cooking of different meals for different benefits.

What if you want to cook stuff? The DOS crafting system had the option to make different types of food with other foods and also poisoning those foods.

Have you seen theese?
https://baldursgate3.wiki.fextralife.com/Supply+Pack

That's what my second point is saying. Right now in BG3 there is no cooking, making the different types of foods useless. BG3 would be better if the type of food used gave a bonus for the next day or if everything was converted to Rations. The current implementation is the worst of both worlds: tedious inventory management with no benefit for different foods.

This could be achieved by my suggestion, where the most common food (>20 units) gives a specific benefit.
Or there could be a cooking component to resting, where you choose food to make certain recipes. Or you could just choose random food and get no benefit.

That's actually an interesting idea. Create discoverable cooking recipes (not many, 3-4 would be enough for EA), let them provide a small buff until the next long rest, and spread them all over the game. This way it would be:

• Impossible to stack effects from multiple different recipes, as you can have only one main course per long rest, so the power creep will be minimal;
• Make Gale slightly less insufferable, as he could bring the first cooking recipe with him (that stew that should have stayed in the family, remember?);
• Easier to mitigate challenges of starting from level 1. The aforementioned Gale's stew, for example, can add, say, +4 HP till the next long rest. Virtually worthless at higher levels, but very handy when you first meet with him.

Just don't go the PoE way, with its crazy food buffs that are essentially mandatory for some fights, and which have practically unobtainable precursors.

I posted this suggestion in the other camp supplies thread:
Even with the new system, long rests are effectively unlimited because there is TONS of food in containers everywhere. It isn't fun to click every container to hoard food, but the current system encourages this.

To fix this problem, why not make camp supplies come from combat instead of from containers?
Most supplies should come from looting enemies, not from containers. This would allow you to fine-tune how many encounters there are between long rests. For example, a hard encounter (the Githyanki) might drop 40 supplies, while an easier encounter might only drop 10.

@polliwagwhirl - That's an interesting idea - camping supplies are way too easy to get and even though I don't long rest often, I certainly could have rested whenever I wanted. I also like the idea of a mobile camping site a la PF:K rather than an entourage who follows you everywhere (we are not royalty...yet Of course, this is an emotive issue so whatever suggestions are produced will upset someone. I still remember being shocked in NWN when you could insta-rest everywhere (having coming from BG2). Completely shatters immersion. I have numerous issues with the current quick travel and camping - but I don't want to derail this discussion.

I just wanted to chime in and state that I hate the camping system

I hate that those camp and mini camp does not exist on the maps.
I like the supply system but I find a bit strange that :
1-39 = half rest
40 = full rest
Why would I use 2-39 rations ?

It would be better if something different happen at 1-10 / 11-20 / 21-30 / 31-39 / 40.

I'm enjoying the supply system quite a bit - it gives value and meaning to food, and makes long rest not as easy and effortless as before. The food is too potent right now, and it's almost impossible to run out of supplies, but I'm sure this is a matter of tweaking. I hope the system is here to stay.

Same. I think it would also be good to make it so that short rests also require camping supplies. That gives the player a reason to keep camping supplies in their inventory as opposed to just sending them all to camp. Also, then short rests could be limited more by camping supplies then by the two short rest limit. If they tweak the cost of camping supplies per rest, I think it would work out very well.

Short Rest Camp supply cost = 1 per party member per level (4 member party x 4th level = 16 camp supplies)

Long Rest Camp supply cost = 2 per campsite member per level (6 characters at camp x 4th level x 2 = 48 camp supplies)

Short Rest needs a quick fade out/in and perhaps a shot of the party actually sitting down at their current location. It feels really unfinished as a quick-heal button you can press while the party is running.

Short rests should also activate 1, maybe more, conversations with party members. There are many that don't require the party to be at base camp.

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) 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.

Just replayed the Auntie Ethel section of the game - it seems like Larian has finally added in "area-based fast-travel/resting restrictions" - is this new to Patch 6? I.e. you can't fast travel nor rest now while you're in Auntie Ethel's lair. The mini-map has this red border around it to indicate it.

I love it.

It really added some serious tension to the moment because I suddenly knew I couldn't blast away endlessly with spells. I believe if someone really wanted to, they can still backtrack out of the lair and go rest. But I think that's okay because you don't want to soft-lock some players (in case they get stuck without enough resources). It's the same in old school and contemporary games (BG2, WoTR).

I think it began in Patch 4. But I agree. They need to do it more often. Spider lair, goblin camp, etc.

If you are friendly with the goblins (you have not openly made the whole camp hostile), why not? For hostile places it makes definitely a sense, though.

It just irks me to no end we can't rest in actual suitable locations when we find them.

Contemplation Chamber in Grymforge.

It's secluded and secure with a door you can close. It has a campfire and even benches and bedrolls around it for gathering the party. It's a meaningful actual location compared to the weird empty non-areas we are forced to camp in. You have Sharran journals to read and long dead corpses to examine while camping. Most of all, you are still connected to the game world while you are there.

There are many places you find while exploring where you get the feeling "this would be a great place to rest in". So WHY do we have to teleport to an off-the-map non-location for camping??? It's weird, unnecessary and it completely disconnects you from the real game world. You don't know where you are, the place has no exits, it looks like the place you were in but it's not. It's nowhere.

And you know you are completely safe as only the player can enter this weird 100% safe pocket dimension. Why exactly do we want to lose all sense of danger while exploring and camping in dangerous places? This just seems like such a bad design choice in every way.

Just... why??

edit: and please, if the answer is "because we want to 100% control all shots for companion dialogue", it's definitely not worth it.