Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback What's the point of resting?

Firesong. With every new comment from you I get the understanding that you don't like D&D games. That the only reason you were excited for BG3 was because it's developed by Larian Studio, the creator of one of your favorite game series, Divinity Original Sin. And I don't know what you expected. A similar divinity game just with a story and classes built on D&D lore maybe? But why?

Now there's nothing wrong with you or others liking the divinity series. They're very good rpg's in their own right. But this time Larian studios is not making a new divinity game. They should be allowed, even by you lovely Larian fans, to create something new, something different. Something that particularly you might not even enjoy but that others do because you enjoy different game styles.

I can tell that you want a bit faster. fluent game with epic encounters where you the hero can mow down hordes of enemies and feel strong afterwards, not having to waste time on positioning, resource management or endless dialogue where no matter what you did there's a chance to fail! Just like DOS2. But d&d isn't about that, it's a completely different mindset on gaming, even in videogames! And Baldur's Gate is a D&D game franchise. That won't change. There will be dice rolls, which means that you can miss the target and you can fail a conversation check. There will be need for rest but if the encounters are balanced correctly those long rests shouldn't have to be taken so often.

I think the main problem with this discussion is that we are discussing how to adapt a d&d core feature around the gameplay. When we, and especially Larian should adapt the gameplay around the core features. I don't mind them putting their own flavour on the 5e like vertical positioning, some(!) surfaces etc to spice things up. But right now, that flavour is overtaking the whole dish.

And for you Wi1em. Not every game needs to be enjoyable by everyone. We were told by Wizards of the coast and Larians Studio that we're about the be given the first 5e D&D pc game. Let us have that please. Other crpgs will come. Even a DOS3 probably.

Really? that's awesome. I was hoping that rest will have an impact (such as time passage). I'll try that as well, just to make sure it wasn't a bug on your end.

Was surprised about it myself! I imagine that, to get this to happen, you have to rest -near- the quest. Because I tried resting with the child in view but just out of initiation range and then when it came back from camp the boy was dead on the rocks. So if you rest 100 times outside of the range of starting the quest, nothing changes. Rest once near the area with the quest started you still have the quest active but can no longer save the boy.

At least, that's my guess, haha.

I genuinely hope they keep the resting and limit it as was suggested here (time passage, lecations, fatigue, ambush, etc..). It's such an integral part of D&D it won't feel right without it.

Ah! The eternal issue of per-rest casting. cRPG love those, yet they don't have a structure that would support such design. I would be shocked if Larian didn't have some idea on how to tacle that problem - if not for EA, then for 1.0.

Generally the problem is, that if resting is unlimited then it throws off the balance - either you tune it hard enough so players have to rest after every encounter (in which case rest might not exist) or you design content so the ability use is spread through multiple encounters - in which case the player can break the balance by going all in and resting more often then devs wanted them to. My personal issue always has been not using abilities or items - I am a horder, so knowing that I should preserve spells and abilities, meant I barely used them.

Probably my favourite implimentation of this system was Pillars of Eternity1 - resting required supplies and you could only carry two at the time. That allowed devs to pace dungeons - they knew how much rest you needed and could design around it - as well and provide additional supplies in dungeong to gather if more rests were needed. Granted it was a soft lock - nothing stopped players from leaving the dungeon and going to town to buy more supploes, but I felt it was enough to pace rests reasonably.

Kingmaker had a rougher approach - it also required supplies (per party member, rather then per-rest) but amount was up-to-the-player. Limited only by carry weight. Less succesful approach IMO, as in general you don't want to carry more then one rest as for the most part you won't need those (you can hunt when resting outside). However, on couple occasion stocking on supplies is necessary, yet the player won't know that until they beat the dungeon and follow a guide (which, by the way, I think is the only reasonable way of playing Kingmaker). A more convoluted, granual and tedious system then PoE, but I think it does a poorer job in pacing rests. Kingmaker has also a time management aspect, but I found it to be mostly smoke and mirrors.

Part of the problem is that in tabletop, the early encounters are easier, and getting the first 5 or so levels comes in a few sessions at most tables. In BG3 EA, you live the entire experience at less than level 4, before much power is accumulated, and for a long time. This is compounded by the existing balance issues (fights where a boss monster keeps summoning more minions vs limited resources, being massively outnumbered in nearly every encounter with no regard for encounter sizes relative to challenge ratings, missing or broken options compared to what is possible in 5E usually, etc). All of which makes characters feel weaker than they would be in 5E tabletop. Larian has not implemented 5E faithfully enough, only taking some parts, and changing others, and have misunderstood that careful balance that 5E establishes because of it. I like Larian, and appreciate their games, and truly hope they can use EA to correct these issues.

PrivateRacoon, can't agree with you more. Firesong seems more interested in making it DOS3 than making it BG3.

My suggestion for a limit to Long Rest is remove all the food they have in BG3 and then add a limited number of "rations" You need a ration to do a Long Rest. Now they can control how / when you can long rest but controlling when you get rations. Not perfect but could be a way to limit long rests.

I actually like this idea because it would keep the pressure on you to move quickly. Food is basically just more gear to trade for equipment as it stands now.

> And for you Wi1em. Not every game needs to be enjoyable by everyone. We were told by Wizards of the coast and Larians Studio that we're about the be given the first 5e D&D pc game. Let us have that please.

Right. So how do you balance resting? As other have said here, it's not strictly defined by the ruleset and as it currently is resting has no reason to exist at all (note: resting is not the same as party camp; you can have the camp but no resting mechanic to restore spell slots).

Heheh, I did the first 30 hours of my run without taking a Long Rest at all! Beat all missions up to the underdark just using food to heal my team... lol. By the end I was kind of running on fumes, but for sure I would agree the Long Rest mechanic and the interaction with food needs some more thought.

Proposed Solution:
Perhaps introduce exhaustion after a period of time with no Long Rest? Of course consuming the Coffee item should push the exhaustion time off a bit.

I think what we need is camp combat events to counter rest spamming. If you decide to camp when near enemies you have a very high chance of a random encounter during your rest period. I have a feeling you simply won't get attacked in camp at all in BG3 outside of scripted events. Where you camp... Even though it seems like we always camp in the same spot, should change the liklihood of being ambushed in your sleep. You could then designate whos on watch for which hours (maybe just set that up and it remembers the set up from your previous rest) and how badly you get ambushed is based on their perception check. This is going to either discourage resting or encourage leaving to a safer area to rest. Which... I know some people would complain they're being forced to run back to town after every encounter so they can rest because they use all their spell slots every fight! Which means they should probably consider changing their playstyle to be more conservative with their resources and tactically position better to not put their party members as at risk of injury. Can't please everyone no matter what they do.

There are already story mechanics that encourage long rests, many conversations with companions can only happen if you are at camp. In my mind that is enough.

> Can't please everyone no matter what they do.

Especially when, apparently, the dnd ruleset is open to interpretation on the resting mechanic, it follows that implementing it 100% correctly isn't possible because a 100% correctness doesn't exist by design. Therefore even if you try to implement a 100% dnd game, some dnd people will disagree with the result.

And then, on top of that, you get feedback from the absolute majority of players, which never played tabletop in their life and just expect a decent game, who will be annoyed by the 100%-ish dnd mechanics and, even though they might like the game in general, will be a bit disappointed by the end result.

And this is what I'm very curious about: how will Larian tackle the problem of pleasing the minority that came for dnd vs the majority that came for a fun, modern game, that is by default expected to take into account all the RPG development experience of past decades. The logic for those people is very simple:

1. I love RPGs
2. Larian makes great RPGs
3. Let's watch gameplay on YouTube
4. Wow, graphics, dialogues, fun combat! Take my money!
5. Get annoyed at dnd

Meanwhile, the minority that are dnd purists, and not even all of them, a subset of that minority, will rub their hands and say "Yes, correct dnd, we approve, thank you Larian".

I would love some limit to Long Rest spams, but only on higher difficulties perhaps, something like DOS2 Tactician mode.

As to how to implement it - progressing quests would be one way to do it, at least some impactful ones, like the one in the Druid Grove.

Alternatively, perhaps make taking a long rest drain XP? Whenever you long rest you need to pay Y XP to take it. Effectively limiting progression if you spam. Never de-level a PC though.

On that note, I do feel like more short rests should be allowed, 2-3 per day. Maybe increase the number of short rests the party takes throughout the campaign. For levels 1-4 one short rest is fine, but later warlocks will really fall behind full casters in the amount of spells they can cast.

> As to how to implement it - progressing quests would be one way to do it, at least some impactful ones, like the one in the Druid Grove.

Whatever the solution, it must be crystal clear and predictable. It shouldn't be like you take a rest and then find out you completely destroyed your entire playthrough because taking a rest advanced something beyond a point of recovery. I think quest description should clearly communicate that this is time limited and super urgent and if you rest you'll mess it up.

I generally dislike timers - what it means is that we have to do resource management with an unknown source. Do you clearly communicate timer for each times quest? That's a bit heavy handed. If you don't then that become a mess as the player doesn't know how they could manage their rests - they get encouraged not to rest, and then they don't use abilities, and then game becomes no fun. If resting is limited, then players have an idea on how they are doing.

Some games that did resting well - Darkest Dungeon and Dark Souls. Not sure though, if there is much to learn here without completely altering a structre of a cRPG. In the end, any punishments added to resting, acts as annoyances rather then solutions. And when adding such limitations, one needs to be careful as to not encourage un-fun game styles - just as unlimited rests encourages un-fun gamestyles.

Yes, I personally think that it may be a bad decision to force timers on everyone. Not to mention it would cost dev team time and resources to implement.

That said, I would appreciate if there was a timer option, either on high difficulties, or a toggle (similar to DOS2 Honour mode) that would be great.

How to communicate the timer - that is difficult. The easiest way would be through the log, but as you mentioned it may be a tad heavy handed

The more I read and think about it, the more I become convinced that figuring out short and long rests is going to be the hardest aspect of this game for Larian, and that once they settle on a solution a bunch of other things will fall into place.

The issue with rests is that the game is very much balanced around them. Long rests dictate how frequently numerous casters like wizards and clerics can use their spells, while short rests dictate how often other classes like warlocks can use their abilities. So you can't just remove rests without fundamentally altering the system to the point where it barely if at all resembles 5e. At the same time, rests are the mechanic that most relies on a living, human DM to make them work right. A DM knows how many encounters they want the party to run into in a session, they knows how difficult they want the party to find things, and they can adjudicate when it does and doesn't make sense to take rests. But a computer program can't do that, especially not with the way encounters are handled in this game.

What exactly is open to interpretation about long rests? You need to sleep 8 hours (or 4 for elves) and can only do it once per day. You can do some minor things as part of that rest that dont need to be sleep but thats very time (and action) limited. The limited time that can be something different allows you to alternate people sleeping to keep watch the entire night or do some roleplaying while still counting it as part of your rest. It also allows a party to prevent night time ambushes and adds story and tension moments.

There isent exactly much wiggle room for interpretation though. What is needed for a long rest is pretty clear.