Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback [Discussion] Resting mechanics

So right now the mechanics behind resting/food are pretty barebones.
What improvements do you suggest to make resting a useful (at least not frustrating mechanic).

What we have at the moment:

• one short rest for each long rest
• no limitations on how often you can use it
• you can eat food whenever (even during combat)
• long rests advance the story

What suggestions will be valuable for Larian (for how they approach the game design on a broader scale imo):

• Mechanics should be based on Pen&Paper rules (if it's not possible to copy P&P it should be at least be recognizeable/inspired by it)
• Mechanics shouldn't not feel frustrating/pointless/laborious just for the sake of staying true to P&P and be fitting for a video game (alot of wiggle room for higher difficulties imo)

Some general proposals by me:

• increase short rests to 2 or 3 before you can use a long rest so short rest based classes are not at a disadvantage
• Resting mechanics should feel rewarding (Story/health/spell slot regen) on lower difficulty levels but also have some depth/possible punishment to it on higher difficulty
• Resting mechanics can be used really well to adjust difficulty since resource management is such an integral part of the game
• Access to food consumption: E.g. 0-Always, 1-Out of Combat, 2-Only during Rests, 4-No HP Regen if no food is consumed during rests, 4-Give Exhaustion mechanic if you dont eat/drink during rests

Somehow control how often long rest/short rest cycles can be used (Here are some possibilities i thought of but maybe there are more and better options?):

Random Encounters:

• Don't like it since it's hard to balance and can be abuseable to farm loot/exp
• It's only game over with extra steps. You can come in a situation where you are to weak to rest since you can't beat the encounters and that's why you want to rest in the first place to be able to beat some encounter

Mile Stones:

• You get access to a new cycle of short/long rest at certain Mile Stones
• May also be hard to balance if you're unlucky and hit a lot of milestones and suddenly you have a shortage of rests

Timer:

• You are on a timer and resting let's the clock tick
• Mechanically the best solution imo but it doesn't feel good to a lot of people
• Maybe you can introduce the timer mechanic in a way so it doesn't feel like you are on a timer?

Cooldown:

• Similar to Mile Stones but more flexible
• Cooldown to rest cycles regarding some ingame time, number of encounters, game progress?

Buffer system:

• You can rest whenever you want but there is a limit so you ahve to plan how you spread otu your rests
• You could link it to food so you can only rest with food and the amount of food limits how often you can rest in the game (that way you could control the resting system better)

This is similar to another thread on the subject here: https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=701456&nt=2&page=1

My idea for better balancing long rests, copied from that thread is:

• Three short rests per long rest. At the very least there should be no fewer than two.
• A Fatigue meter is put into the game - usually hidden from the player.
• Fatigue is increased by distance traveled and from any source of healing except Short Rests.
• Distance traveled is the number of steps taken, divided by the number of active party members - basically attempting to average it out if you have one person scout ahead a lot.
• Distance traveled does not count movement in combat.
• Healing is defined as recovering hit points - not temporary hit points. Healing which overflows your maximum does not count towards Fatigue.
• You are not permitted to take a long rest until Fatigue passes a certain point. At that point, the fatigue meter becomes visible.
• Once the fatigue meter reaches the end, the characters receive a point of Exhaustion. If this happens during combat, the status doesn't apply until combat has ended.
• Exhaustion works mostly the same as it does in 5e.
• Continuing to ignore Fatigue will increase the Fatigue meter until an additional point of exhaustion is added.
• You automatically return to camp upon accumulating 5 Exhaustion points and are out of combat and dialogue.
• A long rest will remove all exhaustion points. (By the rules, it's just one, but this is better for the videogame adaptation).

Increasing Fatigue through distance traveled ensures that there is no soft-lock for lack of resources, or with a "random encounter" when you're already tapped out. Increasing Fatigue through Healing encourages several encounters before taking a long rest. Prohibiting long rests without sufficient Fatigue prevents spamming long rests before every combat.

Difficulty levels can perhaps adjust the amount of time needed before a long rest is permitted.

I think a cool down on long rests with 2 or 3 short rests between would be easiest to implement. Also - limiting fast travel to and from the camp would help. The story really does unfold quite a bit at the camp, so perhaps that should be spread up if less rests are allowed?

I believe it's designed the way it is (allowing frequent rests) because a lot of the plot progression is tied to the camp.

That's why there's only one short rest and the combat's on the more difficult side. It's all structured to encourage you to go to camp frequently. That in turn moves a lot of these plot elements forward.

We'll have even more party members in the final game, so they'll want us to juggle our team around frequently (and moving their plots forward in camp) before we settle on our final 3 teammates.

The issue with that is that it weakens characters with short rest mechanics and strengthen casters.

They could increase the number of dialogues which can trigger in camp from 1 to 3 or 4 if they want the plot progression to be faster

It doesn't weaken characters with SHM, but it does strengthen full casters, which is why combat is on the difficult side.

That could help somewhat, but only to a certain degree. Certain triggers don't happen until specific characters come across specific areas/events in the game. With more characters, the more this will happen. And they'll want to shake up the party composition regularly as you only have one Act to advance their plots and figure out who to take. The longer you spend outside of camp, the more inertia takes over. The fewer the changeups, the fewer the plots that will advance.

unlimited long rests need to be addressed, tabletop is balanced around limited resources and as BG3 is now, you have full resources for every fight.

My suggesting is you need a ration to do a long rest and reward rations at various points in the story.

Not perfect but should be easy to add and lets Larian have some control over the number of long rests we are getting.

I do agree that more short rests are needed between long rests.

There also the issue that the mindworm story seems to only progress on long rests, that may not be a good design.

Yes, but it's still optional. The design allows players of different skill levels to make their way through some of the longer side quests, essentially choosing their own level of challenge in how often they choose the long rest.

Maybe it will be gated off somehow at the highest difficulty setting, once that's in the game? Right now though, the player can set exactly how difficult each dungeon or similar encounter can be. It makes the game more approachable for newbies. I know that might make hardcore D&D players upset, but Larian is trying to sell to a wide audience here. At least you're not forced to long rest on some schedule. You can choose to play it more hardcore if you want.



That's a potential problem, yes. It might be that the story progress isn't just based on number of long rests, but maybe also player XP progression?

Classes built around short rest mechanics, like fighters and warlocks, will not get a chance to shine unless there are 2-4 short rests per long rest and the long rest mechanic based folks, like wizards and clerics, have no reason to think much about managing their resources with only one, or no short rests before a long rest. These kind of things are balanced by the DM in a DnD 5e live game, on the fly, with regard to tension and pacing. This is, obviously, a difficult thing in a CRPG and it may be that Larian's solution of one short rest is what they believe is a good balance, alongside the other changes they have made (like food is healing). In my opinion, if there must be a fixed number of short rests, 2 is that number.

OP's assessment and ideas all seem sound as do some of the suggestions so far and I hope that the Larian Devs find it food for thought.