Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Resting system - The Final Solution

At 10th level, a Warlock has just 2 spell slots. A Wizard has 4+3+3+3+2 = 15 total spell slots. If you allow infinite long rests, there is absolutely zero balance here.

100% this! Don't give everybody and their brother a full night's camp supplies. Don't have so much food around that it becomes trivial to loot more than you'll ever use. (Obviously, I hope, reduce the number of containers to waste time looting, while you're at it).

The current camp system is really not that bad, but would be improved by food/camping supplies being valuable, not the year's worth of potatoes, sausage, and (likely rotting) fish I'm schlepping around. Maybe give some of this food expirations - fish only stay edible for 20 turns, fresh meat for 25, and so on.

I've got the best solution of all. Just throw out the whole rest system period. Yeah. See. Perfect. After every fight, everybody heals to full and recovers spell slots to full because without limits and restrictions, why bother with the annoyance of clicking end day and going to camp. Just auto heal and spell slot recovery every time and do away with long and short rests...

And food
And potions, because why would you need them at all
And spell slots, because you will probably not expend them all during a single battle
And camp dialogues
And mini camps and the main camp
And fatigue or special conditions that require a long rest to remove
And spells that heal special conditions
Etc. Etc. Etc.
And any kind of normal system of fighting a bunch of weaker minions and the a boss because every battle will need to be extreme boss battles to be fun because once you can fireball the crap out of enemies every battle what fun will the game be, so get rid of every enemy that isn't totally insane

Because when you start to cut restrictions, the game starts to completely unravel. You MUST restrict rests. Period. If you don't, everything falls apart.

Why does no one trust the experienced D&Ders. I've played the game for a long time. You can't just let players spam rests.

But isn't that a convention of the genre? I don't know any game I've played where there was something that should be catastrophically urgent that also couldn't wait for sidequests and whatnot. I don't know any game (and I'm certainly open to being wrong) where taking your time to rest or do sidequests results in catastrophe from the main plot.

I actually thought the knowledge we eventually get about how different our situation is from those more typically-afflicted is a really clever way to handle this (though granted this doesn't apply to the druid/tief situation).

But not having forever to deal with an urgent disaster? How do you make a game that enforces that without pissing off a huge, huge proportion of people?

thank you! I've always felt like a bit of a weirdo for enjoying meal planning for the party

The least complicated rest system would have been to have a day/night system. Long rest would be once in a 24 hour cycle and short rests would be whatever, maybe more or less depending on difficulty setting.

They need to separate companion conversations from resting. No matter what system they use for it, we are pretty much forced to be lazy bums to progress these conversations.



I feel this would be yet another way to needlessly complicate things but that is not your fault, that is Larian's for expecting everyone to cheese things and "balancing" around that.


I don't like this, sorry. It penalizes different playstyles. My all ranged party is barely going to take any damage but there is a really good chance that all my spell slots are going to be used in order to prevent the damage. In order to rest you are pretty much forcing me to use one or two characters as bait so they take damage, leading to using more spell slots for damage and less for crowd control and more potions being used to keep the bait alive. Now the bait may as well be a fighter since they have a better chance at survival and if I don't want to use all my potions then now I am stuck bringing a cleric who has to be careful to barely heal the bait. I suppose if I want to play my original party I can have some of them walk into a blade barrier or something so we can rest, but that is immersion breaking.

The only character whose approval grows that high is Gale. The second character is Shadowheart, but it's not even 50% as easy as in the case of Gale. A large loss of approval causes the player to be locked into the companion story that is a large part of the game.
Besides, I don't like to be rushed, especially in a situation where rushing will end up dying quickly.
Let's say the Lae'zel quest. There is no chance that a character below level 4 has any chance to patrol without cheese, and this is just the normal difficulty level. In the full game, playing very hard (or whatever it will be called), there is no option that you will be able to beat this fight without level 5. Most likely, in the full game, you won't be able to reach level 5 before clearing most of the map on the surface.
I don't like situations when the game is punishing me because the fight went wrong because this group of half-dead goblins massacred my character in one turn and I was forced to rest once too much.

I think we both have valid points, just different perspectives on the same root issue. But I believe this is what JandK was referrig to when he said the root issue (Resting at Camp) is at odds with itself. You seem focused on the game balancing aspect of the issue and I am more focused on the content exposure aspect. You mentioned at one point, who cares if people miss content... it is a non-linear game, that is what secondary play throughs are for. I would argue who cares if people spam their long rests, that is what the difficulty slider is for. So if we are both wrong, then maybe things are fine they way they are.

I appreciate the amount of effort you put into this as well. I would like to point out that when it comes to game balance, there are a number of large holes that need to be patched. I mean... how do you think I am able to play through most of the campaign without a single Long Rest? Don't need a lot of rest when every NPC has all the best gear, money, stolen scrolls and potions they can carry. I'm just saying, if the goal is game balance, Long Rests would not be my primary target.

I think your suggestion is pretty big budget. I too would love some elaborate improvements bordering on overhauls. Lord knows I posted my share of suggestions last year when I felt there was still enough development time left to make big changes. But at this point, a year into EA, I don't expect them to realistically consider any big-budget suggestion. Even my own post, my 2nd and 3rd bullets I wrote knowing very well it was more or less wishful thinking. In this thread, polliwagwhirl's suggestion to simply update the config to limit supply drops is probably the most likely suggestion made that might actually be considered. (Though secretly I hope it isn't as it is at odds with my goals )

But at least if Merchants carry supplies, I can still steal all I need....

Open the clock, choose the hour you want, click "wait", look time passing fast, then do what you want.

A simple cheat that allow players to do what they want even if the system is now balanced arround 1 long rest / day.

I never argued for a large loss of approval. Even a single point of approval loss would be sufficient, simply because the display message "Lae'zel disapproves" would motivate players to push on. Also, in my initial post I did suggest allowing a persuasion check to reduce/negate that approval loss. Again, simply because the fact that the message/conversation would be brought up is enough of a disincentive to frequent long resting.

If you don't like to be rushed, that's fine. But that's a separate issue from things like: "the system will be simple to soft lock," and/or "the mechanical consequence is too punitive." I'm not arguing that the game should require you to go through 10+ fights before you're able to long rest. But 2 or 3? Yeah that's fine; that's the lower limit of expected battles per long rest in 5e. And given the prevalence of scrolls, the healing from short rests, and the class abilities that recharge on short rest, it will be extremely unlikely to reach a scenario where you literally cannot continue adventuring without long resting in such a time frame. And even if you do reach that scenario, you can rest anyway with a (possible) slight approval loss! And/or lower the difficulty level if you want (another option is that rest limits are only turned on for "hardcore/realism" difficulty modes.)

This implementation could also be combined with other metrics: i.e., if the game detects total HP across the party to be too low (i.e., exactly the example you propose above) then it could add a dialogue line to Lae'zel "You make a good point Tav; a smart warrior knows when to rest for the next fight," and reduce/negate the approval loss if you force a long rest.

Only at this point you can do it now, although it is doubtful whether the game will allow it on higher difficulty levels where the enemies will be much stronger. Even now, there are fights that can easily turn into difficult fights, especially when the character is not rested.
I would rather not expect that playing at the highest level will allow you to play more than 1-2 fights per rest, especially since there are not many ways to recover except for a short rest, unless you play specific class combinations.
You won't get far with cantrips alone.
Reducing approval doesn't make much sense then.

Then there's this. Since you've already indicated that your problem with the current rest system is that it can be spammed, that tells me how much your opinion on the matter should be considered: Not at all. How Joe Casual chooses to play the game is, quite frankly, none of your business, unless they're playing in your MP instance of the game. In a SP environment, it has no bearing on what you're doing. You do want to control how they play, however. I've said this in another thread on the matter, but if I didn't read the forums, I wouldn't know there's an issue with the rest system, which tells me that there isn't one. Obvious flaws/bugs/exploits don't require reading the forums to know about them, they can be encountered naturally by playing the game. I didn't eat food to heal up in combat, but that "issue" was "fixed". Another thing that I wouldn't know about because I didn't try to do it, except that I read about it on the forums. I missed a lot of character development because I didn't take enough LRs to get it. That is a bigger issue than "someone might rest too much for my liking in the SP game that they also bought".

You see, I don't know if tadpole dreams are tied to specific story beats, or to a certain number of LRs, because I didn't get all of them. That needs to be fixed. I missed out on a lot of comp dialog, because I didn't take enough LRs. Nowhere does this imply that I should get them all, in spite of what your strawman tries to imply, but I should have gotten more than I did. That needs to be fixed. How much Joe Casual is resting in their SP campaign? None of my business, as it doesn't affect what is or isn't happening in my SP campaign. What I do need to get are the crucial elements to both comp and personal stories. Your "final solution" does nothing to address my problem with LRs, in that if I don't take enough of them, I'll be missing out on those elements, and if I'm not doing everything there is to do in Act 1, I won't accumulate enough "rest points" to get them, and so, your "final solution" actually makes the game worse, instead of "fixing" anything except your need to control what another player may be doing in their SP campaign.

TL;DR? Your little system makes the problems that I'm having with the rest system worse, instead of addressing them, and therefore brings nothing of value to the conversation. I already don't "abuse" the LR system, so making it harder to abuse doesn't do anything for me but make getting the things I should be able to get harder to get. So, from where I'm sitting, it's not even a band-aid, let alone a "final solution"...

Because some of us have also played DnD? I stopped at 4e, but played from the original pamphlets to then. My dice are sitting in their little box, collecting dust now. Unsurprisingly, if I didn't read the forums, I wouldn't know there was an issue with the rest system. The problem I have with threads like this is that I already restrict my LRs. I've been doing it since I started playing. Why aren't you doing it? If you're going to tell me that you do, then I'm "Pushing X to doubt". Because the alternative is that you're more worried about controlling what Joe Casual is doing, than what you're doing to prevent "everything falls apart". Surely nobody is self important enough to believe that their opinion on a SP game is what should dictate what everyone else does, right?

In my system, food can be kept as an additional condition, especially since it is so plentiful and non-restrictive. It can add an extra element of role-playing to it.

You know, my motivation for writing this thread was to address the fact that the fundamental D&D concepts of an adventuring day and rest are currently not implemented at all in the game. Spamming rest is not an implementation of D&D rules. It's not even an interpretation of them, it's blatantly ignoring rules. And it's not just me who thinks Larian's rest system sucks, apparently Larian thinks so too, otherwise, they wouldn't have made a futile attempt at making it suck less by adding food requirements. So, the point was to fix a mechanical issue.

What you seem to be hung up on is companion-related content. It is something that hasn't even crossed my mind when writing this. But since that seems like a big problem for people, it is shocking to see the unbelievable lack of imagination, since this "problem" is beyond banal to solve. And the solution is painfully obvious - disentangle companion interaction with the need to sleep. But no, you will not argue for a common-sense solution, you are arguing that we should keep literally the most fundamental concept of D&D, an adventuring day, completely broken so that you can have all the companion interaction in the stupid way Larian has intended you to - before sleeping.

Just delete your account and go away.

Agree! I wouldn’t want to lose companion approval for resting or to have quests fail or have worse outcomes.

- long/short rest are a core mechanic of DnD.
- in DnD, it's based on time. Everything is balanced arround 1 LR/day.
- Without resting restrictions, the spellslot system and the class balance is broken or does not make sense.
- in a video game, players should not be stucked because they cannot rest when they have to.
- in BG3, companions scenes trigger when you long rest.
- in BG3, players shouldn't have to spam long rest to trigger all companion scenes.

These are facts everyone should have in mind when making or answering suggestions about the mechanic.

The resting system in BG3 is a problem but it's not because some players can spam it.

It's because "click the button when you want" is the only thing the game offers... Which is in total contradiction with the rules the game uses.

Not a great system. It is a singleplayer game and people should play it the way they want. The need to consume food is fine, the more important thing was removing the direct heal effects from the food items.

Reads as: "but my idea is being challenged, and I can't handle it".

Check it out, you're concerned with "fixing a game mechanic", and yet, want to cry when I point to other mechanics that are broken, that are directly tied to the mechanic you want to "fix", with no apparent solutions to the things that are already broken, and yet, want to claim "final solution".

So, how, exactly, is "pressure them to take a long rest for comp/tadpole content" going to work when they don't have your 100 rest points? This was your stated solution to a problem that I pointed out with it, and yet, the closest thing I've gotten to a response is "delete your account and go away"? So, despite "final solution", it's not even solving issues that are, despite how much resentment you have, tied directly to the system. You're more concerned about what other players might be doing, than any real problems with the game. What other motivations would there be for dismissing inherent issues with your system with things like "delete your account and go away"?

So instead of trying to solve these issues, you resort to this. How is it going to address my issues with the current system? How are you going to "pressure" me to take a long rest, if I don't have 100 rest points to take it? Instead of strawman arguments, or straight out attacking me with "delete your account and go away", how about you actually present some real answers to flaws in your "final solution"? I understand that this is a challenging issue for people that don't like having their "brilliance" called into question, but none of this provides any solutions to the inherent problems in your "system".

I can take criticism, you're just not providing any. You're crying about an issue that is only related to resting by Larian's stupid design, not because it needs to be. And since apparently you can't read:



Go back to the kiddy table.