Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Larian! Please stop punishing good roleplaying

OK. I stand corrected. If this comment had been posted in the beginning, I'd have accepted that. It's 5e rules. I don't recall reading that before, so that's my bad that I didn't catch the "A character can't benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period" line. I know in other D&D video games a long rest has been able to be performed more than once a day, and I know some play D&D that way, so maybe it didn't register for me. Either way, doesn't matter. You've pointed out the rules, and yes, it makes sense that if Long Rest is pretty much you sleeping at the end of a day, then fine. I'm good with that. 1 Long Rest a day then. Thank you for pointing it out to me.

This said, if Long Rest must equal End Day, meaning I adventure a bit, maybe do 2 short rests (A Short Rest is a period of downtime, at least 1 hour long, during which a character does nothing more strenuous than eating, drinking, reading, and tending to wounds.), then this only escalates the point I'm trying to make for this entire post. Everyone keeps saying it makes no sense from a story perspective that you should be in a hurry and not Long Rest a lot. However, if every Long Rest is to be 1 Day coming to an end, I should not be Long Resting if at all possible according to the storyline. Why? These factors tell me, the player, not to Long Rest if at all possible, ESPECIALLY if a Long Rest is the end of a day:

1. I have a tadpole in my head that is a foreign object that is a creepy, nasty, ugly, scary thing. At the beginning, especially, I am told multiple times, and may even watch it happen to someone if I trigger the scene, that this tadpole is going to turn me grotesquely into a Mind Flayer in a very, very painful way. Even later, when I am told it is dormant, there is still the looming threat that any day now I might see symptoms. And then, to top it all off, I am told that this thing is special and that the Mind Flayers and the Absolute have special plans for me and my companions. AND THEN, to top it all off, Raphael shows up wanting to likely get his hands on the dumb thing. He tells me to go ahead and shop around, but eventually your time will come when you will come running to him begging for him to save you. So why would I want to Long Rest unless it was absolutely necessary?

2. After reaching the Druid's Grove, I learn that goblins now know where the Grove is. They could attack again at ANY moment. ANY moment. The longer I take killing the gobbo leaders, the better the chances that the gobbos are going to send a HUGE force to slaughter everyone, possibly including me if I'm in the grove at the time. All the lives in the grove depend on me. So unless I don't care about the tieflings and druids, why would I want to Long Rest unless it was absolutely necessary?

3. The druids are performing a ritual to seal off the grove. It is going to be completed in a few days. The more I Long Rest, the sooner the day will come when the druids will finish the ritual. If that happens, I can't ever buy or sell things in the Grove AND if I care, all the tieflings are going to die either by gnolls on the road or gobbos wiping them out. So why would I want to Long Rest unless it was absolutely necessary? Even if it is just because I would no longer have access to resources and supplies, it would still be important to me to save the Grove if I can.

4. I have companions urging me to complete certain tasks in a timely fashion. Every time I talk to Lae'zel she's nagging at me to stop dawdling and get my butt moving to the creche because it's our only hope for a cure. Shadowheart tells me numerous times that we need to find a healer and it should be our top priority. Gale does too. Astarion as well. "We need to learn to control these things," he urges us. Wyll wants us to get our butts moving to kill the gobbos before it's too late, so that we can save the tieflings he cares about so much. So why would I want to Long Rest unless it was absolutely necessary? If I take too long, shouldn't my companions get fed up with me and leave?

All this said, I escape the nautiloid, land on a beach at the beginning of Day 1. I meet Shadowheart and kill devourers. 5 minutes, maybe 10, of actual adventuring. I'm told to Long Rest. I can see it needing to be there as a Tutorial feature to tell players that if they need to Long Rest it's there. They may have not done so well against the devourers. So it is a good thing to have it there at that time.

However, I shouldn't HAVE to Long Rest there if I don't need to. If I have full health and spell slots or whatever, why Long Rest when I just started my day and have only been maybe adventuring for 10 minutes? By saying I shouldn't HAVE to, I mean that I shouldn't have to Long Rest in order to trigger certain dialogues. Every time I play, if I don't End Day at that point or some time prior to fighting Marli and Barton in the ruins, I miss out on Gale's Mirror Image dialogue. I don't know how others have triggered it if they don't do a Long Rest before Marli and Barton, but I seem to never trigger it unless I do End Day prior to the ruins. I either get the Mirror Image dialogue or Go to Hell. Never both. So I am punished for not Long Resting after, at the most, 20 minutes of barely doing anything but run around and meet people. I have a tadpole in my head, gonna turn me to a Mind Flayer, but I'm going to adventure 20 minutes and rest 23 hours? Makes no sense unless I am low on health and spell slots. Shadowheart even tells you, if you rest at that point, that she's not sure it's a good idea. So especially if I agree with her that it wasn't a good idea, I shouldn't need to rest in order to experience certain dialogue options at that point in the game.

It also doesn't make sense at all if I DID Long Rest at that point, that my characters would then say, "Gosh. I'd better see a bedroll in my near future," after beating Marli in the ruins. I mean. How much sleep and rest do my characters need? If I Long Rested just after beating the devourers, spent maybe another 15 minutes adventuring, my characters shouldn't be saying they're tired already. I just woke up from spending like 23 and a half hours doing nothing, sleeping 8 hours of that amount of time. So why after I defeat the guy at the door and Marli are my characters suddenly needing to Long Rest again? Especially if I beat them using stealth so that they don't even scratch me, it makes no sense to Long Rest at that point.

So why are they tired? The answer is only because another dialogue scene needs a triggering. That's dumb roleplaying. I should not be tired after barely doing anything. However, if I press on to a logical resting zone, like the Druid's Grove after I've talked to Nettie and done a bunch of stuff in the Grove, then I miss out on another dialogue scene and character development. AND, if you play at all like I do, even in my first playthrough, you can make it to the Druid's Grove without Long Resting at all or maybe just once. So what do you get if you don't Long Rest until after you meet Nettie? You miss out on character development. No conversations with Gale or Astarion or Shadowheart because you didn't adventure 30 minutes and take the rest of the day off and sleep 8 hours.

That's what I mean by the game punishing good roleplaying. Because I don't rest so often, because I don't need to, I miss out on good stuff that the creators developed but I don't get to see because I'm naturally trying to NOT Long Rest as much as possible because that's what the story is telling me to do. It's a complete contradiction from the story to rest that often. And then, later in the game, again, it is a complete contradiction to Long Rest often because of the 4 items I mentioned above.

So ALL I am suggesting is that Larian do the following:

1. Untie the dialogues from End Day so that I can get my character development without having to End Day when it is clearly not necessary for my characters to End a Day. If I have full health and spell slots and I feel I don't need to End Day, don't make me do so just so I can see all the dialogues and interact with the characters. Some dialogues require camp and End Day. I get that. Let me trigger them at some point. Does Gale's Mirror Image scene and Go to Hell have to be before Nettie and the Grove? Can't they still be triggered at some point? I'm still going to long rest. They could be triggered during later long rests. Or you could trigger multiple dialogues all in one night. I get to the Grove and meet Nettie without resting. I rest. Gale's Mirror Image dialogue is triggered. I talk to Shadowheart and get her "I'm not sure this is a good idea" speech. I talk to Astarion and get his beginning dialogues. I notice Gale has another exclamation mark over his head. I talk to him again and trigger the Go to Hell dialogue. I conclude by going to sleep and trigger Raphael's. Sure, it's a lot of dialogue all at once, but I did it to myself by not resting before then. At least I get to experience all the dialogue and character development.

2. Actually follow through with the story. If you tell me that within days goblins might attack, then make the goblins attack within days. Set a time limit. If they are going to attack within say 7 days from the time you enter the Grove, then after 7 Long Rests the goblins attack the Druid Camp. Same with the Druids and their ritual and Lae'zel being in your party and Wyll, etc. If you don't do things in a reasonable, timely fashion, it makes sense from a story perspective for things to happen because you weren't doing what you were told you should be doing. I'm not suggesting an unreasonable or difficult to meet time frame. Give the players time to still explore the whole map and have fun with it. I'm just saying it would put a limit on the number of times people use Long Rest so that they don't use it so much that it makes all the items you created practically worthless. Plus, it adds more possible endings to different scenarios and more flavor and choices to your gameplay. It adds more strategy too.

3. Add better rewards for those who do finish quests in a timely fashion, meaning with only using a certain number of Long Rests. Again, if I beat the hag without Long Resting, something I've never been able to do myself without complete and total luck, shoving her into a bottomless pit, I should get better gear and gold than someone who fights the Red Caps, Long Rests, fights the Adventurers, Long Rests, and then fights the hag. Why is she even waiting around for you to come get her at that point? Again, I think it would make more sense to do what one other player suggested and have Mayrina shipped off to another hag in Baldur's by that point. You can still fight the hag, but it's too late to save Mayrina if you don't rescue her quick enough.

So, again, the whole point of the thread is: Reward good playing.

Maybe "Punish bad role playing" is what is making people upset. If that's upsetting people, let me reword it. I'm sorry to offend. I don't mean to make it sound like people suck or something at the game. This is not a "Get Gud" post. That's not the point. I've certainly had times when I've totally done poorly at boss fights and so forth as well. The spider queen the first time I played it... I did SO bad. So, I'm not meaning to criticize people's gaming.

My point is to reward BETTER roleplaying. If someone who is better than me can beat the entire hag lair without Long Resting even once, that person should get some sort of really awesome magic item. If you beat it with only 1 Long Rest just before facing her, then you get some cool stuff but not as many cool things. The hag cleared out a good portion of her magic items before you arrived because you took so long. That's what she was doing while you rested. If you beat her after needing 2 or more Long Rests, you get stuff, but the cool stuff isn't there anymore. Thus, rewarding people for doing better.

So the next time I play through the game, when I do better at it than the previous time, I might get even cooler items and better scenario results. Maybe the first time I play the game, I fail to kill the gobbo leaders and the grove is attacked. The next time, I prioritize better and at least dethrone Kahga. The Grove is still attacked but the druids help defend, making the fight easier. The third time, I beat the gobbo leaders and entirely save the grove without loss of life. Everyone is so happy that they give me better gear to equip me for my upcoming new questline.

Thus making the game more rewarding to play through each time. The better I get, the better results I get from a story perspective, dialogue and items.