Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback [Patch 5 feedback] New rest mechanism ("food for long rests")

Just a thought.... but these requirements for long rest may affect what kind of classes folks have in the party. Don't need long rests as a thief, or warlock (the two classes I enjoy most in EA anyway) so can use potions and scrolls instead of clerics and mages. This saves me having to deal with Shadowheart (after I steal her box), and Gale (and his annoying need to eat magic items). And just run the party with two Thieves (make Astarian a caster thief), a Warlock, and a Fighter. Though optimally if I could, I would run a 3 thief party with one warlock (as bait) and skip the fighter altogether.

Conversely, the LACK of restrictions for long rests also affected what classes people will have in the party. What mechanical benefit is there to play a Warlock with their limited spell slots and spell selection when a Wizard gets a ton more spells to choose from and more slots to use?

So balance is needed.
Too easy to find food or too cheap to buy supplies and it’s a meaningless mechanic which means people will still long rest adnauseum. Too strict and yeah, watch everyone take elves and classes in order not to be impacted by it.

It anyway, let’s see how it feels after the patch drops.

Yop. The thing is...balance is really not that required in PVE. Not trolling here but neither BG2 or DOS2 were " balanced" in terms of late game mechanics or certain spells /technics you could use early ( not talking about obvious exploits etc ).

Personally I like my PVE games to at least pretend they are balancing anything so I can feel so smart by outplaying their " balancing" attempts. So this resting system thing they add here is a really nice touch

Ultimately if the game was 100% balanced in terms of AI and player possibility the player would loose each time he makes a mistake / take a lot of damage/ loose a character.
If that happens then the only possible meta is to avoid taking damage. By nuking each encounter to preserve those precious resting ressources.

It kinda creates a vicious circle.

We can go in the details once the new patch is actually out but for now I just want to highlight in terms of PVE you balance things out to diminish the power gap between classes/skills so using different combos /spells actually makes sense. Poor wyll is a good example here

@Aazo dSaying resting will delete the mage meta in D&D is an abomination please do not say that out loud ever again.

Classes in D&D are ALREADY balanced to have different degrees of maintenance/power outburst. Most of the "low maintenance classes" (like rogue, fighter, warlock, etc) that benefit just marginally from having to take long rests pay the price of that convenience by not being able to unleash the same amount of "mayhem" offered by classes like mages, who are all about their spell slots.

One of the problems many had with the unlimited long rests was precisely that it was an implicit buff for certain classes, making other less appealing in comparison.

Finally we'll have a reason to ignore Raphael's pompous speech in the House of Hope and fill our plates

That was always my default course of action, for the record.

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Tosser."

Same!
Now it's going to be even more in-character for our starving party lol

Yeah balance is perhaps not quite the right word, because you don't want a mechanic here that is so finely tuned that you're calculating the optimal path. More that there should be just enough hindrance so that instead of long resting after every encounter you are made to think a bit more about pushing the exploration with your current remaining spell slots etc... and I do think that is the aim here, to just make you re-think pressing that long rest button and that's all it needs to do right?

This, exactly. The food supplies don't have to be super-scarce, it only has to make people less willing to long rest after every fight.

I don't know how the "you get some spell slots back for a shallow rest" mechanic works, but I suspect that you won't be able to repeatedly shallow rest to be fully restored, it'll likely only restore you to a certain amount and if you are at that amount or higher, you don't gain anything.

Hopefully, they will include a toggle in the options to turn the requirements off. That way everyone can play as they like!

Thinking about it, I suspect that at least part of the purpose of a Shallow Rest will be to allow you to trigger camp events and things that require sleeping to do. I'm guessing that there may be an option to Shallow Rest even if we have enough resources for a full rest if we want to see camp scenes without wasting food.

Worse for worse if you like cheating your way into quick and dirty convenience, you will probably be able to use some trainer or mod.

As far as the core game is designed to be decent and have proper limitations in place, everything optional aside from that is fair game.

Exactly. This. I don't think anyone would disagree on this one.

+1 ... but i doubt that.

By hook or by crook! I would rather have it as an option in the game, though. I am also going to see if goodberries work!

Why do you doubt it? Or do you mean just for this patch?

I don’t think this is something you set as an option, either it works and it’s a game mechanic, or it doesn’t ant they’ll remove it or change it before launch.

Given the penchant for missing though, I could see this being a prime candidate for changes and tweaks by the modders and assuming the mechanic works fine, I would be ok with that.

But let’s see how it plays out first…

Its quite simple really ...
Most companies tend to provide more or less ballanced experience in their games ... therefore its reasonable to expect larian to "ballance" the game around system they would use in the end ... no matter wich that would be ...

But if you try to include one that would give player aproximately 20(?) Long rests per Act ... and another that will give him unlimited Long rests ... im kinda affraid that the difference here is too big to include it to same system.
Therefore as Tuco said, i would bet my money for mod or trainer.

While personally I am all up for this particular addition (because it makes resting make at least a bit of sense from the balancing perspective, and no, I am not in the "singleplayer games should not bother with balance" camp, because what's even the point of adhering to a ruleset or devising mechanics, then), it's really interesting (and a bit tragic, frankly) seeing how Larian can't appease everyone no matter what they do. Either it's the hardcore 5e purists who are unhappy that everything isn't accurate to the letter (no adaptation, including the holier-than-thou Solasta, has ever been 100% precise) or the Biowarites complaining that the game becomes too complicated and has unnecessary micromanagement.

The most amusing thing is that this new system is incredibly simple and straightforward compared to, say, Kingmaker where you, ahem:
- picked what to cook so that you get meal bonuses, requiring you to keep an eye on rarer ingredients;
- assigned characters to hunting, guarding, cooking duties according to their skills;
- had to pick one of the companions' camping abilities that best suited the situation (AKA Tristian for healing, Jubilost for shorter camping time, and everyone else sucks in comparison, but it's there);
- there was a chance of a random encounter which would potentially involve some of your characters still sleeping or having to fight unarmored because you can't sleep in full plate, and they accounted for that;

And yet there are complaints that having to pick up random food (aren't most players compulsively looting everything as it is?) and pick what to eat is too much micromanagement. Larian might as well just not listen to feedback at this rate, honestly.

Hm i pretty much stopped playing Kingmaker because of that over complicated camping mechanism.
So hopefully this system will be more forgiving and easier to manage.
It might be ok if i need a little bit of food.. hoping the patch releases soon so i can see.
honestly there is just a small step between funny system and micromanagement hell in that regard.