Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Mega-threads and Guides Camping and resting.

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It depends on what resources you're talking about. TT does not force you to micromanage tons and tons of useless junk like forks and spoons and knives and plates. It also does not force you to micromanage food. Usually you might buy a week's worth of rations, which you would mark down as 7 rations. The DM would then say you have traveled for 7 days. You might need to think about getting more food. That would be about the gist of your item resource management.

If we're talking about spell slot management, that is where D&D forces a player to concern themselves with resource management. Spell slots limit the spellcaster so that they aren't hurling massive damage spells every combat and thus making other classes practically worthless.

This is where resting comes into play. If a spellcaster can long rest after every battle, then spell slot management is really pointless. That's why we are trying to work out some sort of camping solution where resting is at least limited in some fashion so that spellcasters can't just replenish their spells constantly.

5e Rules:

"A Long Rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps or performs light activity: reading, talking, eating, or standing watch for no more than 2 hours. If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity—at least 1 hour of walking, Fighting, casting Spells, or similar Adventuring activity—the Characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it."

Since no actual clock is in this game, allowing an interruption while resting could be an issue for gameplay. You rest. Random Encounter. Rest needs to start again, at least 8 hours. Besides this, I'm still afraid Larian won't do random encounters well. So I'm thinking forget it.

5e Rules:

"At the end of a Long Rest, a character regains all lost Hit Points. The character also regains spent Hit Dice, up to a number of dice equal to half of the character’s total number of them (minimum of one die). For example, if a character has eight Hit Dice, he or she can regain four spent Hit Dice upon finishing a Long Rest."

I still think Hit Dice limiting Short Rest is the best way to go. Unlimit Short Rests so you can have more than 2, and implement Hit Dice. They're more strategic. You make decisions about how many you will use per rest. Some classes get their abilities reset. It's just a better system imo.

5e Rules:

"A character can’t benefit from more than one Long Rest in a 24-hour period, and a character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits."

This is the one I'd chuck. Make 2 Long Rests a Day so players can adventure by night and so days would go by slower. 2 Long Rests a Day means even if you spam Long Rests, it makes more sense from a story perspective. The ritual might not complete in 3 days (6 Long Rests), but yeah it probably should after 6 days. Lae'zel should get pissed and leave the party if you haven't gone to the Gith in 6 days, but 3, maybe not.

As far as limiting Long Rests, I'm thinking you could still use Camping Supplies IF they were crafted items rather than just food. So here's another idea I had. Make food ingredients items for crafting Camping Supplies. Besides food, you need drinks, like water or wine even, bandages, repair kits and healing ointments. Let's say 4 food, 4 drinks, 4 bandages, 4 repair kits and 4 healing ointments for 1 Camping Supply. 1 Camping Supply then equals 1 Long Rest.

Something LIKE this.

Why?

Food and drink help recover personal strength and health. Bandages also promote injury healing as do healing ointments. Repair kits are for fixing armor and weapons, which are, in RPG terms, part of your overall ability to reduce injury... Thus somewhat a part of HP.

Why does this limit? Gotta find enough of all the ingredients in order to Long Rest frequently. Thus, hunting for the ingredients becomes a bigger part of the game, and it also makes buying these items at vendors more valuable. Certainly is a whole lot less of a pain to buy a complete supply than to hunt around for ingredients for them.

Then they could have players use skill checks to forage for supplies if they can't find them themselves. Rangers would thus get a better chance of success in favored terrain, adding value to that.

This then makes Goodberry a super convenient spell. You no longer have to worry about food when crafting a Camping Supply. You just need the other ingredients. However, just having Goodberry doesn't necessarily mean you can Long Rest as much as you want. You still need the other ingredients. It would, however, provide maybe the food and healing requirements, because Goodberry does both. I would say maybe you just need 4 drinks and 4 repair kits if you cast Goodberry.

Then add Create Food and Water spell, and the only thing would be Repair Kits. Add Mending spell, and viola. All requirements met. But then, how often are you going to have a party that has ALL these spells? So, you would almost always need to acquire at least SOME ingredients in order to make a single Camp Supply.

Have to think about long rest a bit more After all this discussion (even if I still think cool random encounters or events are the best solution), but I totally agree with short rests.

Still not sure about the limitation between long rest but about making short rests more coherent and more interresting with hit dices, I fully agree.

Now that I know the rules and have seen Solasta, I can't understand why Larian decided to go with this uninterresting "gameplay mechanicless" heal me button.

20 + years and we still have no solution for this... weird that camping is still broken..

on short rest wizard only could replenish their spell slots. what about other casters like divine? only just 1 long rest per day and most caster spells are prepared. i'm not sure what to think of this. its probably means casters should just stay out of range and use their bow/crossbow. only use some buffs or nukes on some difficult battle. also i find some spells duration a little too short which makes caster really not that appealing. anyone correct me if i'm wrong. the shield spell is a reaction and only useful for 1 attack.

Wizards (in 5e and BG3) are long rest casters, just like practically all other casters. Only warlocks replenish slots on short rests. If you're suggesting that Larian rebalances BG3 such that wizards become short rest casters, why not other casters too? If you're just referring to wizard's Arcane Recovery, that's only 1 slot per day during a short rest, which is a relatively small effect comparable to clerics getting their Channel Divinity back.

Warlocks replenish their spell slots on short rest by design; correspondingly they only get 2 spell slots whereas other casters get 6+. Warlocks are expected to expend all their slots between short rests (short-rest-based class) while other casters have to ration all their slots over the entire day (long-rest-based class).

All casters have unlimited castings of their known cantrips, which are likely more powerful than any non-magical ranged weapon given that the attack roll bonus/save DC is dependent on their spellcasting stat while weapons use (presumably lower) Dex. I typically recommend that all casters take 1 attack-roll cantrip and 1 saving-throw (damaging) cantrip for this reason.

The Shield spell lasts until the start of your next turn. It is a very powerful spell: +5 to your AC is huge considering the bounded accuracy of 5e, and you'll never waste shield because you get to know the attack roll before casting it. Additionally, at higher levels your other level-1 spells often become less effective, but Shield remains a powerful option and only uses your (often-unused-by-casters) reaction.

yes i was actually referring to wizard arcane recovery. since wizard has the the privilege to replenish spell slots, why not other caster too? what i'm pointing out here is that caster seems to be on the losing side as those spells need a long rest to be replenished. that makes saving up spells only for more difficult battles (which meta gaming is required). yes cantrip seems like really a good solution for unlimited castings where older dnd versions where they dont have any and martial characters > caster as they can just basically swing their swords infinitely. correct me if wrong but cantrip damage are actually lower. currently playing solasta, i have my wizard actually using crossbow. i have same DEX score as INT which makes range attack viable (not to mentioned +2DEX bonus for scalemail).

i would have like shield having a duration like pathfinder. but now instead the shield block per attack. this is all good if there aren't many monsters around. but if you were to be swarmed, that shield isn't a good idea. also i kinda dislike concentration. most of cleric spells are concentration. after casting bless, you can't cast any other spells. it's so restrictive. also concentration broken if getting hit. man i kinda hate this concentration mechanic really deeply now.

i kind of really loving solasta now for the reactions. that reaction for smite, for channel divinity, for shield, for block (paladin protection) are so flavorful. now when comparing to baldur's gate 3 it seems like outright insulting if larian isn't implementing the same. also that counter-spell had me like.. wow.

Cantrips (at low levels) CAN be lower damage, but that's usually offset by a higher chance to hit due to a higher spellcasting stat.
Your wizard probably has a 16 or 18 Int, apparently has a 14 Dex, and is using a light crossbow right? And is presumably level 1-4 so a proficiency bonus of +2.
A Light Crossbow attack will be +4 for 1d8+1 damage.
A Firebolt attack will be at +5 (or +6) for 1d10 damage. Higher chance to hit, with equivalent average damage.
A Ray of Frost will be at +5 (or +6) for 1d8 damage. Higher chance to hit, less damage, but also a slowing effect.
Edit: Saving Throw spells heavily depend on the enemy's Dex vs Wis vs Con ST bonuses.
Edit2: Mistaken math -> Dex of 14 means crossbow should be 1d8+2 damage = higher than cantrips

Of course, at level 5 all cantrips get another damage dice (Firebolt->2d10). Which then happens again at levels 11 and 17. Also something to consider is damage resistance - many creatures resist poison and fire, but many creatures also resist non-magic damage.

Again, Shield lasts until the start of your next turn. So it actually works better when you're surrounded by enemies, because it blocks more hits per use. But yes, 5e's decisions to heavily nerf spell durations and make so many of them require concentration are...interesting. Many people don't like these aspects, but it does succeed at the goal of preventing spellcasters from utterly dominating and the tedious pre-combat buffing.

I particularly don't like Mirror Image (3 images, lasts 1 minute). Because it only lasts 1 minute, you can't precast it before most fights. But then you have to spend your first turn's action casting it, which doesn't feel worth it due to the low # of images and the relatively short (~4-8 round) combat lengths.

It would be great for Mirror Image to be a bonus action.😊

Druids have too many concentration spells as well!

i have both my DEX and INT score as equal. both starting stats as 16. not sure if i made a subpar character. maybe my wizard should have gone naked without any armor and just utilize the mage armor spell? correct me if i'm wrong, higher DEX score helps stealth? as being in stealth is nice as you gain advantage. i'm playing solasta on authentic mode (first playthrough) and new to dnd5e. really loving it so far as game seems to teach me dnd5e rules and the mechanics are well presented. should i have go with 14 DEX and 18 INT instead? you are right what i found is that most enemy seem to have high DEX saves.

didn't really know that cantrips get additional dice at level 5, 11 and 17. however if not mistaken, solasta campaign should just max out around level 10 and 12 for lost valley DLC. apologies for misunderstanding on the shield. so it works exactly as pathfinder (except the duration and it only lasts 1 turn). i actually love pre-combat buffing (maybe i'm used to pathfinder already). i agree it gets tedious but i believe it can be improved via QOL features like spell group casting (group spells together and act as 1 casting). of course this shouldn't be allowed during combat.

the reason i hated the concentration because it's either apple or orange. you can't have both. so i often find myself casting bless. with just this casting, i can't have other essential buffs. this also make CON much more valuable to maintain concentration. due to the shorten duration, on topic about camping and rest, as i previously mentioned this makes that caster would not be able to use their spells as they like (unless cantrips) as replenishing them relies on long rest.

as long rest are being used as a difficulty or challenge mechanism, that's why casters now has to use cantrips or martial weapons. due to this IMO, short rest should also replenish spell slots like maybe half of 1d4 per level divided by 2? if not mistaken short rest has no limits in RAW? correct me if i'm wrong. short rest only last 1 hour. so as it is now it seems the short rest is only useful for recovering hitpoints (which also randomize base on hit dice).

I'm glad you're enjoying Solasta so much!
Ah, then yes ranged weapons at levels 1-4 will definitely be better. Apologies, I missed that clarification in your earlier post. Most people give their wizards more Int than Dex, but Dex is generally an incredibly powerful stat in 5e so it's not a terrible a tradeoff. Higher Dex does indeed help stealth, which can be very powerful in 5e and especially Solasta.

Armor: You said you were wearing Scale mail, which should give disadvantage on stealth checks; be wary of that. Scale Mail should give you AC of 16 (14+2), while Mage Amor would also give you an AC of 16 (10+3+Dex bonus). But of course, you'll probably find magical Scale Mail at some point which will be better than mage armor.

This would be a Significant buff to casters without any corresponding buff to martials. I don't think it's needed. Knowing when to use your spell slots vs cantrips/weapons is part of the 5e resource management system, and thus part of the difficulty.

Technically Short Rest has no limits in 5e RAW, but RAI you should be taking 2-3 short rests per day. It is mainly useful for recovering hit points and the various recharge-on-short-rest abilities that some classes have: warlocks and monks are entirely reliant on short rests, while fighters/moon druids/clerics get some nice perks during short rests that aren't necessary to function.

I would not change anything of the current mechanics, except making long rests more difficult. The current status of the rests favors casters (and Barbarians) very much, too much in my opinion. If you like you can go into any fight fully loaded up because you can long rest without any hindrance everywhere and all the time, as food is found in abundance.

That Clerics are dependent on concentration for many spells is a necessary limitation, otherwise they would be too strong. I don't have experience with Druids (which I don't like and never played), but I assume it is similar.

Question: how can a Wizard wear scalemail which is medium armor and available as feat only if you have the light armor ability, at least in BG3? Is it a racial (nonsensical) feat?

For clerics: While I say this with huge pain they deserve the concentration thing. A Cleric with maxed out dex + hp + decent strenght is : A tank, a healer, a dps , an archer(A rogue barely outdamages him due to some skills modifiers but seriously. Dexterity alone makes a cleric a decent archer) , can manage close combat (So he now genually doesn't care about his spellslots that much even if cornered ) and don't forget the great capuccino he makes. Really, clerics op.

Ps: If you really want to go AFK while your cleric is getting hit give the " trickster " subclass or whatever. The shadowheart subclass. He can now mirror image to heal mid-fight if you really want to make him a brick wall.

OK. I'm putting this here because this is the megathread and this is where this belongs. We have all these camping and resting threads everywhere, and we're ignoring the megathread. (I admit... I started a lot of it.)

So, the purpose of this response is to hopefully better explain what my ultimate suggestion is for resting:

Imagine the amount of replayability with just these changes:

1. Forget food. Remove it altogether from the game. All it does is provide lots of additional item management. If you are going to keep it, for immersion purposes, give it a better, more meaningful purpose and for the love of all that is holy, food should perish after X number of long rests depending on the type of food.

2. No hard limits for either Long or Short Rests. In other words, Short Rests should not be limited to 2 per day. ESPECIALLY if you're going to have unlimited Long Rests, you need to make Short Rests unlimited so that you are encouraged to Short Rest more than Long Rest.

3. Short Rests managed by Hit Dice. This gives some strategy to it and makes it more interesting. If you unlimit Short Rests as I am suggesting, there does need to be at least some way to limit regaining HP via Short Rests or a push of the button can heal you to full between every battle. Hit Dice is 5e. This game is supposed to be 5e. Besides that, it makes sense and provides limitations of some kind to healing between battles. Even if you run out of Hit Dice, however, there is still value in the short rests for classes like Fighter and Monk and Druid and Warlock, and such.

4. Long Rests are locked until you find the first Camp in the area. So, you start on the beach and have to go until you reach the Dank Crypt before you unlock a camp - the first camp being the mini-camp within the dank crypt. This forces you to use short rests and items to recover until you unlock the camp in the crypt. If you bypass the dank crypt and go to the grove right away, the grove is the first location where you unlock a camp, and Long Rest is now unlocked upon reaching the grove. If you fall into the Underdark, you have to find a camp location before you can Long Rest there. Once your first camp is unlocked, you can then fast travel, etc. back to your unlocked camps at any point in time - except when restricted by specific events, but that's the next point.

5. Some areas restrict fast travel and long rest, such as the goblin camp after you've killed the goblin leaders. You have to find your way out before you can either fast travel or long rest. Only Short Rests are enabled during this time. It's much more plausible that you could hide for maybe an hour somewhere and patch yourself up than find a place to hide for most of a day and patch yourselves up.

6. And this is the big one. I've posted this one before, but I'll say it again. Please read this part carefully. Long Rests are not limited, but they trigger events in the game.

Now let me elaborate on this last point. As I said above, imagine the amount of replayability with this.

First Playthrough - You fight the intellect devourers and get your butt handed to you. You're not doing so well. (This touches more on point 4 as well). You try to Long Rest, but SH tells you, "No way.
We could turn at any moment. I know we're tired and in bad shape right now, but if we rest for a day, we'll start turning into mind flayers. It'll be too late. Let's take a break for an hour or two at most and then continue." Short Rest is available and tutorial tells you how it works. You fight your way to the crypt and finally you unlock a Long Rest. By this point, you have met Gale. You take him with. You REALLY need a Long Rest now. So you try again. Dialogue occurs. Gale's Mirror Image dialogue occurs. At the end, he says, "Looks like we could maybe chance a rest." After all, the dialogue implies that things aren't happening the way they normally should with the tadpoles. So, Long Rest is unlocked at last and you can sleep in the Dank Crypt.

Second Playthrough - You can go a lot longer, AND you reject Gale. You don't like him and you don't bring him with you. You long rest at the Dank Crypt, but Gale isn't with you. A cutscene occurs where you are explaining to your companions basically the same thing Gale said in his Mirror Image dialogue. "We aren't turning as fast as we should, and we need rest. I think we can risk taking the rest of the day to recover. We need to."

Third Playthrough - You skip the dank crypt and head to the grove. You only have SH and Astarion with you. You've completely bypassed Gale and Lae'zel. You do the grove fight and enter the grove and do the convos with Zevlor, etc. Camp unlocked. Long Rest available. You don't even finish going through the grove yet. You try to long rest. Cutscene. "We could rest here, but we might find a healer," says SH. "Let's at least try to see if we can speak with Nettie first. Then let's rest." So, it doesn't let you Long Rest until after you've talked to Nettie. Even though it says Camp available and Long Rest unlocked, the game won't let you until you talk to Nettie - suggesting that you should go straight there.

Basically, the point is that the game is pushing you to keep going and suggesting to you where you should go first before you long rest.

Now, skip ahead until later. After visiting the grove, long rests are now available at any time. However, in your first playthrough, you take 5 days to save the grove and make reconciliation between the druids and tieflings. The ritual would have completed in 3 days, so in this playthrough, Rath had to interrupt the ritual to stop it from being completed in 3 days. He was consequently locked up for it and is unavailable to help you. In the second playthrough, you save the grove in 3 days. Rath isn't locked up and is able to help you. Third playthrough, you beat it in 8 days. Rath interrupted it on Day 3 and was locked up, and on Day 6 it is interrupted by Mol who has vanished with the idol somewhere. You now have to do something before the druids find Mol and kill the kid. Different playthroughs. Different results all because you long rested differently. It's not limiting long rests. It's providing different outcomes depending on how many you used. It's creating a semblance of time in the game.

I have seen around here quite interesting suggestion that i really liked ...

Fresh food would give more nourishment ... but it would spoil after few long rests.
Dried (processed) food would give less nourishment ... but it would reamain eatable a lot longer. (And we would only find processed or rotten food in the world.)
Then all we need is option to "pack" processed food to pack of camp supplies.

And voila!
Your inventory can be easily nice and clean.
Resting will be as limited as you want.
And it would even make sense.

I wonder why it was (seemingly) dismissed?

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As for the rest ... i dont like anything about it. :-/

Of course you don't.

And as far as food goes... Goodberry. No food necessary. Buy a pack at vendor for cheap. No food necessary,. No limits.

In the end, food is pointless in the game and makes a very poor limiting agent for resting.

Oh yes, Goodberry ... that would be nice, if it would work "by the design".
Well, at least one good suggestion.

Now, as far as point 6 goes, the idea is overlapping triggers - but things they've already established in the game.

Example: You reach the Grove and visit Nadira - pink haired tiefling. You look through the telescope and see Waukeen's Rest. It's NOT on fire. Why? Because if it was, and you long rest, it shouldn't be on fire anymore. So, when looking through the telescope for the first time, you see a nice, not on fire inn. Once you go there and trigger the entire save people from the fire side quest, if you go back and look through the telescope, now it's a smoldering ruin.

Example: Ritual takes 3 days. You long rest for the first time. Raphael happens. You long rest for the second time, you have a Dream Lover dream. You long rest a third time. Rath has interrupted the ritual and is imprisoned. You long rest a fourth time. Ah. Nothing happens. You long rest a fifth time. Lae'zel warns she might leave if you don't go to the Gith patrol that day. You long rest a sixth time. Mol has stolen the idol and is in hiding. The druids and tieflings are close to all out war. You still haven't gone to the Gith patrol so Lae'zel takes off. You long rest a seventh time. Dream Lover Dream 2. You head to the Gith patrol and find Lae'zel nearby, wounded by the goblin raid on Waukeen's Rest. She rejoins your party. You face the patrol. You long rest an eighth time. A tiefling approaches you at camp. "The situations's getting worse. Do something soon or else we're doomed."

It doesn't have to be EXACTLY like this, but the point is that different events are triggered on different days, overlapping one another. Then, later in the game, in the Underdark, when time isn't as prevalent in the story, you can flipping long rest as much as you want, but every now and then, another dream sequence or something similar to remind you that you have an ultimate quest and you just keep wasting time.

Again, think of what this would do.

1. There would be time, or some sense of time.
2. No real rest limits, but things happen based on using long rests.
3. Replayability. Each play through could be different because you do things differently on different days.

So instead of limiting LR, you are encouraged to long rest at different times for each playthrough to see what happens.

And before you say that it'll be too much work, let me ask this. Is it more work than having to go back to the drawing board again and again because you just can't find a system that works? Also notice that the suggestion takes elements already in game and uses them, like the dream lover dreams. Yes, a few more cutscenes and such, but in the end a truly replayable experience and no hard LR or SR limits.

Icewind Dale replay. Here's what I noticed:

Long Rest as much as you want. No consequences. Biggest penalty was painstakingly walking back to map exit and then painstakingly walking to the inn. Bad guys might regen a bit, but they were always minor enemies killed easily. No food requirement. Once enemies are cleared out, they remain cleared out.

Basically, what I'm saying is, BG3 simply cuts the tedious out of it. However, it's very much the same. No limits. No consequences.

That said, there were no Short Rest mechanics in that system. It was 8 hours rest and that's all you got.

My point is that I do think we get too harsh on Larian about these kinds of mechanics, myself included. However, I do still think that the game would be better with better and more meaningful rest mechanics. Each type of rest should have a solid purpose. Short Rest should be promoted in some way to try to promote a longer adventuring day so it feels more like a true D&D session.