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GM4Him #816605 11/06/22 04:13 PM
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Originally Posted by GM4Him
Whatever. Like I said, it doesn't matter anyway.

Again. And again. The point of this thread is that Long rest is promoted. Short rest is limited and an afterthought. Encounters are designed in a way where it is basically expected that you will long rest before each fight. So, your party essentially sleeps for 8 hours, wakes up, adventures for a very short time, and calls it a day. Especially in the Underdark, this is very true.

This is stupid. It makes no sense from a Roleplaying game perspective. You are supposed to adventure for a long time and rest only when needed.

It's like playing Descent into Avernus and after getting the quest to go take out the Dead Three Cult, you call it a day. Then you journey to the hideout, fight the guards at the entrance and call it a day. You enter and fight a group of cultists, and call it a day.

The whole cult lair is meant to be one fluid sequence. You're supposed to do it all in one stint, and you do so by using short rests, potions and other items, etc. You don't long rest between fights.

If players feel that they should or need to long rest between just about every encounter, that's bad campaign design. Sure. You might say, "But I don't feel that way. I can go forever," but others don't. They feel that the adventure and NPCs are always pushing for frequent long rests instead of pushing for short.

What I really want is:

1. Untie dialogue from long rest - except those that make sense like Shadowheart's "Are you sure this is a good idea" dialogue.
2. Stop having characters say, "I'm tired. Better call it a day.". I don't mind said dialogue as long as I've lost like half the total party HP and used a bunch of spell slots. Then it makes sense.
3. Unlimit short rest so I can do it as much as I want, but limit it via Hit Dice so that it at least has some limit to it that encourages strategy.
4. Limit long rest in some fashion besides food because you get endless amounts of it and even if you didn't you could buy it. But heck, even if you kept the food limit but made food spoil or limit how much you find, that would at least be better. It would encourage short resting more. Just something to discourage long rest to add more value to short.
5. Have at least the burning building stop burning after you encounter it so it seems like time does actually pass, and ANYTHING you can do to add to time would be awesome. Have people stop having the same bloody convos every dang day. SOMEthing to make long resting more impactful to the world.

To me, all rests are an afterthought, with the unfortunate side effect of missing out on content because of things that are tied to LRs. I've been advocating for a way to "fix" that for a long time. Whether it's removing the need to actually rest with "Hey, can I talk to you in private", which would mean going to camp to talk, or just removing the need to go to camp for some of them, as can already happen with Shadowheart at the altar. If one feels like LRs are abuseable, they have the option to simply not abuse them. So, railing against this option doesn't come across as "improving the game" but more as "controlling how someone else plays it". From my perspective, you are abusing LRs, and I say this as someone that is impacted by not abusing them.

So, as I have said before, limit LRs by requiring x amount of SRs before you can take one, and limit SRs by time between them, and the number you can take "per day", whether that's as it is now, or with HD, or whatever. My playstyle will still suffer, however, if important story beats, or companion interactions, aren't highlighted in some other way to let me know I need to do something about it.

3. Un-limit SRs, but limit them. Is it any wonder some people are scratching their heads? I paraphrased that from the actual quote, but the quote is here, and is copy/pasted, so that people can see what it is that I'm actually responding to.

mrfuji3 #816607 11/06/22 04:55 PM
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Originally Posted by mrfuji3
I don't think this would fix anything. While some encounters should certainly be made less tedious (40 goblins ugh), combat encounter difficulty isn't really the problem. It's that LRing is so easy and other game mechanics (LR cutscenes, all new dialogue, companions explicitly saying "i'm tired") encourage resting to such a high degree. Sure, if all encounters were trivial, I'd *want* to LR less often. But I'd most likely end up resting the exact same amount in order to not miss content. If anything, easier encounters would make the contradiction in BG3's LR-system-vs-content design even more apparent.

Oh there are definitely other fixes, such as moving some rest cutscenes to crossing unmissable triggers on the map or making them available for both long AND short rests.

Stabbey #816608 11/06/22 05:04 PM
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Originally Posted by Stabbey
The complaint is that perhaps some of the encounters should be tweaked in difficulty so that they consume fewer resources, so that fewer players feel like they need to do a long rest after every one.
If could have ben, yes ... but it was not.

Complaint was that game encourages players to use Long Rests instead of Short rests ...
No matter how hard would encounters be, Long Rest will allways be more effective, so the complaint would remain the same even if every single encounter in game would be resolved by single cantrip. O_o


Originally Posted by Stabbey
Nothing about GM4Him's response could possibly be considered - by anyone who was posting in good faith - as a personal attack.
Thank you for your opinion ... nobody asked for. :-/

Now if you dont mind (and honestly, even if you do), i will be judge of when i feel attacked ... k?
And i will certainly appreciate if you will stick to your own business aswell. wink

---

Originally Posted by GM4Him
I don't have time to respond to every thing you pick apart...
You can focus only on those that ends with questionmark. wink
Thats all i asked.


Originally Posted by GM4Him
And what's the point?
You tell me. laugh
You created this. smile


Originally Posted by GM4Him
So I get to the place where I just give up and stop trying to reason with you.
Yeah i noticed ...
And it was certainly not recently ... you start a debate, sometimes raise few interesting opinions (lately just repeating the same with different words), people start talking about them, and after some time ... you loose interest, and come back just to repeat nothing really matters, you no longer care, or continuing in that topic is pointless.

Funny it usualy dates exactly the moment when people start either asking hard questions, or showing on examples why would such suggestion never work. O_o
Coincidence? I think not.


Originally Posted by GM4Him
And I do tend to think you are getting a bit hostile when you start saying things like "I mean ... sure, be my guest, play however the f**k you want ...
Just, since i dont find you qualified to decide what "makes sense" from roleplay perspective ... dont mess with my games. :-/"
What is hostile about encouraging people to do anything they want? laugh


Originally Posted by GM4Him
But whatever. Again. It doesn't matter.
See this is another thing ... you try hard to make the expression you dont care ... but if you dont care, why bother telling us that you dont care? smile

---

Originally Posted by Stabbey
Oh there are definitely other fixes, such as moving some rest cutscenes to crossing unmissable triggers on the map
This dont sound like good idea. :-/

Personaly i dislike that Astarion thirst for blood is triggered by examining corpse of pig ... things like theese should in my honest opinion be strictly tied to amount of Long Rests ...

With triggers like this you can on one night have Astarion thirsty by second night (not sure about first one, since there is many conversations that would overwrite it in my opinion but didnt try) ... and in second gameplay, when you purposefully avoid the pig you never, ever, ever find out he is a Vampire (no matter how obvious it is).

Or another example is Gale hunger for magical artefact, if you keep him just "somehow liking you, but not too much" it never happens! O_o


Originally Posted by Stabbey
making them available for both long AND short rests.
Im affraid i have seen somewhere Swen talking about this is technically impossible, since as they are focused on this whole "cinematics" ... they need specific place to record it.
If you would make talking with companions possible anywhere ... they would need to just strictly stand on place, and dont even gesture much, since otherwise they could easily end in some texture. laugh


I still dont understand why cant we change Race for our hirelings. frown
Lets us play Githyanki as racist as they trully are! frown
GM4Him #816611 11/06/22 06:23 PM
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Yeah, I do think that the main problem with the long rest system as it stands isn't just how effortlessly abuseable the system is, but that players HAVE to abuse it in order to engage fully with their party. I'm sure at full release it's going to be better since they'll have fixed ome of the issues with how cut scenes are prioritized, and with the issue of companion cut scenes often overwiting one another, but that's only part of the problem. On a first playthrough, there's no way to know when a cut scene will happen or why. So even if a player doesn't want to abuse the system, they're potentially going to feel forced to do so in order to not miss out on a significant portion of the game. And that is a problem which NEEDS to be addressed.

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Originally Posted by robertthebard
3. Un-limit SRs, but limit them. Is it any wonder some people are scratching their heads?

OK. Sorry. Explained this so many times that I didn't realize how it might come across to someone who hasn't read the explanation before.

By Un-limit SRs, I mean make it so that you can do more than 2 per day. My point is that the resting system is backwards. Short Rests should be promoted. A DM should WANT the players to SR as much as they can while LR'ing less. This stretches out the adventuring day so it doesn't feel like players have sucky, bad, weak characters. You WANT players to feel like their characters are powerful, even at level 1. You don't want players to feel like they can't kill anything and their characters are dumb.

So, you promote SRs. Limiting SRs to 2 per day, however, while having unlimited LRs essentially says, "Hey players. LR more and SR less."

But, you still need SOME sort of limits to SRs or you will then make those who benefit more from SRs more powerful than those who only benefit from LRs. In other words, if SRs aren't limited in some way, Warlocks then become MORE powerful than Wizards. Warlocks only ever get a few spell slots, even at higher levels, but their spell slots reset per SR. Meanwhile, Wizards get WAY more spell slots, but they only reset via LR. So, if SRs are totally unlimited, the Warlock can spam SR forever and wind up having more spell slots than Wizards, making them more powerful. But, as the game is currently, with only 2 SRs per day, the Warlock's class is totally nerfed.

That's why I said they should do like 5e was designed and limit SRs via Hit Dice. As was mentioned by someone on this thread, SRs eventually do promote LR because you only get half your Hit Dice back per LR. So, you have to strategically use Hit Dice and plan them out well, along with your SRs, so you don't mess yourself over later.

And THAT'S what I want. Strategy. Something meaningful. Something more than a push of a button that is a convenience, and something that promotes SRs and discourages just using LRs. I want things to have meaning and purpose. Otherwise, just remove it.

Seriously, I'd rather they do something like NWN, where resting was a five second "bend the knee" moment and then you continue on with your day than this current resting system. At least then I'd feel like my characters aren't sleeping their lives away with brain-eating tadpoles in their heads.

Quote
See this is another thing ... you try hard to make the expression you dont care ... but if you dont care, why bother telling us that you dont care? smile

"But whatever. Again. It doesn't matter." This phrase does not mean "I don't care." It means that no matter how much you argue with me, and how much I respond to you - no matter how much we pick apart each other's comments and statements and whatever - at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. What are we changing? Even if I were to somehow convince you that I'm right and the current resting system sucks, it changes nothing. You aren't Larian. You won't go and change the game. Likewise, even if you convinced me to leave the game as is, it changes nothing. I'm not Larian. They might change the game regardless of what we decide - and they might even do it in a way we don't want.

So it doesn't matter, and thus, why waste time going back and forth picking apart the things we say to each other. See, you keep trying to do that, and to get me to do that, but I don't want to. I state my suggestion and opinion. You state yours. Larian now knows what we both think. Great. Glad.

And you know what else motivates me to not go back and forth with you? You're probably going to get what you want in the end anyway? Why? Because what you want is for Larian to virtually change very little in the game. So, you win - or you will likely win. So why bother? It's exhausting trying to answer your responses, and I frankly just don't have time. I'm only responding now because I care about you and don't like just ignoring people.

But anyway, you know what? I'm also perfectly fine if Larian doesn't change anything. I love the game. I'd love to see it improved, and I'd love to see some of my suggestions actually done in the game, but I'm fine with them not doing them. Why? Because I love the game. Do I think it could be better? Yes. That's why I bothered to come out here and post suggestions. I wanted to make the game better. I wanted to be apart of building a fun and exciting game.

But in the end, what do I have to show for it? Which of my suggestions did they actually implement? Hmmm...

So, I say again, "it doesn't matter."

GM4Him #816618 11/06/22 07:29 PM
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Originally Posted by GM4Him
Originally Posted by robertthebard
3. Un-limit SRs, but limit them. Is it any wonder some people are scratching their heads?

OK. Sorry. Explained this so many times that I didn't realize how it might come across to someone who hasn't read the explanation before.

By Un-limit SRs, I mean make it so that you can do more than 2 per day. My point is that the resting system is backwards. Short Rests should be promoted. A DM should WANT the players to SR as much as they can while LR'ing less. This stretches out the adventuring day so it doesn't feel like players have sucky, bad, weak characters. You WANT players to feel like their characters are powerful, even at level 1. You don't want players to feel like they can't kill anything and their characters are dumb.

So, you promote SRs. Limiting SRs to 2 per day, however, while having unlimited LRs essentially says, "Hey players. LR more and SR less."

But, you still need SOME sort of limits to SRs or you will then make those who benefit more from SRs more powerful than those who only benefit from LRs. In other words, if SRs aren't limited in some way, Warlocks then become MORE powerful than Wizards. Warlocks only ever get a few spell slots, even at higher levels, but their spell slots reset per SR. Meanwhile, Wizards get WAY more spell slots, but they only reset via LR. So, if SRs are totally unlimited, the Warlock can spam SR forever and wind up having more spell slots than Wizards, making them more powerful. But, as the game is currently, with only 2 SRs per day, the Warlock's class is totally nerfed.

That's why I said they should do like 5e was designed and limit SRs via Hit Dice. As was mentioned by someone on this thread, SRs eventually do promote LR because you only get half your Hit Dice back per LR. So, you have to strategically use Hit Dice and plan them out well, along with your SRs, so you don't mess yourself over later.

And THAT'S what I want. Strategy. Something meaningful. Something more than a push of a button that is a convenience, and something that promotes SRs and discourages just using LRs. I want things to have meaning and purpose. Otherwise, just remove it.

Seriously, I'd rather they do something like NWN, where resting was a five second "bend the knee" moment and then you continue on with your day than this current resting system. At least then I'd feel like my characters aren't sleeping their lives away with brain-eating tadpoles in their heads.

Except that, even with an HD limit, players would be treating SRs exactly like you're complaining about people treating LRs. If one can simply roll a Warlock, per your example, and just SR their way to victory, why roll anything else? This is why I'd much rather see LRs restricted by requiring x number of SRs in between, while limiting the number, and number of times, one can take a SR. Whether that's 2 "per day", or based on HD doesn't matter to me. What really and truly matters is that I won't miss out on a comp romance, for example, because I was busy playing the game, instead of spending a majority of my time in camp.

The beauty of this is that the LRs need not require one to exhaust all possible SRs. If we run with a HD restriction, and the player has 4 HD, we can still restrict LRs to requiring 2 SRs, for example. Then it's just a matter of determining a good "cut off" time for SRs. However, any system that's affecting LRs must have a way to fix the ability of a player to miss out on relevant content. Anything that doesn't address this does not fix the game, but breaks it. So, from where I'm sitting, this is like a 25% solution, which does nothing to address the overall problem that I have with how LR/story beats are handled. Some of them require LRs, the dream sequences for example, and Astarion's little "adventure". Some of them really don't, like Gale's Weave scene. That could just as easily be handled with a quest marker on him, or his portrait, telling me that he needs to talk, and if I talk to him, he can suggest talking in camp. This would not require a rest at all, just having the convo there.

GM4Him #816621 11/06/22 08:12 PM
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The easiest solution is to queue events in the camp. When a player unlocks an event it is added to the pool.
When the player rests, the event is triggered in the order it was added. Thanks to this solution, the player will be able to run all cutscenes one by one without spamming the rest after each conversation. Of course, there is a high probability that some cutscenes will not make sense at some point, but this is quite a minor problem.

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Originally Posted by robertthebard
[quote=GM4Him][quote=robertthebard]

Except that, even with an HD limit, players would be treating SRs exactly like you're complaining about people treating LRs. If one can simply roll a Warlock, per your example, and just SR their way to victory, why roll anything else? This is why I'd much rather see LRs restricted by requiring x number of SRs in between, while limiting the number, and number of times, one can take a SR. Whether that's 2 "per day", or based on HD doesn't matter to me. What really and truly matters is that I won't miss out on a comp romance, for example, because I was busy playing the game, instead of spending a majority of my time in camp.

The beauty of this is that the LRs need not require one to exhaust all possible SRs. If we run with a HD restriction, and the player has 4 HD, we can still restrict LRs to requiring 2 SRs, for example. Then it's just a matter of determining a good "cut off" time for SRs. However, any system that's affecting LRs must have a way to fix the ability of a player to miss out on relevant content. Anything that doesn't address this does not fix the game, but breaks it. So, from where I'm sitting, this is like a 25% solution, which does nothing to address the overall problem that I have with how LR/story beats are handled. Some of them require LRs, the dream sequences for example, and Astarion's little "adventure". Some of them really don't, like Gale's Weave scene. That could just as easily be handled with a quest marker on him, or his portrait, telling me that he needs to talk, and if I talk to him, he can suggest talking in camp. This would not require a rest at all, just having the convo there.

I think we're not connecting. My first suggestion was to untie dialogue from LR. Of course certain ones would have to be triggered by LR, like Raphael, but trust me, those could be worked in easier if other dialogues aren't tied to LR.

I suggested numerous times that dialogues could be tied to SR, even sending the party to camp to make it easier on Larian to implement. This, promoting SRs with character development as well. This only works, though, if you allow more than 2 SR a day, which is another reason why I want them to unlimit SR in terms of the hard 2 a day limit.

Using Hit Dice to limit SR actually works well because you don't have to spend Hit Dice whenever you SR. For example, Lae'zel has 3 HD. She has only lost 2 HP. She SRs and spends no HD during the rest. She saves them for later. However, she regains her Action Surge and Second Wind. Meanwhile, Shadowheart has 3 HD and only has 2 HP left. Oh yeah, she uses all 3 HD during her SR because of how hurt she is. She gains her channel divinity charges back, but no spell slots because she's a cleric. Wyll has 3HD and uses 1. He gains his spell slots back.

They adventure. Lae'zel loses a lot of HP. SH doesn't. Wyll does. Lae'zel uses 2 HD. Wyll uses 2. Everyone's low on HD now. Next fight might do them in for the day.

Different day. Lae'zel survives 3 fights without using HD during rests. SH uses all hers, and so does Wyll. Player switches out Wyll and SH and adds Gale and Astarion. They have full HD. Party continues that day full strength. 3 fights later, they've all spent 2 HD. Total SRs that day? Between all characters, maybe 6-8 SRs.

2 Long rests. 6-8 SRs used wisely between all party members. Day is extended a lot, and dialogues could be stretched out among all 6-8 SRs and the 2 LRs.

GM4Him #816634 12/06/22 12:22 AM
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Originally Posted by GM4Him
Originally Posted by robertthebard
[quote=GM4Him][quote=robertthebard]

Except that, even with an HD limit, players would be treating SRs exactly like you're complaining about people treating LRs. If one can simply roll a Warlock, per your example, and just SR their way to victory, why roll anything else? This is why I'd much rather see LRs restricted by requiring x number of SRs in between, while limiting the number, and number of times, one can take a SR. Whether that's 2 "per day", or based on HD doesn't matter to me. What really and truly matters is that I won't miss out on a comp romance, for example, because I was busy playing the game, instead of spending a majority of my time in camp.

The beauty of this is that the LRs need not require one to exhaust all possible SRs. If we run with a HD restriction, and the player has 4 HD, we can still restrict LRs to requiring 2 SRs, for example. Then it's just a matter of determining a good "cut off" time for SRs. However, any system that's affecting LRs must have a way to fix the ability of a player to miss out on relevant content. Anything that doesn't address this does not fix the game, but breaks it. So, from where I'm sitting, this is like a 25% solution, which does nothing to address the overall problem that I have with how LR/story beats are handled. Some of them require LRs, the dream sequences for example, and Astarion's little "adventure". Some of them really don't, like Gale's Weave scene. That could just as easily be handled with a quest marker on him, or his portrait, telling me that he needs to talk, and if I talk to him, he can suggest talking in camp. This would not require a rest at all, just having the convo there.

I think we're not connecting. My first suggestion was to untie dialogue from LR. Of course certain ones would have to be triggered by LR, like Raphael, but trust me, those could be worked in easier if other dialogues aren't tied to LR.

I suggested numerous times that dialogues could be tied to SR, even sending the party to camp to make it easier on Larian to implement. This, promoting SRs with character development as well. This only works, though, if you allow more than 2 SR a day, which is another reason why I want them to unlimit SR in terms of the hard 2 a day limit.

Using Hit Dice to limit SR actually works well because you don't have to spend Hit Dice whenever you SR. For example, Lae'zel has 3 HD. She has only lost 2 HP. She SRs and spends no HD during the rest. She saves them for later. However, she regains her Action Surge and Second Wind. Meanwhile, Shadowheart has 3 HD and only has 2 HP left. Oh yeah, she uses all 3 HD during her SR because of how hurt she is. She gains her channel divinity charges back, but no spell slots because she's a cleric. Wyll has 3HD and uses 1. He gains his spell slots back.

They adventure. Lae'zel loses a lot of HP. SH doesn't. Wyll does. Lae'zel uses 2 HD. Wyll uses 2. Everyone's low on HD now. Next fight might do them in for the day.

Different day. Lae'zel survives 3 fights without using HD during rests. SH uses all hers, and so does Wyll. Player switches out Wyll and SH and adds Gale and Astarion. They have full HD. Party continues that day full strength. 3 fights later, they've all spent 2 HD. Total SRs that day? Between all characters, maybe 6-8 SRs.

2 Long rests. 6-8 SRs used wisely between all party members. Day is extended a lot, and dialogues could be stretched out among all 6-8 SRs and the 2 LRs.

I'm not down with all of that micromanaging just for a SR. There are already a lot of things I need to keep track of, and I don't fancy the notion of adding another list of things. This would be complicated with one character, and almost nightmarish with 4. Worse if you lose track of who has what HD to run this SR on. I would much rather see something like:

Average party HD is 4, and so, you have 4 SRs for this day. One button and done. For the sake of example, a LR requires that you take 3 SRs. A SR can only be taken once every 3 in game hours, to the maximum Average HD of the party. Combatting one spammable resource with another doesn't accomplish a whole lot, and with the right classes, it changes nothing.

GM4Him #816636 12/06/22 12:39 AM
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But it isn't complex. Solasta has done it very well, simple and hardly an issue of micromanaging.

Here's how it works:

4 party members at level 4. Each has 4 HD. You Short Rest. Menu pops up showing all 4 members and how many HD they have available. Lae'zel, SH, your MC and Gale. Lae'zel has 4d10, SH has 4d8, MC has 4d8 and Gale has 4d6. You use 2 HD for Lae, 1 for SH, 1 for MC and none for Gale. Computer tracks these. There is also a button on Gale's section for Arcane Recovery. Want to use it? Click the button. Done.

Next SR. Popup menu. Shows Lae has 2 HD, SH has 3, MC has 3 and Gale 4. Arcane Recovery is blanked out because Gale used it up. You use 0 HD for Lae, 1 for SH 0 for MC and 1 for Gale. Done.

Next SR. Popup menu. Lae has 2, SH has 2, MC has 3 and Gale has 3. You use 0 for Lae, 1 for SH, 1 for MC, 1 for Gale. Done. Note: Each SH, Lae gets Action Surge and Second Wind reset and SH gets her channel divinity charges back. MC is a Warlock and gets spell slots back each time.

Next SR. Popup menu. Lae uses 1, SH uses 1, MC uses 1 and Gale uses none. Done.

Decides to LR. Computer gives everyone 2 HD back (half total). You don't even have to do anything. Full reset on HP, abilities and such.

Or, instead of LR, the player decides to switch out. His MC still has a lot left in him. He also thinks Gale can keep going. Switches in Wyll and Astarion. Same day continues. Adventure day extended.

And so, each SR is only a few more button presses each. Instead of 1, it's maybe 1-2 clicks per character. What? 10 seconds in total? And you could then legit do dialogues during SRs by sending them to camp to SR. It's really not that much more to do or manage.

Certainly easier than the nasty item management system we're forced to deal with.

Last edited by GM4Him; 12/06/22 02:33 AM.
GM4Him #816639 12/06/22 02:59 AM
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After much consideration, I think I've arrived at a solution. I believe that a long rest should be followed by an 8 hour cool down. The player should be forced to exit the game for the next 8 hours. This will make the choice to long rest something the player has to seriously consider.

In addition to this, I believe the short rest should be followed by a 1 hour cool down. If the player doesn't want to exit the game, maybe the screen can show the camp fire for the prescribed amount of time while a bit of soothing music plays.

All of this will bring a much needed level of gravitas and immersion to the resting system.

GM4Him #816646 12/06/22 05:49 AM
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OK. After a good deal of thought, and I mean a good deal of thought, I forced myself to remember what it was like when I first played the game - my very first playthrough. Setting aside ALL playthroughs since, here is what I came to the conclusion about:

Long Rest as is worked just fine. Why? Because on the initial playthrough only, I was fooled into thinking that Long Rest really did matter. I believed that I couldn't Long Rest often because I was going to turn into a mind flayer.

Now, that said, these are the things I remember thinking:

OMG. The first fight against the 3 intellect devourers was brutal and I HAD to Long Rest afterwards, just like the original tooltip suggested (for it used to suggest a long rest at that point, while now it suggests a short rest). Yes, the intellect devourers have since been nerfed into booty easy half-baked squishy brain thugs that can't do anything intellect devourers are supposed to do, but it is truly no longer as difficult and thus wouldn't likely require a long rest at this point.

Back to what I remember:

Still. I was actually scared to long rest, even though I knew I had to and figured the game wouldn't tell me to do it if I couldn't. So, I did, and I had Shadowheart scold me for doing so, but I was like, "Shut up, Wench! I nearly died. If we run into even more of those, we're totally dead. I know we might turn at any moment, but I have no freaking choice."

On we went the next day, and I was thankful for no signs of turning. We ran into Astarion, Gale, etc., got to the Dank Crypt with Gimblebock, chased him off, made our way inside, fought the mercenaries, and nearly died again. In fact, I think it took me like 3 times to get through that part without game over. Mari and Barton were brutal, and exploding surfaces! OH MY! And I had to long rest again.

Still, I did it as infrequent as possible. It wasn't because the game limited me, but because the story tricked me into thinking that I had to rest very little. As a result, I got a few dialogue cutscenes, but I missed Gale's Mirror Image and Go to Hell one on that initial playthrough. If I remember correctly.

The point is, in truth, the story does discourage long resting and encourages using short rests and whatever else you can use to keep going. So, in that regard, there is a sort of limit to resting and Larian does discourage long resting in some way.

BUT... and I must stress that it is a BIG BUT. Once I realized as a player that I'd been duped, I remember feeling very angry. Especially on subsequent playthroughs when I realized I'd missed some fun character development cutscenes, I was SUPER angry. That's my favorite part of games like this - the character development and interaction. Finding out I missed some just because I actually did what the story guided me to do, that made me REALLY unhappy.

And also BUT... and I must stress that it is a BIG BUT... I have never liked the short rest, quick click, kinda sorta heal functionality. It is SO much less strategic and intuiative than Hit Dice, and it strips short rest of many of its primary functions - such as Wizard Arcane Recovery ONLY being able to be done during a short rest. And as mentioned above and multiple times over and over again, limiting short rests to 2 per day really nerfs classes like the Warlock. You get 1 to 2 spell slots per short rest, which is only 6 total spell slots at most per day for like 10 levels - I can't remember exactly how many off the top of my head before you get your 3rd spell slot. Meanwhile, a Wizard will have a total of like 6 spell slots per day by the time s/he reaches what? Level 3? And the Warlock doesn't get that many other good perks as a class to make them worth much as a fighter or rogue or anything else. Other classes are also going to be nerfed because of this - druid being one of them because Wild Shape is also reset during short rests, as are fighter special abilities.

But Hit Dice effectively limits short rests while still allowing players to short rest as much as they want per day. Hit Dice would GREATLY encourage short rests over long while still keeping players from spamming short rest too much. "How?" you might ask.

First-time players will be tricked into thinking they shouldn't long rest, just as I was. So, they need an alternative and will naturally find short rest to be a good one. The tooltips now promote short rest after the intellect devourer fight, so first-time players will naturally use it first. Yay! Good. At level 2, which they should be at by the time of the intellect devourer fight, they'll have 2 HD per character. Click Short Rest. Menu pops up. There are 2 eight-sided dice for Shadowheart on the menu and 2 whatever dice for the MC. You click on one of the 2 for the MC, and the tooltips could tell you, "This heals you 1dX number of HP. You could use one or both HD right now. However, keep in mind that every time you Long Rest, you only get half as many HD back as your character level. So, at level 2, you will only get 1 HD back when you Long Rest up to your total of 2 HD. Use them wisely. Also keep in mind, though, that many special abilities and spell slots are reset when you short rest, depending on your class, while some classes only have their spell slots and special abilities reset during a long rest."

Afterwards, they could even have Shadowheart's, "I'm not sure this is such a good idea," cutscene dialogue play out. After all, she's not sure a short rest is even good with the tadpoles in your head. "We need to find a healer," speech makes sense. Why NOT have her say it during a short rest after so little time has passed since you crashed?

And, they warn you up front that you can get healed via HD during a short rest, and you will have some characters reset their special abilities and spell slots while others will not. Thus, you know immediately that there are limits to your resting, both short and long.

You continue. You short rest again after meeting Gale because you're still afraid to long rest because of the story - you have tadpoles in your head. You short rest a second time and use NO HD. You just did it to reset your special abilities and spell slots for some of your classes. Great. Fine. Mission complete. Good job Larian.

They could then have another dialogue triggered. Gale's mirror image scene or go to hell dialogue. Both of these begin to clue the player in that something is different with the tadpole. Maybe they CAN long rest and get away with it. After all, Gale's dialogues - both of them - and especially the Mirror Image one, imply that your tadpoles are special and you remain "blissfully unchanged."

What does this do? This lets the player know, instead of later blindsiding them, that they can long rest a bit more frequently without being so afraid to do so. After playing through a second time and beyond, players shouldn't have that same feeling I did that they were tricked and deceived and also that they missed out on content. Larian is having Gale actually warn them almost right away that they maybe can relax a bit and long rest.

But the game still warns you not to long rest too much because you could still turn at any moment. They're just letting you know it won't take hours. So you still kinda limit yourself. Shoot! To this day we don't really know how the finished product is going to manage this. None of us truly knows if Larian is going to have a set number of Long Rests are allowed before you have some sort of Dream Lover sequence even if you don't use illithid powers. They still might do something like that. We don't know. So it is still a legit method to discourage long rests.

Now, to make sure you didn't miss it, what I'm saying, in summary, is that long rest is still discouraged via story. If they added Hit Dice as the mechanic to limit short rest, and removed the 2 per day, this would encourage more short resting which in turn would naturally discourage long resting. With the story and an encouragement to short resting, people would naturally not long rest as much. Add food to it in more limited quantities, and I think it would really discourage long rest spamming and encourage more short resting.

Again, let me be clear, short rest via Hit Dice is NOT that complicated, time consuming, or difficult. It is a very easy mechanic to manage. You click Short Rest Button. Window pops up. Each party member is shown in the window with their Hit Dice. You click on the Hit Dice one at a time. It rolls and heals you that many HP (+ your Constitution modifer). YOU get to decide how much each character heals each Short Rest. And let me be clear. It's a QUICK dice roll - as in instant. Not the d20 animation style you get on skill checks but a - click on HD and get result instantly to your character - event. Not even a second transpires so you can click on 20 HDs in like 2 seconds and be done, if you wanted.

How hard is it? Let's count how many clicks. 4 party members at level 4. Click Short Rest Button. Click Hit Die for Character 1. Maximum 4 clicks for that character. Click Hit Die for Character 2-4. Max 4 clicks per character. Add a button for Arcane Recovery. That's maybe one extra click or 2 for wizards. Maximum number of clicks per Short Rest? 20 at level 4 if you count clicking that you're finished - and this is only if you have like a wizard with you. How hard is it to click 20 times? How long does that REALLY take you? And that's MAXIMUM number of clicks. You could short rest and click 4 times and be done... Or 3 times... Or 8... Or 2.

What are the benefits of this system?

1. More special ability and spell slot resets for classes like Warlock, Fighter, Monk, Druid, etc.
2. Arcane Recovery is now done via short rests, making short rests more valuable to wizards.
3. Short rests are encouraged while long rests are not needed as much. Thus, the adventuring day is extended instead of having people adventure 5 minutes and take the rest of the day off.
4. YOU get to decide how much your characters heal every short rest. You don't just have 2 per day, and if 1 or 2 characters didn't need to short rest, so what. It's not a wasted short rest. You could just have 2 characters heal and save the Hit Dice for the other two characters until they need it.
5. You can short rest a lot, switch out to still fully rested characters who haven't used Hit Dice, and continue your adventure with your still fully rested characters while leaving those you've spent Hit Dice for back at camp. Thus, you CAN utilize your WHOLE party more. You can switch out characters and still continue to short rest that day and receive benefits for it. In current game, if I've spent my 2 short rests with one party of 4, and I go to camp and switch out some of them, I can't short rest anymore.
6. Dialogues can be switched to short rest triggered dialogues pretty easily. Why? Because they could still have you go to camp during a short rest, and still have the dialogues they've already worked so hard on take place at camp. The only difference would be that it isn't night. It's day now when they take place. But, the benefit is that you wouldn't miss a lot of those dialogues that you miss now if you don't long rest frequently. In other words, by tying the dialogues to short rest, you have a much better chance that people will trigger them. And, just in case people skip short rests and just do long, they could still be tied to long rest too - so tied to both so players don't miss them.

So, again, to recap. What would they really need to change?

1. Short Rests trigger dialogues.
2. Remove the limit of 2 Short Rests per day.
3. Add the Hit Dice mechanic to Short Rests.
4. Send the party to camp for a Short Rest so dialogues can be done. (If they don't have to do this, I'm good with that. I just put this in here because I figure they probably would want to do this to make their lives easier. I am ALL for dialogues happening outside of camp on the road. I'd prefer it, actually.)
5. Make Arcane Recovery only available during a Short Rest as a simple, extra little button you press right near the Hit Dice buttons.
6. Limit food more (and this is a maybe. If they keep food as a limit for long resting, they really do need to limit it more).

What I'm saying is, this would NOT really be a major overhaul on Larian's part. Sure. On subsequent playthroughs, you might be like, "But I could long rest without limitation." But I will say that many have made some valid arguments in this regard. It is safer to have long rest unlimited so players don't get frustrated and soft locked than it is to try to figure out a decent long rest limitation that would work. The story does do a good job prompting players to long rest infrequently, and if they tied dialogues to short rest, it would work much more to prompt players to use short rests as their go-to instead of long.

Heck. If I knew I would get more character development if I short rest frequently, I'd be short resting ALL the time. No question. That alone would be a huge motivation to me to short rest instead of long. And the Hit Dice mechanic would also promote this for me because I could short rest more than 2 times a day AND I control who heals each rest. It isn't just a quick heal button you only get to use twice max per day and sucks to be you if only one or two characters needed it.

Seriously. It's a few clicks, people. A few clicks. It's not some hugely time consuming mechanic. Watch a Solasta short rest video and see for yourself. Even at higher levels, it's not a painful mechanic. It works REALLY well, and I can't stress enough how much I like the fact that with Hit Dice I am in control of how much each character heals and when.

Last edited by GM4Him; 12/06/22 06:09 AM.
GM4Him #816654 12/06/22 11:28 AM
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Originally Posted by GM4Him
What are the benefits of this system?

1. More special ability and spell slot resets for classes like Warlock, Fighter, Monk, Druid, etc.
2. Arcane Recovery is now done via short rests, making short rests more valuable to wizards.
3. Short rests are encouraged while long rests are not needed as much. Thus, the adventuring day is extended instead of having people adventure 5 minutes and take the rest of the day off.
4. YOU get to decide how much your characters heal every short rest. You don't just have 2 per day, and if 1 or 2 characters didn't need to short rest, so what. It's not a wasted short rest. You could just have 2 characters heal and save the Hit Dice for the other two characters until they need it.
5. You can short rest a lot, switch out to still fully rested characters who haven't used Hit Dice, and continue your adventure with your still fully rested characters while leaving those you've spent Hit Dice for back at camp. Thus, you CAN utilize your WHOLE party more. You can switch out characters and still continue to short rest that day and receive benefits for it. In current game, if I've spent my 2 short rests with one party of 4, and I go to camp and switch out some of them, I can't short rest anymore.
6. Dialogues can be switched to short rest triggered dialogues pretty easily. Why? Because they could still have you go to camp during a short rest, and still have the dialogues they've already worked so hard on take place at camp. The only difference would be that it isn't night. It's day now when they take place. But, the benefit is that you wouldn't miss a lot of those dialogues that you miss now if you don't long rest frequently. In other words, by tying the dialogues to short rest, you have a much better chance that people will trigger them. And, just in case people skip short rests and just do long, they could still be tied to long rest too - so tied to both so players don't miss them.

So, again, to recap. What would they really need to change?

1. Short Rests trigger dialogues.
2. Remove the limit of 2 Short Rests per day.
3. Add the Hit Dice mechanic to Short Rests.
4. Send the party to camp for a Short Rest so dialogues can be done. (If they don't have to do this, I'm good with that. I just put this in here because I figure they probably would want to do this to make their lives easier. I am ALL for dialogues happening outside of camp on the road. I'd prefer it, actually.)
5. Make Arcane Recovery only available during a Short Rest as a simple, extra little button you press right near the Hit Dice buttons.
6. Limit food more (and this is a maybe. If they keep food as a limit for long resting, they really do need to limit it more).

This is an excellent write up. While Solasta is not a favorite of mine, the short rest mechanic in it was excellent. And I would shift spell preparation to SR as well, it's just makes a lot more sense that way.

Limiting LR is other thing and, while I do hope for some improvements in that regard, I don't see Larain succeeding at that. Every single attempt to translate LR mechanic into cRPGs failed in some regard.

GM4Him #816655 12/06/22 11:51 AM
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Yeah. I've kinda given up on LR limitations. If we can at least get some better SR mechanics that encourage more use of SR, that would go a long way.

GM4Him #816669 12/06/22 04:08 PM
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I would say 3-6 short rests. I think unlimited is abusable with certain class types. But to few hurts those same classes.

I do not think it should be level dependent. The rest system is a balancing mechanism that should function constant throughout progression.

Since the game can't time pressure us or give us complications for attempting a rest, the game has to provide another system to balance resting.

JiruoVX #816674 12/06/22 07:15 PM
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Originally Posted by JiruoVX
I would say 3-6 short rests. I think unlimited is abusable with certain class types. But to few hurts those same classes.

I do not think it should be level dependent. The rest system is a balancing mechanism that should function constant throughout progression.

Since the game can't time pressure us or give us complications for attempting a rest, the game has to provide another system to balance resting.

Hit Dice makes it so abusing the system doesn't work. Why? Once a character or 2 are out of Hit Dice, it gets harder and harder to short rest and get anything out of it.

Example:. You're a Warlock, so you get spell slots reset every short rest. Big deal. Once you no longer get a healing benefit from short rest, it's usefulness drastically decreases. You only get 1 or 2 more spell slots per SR. It's not going to benefit you that much if you keep SRing when you have no more HD.

The only class that could spam short rest and fully heal as a result is Fighter with Second Wind. Big deal if the rest of your party is unable to do so. What? Fighter gonna solo the Gith Patrol or hag or spider matriarch? Even Lae'zel and MC Fighter would struggle with that.

The point is, if you limit SRs by HD and no hard limits, it works just fine, and SRs are promoted which means people will use LRs less, naturally, especially if they know they have a ticking time bomb in their heads.

Last edited by GM4Him; 12/06/22 08:13 PM.
GM4Him #816677 12/06/22 08:10 PM
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I thought that point was to make Short Rests more appealing ... so people choose to use them over Long Rest ...
How are Hit Dices suppose to achieve that?


I still dont understand why cant we change Race for our hirelings. frown
Lets us play Githyanki as racist as they trully are! frown
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Originally Posted by RagnarokCzD
I thought that point was to make Short Rests more appealing ... so people choose to use them over Long Rest ...
How are Hit Dices suppose to achieve that?

It's all about the presentation.

Look. I'm trying to throw you and Icelyn a bone here by saying maybe LR doesn't need to be limited much if at all. If newby players think they shouldn't LR much, and they have a good working SR system as an alternative, limiting LR might not be necessary. That's my point. HD limiting SRs might provide a better SR solution that would promote SRs, because you can SR more than 2 a day, dialogues tied to SR, many special abilities are reset, and YOU control who heals during SR and when and by how much. Add Arcane Recovery to SR as a limit to it, and that promotes SR even more.

GM4Him #816680 12/06/22 08:47 PM
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You would have to throw a whole cow in order to at least lure to me to start considering to bite. laugh
But anyway:

Tying dialogues to Short Rest is mechanicaly impossible ... i thought we are allready beyond that, since it was repeated at least dozen times. O_o

Amount of Short Rest was never an issue as far as i know ... you were coplaining that Long Rests are more effective and therefore there is no reason to use Short one ... that will remain unchanged even if you get 20 Short Rests per day. :-/

You control who heals and how much ... okey, that is good point ...
But how exactly is that better compared to curent system where everyone heals quite a lot? O_o
And you dont need to check another resource. O_o

Arcane recovery on Short Rest sounds like good idea ... but dont get mad, its the only good idea. :-/


Everything else seems to be easily achievable by simply giving 2 more Short Rests. laugh


I still dont understand why cant we change Race for our hirelings. frown
Lets us play Githyanki as racist as they trully are! frown
GM4Him #816681 12/06/22 09:33 PM
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Oh. Was I trying to convince you? Sorry. Didn't know you were Larian.

"Tying dialogues to Short Rest is mechanicaly impossible ... i thought we are allready beyond that, since it was repeated at least dozen times. O_o"

Is it? Did you actually prove it's impossible? Do you really know? I wasn't aware you were Larian.

"Amount of Short Rest was never an issue as far as i know ... you were coplaining that Long Rests are more effective and therefore there is no reason to use Short one ... that will remain unchanged even if you get 20 Short Rests per day. :-/"

It is an issue. That's my point. 2 SRs mean you'll SR less and LR more.

"You control who heals and how much ... okey, that is good point ...
But how exactly is that better compared to curent system where everyone heals quite a lot? O_o
And you dont need to check another resource. O_o"

I thought I made that clear. By controlling it with HD, you can SR more than 2 times per day with various party members. Has Gale used all his HD? Switch him out and bring in Wyll. Adventure continues. Same day. Adventure day extended.

"Arcane recovery on Short Rest sounds like good idea ... but dont get mad, its the only good idea. :-/"

Thank you for your opinion. Smiley winky face.

Last edited by GM4Him; 12/06/22 09:37 PM.
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