@Stabbey This could be an interesting solution despite being a disguised time constraint. There is one major problem and one major benefit I see here.
Let's see how this could work :
In this case we want to have a fatigue treshhold giving you exhaustion points, up to 5. At 5 we go to sleep.
My proposal (
which I detailed here) was to have a fatigue meter. Once it crosses a certain threshold, you are permitted to long rest, but have no penalties at that time. Once it hits the maximum, the party gets a point of Exhaustion. The meter continues to count up, but you can take a long rest to clear any accumulated Exhaustion points.
The Exhaustion system I mentioned was the one 5e uses, which progressively increases the penalties. With 5 points of Exhaustion, movement is reduced to 0 - you can't move at all, which is why I set that as the point at which a long rest is automatically forced. Practically speaking, the penalties for Exhaustion in 5e are bad enough that it's highly encouraged to long rest long before getting any, never mind 5 points:
1 Exhaustion point is Disadvantage on ability checks.
2 Exhaustion points cuts movement speed in half.
3 Exhaustion points is Disadvantage on attack rolls and saving throws.
4 Exhaustion points cuts maximum HP in half.
5 Exhaustion points reduces speed to 0.
At 6 Exhaustion points you die.
Of course, the actual rules also say that you can only lose 1 point of exhaustion per long rest, but that would be tedious in videogame format which can't gloss over time so easily, so in my system you lose them all upon taking a long rest.
We have a cooldown that you cannot bypass (for now) for long rests. Long rests being the only way to get back your spells as a mage/wizard.
Short rests give us back our hp + special actions.
It brings us to the logic of D&D when you won't long rest twice in a row cause only 2 hours elapsed in your role play. It also forces you to use your spells carefully and to scout before engaging in a fight. You cannot end up in a fight not knowing what awaits you later on. It forces you to use more mechanics from D&D, including certain spells like invisibility( even if it already has an application right now).
Correct, there will be a cooldown you can't bypass. The reasoning is that long resting too frequently breaks the attrition-based balance of D&D, and gives no incentive to use a Warlock, which is based on long rests being a lot rarer than short rests.
Sooner or later you will deplete all your spells. Let's take the goblin camp as an example.
You cleared the gate and sneaked inside. You executed everyone inside. Outside you have 18 enemies awaiting you. You already killed around 20 of them and you're low level so you're in need of replenishing your spells. You have 3 fatigue points(for now we don't know how they are generated).
I was in a hurry when I posted my idea, so I didn't go into a lot of detail, but the idea I have in mind is that once you get to about 67% of your first Exhaustion Point, you can long rest again. Difficulty settings could
possibly change that, so 40% for Easy and 80% for Hard. Once you're past that "67%", you can long rest whether you have 0 or 4 Exhaustion points.
You really wouldn't want to have any exhaustion points, never mind entering into an enemy encampment and starting a fight with 3 of them. So yes, if you have 3 exhaustion points and are tapped out with a ton of enemies outside, you're pretty screwed. However, if you have crossed the (arbitrarily chosen) "67% Fatigue" threshold on the first exhaustion point, you can take a long rest. If you have not yet crossed it, you can walk around more to increase it and tip it over, or use healing to tip it over.
Whether long rests in enemy territory are allowed is a different question which my idea does not address.
At this point we are down to short rest and let's go. This encounter is doable with cantrips only for mage and you still have your melee/archer characters that can do the damage. After the fight we have 5 fatigue points. Long rest, and let's go.
The major issue I see here is -> Sooner or later you might end up against the wall with no possible solution.
If you replace the 18 super simple to kill goblins with a boss where your wizard is actually required there is nothing you can do to fight the boss in question. Or rather your mage will be borderline useless during that fight. That will be super difficult all of sudden and might become frustrating. Unless you balance the game around cantrips and melee characters.
You can eventually leave and come back for him later. That would make sense, you're not in power to kill who you want when you want at your level. And that's the wall I'm speaking off. In D&D it would make sense story wise to leave this fight, do something else and you're still playing.
My idea was that simply walking around increases fatigue to allow crossing the threshold and allowing a long rest. This to me is less likely to get players stuck than a system based around consuming food or rations, which could run out. I also think it's better than a "random encounter" system which could either block players because they're in too bad a shape to win the fight, or, if the encounter happens after a long rest, could tap them enough that they'll feel like they need another long rest to recover from the random encounter they just had by having a long rest.
Walking around would increase fatigue less than receiving healing would. Healing from short rests would not count towards the fatigue meter, because I want to encourage more use of short rests, and you would be limited to 2-3 short rests per long rest anyway.
In a PC game you're loosing content. If you have to skip some fights or have serious issues during them because " you're can't rest yet" that would ( based on the current form of BG3) become an issue.
Again, this is my fault for poorly explaining my idea in limited time, but fatigue increases from walking around outside of combat (it probably does not increase from movement inside combat, which would disadvantage melee-heavy parties more), so you wouldn't get stuck being unable to rest as long as you can still move.
I think the solution would be not to limit how often you can replenish your ressources to 100% but where you can do it. I think the best way would be to provide "camping kits" exactly like in POE1 but give you like 5 of them. More than enough to clear one of the zones of the map. After this time you could come back to the town and buy more of them.
Now you made the player come back to the town and...what for exactly? There should be some kind of gameplay there. In wasteland you had your base to manage, upgrades to make etc. In case of BG3 you have items to sell, others to identify( hopefully!). So it would make sense to some extent. But then you're effectively making an illusion of resource management while in reality you're never in the risk of running low on anything. In wasteland it worked because you were buying ammo type for each gun , upgrading them etc. If it sums up to " buy this item 5 times" it will be pointless.
Yes, i have no solution for this. Yours is the closest one to become a good idea BUT we would need to find something for the " wall" i mentioned.
The idea of resting in specific areas isn't terrible, but because there are no respawning enemies, it would ultimately end up being a lot of backtracking to the safe area, resting then returning to the place you left off from, all without any new encounters along the way. That would start to feel like a waste of time, which would only increase the more you play.
What the different difficulty settings each do still needs to be determined, then balanced, then tested and re-balanced.
