Hate The Rest System, Am I Doing It Wrong?

[Nox Tenebris]

I feel like I have to long rest after every fight to get my spells back. I'm still very low level so is this something that is less of a thing once you get further in the game or am I just bad?

[Unrealtairo]

Well either way the infinite spell mod is about to get updated and a few others this week so Im just going to wait on playing more and use that

[Swimfan]

Originally posted by FireGryph:

How you use your spell slots is a show of how experienced a caster you really are. Picking the right spells, the right resources, for each encounter is part of the mindset and strategy of playing a casting class. Do you really neeeeed to cast fireball on the single, already-prone, goblin?

5e did a great job with cantrips being unlimited, because it means caster classes always have spells to cast, rather than a wizard being forced to run in with a staff or dagger when they run out of spells.

In the end, play how you want, really. But to me thats all part of the deal when you have spells to cast. How to be efficient and effective with the spells you have available.

This is also a fair point.
I play waaay more ressource-oriented in this game as I did in let's say DOS2. This also results in way different experiences.
I had a VERY strange bug the other day and had to return to a previous save. I had to redo an encounter. On my first go (before the bug) the encounter was VERY hard because it was the 3rd in a row and I had to fight tooth and nails - on my second go I had full ressources (just rested) and just decimated the enemies. If every encounter was balanced with cooldowns in mind, all encounters would need to be needlessly harder (aka. balanced with an always fully-rested party in mind).

[aardvarkpepper]

Originally posted by Rin Palora:

Originally posted by Nonomori:

Exactly this. I have a feeling people who were not into DnD and just bought this game for another cRPG adventure from Larian will start to leave because DnD mechanics and that stupid ass backwards spell slot system is just made to needlessly complicate things. That is to say about why after all the revisions DnD hasn't moved to mana points system but it's the same argue "why do US still use that unholy inches, miles, feet, pounds system as metric system is ten times more easier and convenient".

Guess people love to complicate needlessly.

Blame the annoying hardcore DND fans, as I understand it 4th edition was just right in that regard but because it used straight words every neckbeards got triggered and shouted up and down that the game was dumbed down and it was becoming a bad video game. So we got the messy 5th edition as a result, short rest, long rest, per day abilities (use it it 5:59 pm get it back at 6:00 pm), words that don't mean what they mean (Chill Touch - not cold or ice, not a touch either), words that do mean what they mean but are slightly different (action, bonus action, reAction, free action and no you can't use an action for a bonus action ability), etc and it all got dumped into the lap of DM's with a pat on the back and a "you make it work" posted noted because making it harder for people to DM was exactly what DnD needed.

Frankly Pathfinder 2nd edition is looking a lot better but it's just lacking the player base atm.

4th edition was bad. You can characterize anyone disagreeing with you however you want.

[Cosgar]

It's a different layer of resource management

[Caz]

Originally posted by Qiox:

Originally posted by Yakito:

Yes. DnD cripples itself by one of the dumbest things I've ever seen in RPG. "Spells per day".
It adds nothing to pen and paper campaigns other than take away your fun and it's the same with this computer game now. I can't believe Devs kept this.

It adds decision making. What spell to use and when. Is it worth using it if is only a coin flip to land? Maybe for this fight you are better off just plinking away with a xbow.

This is not an aRPG where you just spam whatever you have.

It really doesn't, tho. I end up just not using spells that require a spell slot and only using cantrips all the time. Since it's my first run, I don't know if the next fight will be one where I need to spell slot spells available to turn the tide or not, so I end up just not using them at all. All these cool spells that I'd love play with, but the system is designed to discourage using them. I've never liked the rest system in D&D because of this.

And that applies to melee abilities, too. Why can I swing my sword over and over and over without needing to sit down and watch the clouds but if I want to make the target bleed for a whopping whole two turns, I have to have a picnic before I can do that a second time? I can fire off infinite arrows (something that doesn't even require having actual arrows for), but I want to shoot someone's leg to slow them down (Hamstring), I can't do that a second time without needing a twinkie first?

The rest system for D&D just doesn't make sense, and when translated into video game mechanics just sucks out fun. But, it's what we have so we have to deal with it.

[Swimfan]

Originally posted by Cosgar:

It's a different layer of resource management

Correct.
Because of the rest system they can throw some "easy fights" at you that test how ressource-oriented you can be. Sometimes just casting everything on a horde of goblins ain't the answer.

[katzenkrimis]

That's why I like Fighter, Rogue, Monk, Ranger.

I hate magic users. Wizards, Harry Potter, all that crap.

I try to win every fight using basic attacking smarts. If I get wiped, who cares, just reload and try again.

It's all just practice. We aren't trying for the Olympic podium here.

[Inherited]

Originally posted by katzenkrimis:

That's why I like Fighter, Rogue, Monk, Ranger.

I hate magic users. Wizards, Harry Potter, all that crap.

I try to win every fight using basic attacking smarts. If I get wiped, who cares, just reload and try again.

It's all just practice. We aren't trying for the Olympic podium here.

Boring and dull, all classes that basically only have "auto attack" or a modified version of it. Half the skill bar is empty.

I have used fighter and barbarian myself in party, and it is dull and boring af. It's not much of a class to me, just a geezer that swings a 2h weapon. It's good because you dont have to deal as much with limited spell use before rest like casters do + they can soak hits as frontline but playwise my god it is boring and uninteresting.

fighter, barb, rogue, monk they all seem boring as hell.

[Caz]

Originally posted by katzenkrimis:

That's why I like Fighter, Rogue, Monk, Ranger.

I hate magic users. Wizards, Harry Potter, all that crap.

I try to win every fight using basic attacking smarts. If I get wiped, who cares, just reload and try again.

It's all just practice. We aren't trying for the Olympic podium here.

But you have to deal with the rest system as melee, too.

Want to lacerate someone? Cool! But you need to sit down and have a picnic before you can do it again.
Want to rush someone? You can do that! But if you don't take the time to sit down, make a sandwich, and eat it slowly, you won't be able to do it again.

[Inherited]

Originally posted by Caz:

Originally posted by katzenkrimis:

That's why I like Fighter, Rogue, Monk, Ranger.

I hate magic users. Wizards, Harry Potter, all that crap.

I try to win every fight using basic attacking smarts. If I get wiped, who cares, just reload and try again.

It's all just practice. We aren't trying for the Olympic podium here.

But you have to deal with the rest system as melee, too.

Want to lacerate someone? Cool! But you need to sit down and have a picnic before you can do it again.
Want to rush someone? You can do that! But if you don't take the time to sit down, make a sandwich, and eat it slowly, you won't be able to do it again.

Yeah this rest nonsense seems like some mechanic from a game 30 years ago. It serves no purpose, other than to annoy and inconvenience you and in turn also make the combat more restricted + boring + potentially a slog (forced to use some trash "cantrip" spells that are free) that btw miss, miss, miss, miss, miss oh look I just hit for 1 to 3 damage. Great.

Honestly it's just so stiff and dull.

Atleast the enemies dont have two shield hp bar types like they did in divinity 2, which clowned the entire combat system imo. But this rest system is almost as bad and sours the experience in similar fashion.

[Frostbeast]

This DnD mechanic made Pathfinder 2 combat extremly boring for me. Rest was fun but the combat system. Turned based helps a lot. Loke BG3 or Solastra.
Patchfinder had turnbased to but with realtime in mind. It makes the system even more boring.

[Sentient_Toaster]

Resource rationing is important, and so is time pressure (i.e. the need to press onwards despite your resources being somewhat depleted). It's supposed to involve attrition (like clearing a stronghold in a series of consecutive battles because the defenders aren't just disorganized fools who'll just let you hole up and rest unmolested; or maybe it's a rescue mission that'll fail, because the prisoners will be executed if you give them time to realize that they're under attack; etc) and it worsens the already significant balance disparities between classes if long-rest full casters can just go nova all the time.

It's part of the power budget, basically, and at higher levels wizards in particular are already rather powerful compared to their peers. Having their spells not be utterly spammable is necessary if you want the individual spells to still be powerful but also give space for other classes to exist. A rogue can sneak or climb, but the wizard can render the party sneaky with Pass w/o Trace, or use flight or teleportation. A PAM+GWM glaive fighter can dish out a lot of single-target damage, but a wizard can paralyze a target, send it to another plane of existence. Perhaps the barbarian is an expert grappler and can lock down an ogre; the wizard can toss out Evard's Black Tentacles and damage and restrain a square group of four ogres with a single action while remaining out of their reach. Etc. Spell power requires scarcity.

[Yakito]

Originally posted by Qiox:

Originally posted by Yakito:

Yes. DnD cripples itself by one of the dumbest things I've ever seen in RPG. "Spells per day".
It adds nothing to pen and paper campaigns other than take away your fun and it's the same with this computer game now. I can't believe Devs kept this.

It adds decision making. What spell to use and when. Is it worth using it if is only a coin flip to land? Maybe for this fight you are better off just plinking away with a xbow.

This is not an aRPG where you just spam whatever you have.

It does not add any decision making at all. I will use all my spells in a fight regardless. And the game often expects you to. You'd be metagaming if you went into a certain fight knowing you won't be fighting any boss and so your cantrips will do. That's not right.
You run out of spells that you are supposed to use to the fullest and then you rest after that.
Cantrops are boring anyway. Spamming constant 1d10 damage spell over and over is boring.

Edit: I also would argue that it takes away from fun a lot. I was going through the goblin stronghold and this was a long one with many fights. Do you know how lame it is to just teleport out into a camp while being in the middle of the stonghold just to magically re-appear next day with my spells? How is this even justifiable in an actual pen and paper session is beyond me. It destroys the world for me.

I recently got back into trying DnD again. (pen and paper). I rolled a Sorcerer. Jesus. Rolling 1d3 for ally my spells that miss often is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ patheticly boring that I cannot look at DnD again. It was and always will be a rubbish system. Levels... who the ♥♥♥♥ thought levels were good for pen and paper.

[ACS36]

I can see why players unfamiliar with this type of game would feel like they have to long rest all the time to get spells slots back. But the truth is you don't really need to.

It's definitely a design flaw within the game. It might work well in pen and paper, but in a video game it will absolutely be abused as much as possible.

I'm choosing not to rest often. Seems too gimmicky/cheese. I go quite a while without taking a long rest and I'm very thoughtful of how I use my spell slots.

Resting should have a higher cost in the game. It's too cheap. As is much of the game economy. Scrolls/Potions/Barrels are far too common. The player always has what they need to do everything and anything. It makes certain classes less appealing and class specialization less interesting.

[MundM]

Originally posted by Yakito:

Yes. DnD cripples itself by one of the dumbest things I've ever seen in RPG. "Spells per day".
It adds nothing to pen and paper campaigns other than take away your fun and it's the same with this computer game now. I can't believe Devs kept this.

It's called balancing.