"Wait, so they just stopped in the middle of killing everyone and went to sleep?"
"Yeah, damnedest thing. The wizard blew up bill, then asked the others if they wanted to rest and they all just started pulling out tents and shit."
NGL, I play BG3 like D&D, I don't trust the game (DM) not to fuck me over and tend to death march my characters. "Shut up and drink the health potion, you're fine. You still have two first level spell slots, you've got this. Do you really need that short rest?" Etc.
The annoying thing about that is that if you don't long rest enough in BG3, you miss a lot of story beats. Unlike tabletop, it wants you to long rest, and will punish you for not long resting rather than punishing you for long resting.
I'm doing a second playthrough and I'm realizing just how much I missed during my first playthrough where I used my tabletop mindset of "rest only when absolutely necessary". And even then sometimes watching other people's playthroughs I see scenes I never saw.
Or when Karlach hit me with the "I thought we really had something there, but I guess not." At the start of act 3 that made me save scum, fix it, and put an indefinite hold on playing.
Sometimes it forces you to long rest. I had just long rested, used my last scroll of mage armor on my bard, tried to head out, and it wouldn't let me leave camp. It forced me to long rest again to trigger the cut scene with the dragon rider dude at the end of the mountain pass.
Warlocks suffer again. This is why I think 4e's style of giving each class the same number of resources that recharge on short/long rests is better. Making a short rest magic user just because isn't necessarily good game design. I've literally never played in a campaign that does 6 encounters per adventuring day because combat takes so fucking long and we don't want to stretch a single adventuring day over 6 real life weeks. (Gritty Realism does not solve this. Do not suggest it. It changes narrative pacing. Not getting resources back for a month and a half still sucks.)
Does BG3 not do random encounters when resting in dangerous areas? The Pathfinder CRPGs really make it worth stretching your resources to the next safe area.
It doesn't, but I've wished it did. Probably as a toggled option, since I know it would aggravate others.
It would require a couple more Act 2 safe zones scattered about for the player to keep track of, but it makes more sense than the ability to just chill for a while in what can be some incredibly unsafe territory. Sneaking off to bang in the underdark? Sure. Fine. I'm certain that won't cause any undue noise.
There are only 1-2 battles I'm aware of that can or absolutely will happen, and neither are randomized encounters in the same vein. Areas it notes are dangerous, it won't allow you to rest at all.
Boss, the adventurers broke in, killed most of our men, and now are sleeping in the larder. They didn't even lock the door, should we slit their throats while they sleep?
BG3 won't let you go to camp/long rest in "dangerous areas" (usually a bad guy stronghold-esque place) or whatever they're called. But if you backtrack to the beginning of that dangerous area and nap right outside of their gate? Then you're A-OK :)
One of the reasons I really dislike DND is the long rest cadence. It's just not really how a lot of people want to play the game.
Sure, some people want to play the resource management game and really think hard about how to make their five spell slots last. Most people just want to do cool shit.
being a bandit in a world of wizards must suck ass. If they suddenly stop invading your hideout theres an 80% chance they've spontaneously invented a new warcrime that triggers when you walk through the door to investigate, or they're just taking a spellcaster siesta.
Relatedly, “party is baffled when predatory animal becomes feared and flees at 1/2 HP.” I mean, the dire wolves weren’t attacking for fun, they were looking for a meal and found ostensibly snack-shaped things. If you want the pelts, make certain they can’t escape. Sentinel, nets, Entangle, etc..
You gotta make sure to remember that some animals don't know how to back down. This is not in hunting scenarios but general confrontation some animals will get completely caught up in aggression and self destructively begin hyperfocusing on murder mode.
Dogs IRL do it surprisingly often. Humans are also known for it. Adrenaline is a bitch.
BG3 has events where you can't sleep or they complete without you.
Waukeen's rest burning is the first one that comes to mind. If you stumble on it and then rest, Counselor Florrick will die. You have to complete it when you get to it. In a similar vein if you travel to the mountain pass before saving Halsin he will die in the goblin camp. I think that's because multiple days pass in the story when you go the mountain pass route instead of the underdark route.
I did one time provide a room that slows down time for my players. It was after a highly long dungeon stretch at what was the finale of the campaign.
It helped that the dungeon itself was a time warped anomaly so it was easily justified. The whole place was also modelled after the IRL Titanic.
Afterwards they had to fight a gauntlet of a fake final boss, an escape sequence and then an abomination of a dragon (which before seemed to be the fake final boss's pet) rampaging through a city, before said dragon revealed it's true form as a far realm abomination with time based powers.
Sometimes you gotta allow your players to cheese a little.
The community D&D episodes are so good. I hope they go back on their decision to pull the first one from streaming sites. It was one of the things that motivated me to try D&D for the first time.