What RPG handles resting the best?

[rusty_shackleford]

I like how it's handled in DDO(Dungeons & Dragons Online), where each "quest"(each quest is a ~10 minute-to-hour long scenario) has a set number of campfires placed throughout the quest that can only be used once, and if you run out of campfires + can't continue, you have to leave. It causes you to carefully think about when to rest.
Dark Sun(1993) also had handplaced campsites, but were usable as many times as you want.

But it doesn't account for anything like passing of time, resource usage for camping, etc., With the latter, Solasta completely trivialized it by adding conjure supplies magic.

---

The worst is any that just lets you rest spam without consequence, just remove the mechanic and all it's tied to altogether at that point.

[asf]

bodurs gate 2

[Norfleet]

RPG-7 handles resting the best.

You can rest anywhere, anytime...
...but resting occurs in real time, so resting too often can get really boring, plus...
...the world continues to happen while you are resting...
...resting consumes supplies...
...and other players and monsters can attack you while you are resting.

[Oyster Sauce]

Time just speeds up while you're resting in Mount & Blade. Other armies and bandits and caravans are still doing their own thing while you heal your guys.

[1998]

King Arthur, and any other game that hard restricts resting to a fixed number of times. Other implementations like random consumables/camping kits, temp buffs, etc. eventually don't restrict rest spamming at all.

[aweigh]

no resting in the field in Wizardry/Elminage.

gotta return to town to rest and level up which carries its own dangers, chars age when they rest and it affects how their attributes change during level-ups.

in the early game there's also no convenient way of returning to where you left off so you are constantly weighing the pros and cons of returning to town or exploring a bit further. it's simple but an effective way of managing player psychology.

i'm struggling to come up with legitimate reasons for why you even need a resting mechanic in most RPGs. prepare accordingly instead, what's the problem.

[rusty_shackleford]

no resting in the field in Wizardry/Elminage.

gotta return to town to rest and level up which carries its own dangers, chars age when they rest and it affects how their attributes change during level-ups.

in the early game there's also no convenient way of returning to where you left off so you are constantly weighing the pros and cons of returning to town or exploring a bit further. it's simple but an effective way of managing player psychology.

i'm struggling to come up with legitimate reasons for why you even need a resting mechanic in most RPGs. prepare accordingly instead, what's the problem.

Because if those games had say, 3 rests in a dungeon(and were designed around it), it would be another resource you'd have to manage to defeat the dungeon.

[aweigh]

no resting in the field in Wizardry/Elminage.

gotta return to town to rest and level up which carries its own dangers, chars age when they rest and it affects how their attributes change during level-ups.

in the early game there's also no convenient way of returning to where you left off so you are constantly weighing the pros and cons of returning to town or exploring a bit further. it's simple but an effective way of managing player psychology.

i'm struggling to come up with legitimate reasons for why you even need a resting mechanic in most RPGs. prepare accordingly instead, what's the problem.

Because if those games had say, 3 rests in a dungeon(and were designed around it), it would be another resource you'd have to manage to defeat the dungeon.

this is fine, hypothetically. but why not just put more thought into the basic resources that allow the party to continue fighting? Putting in arbitrarily limited rest supplies seems convoluted. It can work fine, not saying it can't, but it just seems unnecessary.

another way can be to put a hard cap on what resting can accomplish: resting in the field only refreshes certain things, or up to a certain point. need a completely safe place (town, etc) to fully replenish. idk just zyn thoughts.

[wndrbr]

Pathfinder Kingmaker is the only rpg i know that has a relatively complex resting management. There's a resource (rations), your party members give you various benefits depending on their specialization (i.e. a guy with a high nature lore can hunt more food, someone with steath skills can camouflage your camp and prevent the night time ambush, etc. And you can't just abuse resting even if you have a lot of camping supplies, since the game has time limits and resting too often may ruin certain quests.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Mount & Blade Warband: you have to camp for your characters to heal, and IIRC they can only use their skills to maximum effectiveness at full HP. However, healing takes time, which means that while you are encamped, you are 1. burning through your supplies and your money as you have to pay your army weekly wages, 2. you are at risk of being attacked while encamped, possibly by a force too strong for you so you lose everything, 3. you might miss out on timed quests, and 4. armies are still moving around the map so the enemy you were tracking might disappear, or the enemy you are at war with might invade some other part of your territory and you are too far away to react in time, and so on.

[Element]

Dork Souls 1
Play the game and forget about camping

[Dorateen]

I prefer restricted resting, so that the player cannot just hit a button after every combat, but also having a designated rest spot for the player to return. This will naturally raise the issue of backtracking, but that's the point. If the player wants to challenge himself and keep pushing deeper into a dungeon while the party is low on resources, there is still that option. But if necessary, it is still possible to go back and heal up. This is vital especially in games with spell memorization mechanics, or else wizards and clerics become dead weight outside of consumables. I find disallowing resting to the extreme a bit frustrating because it is like, you have these player character classes that require resting to function, and now the game is hindering those options. So again, make resting something the player has to work for, but once they find a safe haven then it becomes a valuable tool to leverage exploration (and discovering such a place in a dungeon becomes its own reward).

Also, limiting resting to Inns is a fine idea, as it demands a monetary resource from the party. Needing food is a good option, too.

Wandering monsters as a possible consequence of resting is a legitimate and reasonable practice. However, it does require designing an additional system around that.

If we are talking about resting as part of the adventure simulation in computer role-playing games, I think the Realms of Arkania games handled this best. Allowing the party to set up camp, and assign characters different roles such as guard duty, and hunting for food, as well as spell caster performing their magic rituals.

[rusty_shackleford]

I recall Expeditions: Vikings having a rather in-depth rest system but it has been years since I played it, any other games similar to that?

[Xenich]

I like how it's handled in DDO(Dungeons & Dragons Online), where each "quest"(each quest is a ~10 minute-to-hour long scenario) has a set number of campfires placed throughout the quest that can only be used once, and if you run out of campfires + can't continue, you have to leave. It causes you to carefully think about when to rest.
Dark Sun(1993) also had handplaced campsites, but were usable as many times as you want.

But it doesn't account for anything like passing of time, resource usage for camping, etc., With the latter, Solasta completely trivialized it by adding conjure supplies magic.

---

The worst is any that just lets you rest spam without consequence, just remove the mechanic and all it's tied to altogether at that point.

Yeah, I do like DDO in that respect, though I prefer its system before where resting was carefully calculated to difficulty with the availability being limited in harder modes. Its current system seems to plaster them all over the place making the instances much easier on that front.

I know a lot of people hate the EQ model, but I did like the time based recovery with meditation (combined with the casters not being able to see anything, forcing the use of spell aids) in early releases.

This is one of those things where there are hard lines between gamer tastes in terms of play style. I can respect the style where someone wants to focus all of their "game play" on the action component of play, but I personally enjoy the very slow types of systems where the elements you describe are key to success.

That style is however murder on the impatient but it does clearly provide consequence for people who rush in and those who do not take the time to learn to manage systems with endurance play.

[rusty_shackleford]

Yeah, I do like DDO in that respect, though I prefer its system before where resting was carefully calculated to difficulty with the availability being limited in harder modes. Its current system seems to plaster them all over the place making the instances much easier on that front.

Did they change it? I haven't played it for a few years. It was a perfect system and didn't need any tweaking.

[Xenich]

I prefer restricted resting, so that the player cannot just hit a button after every combat, but also having a designated rest spot for the player to return. This will naturally raise the issue of backtracking, but that's the point. If the player wants to challenge himself and keep pushing deeper into a dungeon while the party is low on resources, there is still that option. But if necessary, it is still possible to go back and heal up. This is vital especially in games with spell memorization mechanics, or else wizards and clerics become dead weight outside of consumables. I find disallowing resting to the extreme a bit frustrating because it is like, you have these player character classes that require resting to function, and now the game is hindering those options. So again, make resting something the player has to work for, but once they find a safe haven then it becomes a valuable tool to leverage exploration (and discovering such a place in a dungeon becomes its own reward).

Also, limiting resting to Inns is a fine idea, as it demands a monetary resource from the party. Needing food is a good option, too.

Wandering monsters as a possible consequence of resting is a legitimate and reasonable practice. However, it does require designing an additional system around that.

If we are talking about resting as part of the adventure simulation in computer role-playing games, I think the Realms of Arkania games handled this best. Allowing the party to set up camp, and assign characters different roles such as guard duty, and hunting for food, as well as spell caster performing their magic rituals.

Yes, this is a good way to handle it. It provides layers of risk/reward and elements of play. Wandering mobs, timer spawns with random pops, etc... Choosing when, where, and how long to rest becomes a game play element in itself. It also provides a means to implement numerous game play features (spells/abilities/race features/etc...) which then have pros/cons concerning this very activity.

[Xenich]

Yeah, I do like DDO in that respect, though I prefer its system before where resting was carefully calculated to difficulty with the availability being limited in harder modes. Its current system seems to plaster them all over the place making the instances much easier on that front.

Did they change it? I haven't played it for a few years. It was a perfect system and didn't need any tweaking.

A while back, before the enhancement introduction (or around that time if I remember right) they slowly started to change them. It may be tweaked differently in newer epic content, but the heroic stuff on elite definitely is made easier. I noticed on many dungeons I was learning I would have to run it in hard first to get a few more rest spots to open up until I learned how the encounters flowed, but it appears now most of the elites have all the spots that the easier modes have opened up.

[rusty_shackleford]

is resting itself actually a good mechanic or just something pulled over from tabletop?

I will admit

I recall Expeditions: Vikings having a rather in-depth rest system but it has been years since I played it, any other games similar to that?

this does add a lot of IMMERSHUN to an RPG.

[TKVNC]

Fallout 4, survival mode

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I liked how the Banner Saga did it. In TBS you are racing against time to outpace a pursuing army (and later, an encroaching apocalypse). You are also leading a caravan of hundreds or thousands of people who are consuming supplies every day, and you have limited amounts of supplies. If a character is KOed in combat, they become injured and have reduced stats for several days, or can be healed up after a few days of stopping the caravan to rest. But again the adversary behind you will be catching up and you will be burning supplies for each day you rest. Supplies are also the currency of the game that you use to buy accessories at shops or for certain dialogue/story options, and if you run out of supplies then people start dying every day of starvation. You can also only stop and rest at certain places, not at any time. So if people are injured, then you are having to weigh whether or not you think stopping to rest is worth the risk that you will not have enough supplies to buy items at a shop if the opportunity arises again or if people will starve or if you won't beat a deadline to make to a place.