I know writing this is a lost cause but I feel I need to do it anyway. After playing Pillars of Eternity for about 3 h I felt that everything looked really promising except 2 things. After 20 h still felt the same. After 40 h I still felt the same, except one of the two problems had become smaller. The problem that was clearly worse in the first 20 h is such a difficult one to tackle and explain that I won't use any time and effort on it but the other is a very simple game mechanic: per day / rest. I was introduced to this type of system with D&D 3.5 and at first it was confusing and when I figured out how it actually works I disliked it. I disliked it as a player, I disliked it as a GM, I disliked it in video games like Baldur's Gate and I still dislike it in games like PoE. In P&P RPGs it works better because these abilites (such as spells) are commonly used also outside combat and because the players have a lot ways to prevent ever getting in to fights (compared to cRPGs where usually 95 % of fights happen regardless what the player does) but even in them it causes unnecessary complications and that is why I have chosen not to use RPG systems which has this type of rules. But in cRPGs I can't just use different system, I am forced to use the one the devs implemented. That is why I'm writing this. So maybe, just maybe there will be better mechanisms in the future games I'll otherwise love to play.

I have been playing cRPGs for about 15 years (also many great games from the golder era 1995 – 2001 such as Baldur's Gates, Toment and Fallouts) and Pen&Paper RPGs for about 10 years (using many different game mechanics, including D&D 3.5 and 5th edition) and I really feel that spells per day / rest is the worst spell casting restriction mechanism I have encoutered.

In short the problem is the ridiculousness of the idea that you make a class, then you give this class abilites, such as spells, that makes this class unique and then you apply a restriction that says that the players should not use these abilities unless s/he is certain that they won't be needed later. This doesn't increase the fun element of playing such class, it decreases it.

One of the most common defences I hear / read is that the spells would be too powerful if they weren't limited. This is true. If nothing else changed in PoE and spellcasting classes could use their spells unlimited amounts, the game would lose all balance. But I'm not saying that spells should be unlimited. I'm not saying that nothing else, except how the use of abilities such as spells are limited should be changed. I'm saying that spells (and other abilites) per rest has an inherent flaw that can easily be fixed by changing the limitation method and applying appropriate changes elsewhere to take into account this change. This could be handled in many ways. For example:

- The spells could be per encounter but there would be less uses per spell level.
- The spell effects could be toned down (I fail to see how it is a good game mechanic that first a class is give so powerful abilities that if the class was able to use them regularly, the class would become OP, and then limiting the class's ability to use them, in order to fix the first problem).
- The spells could use some sort of mana system.
- etc.

Another common defence is that per rest introduces a resource management element to the game and this is good. I concur but any limitation method introduces a resource management element and I have not heard a single argument supporting the claim that the resource management element per rest brings with it is, objectively, the best resource management element. I feel that especially in a cRPG every fight should be both challenging and fun. Per rest method creates a situation where most of the forced battles (so called grinding where there is no method to interact with the hostiles, other than killing them) are not as fun as they would be if all classes could use all of their abilities, not freely, but without trying to guess things like:

- How many fights are there still in this area?
- Will there be a difficult boss battle at the end of this area?
- etc.
I also feel that most of the forced battles are too easy because they assume that the player isn't using the per rest abilites regularly. This becomes a problem especially when methods to circumvate the limitation are added (see below).

Another common defence is that there is a rest mechanism that enables the player to get back all the per rest abilites if they run out during the clean up of an area. But this is just another problem that would not even need solving if the limitation method would be better in the first place. Also the rest mechanism (camp) is broken on its own. They can be used at anytime anywhere. The party is in the middle of a cult base which is filled with hostiles and the game sees no problem taking a nice little 8 h rest right there. The cost is (if I can remember correctly) 75 gold and there are a lot of camping supplies to be found for free all around the game areas. These basically mean that it is (after the beginning) the same as free. And if the player is willing to consume some extra time s/he can just run to base and get a literally free rest there. So the limitation method can easily be circumvented. So we have a mechanic that makes the game less fun and it is being ”fixed” by another which makes it even less fun (the player is forced to consume time on running around looking for merchants or free rest areas).

Originally I truly felt like that talking about this matter is a complete waste of time since obviously the devs like this mechanism since they implemented it into their own system which they have built from scratch (by loaning a lot from D&D). Until I got my 9th level. At that moment I realized that the devs must have felt that there is something wrong with the per rest mechanism why else would they partially remove it at a certain level? If they thought that per rest mechanism is the greatest ability limitation method ever they would have no reason to touch it, right? This made me think another thing about PoE: There are 2 completely unique caster classes and neither uses per rest mechanism. So clearly the devs are not ”in love” with the per rest mechanism. I don't know why they still decided to implement it on the spellcasting of some of the classes and on some other abilites. Maybe it was simply the time constraint. The system loans heavily from D&D and it would have taken more time to fine tune the rules if they had replaced the per rest mechanism with something else. Maybe they were afraid that some of the people who supported the Kickstarter project would be pissed off due to the promise of an old school cRPG if the ”good old per rest mechanism” wasn't there. Maybe it was something else. Regardless of the reason I personally, truly and deeply hope, that the per rest mechanism is though over a second time and unless they can think of some very good argumentation to support it or an exceptional method to fix its problems, it is replaced by something that simply works better.

Thank you for making this post. I doubt Obsidian will notice it over here on discussion boards, so if you want to be heard, go over to Obsidian forums and also make your post there - however, I can assure you that all the issues you are mentioning were already talked about at length over there. I've been stalking those boards for quite some time. Anyway, I won't respond to your entire post, and I will try to explain my point of view while taking some of your points and responding directly - if you feel like I'm cherry picking your argument, feel free to point it out and tell me why so I can adjust/change my argumentation accordingly. I assure you I'm not doing it on purpose.

Anyway, to take a look at big picture, before I even start responding to your individual points: After all the RPGs which got released troughout years, I found system used by Obsidian incredibly refreshing. Just about every RPG ever uses mana/cooldown-based casting and at this point, it just doesn't feel like a particularily interesting mechanic to me. In fact, one of the reasons why I heavily disliked Dragon Age: Origins was that these were your only restrictions on casting spells, which made every single encounter feel the same (overly long dungeons hardly helped either.) Argument can be made that all of those games use the mechanic for a reason - and I firmly believe this reason is that it is easy to implement. For every single encounter, you can count on player to have his full 'firepower' at his disposal, so there's at least one variable (as far as it can be in RPGs anyway) gone from the equasion when designing enemies and encounters.

Now rest-based skill usage? That's an entirely different can of worms. It requires a very different design approach to properly pull it off, and I believe designing an RPG around this mechanic is a lot more difficult than designing it around mana/cooldowns. In mana/cooldown system, you only ever need to weight individual encounters as isolated obstacles into which players get in full strength, and from which they'll emerge with some potions gone at worst. Rest-based skills, on the other hand, would force a designer to think about how will players allocate their resources, and how to scale encounters in such a way that player does not exceed his limited resources, but pushes them enough to almost use them up to keep the tension high. Now I'm not saying Pillars of Eternity has managed to pull this balance off - quite the contrary actually. But I always prefer games trying to do something uncommon and failing to them just playing it safe. So yes, I come from the 'resource management' camp, and I'm glad Pillars used per rest mechanics as opposed to anything else. At the end of the day, however, I'm also glad it quite simply uses a mechanic which is different to vast majority of modern RPGs. Now, to your individual points... This a good point to bring up, but for a different reason that you'd expect - see, you have brought up an inherent issue with systems which allow you to use the same set of abilities every single encounter, and that is the fact that these abilities need to be balanced in such a way that they can be used every single encounter without making the encounters too easy. On the other hand, per rest systems can give you some insanely powerful abilities that you can only use once or twice per floor of a dungeon. See where I'm going with this? The balance is shifted, and it gives designers more freedom to give certain abilities massive potential without inevitably breaking the game. Can't realistically do that with a per encounter system, at least not without giving those abilities massive downsides. That's because this particular matter can not really be considered objectively. I, very subjectively, love resource management in games. And as far as I'm concerned, while implementation of resource management elements was wonky in Pillars, Obsidian has nailed what should be managed. It seems that what you hate is what I love about the whole thing - the feeling of uncertainty of what is to come, the thrill I get when I finish a battle using minimal amount of my finite resources. I can't just go all out on this one enemy, because then I might not have the strength to take on the next obstacle. The entire game is full of extremely clever tradeoffs - do I use this spell now and forfeit my chance of using it later? If I don't use it now, how much HP are my characters going to lose? Is the loss of HP worth keeping the spell? It even concerns rejuvenating fallen characters in battle - when their endurance drops to 0, can the rest of my party handle the fight? Do I get that person back on his feet while risking further loss of overal hit points? Which brings us all the way back to: What if I'll need the ressurrect spell later on? It's a constant balancing act, and I'm so thankful Obsidian has attempted to do this on a scale this large. Mechanics concerning resource management are used troughout core mechanics of this entire game and create this beautiful, albeit flawed whole. I have not seen any RPG in my life which would attempt to quite go this far with it, and certainly not using a concept as antiquated as per rest abilities as one of the core principles. Surely you can see how much of this decisionmaking would cease to exist if the per rest requirement would be dropped. Which brings me to... The player is not forced to do anything. The design intent is quite strongly suggested to the player - max out your resources in town and then make do with what you have until you find another town/merchant. I have seen suggestions to lock player in an area until player clears it out so he's stuck with the finite amount of resources, but I'm glad there's a big, fat "I handled this part really badly, better go restock" option in case I screw up. Nonetheless, I consider Obsidian my DM, and I tend to respect how my DM wants me to play his game. Obsidian are extremely experienced RPG designers, and they have made sure that with proper party build, you can do any dungeon on the hardest difficulty without backtracking. And you said it yourself, the game is relatively generous with camping supplies - just not generous enough to make you comfortable on any difficulty. In other words, while you can constantly run back to town, you're breaking the game by doing so - however, I feel it would be wrong to limit this behaviour so the game doesn't become too punishing. Not necessarily. IIRC you only get tier 1 and 2 spells on per encounter basis, and at that point of the game, those tiers contain nice utilitarian spells, but nothing particularily powerful. Nonetheless, it gives player a good feeling of progression and of increasing power of his caster - additionally, it somewhat changes dynamic of combat, which is quite essential to keep player's attention troughout a game as long as Pillars of Eternity.

To be continued...

Previously on GOG discussion boards...
Cooldown McManatron: "WE ARE LEGION! RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!"
PerRestxie: "Fen! Fen, are you all right? What's wrong with your leg!?"
Fenixp: "Run, Restxie! Run and save yourself! I can handle this foe!"
PerRestxie: "But Fen... I... I love you!"
Fenixp: "I said go! Run! RUN YOU FOOL!"

And now the conclusion...
(a mechanic which does needs to be dropped is character limit on discussion boards. Combined with automatic merging of posts sent with smaller than 10 min long delay.) Eh, you're in territory of wild assumptions there. But since you went there, basic videogame design practices give me a lot easier answer to that small riddle: Diversity. It's a PC RPG. In other words, it doesn't need its mechanics particularily centralized around a small number of similar concepts, and designers can go wild with creating different mechanics for various classes in order to make playing those classes more diverse, and to allow for higher replayability in the future. I was personally extremely impressed by sheer amount of different spellcasting mechanics Obsidian has stuffed into Pillars, and very pleasantly surprised to find out that none of those systems is a traditional mana pool / cooldown mechanic. And I, personally, believe that 'something that simply works better' is highly subjective ;-) I have played at the very least dozens of PC RPGs in my life, but I would not be surprised if the number went into hundreds. In vast majority of them, I kept encountering the same old boring mechanics with only some minor twists to the formula. I have seen potential in Infinity Engine games, but was quite disappointed that I've had to roleplay resource management for myself and there wasn't any underlying mechanic properly connecting these aspect together. Pillars of Eternity is a bit of a dream come true - finally a game brave enough to take these old mechanics and work on polishing them up, adding them into a functional whole, and using them in a manner that I'm yet to see in another videogame. I applaud Obsidian for their design decisions, and I would never want them to remove these aspects - in fact, I wish to see them work on them, polish them, make them even better.

Good grief, you guys. Can I get an executive summary?

That is an executive summary, I've had to restrain myself to keep the post short. Do you want me to also write the long version? :-P

Isn't it a contradiction? First you say that it's bad when spells are limited and you want them available for every encounter, but later you say you dislike the rest mechanic because it allows you to rest often. But the latter solves the problem of the earlier issue?

It's like complaining that the fries in that one restaurant are not salty enough and then complain about how they offer salt for free so you can add some yourself any time.

Its a complex matter. One could just go directly to the conclusion but then there wouldn't be any supporting argumentation which is the whole point of this type of discussion.

Feel free to join in.

No and I'm sorry if your misunderstanding is caused by my incoherent writing.

I feel spellcasting and other ability usage should be limited somehow but the per rest mechanic has some inherent flaws that make the game less fun. The latter one is about that the almost free rest mechanism is supposed to fix the problem but only lessens it and then causes a problem of its own. It doesn't solve the problem because of two reasons. You don't rest after *every* fight even with the nearly free rests and if you do the game difficulty is totally wrecked.

Hmmm, I see. I'm personally a fan of the "Fully recover after every battle, but every battle is a challenge" style. So if resting is fully free and you can rest after every battle, that's exactly how I like it (it doesn't really work so well in most of these games you mentioned because there is the risk of surprise attacks when resting in the wild and backtracking to town after every battle is super boring - but in theory if resting had no risks it would be good).

I also kind of understand the modern D&D style (E5) where spells are even more limited than in any of these video games with the philosophy that they should only be used in rare situations when they are really needed to survive or overcome an obstacle. At first I thought it was strange because I was used to other games where the wizards basically did cast spells every turn and rarely ran out of MP (magic), but I eventually got used to it and kind of like it now.

Per encounter is also a limitation and requires resource management but only extends to one fight at a time. You would have to use those limited resources when they provide you the most. Think for example if you only had 2 spell slots per level but they were per encounter. That would certainly limit your spellcasting, right? Well per rest works a lot better in Pen&Paper because the fights are not forced and are a lot rarer. You usually have tons of other options (other than combat) to accomplish your goal. So you get to use your rare resources when you want instead of at every turn to kill some random mooks that can't literally do anything else other than attack you, like in normal cRPGs. This is why many spells are best used outside combat in P&P which isn't an option in normal cRPGs at all and this also reduces the problems of per rest but does not remove them.

First of all thank you for your reply. You clearly put a lot more thought and efforct to it than what is commonly seen around game forums.

I'll (probably) tackle your whole post later but now the beef. In the end I think that most of our differences in opinion comes down to this. You are simply willing to forgive a lot more than I am for trying. Is it possible to make the per rest work, absolutely. In fact it already works in PoE just not well but a lot better than in its predecessors. There is a workaround / safety net in that can be used just in case you hate it or run into trouble with your resource management (which has its own problems and half nullifies the point of per rest); there is a mix of per rest, per encounter and mana abilites (no matter what you say, Cyphers are mana based, they just regain it "differently") which lessens the problems of classes being based on per rest abilities and so on. I'll do something I very rarely do, I'll quote myself:

'...unless they can think of some very good argumentation to support it or an exceptional method to fix its problems, it is replaced by something that simply works better.'

They tried to use it like it has been used before and it doesn't work that way. Either the resource management has to become a lot more important (with a hefty penalty if you need to use the safety net), something else needs to fix the issues or there needs to a new approach which simply works better in practise. The per rest mechanic is so difficult to implement well that I feel that it shouldn't be tried unless the devs think that they have found the holy grail that fixes its problems. They tried and failed. I feel it's time to get back to the drawing board and come up with something better.

Wait, I think I still didn't get it. Do you think there are too many or too few spell slots available?

Btw, can't talk about Pillars of Eternity yet, but in Icewind Dale I never used spells in combat, only before combat to buff up. Anything else didn't seem mandatory? (Not to mention that you can just make an party tha doesn't rely on magic.)

You don't really have to respond just because I put effort into typing up a reply unless you actually have a lot to add - I understand your point of view quite well and I put a decent amount of effort into understanding it. All I ask of you is to do the same ;-)

To an extent I suppose. The other reason is that I really dig resource management in games.

Eh, I don't know - I'd say there's hope for them yet. But I guess we'll see. Obsidian will most certainly not completely overhaul their mechanics for PoE. If a sequel ever comes out, we'll see what's going to happen.

the vancian spell system of having to rest to recharge your spells is not only the only one that is realistic in-universe (that or a mana system), it's also the BETTER. d&d 2nd and 3rd spell casting is my favourite magic system in ANY RPG.

of course this is one of the 700 billion things wizards managed to screw up with the cursed 4th edition (which I don't even acknowledge as d&d)

not like you would have any disadvantage by resting anyway. are there rations in this game? if yes, they surely can't be that rare or expensive

also, what are you talking about in the first place? From the few hours I've played, I remember that this game uses abilities/encounter!!!

How exactly isl the vancian system realistic? I personally find it to be one of the least realistic mechanics on RPGs. It is one of the things in D&D that every time reminds me that D&D is a roleplaying ->GAME<- which doesn't even try to represent the reality in anyway.

The game uses per rest, per encounter, mana and chanters who are kind of like mana but not really. What exactly was the thing you didn't understand?