Resting Systems - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

By now most of us have played on multiple PWs, and thus have seen more than one way to handle resting. Some servers are highly restrictive, requiring you to be be in a specific kind of location before you rest, and resting has a long cooldown timer. Other PWs are far more lax, and you can literally take a knee anywhere at any time. Most PWs seem to be somewhere in the middle.

The idea of making classes and characters with an investment into the survival skill, and possibly the Tracking feat, was brought up - perhaps having one of those types in your group would make resting in the wilderness safer, where as groups or individuals lacking such skill have to take a moment to set up camp and/or risk being ambushed.

Other possibilities include: long dungeons might have one rest spot somewhere in the middle, but short dungeons (or purposefully harder ones) may not have any. For the sake of not being completely irritating, the city and pre-flagged safe areas would have unlimited resting with no cooldowns.

While we are discussing how to handle resting here, what would y'all like to see? What about resting annoys you? What adds difficulty to playing without being interesting at the same time?

I like a more conservative sort of resting system. With a lot of logic backing it up. Such as Campsites, Inns, houses and things of that nature. I don't like being able to freely rest. I dislike resting for one main reason, it gives spell casters a distinct advantage over the less magically inclined. While it is helpful to a group it would allow them to grind out xp a lot faster than a rogue or fighter type class. It's just a picky little thing on my end personally.

SarwyckGreystone wrote:I like a more conservative sort of resting system. With a lot of logic backing it up. Such as Campsites, Inns, houses and things of that nature. I don't like being able to freely rest. I dislike resting for one main reason, it gives spell casters a distinct advantage over the less magically inclined. While it is helpful to a group it would allow them to grind out xp a lot faster than a rogue or fighter type class. It's just a picky little thing on my end personally.

This isn't necessarily true. Take ToA for example. You pretty much -had- to be a spellcaster to do anything at all or you would either have to spend 500 gold on health kits every dungeon run or you just ran out  of hp after the first few clusters. Spellcasters on the other hand have the ability to prevent damage from occurring in the first place, which made them able to sustain much much longer dungeon runs for a fraction of the cost.

What matters most is that the rest system is designed keeping in mind the gear and mechanical limitations of the server. Servers like Dalelands with readily available regen can afford to be rest restrictive, while low-magic settings are brutal murder for any non-mages who can't rest.

Something to consider if you want to limit mages: Create resting stations in dungeons that are scripted to cast the Heal spell onto characters once every few hours. This lets people recover their hp but not their use/day abilities.

I should add that we intend on creating/balancing available items and loot so that you do not have to be a spellcaster in order to do anything.

If all goes well (and honestly, if we're lucky and we hit that sweet spot) there will be a point which a majority of players reach (level 20?) where everything kind of evens out. Casters have enough spells of enough power to not be useless, and non-casters have access to enough gear of similar level, that there is not a completely obvious caste of characters that are more powerful than everyone else.

I personally think its impossible to balance these classes in this game, and none of us will ever claim to have that goal. What we can do, however, is provide gear and an environment where imbalances are not so glaring and show-stopping.

So, with that in mind, I want a resting system that provides some challenge (when it comes to dungeon runs) without being completely obnoxious, while rewarding players who take some of the less common skills or feats (survival, tracking, etc).

/end semi-derail.

Most servers tend to overthink resting. The optimal system I've seen from the various servers I've been on is quite simple: Free resting everywhere except inside dungeons, with long dungeons having rest spots at intervals.

There's no point in resting restrictions outside of dungeons themselves. It's just inconvenient and annoying.

Or if the scripters feel awesome, resting in dungeons possible, but chance to spawn creatures and interrupt resting!

undeadmustache wrote:Or if the scripters feel awesome, resting in dungeons possible, but chance to spawn creatures and interrupt resting!

That.... Is awesome.

Edit: Or no resting in deungones... But within cities mayb run the risk of guards spawning and interupting the rest. Rest within taverns of course would be fine.