Campfires

[Darkion]

In that case, how about making them something altogether different from "campfires"? Like a tent or hut or bedrolls or something. I guess it makes more sense to make the campfire a limited term resource, and a tent permanent for example.

How about having the limited ones be some sort of brazier with a few burning coals? After a few rests the graphic can change to an empty brazier that can no longer be used.

[Greymark]

This is area where I have a hard time forming a strong opinion. On one hand, I completely agree that if you can easily leave an area with no penalties to travel to another location where a fire is located that the repetitive nature can be simply a time sink and little added value. On the other hand, I also tend to abuse fires even though intellectually I know I should not. Basically, if I know I have unlimited rests I will shoot off high level spells and complete the encounter with less thought and strategy then I would if I had a more stressful situation. In fact, I think the fun in this type of game is navigating through the stress with carefully thought out next moves.

I agree with the previous poster that the single use camp fire was cool. For me, not so much because it was single use but because it was unexpected. I wonder if the answer does not lie with that variable.

Fires consume fuel, we have no idea how much fuel is available, and each use of a fire could be its last. It could be random, it could be a DM call specific to situation (although I would still add a random variable but maybe within a different range) but in the end it would make a person think twice before using fire ("maybe I should fight more conservatively just in case the next time is the last" - meaning you go over to the fire to click on it and it blows out with only charcoal left).

I have to say I was never a fan of the random encounter after "sleeping" that many games employ. I do think the idea proposed by previous poster of some sort of consequence could be cool. I would take it a step further though and (again I think random adds to the stress level) when a consequence happens it shows up as dialogue "Your delay allowed the Princess to be swept to a new location"). Otherwise you destined to get a bunch of people saying the game is broken the Princess is gone. (Or maybe a note is left behind, triggered by the use of the fire, "Sorry, left without ya ...")

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Your idea is interesting. So you'll never know how often you could use a campfire, once, twice, or 10 times... But you could save prior to your rest attempt and reload until the campfire does not disappear after the rest. But that can be solved programmatically.

If think I liked the Undead Tower most in that regard. You had 1 rest and that had to suffice. A similar approach should be used more often imo.

[Archangel]

I support having more one shot campfires in dungeons instead of 1-2 permanent. It will help spellcasters in some areas where you cannot exit but also limit constant resting.

Personally I didn't abuse the campfires much but abused the crafting system and kept making Haste scrolls to not waste my wizard's spell slots.