Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Fix shove (limit to 5' and in replace of an attack)

Yes, this is another Shove thread. The current implementation is incredibly annoying and literally gamebreaking. In the 5e rules you can shove someone 5' in replace of an attack. In BG3 this is apparently a 'free action' and you can toss someone half-way across the screen.

Ah! 😌. Yet another who is saying the same thing.

PLEASE Larian. Fix this and Throw. No yeeting characters ridiculous distances... Like cats being thrown 300+ feet across chasms into spider lairs.

Agreed.

The distance needs to be reduced. It needs to be part of the Attack action, so that we can mix-and-match at level 5 when we get Extra Attack.

Also, we should be allowed to Shove To Prone, in addition to Shove Away.

+1

+1

+1

Just do it like in Solasta... you can either shove prone or shove 5 feet away, as an action, or part of attacks. Like in PHB. Done.

Aside for the countless times we already pointed this flaw in the past, we were JUST having another thread about it in the feedback section:
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=820182#Post820182

Not that I'm even complaining about it, because at this point I'm getting the feeling that being pedantic about it at any given chance is becoming the only way to get Larian's acknowledgement that something doesn't work.

Speaking of which, I'll just copy-paste the same things I said in that thread:

I like the way shove works in the game right now. I hope it doesn't change.

It gives me a potential bonus action and overall makes the combat more interesting, in my opinion.

Just because I happened to cross someone mentioning this in another forum and I found it quite fitting for the context (and also because it's somewhat amusing, when put in contrast with what Larian did so far):

"Beware of adding anything to your game that allows a character to concentrate on more than one effect at a time, use more than one reaction or bonus action per round, or attune to more than three magic items at a time.
Rules and game elements that override the rules for concentration, reactions, bonus actions, and magic item attunement can seriously unbalance or overcomplicate your game." (DMG, p. 263)

The devs can't really say they weren't warned about it.
And yet, so far they already broke two of the three cardinal rules.

Yeah, shove as it is needs to go. Make it an action and don't let characters get thrown away 300 feet.

@Tuco: I must admit it was amusing the first few times the AI learned it was far more efficient to shove a sleeping ally rather than 'gently' waking them up. It apparently considers if the shove will kill their target though, however it will shove someone down from a height if the target has a chance to survive - which looks absolutely hilarious.

"Just do like in Solasta" solves pretty much every problem with BG3's combat.

BG3 EA combat is way more varied and interesting than Solasta’s IMO. I understand some complaints about 5e implementation, but Solasta’s enemy behavior is incredibly dull. Being sometimes frustrated by a shove KO is still better than having enemies that just attack the closest for 90% of the time.

+1

Solasta has such horrible encounter design too, the very first battle in the DLC starts with a bear just appearing out of nowhere right next to your party. And it has a decent chance of just instantly killing a character.

BG3 combat is more fun than Solasta in pretty much every way that matters.

Yes Larian should fix this

Larian should have addressed that months ago. I don’t hold my breath for them to come to their senses.

Oh look, the Reddit apologists who haven't paused to take anything beyond EA into consideration are here.


I don't think most people here are miffed at the idea of shove KOs in general. The argument has always been that it's too easy to use, since there's hardly anything stopping you from just doing it every turn as a bonus action, along with the other half of Shove not being implemented (the shove prone option). The latter part means that the game's overall balance seems to skew heavily mage/archer-centric on top of that, as melee characters gain very little from distance shoving unless they can score a KO with it or it's to prevent an enemy from reaching your ranged. Whereas they would benefit tons from shoving to prone.

Shifting shove from bonus action to main action, along with implementing the missing shove to prone function, would achieve the following.

1) The risk/reward calculation for utilizing Shove is suddenly going to shift towards there being much more risk to using it. Enemies could no longer freely shove each other awake and still attack in the same turn, for instance. A failed shove attempt means you can't do anything else that turn.

2) Larian's stated goal is to give martials more to do in general. I think they've done enough of that with the additional weapon actions as is. But many martials and some martial-focused mage subclasses gain Extra Attack at level 5 or beyond. This is something that points to how people not familiar with these mechanics should not consider themselves as having equal input in these discussions - Shove is also considered an Attack, and thus as a main action, a character with Extra Attack can have 2 shove attempts in a single turn if they wish, or shove prone for their first attack and use an actual attack with advantage on their second, and still have a bonus action to use. This is not possible with shove as a bonus action.

At this point, I've accepted that reactions may be gimped in BG3 forever due to engine limitations. If we're not going to get proper reactions, shove absolutely shouldn't be a bonus action either, at least not without a feat cost. The long term effects on the encounter balance is going to be really bad, potentially on the same level as the highly lambasted armor system in DOS2 that caused a total endgame rebalancing in the definitive edition. And from what I can see from the DOS2 section of this forum during the EA phase for that game, there were plenty of people that raised the alarm on that, only to get ignored.

This post is spot on.

Unsettling is the truth that Larian likes to bounce of a wall a few times before they see it as a real problem.

"This is something that points to how people not familiar with these mechanics should not consider themselves as having equal input in these discussions"...I wish that the Larian team had at least one D&D purist, whose opinion they trusted.

Again. Played as Barbarian in Patch 7. No weapons. Just shove and throw enemies off things and into each other. Killed all enemies WITHOUT companions (Solo) all the way up to harpies. And I almost killed them too.

That is broken combat mechanics.