Review of original post and my list of suggestions to include:
1.2)
# Shove ideally would be an attack and not a (bonus) action; 5th level Fighter, Barbarian, Paladin, Monk & Ranger get extra attacks, so they should be able to shove two creatures or try to shove one creature twice
# Noticed a bug: “You make a strength (Athletics) or dexterity (Acrobatics)” can only use strength (Athletics) and I think it’s how Larian implements it. Can use dexterity only when defending (i.e. you use force to shove, but you can either use force to cancel the effect or try to avoid it with dex). I would also include “The target must be no more than one size larger than you” to shoving, because it’s hard for me to imagine 30lb Halfling to be able to push 600lb Ogre.
i'll edit about ennemie's size because you're totally right.
About shove as an action I don't really know... I guess it's part of larian's vision to offer us "more" things to do.
Personnaly I don't find this necessary but i'm not sure it breaks anything as a bonus action (everyone is able to shove, but your melee classes won't be able to do it more than once).
# Help as bonus action or reaction falls into the same problems as described by Isaac in 0.1) (free Advantage that kills many skills and abilities that cost full action and/or resources). For 3 minutes explanation of cool effect of Help as an action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Vmc3ka7CsMAbout Help I'm not sure it falls into the same problems.
As you notice I imagine this as a bonus action, still to fit to Larian's vision that find we don't have enough things to do in D&D.
According to me it's possible to have Help as a bonus action, but of course not as an advantage because it would exactly fall in the backstab/high ground problem.
I'm not against such bonus but if there are reasonnable.
According to me we shouldn't be able to have +5 (or advantage) such easily with a bonus action, but why not a +2 or +3 ?
By itself it doesn't break anything to give a small bonus, but when you have free +2 bonus from help, +2 bonus from height and +2 bonus from something else, which all stack, this is already much better than advantage, which is on average +5, but can sometimes be +0, leading to miss. +6 "never" misses. Difficulty levels are simpler for casual players to understand and much easier to implement than adding small bonuses to many different things. (This is where we fight for people who don't like missing, not miss as much, right?)
Also (a minor detail) there is a Rogue Mastermind subclass, which gets Help as bonus action at level 3. Subclasses are very easy to implement, they give only a few bonuses, so bonus Help for everyone makes this one less useful.
Larian's vision might be distorted by many things right now, e.g. we only get max 4 lvl and there are a lot of things to do later; battle feeling slow due to AI thinking (I did 1 thing and now I have to wait a few minutes) and maybe player having hard time deciding which one thing to do during their turn (UI not focused on helping them, but this is a different topic); or BG3 lvl 1 Wizard having many things to do, because you can currently rest after every battle vs BG3 lvl 1 Fighter, who clicks on enemies or D&D lvl 1 Wizard, who throws Fire Bolt every turn, because they either already cast Sleep and Magic Missle in previous battle or wisely wait for a tougher battle to come
I thought Larian's vision was "Gather your party" (or maybe they changed to "It's party time" currently displayed on baldursgate3.game). No single (especially low level) character should feel strong. It's the party working together that makes them strong. Solutions might be simpler than trying to change balance. Help might be a cool animation that distracts NPC until Lae'zel delivers the killing blow.
Like in sports, if you merely (as your full action) pass the ball to an attacker for them to score a goal, is it nothing?
D&D is most of the time about doing one thing during one turn, everything else is a bonus, special situation action... and I have absolutely no objections is Larian wants to abandon D&D and give everybody two or more actions every turn. How they try to do it now doesn't seem right. They give abilities that were designed for certain class or subclass to everybody for free. Strong fighters can jump in, shove enemy to the ground and use this advantage to deal a critical strike. Rogues can strike unnoticed and hide before enemy can strike back. Mages can... FIREBALL! (for it's the only thing that they shall do) or die a horrible death when surrounded by 3 goblins.
Let's make battles epic by giving every class distinct features and not by giving everybody same (quite boring by themselves) actions that are supposed to make certain classes shine.
2.1) Climbing in D&D normally costs twice as much as walking, so if you want to climb 30ft ladder, you have to use two turns (or Dash). Stopping in the middle of the ladder if you have no more movement should be a thing (potentialy not being able to use action like attack with a bow). There are special skills that make climbing faster, e.g. lvl 3 Rogue Thief: "you gain the ability to climb faster than normal; climbing no longer costs you extra movement”.
This could be cool but I really think it would be hard to implement. How to show players they're not going to be able to climb until the top of the ladder ?
I think a : "you can" or "you can't" climb is easier, but i'm not a game dev.
I like to say in programming nothing is impossible. Wouldn't it be also cool if Imp familiar could really fly, 15ft above the ground, away from enemy melee attacks and not merely use "jump" spell?
