Do you have evidence that enemies resist shove attempts with athletics (or AC)?
That's what it says when you hover over the Athletics skill in the game. It says that it helps with both shove attempts and with resisting shove attempts. Try it in character creation. Hover over the skills.
Though if we're limiting ourselves to 1H weapons (because SH wields a shield), the difference in damage is 1d6 (dex) -> 1d8 (strength) which is not much. I wasn't considering magic items in my analysis because you can apply magical effects equally to all weapons. If Larian is only giving us cool magic strength weapons, then we could equally argue that Larian should give us more finesse magic weapons instead of giving NPCs more strength.
This isn't entirely fair. Shadowheart doesn't have a lot of finesse weapon options due to her weapon proficiencies. It's not like she can use the rapier. She basically gets to choose from the dagger or the dagger. Regarding the available types of magic items, I'm just pointing out that the Str options are a lot better than the finesse options available to Shadowheart at the moment. I guess we can ask for better daggers to compete with all the other cool weapons, but shrug, I think the bigger weapons are always going to be cooler in the long run. They certainly are now, in my opinion.
Jump, yes that is a big one.
Which goes straight to my point. I put forward the argument that it's not a given that Dex is better for front line combat, and I think I've made an effective argument. Again, it might be different in pen and paper, but when we're talking about this game, I think Str stands out.
Why are you dismissing sleight of hand? It's very important for picking locks and stealing from merchants if you're in to that. It seems like you're entirely focused on combat efficiency, which is a large part of the game, but not all of it.
Because my entire point was about front line combat. Sure, sleight of hand is occasionally useful outside of combat. I tend to prefer a rogue for that when I use it... but really, other than getting into locks, I don't think it's all that great a skill. Picking pockets almost always turns into save scumming, and that's not really my thing.
Finally, yes SH could take the Heavy Armor Feat (at the opportunity cost of a +2 increase to her Wisdom), but all heavy armors give disadvantage on stealth checks. This doesn't really make sense for her character: a trickery domain cleric/spy. And the initiative system isn't like divinity; characters in BG3 combat are sorted purely by their initiative scores, instead of alternating ally-enemy-ally-enemy as in DOS. So any initiative bonus helps.
I'm just pointing out that she already has a great armor class, better than everyone else. Personally, I don't think that extra +1 makes up for the loss of strength, but going with heavy armor would help someone who thought otherwise.
I think the value of a +1 to initiative is being overstated. I've played through hundreds of hours of this game, and I've seen all sorts of initiative spreads throughout multiple combats. That +1 is hardly noticeable, in my opinion.
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Again, my whole point is that it's not a given that Dex is better for the front line than Str. That was put forward by a couple of different people as if everyone naturally agreed, and it's not something I agree with, at least not in regards to this game. I think there's a lot to be said for a high strength in this game when you're talking about front line combat.
