Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General A case for shove as a bonus action

I appreciate your criticism and advice since I often can't see the flaws in what I suggest, but I have a habit of debating.
If you don't want to debate, that's fine, but I'm probably still going to reply with what I think and why I'm thinking that.

Anyway, I said that I have no idea how it would work or if it would be balanced because I have no way to implement those changes and test them.
However, the way that I see it is that with a few changes, Shove would probably work as a Bonus Action without being overpowered while also making more sense.


I wasn't aware that it had too many steps before you mentioned it.
If more simple systems already exist for certain things (like the contests), I wouldn't know, since I'm not versed in the systems of Dungeons & Dragons or of Baldur's Gate III.
I'm just trying to think of ways for Shove to stay as a Bonus Action without being overpowered.
Making it into an Action seems like it wouldn't have much of a positive effect, since it wouldn't entirely fix it or have it make much sense.


I don't know what the design philosophy is for the 5e rules (though I'd guess that it's to make the game faster and easier to play for people who don't care if things make sense), but I think that adding Weight into the equation can lead to better results.

Having Weight included seems odd if it's not going to affect much.
It might affect fall damage right now in Baldur's Gate III, which would make sense, but I'm not sure.
Weight isn't customizable and doesn't affect appearance in Baldur's Gate III, but in Dungeons & Dragons, it's supposed to.


I don't know how the systems work exactly, but wouldn't characters be making die rolls with modifiers based on their Abilities?
If I'm right, while having very good Strength and Dexterity would make Shove more likely to succeed, even without high Strength and Dexterity, it shouldn't always or often fail.
If I'm wrong, I agree that it shouldn't work like that.


I'm not sure how I'm pushing back against those rules regarding that, since I'm apparently saying to do what it says to do for Shove.
When I read the rules for it, I assumed that there was some die roll deciding whether it pushed a character or caused them to become prone.


Imagine kicking a ball vs kicking a wall.
It's easier to miss the ball than it is to miss the wall (...and it's possible to miss the wall if distance is miscalculated).


Considering the Range in the description of Shove in Baldur's Gate III, if characters are being pushed more than five feet away, it's probably a bug.
Likewise for Shove always working when hiding and for Athletics and Acrobatics not being used correctly.


No problem.

+1

I'm mostly trying to ensure that things stay friendly, even though I suspect there is at least one aspect that we will disagree over at a fundamental level. That's okay, the system isn't perfect and there are places it can and should still be adjusted, but generally speaking 5e is very sound and well balanced, and its solutions are, in most cases, the best solutions in terms of maintaining the balance between practicality, approachability and realism... Simple and approachable, easy to understand, and a rule system that is internally consistent wit itself without too many exceptions or irregularities, so that it is easy for newcomers to pick up and play with, but without sacrificing attention to realism and relatability to in-setting sense is a strong element of the design philosophy I mentioned.

So, here's the reasoning discussion:

In 5e, classes are intended to retain strong senses of individuality and uniqueness as you move into their various archetypes, and while each can fill a variety of roles, and they are all intended to be able to fill those roles comparatively well to each other, they maintain a sense of unique flavour to them while doing so - A Cleric can be your party healer, and so can your Druid, and so can your Sorcerer - but they will each feel different, to play, and they will feel different and distinct from each other in the process. That's the goal. What this often means is that some classes and class archetypes are allowed to maintain something of a near-monopoly on being able to do certain things particularly well, because doing those certain things better than anyone else are is part of what helps them maintain that unique flavour. It's rarely a very big thing, but it's a poignant one all the same in these cases.

Battle-master Fighter is one example of this design philosophy - All characters can try most of the various things that battle-masters can do, but for everyone else, it's a comparative cost investment - for example, they can try to knock an enemy prone, OR they can settle for attempting to do damage - the Battle-master is unique in this sense because they have the capability, by contrast, to knock something prone without giving up their attempt to deal damage. There's more to it than this, of course, and it's not that cut and dry either, but that's one example.

So, at base, in order to turn shove into a bonus action that everyone can use, you would need to find a way to do that that didn't steal that class-identifying uniqueness form Battle-masters and give it to everyone for free - because if you do, then you remove part of the value and appeal of playing a battle-master, and you take one step closer to homogenising all classes - a point which Larian's BG3 is treading far too many dangerous steps towards already.

As for Shove itself... You are attempting to take an action, and your targeted opponent is attempting to prevent that from occurring. This is the simplest, straightforward description of what is happening. Both parties must have a chance here, but the design philosophy is focused on keeping these things as simple and clear as possible, while still maintaining a much of an element of realism as possible.

So, when you try to shove your opponent, who is standing right in front of you, you are not going to 'miss' them unless they do something to make you miss them - if they were an inanimate sandbag, even a small one that's only three feet high, you are not going to 'miss' them - there is no practical situation where you would or could. You'll miss, rather, if your opponent deftly ducks under or around you, or manages to dart aside in time. You might also fail to shove them if they surprised you with their planted feet and stoic resilience, and they straight up resist your effort directly. This is the realistic description of what might happen.

We can handle this with a single check, because 5e has a system of checks that is designed expressly for this type of situation - a situation where two or more forces are acting on a goal or outcome, with differing intent and in opposition to each other, wherein both may have a reasonable chance of succeeding or failing. That system is the Opposed Ability Check system - The forces in play roll against one another, using whatever ability score is most appropriate for them in the situation, and adding a skill proficiency if a particular skill is suitable. These can be different for each acting force. Whoever wins the roll achieves their goal, and in the case of a tie, the status quo remains as it was, unchanged. What this means is that if you are trying to force a door open, and someone on the other side is struggling to hold it shut, and you tie, then the door remains shut. If you are struggling to hold a door open against someone who is attempting to wrench it closed, and you tie, then the door remains open. For shoving, this means that in the case of a tie, the character remains where they are, and is not shoved away/down.

In 5e, Shove is defined as an opposed check, but leaves the choice of how to resist in the defender's hands - So, while the shover must use their Strength (Athletics) to attempt the shove, the defender can choose to resist with Strength (Athletics), or they can try to resist with Dexterity (Acrobatics). This makes it one simple check, but it covers the concept of the many different ways that the shove could succeed or fail; it covers 'missing' because your target evaded you, as well as failing because they resisted you, etc.

So you can try to knock them down, sure, that's one option (and importantly, it's a choice that the attacker makes, based on what they are trying to do - having an ability that can drastically change what it does base don chance is not something you want as a standard combat action; when you shove someone away from you, you usually, specifically, don't want them prone, and vice-versa) - but what if you want to move them away? Well, that's potentially more complicated, says the thought process... how strong a character is, and the weight of what they're pushing must come into it surely? Yes, but... We can account for that and still keep it simple and approachable using the elements already defined for regular use within the system, without bringing new elements in. For starters: it's impractical to introduce maths or scales relating to character weight that both realised on an aspect of a character's weight that will give some races a heavy disadvantage compared to others (something they wish very strongly to avoid), and also that expects players to book-keep their equipment weight - carry capacity rules have variants and are often treated as optional by many, so introducing a mechanic to s standard action that demands book-keeping for it is an immediate no.

Instead... Many class features already take into account size category of the target creature - and size category and weight go more or less hand in hand anyway, most of the time. So, what we do instead is say that you can only shove something that is no more than one size category larger than you - something bigger than that is, by proxy, going to be too massive and too heavy for you to effectively shove. This is how that is accounted for and worked into the consideration without making the whole mechanic more complicated... and it works well for doing that, the majority of the time.

In terms of shoving distance: Well, we can actually return to realism for this one. Mike, who bench-presses an excessive number at the gym three days a week can set up a 50lb sand bag on a gym mat, and then, with a single action, in the course of less than six seconds, attempt to shove it just as far as he can - not pick it up and throw it, mind you - that would be a grapple - but just shove it. How far CAN he actually shove it? The reality is, not actually that far. More than five feet clear of its original position? Actually, not really, as it turns out. This makes it much easier, and helps settle back some realism in the process - we can just say that if you're shoving something away, rather than knocking it prone, you can shove it into the next square - five feet away. If you want to shove something further than that, you'll need a special ability, magic, or something above and beyond what a regular person could do. Some classes will have just such special abilities... but regular people, and basic shove - five feet is actually simple, easy and much more realistic than giving them more than five feet based on strength/weight.

==

Right now, in BG3, weight affects the impact damage that something does when thrown into another target - that's all entirely homebrew from Larian, however, and it's also hard to comment on because they don't let us see the calculation in the log. It just happens... and it's one of those things that pays up a lot, for free, and detracts from class abilities in the process. Unfortunately, having enemies going flying dozens of feet is not unintended by Larian - the 5ft range notifier on shove itself is just saying how close you have to be to use it - which is melee range - in BGT3 distance is affected, or so it claims, by strength and weight of target... the exact math is obfuscated from us though. The 100% success rate of shove form hiding is also, currently at least, intended by Larian... shove is supposed to work 100% of the time on an incapacitated target (which, ironically, in BG3 we aren't allowed to shove incapacitated targets... only dead ones), but simply hiding from them should, at most give you advantage on the opposed check, for being an unseen attacker.... but then I'd have to get into a rant about their shonky implementation of stealth, and that's a whole other thread...

==

For the rest - the main issue with proposing a two-check system for this simple combat action is that it's required that you pass both checks to do anything at all - you are rolling two d20s and if Either of them is low enough to fail, then you fail utterly - if that sounds familiar, it's because it is. You've just forced the player to roll at innate disadvantage every time they try to shove someone, by definition. Beyond that, it's measuring against two different ability scores, which virtually no class will ever have high scores for both, so they are very likely to fail at least one of those checks, no matter who they are, and thus fail the shove in totality.

((Addendum: Halflings are not balls, do not kick the halflings, please))

It always baffles me that creatures 1 size larger than you don't get advantage to resist grapple & shove checks (and/or advantage on shoving a smaller creature). The Enlarge spell grants characters Advantage on strength checks, but simply being 1 size larger naturally doesn't...? I recognize that this is probably for balance purposes to prevent small PCs from being underpowered, but it still feels weird. (I would prefer if larger creatures got advantage on STR checks, but smaller creatures get +1 AC as in 3.5e).

Yeah, it is one quirk that is odd, I admit... and you're right, it's primarily for system balance reasons that it is that way.

Oh, a point a forgot that I had in my mind while typing the above: most of our small races get a natural racial boost to Dexterity, either as their major or their minor - this is how the system represents the benefits of their smaller size now. (And incidentally, one of the many minor yet pervasive minor factors that make Tasha's lineage system removing racial ability score bonuses actually a very BAD move from wizards, and not one I supported)

I've been doing a couple of tests recently to see how exactly shove works. Let me copy a post from another topic.


In my opinion, the shove should also depend on the size difference between target and pusher.
This would solve a lot of shove problems. Currently, the size only affects the push range.
I think a -2 / + 2 penalty / bonus would be ideal for each level of difference between the target and the pusher.
Thanks to this, a player who does not have indecently much strength would not be able to push large creatures without a lot of luck.
On the other hand, it would practically protect players from being pushed by small creatures like goblins (as long as the character invests in athletics / acrobatics), which is perhaps the biggest complaint about shove.
Of course, it also has some drawbacks (or advantages depending on how you look).
If the player were the victim of some large creature, he would fall over much more often. This is quite logical, the minotaur shouldn't have any problems with throwing a wizard from a rock.

The complaint is not that it is by goblin.
The complaint is that it happen too often.

It would be the same / even worse if goblins in the goblins camp were humans.

If you are often thrown from a height, it means that the player is not positioning correctly. Otherwise, it has practically no effect.
I remember there were complaints about martial classes not being able to use attacks of opportunity meaningfully due to shove. However, in the case of standard enemies in EA, they have a very low chance of pushing a properly built warrior away.
Virtually the only classes that suffer from shove are magic classes that should be physically weak.

Laezel disagrees. And sure enemies will fail more often then not, but if you have more goblins then party members shoving every single turn, with push distance shockingly generous the odds are that unless you focus on not being nowhere near the pit ( and I don't mean- don't stand on edge - I mean nowhere near) your party member sooner or later will end up falling down - no matter what class or build they are. It's silly. It is free a disintegration spell - sure it will fail most of the time, when if you fail RNG once it can end your fighting chance (or at least cost you a resurect). It becomes the game of shove them down, before they shove you.

Pits should be a nice gimmick but should not overpower core combat system.

Okay.


I'm not sure about it being realistic or practical, but I'll believe that it's approachable and balanced.


You're only talking about...what? Two of the Battle Master's maneuvers, Trip Attack and Pushing Attack?
Either way, it's not really taking away from the uniqueness of the class.

If you use those maneuvers, unlike most other classes, you'd be able to use a Bonus Action in addition to those, right?
So, you could use Trip Attack, which causes damage and can knock a foe prone, and then use Shove to push them.
Alternatively, you could use Shove and then Push Attack, or Push Attack and Dash.
So, still a lot of combinations, and that's not even mentioning the other maneuvers.

What might be somewhat more of a problem for Battle Master is enchanted weapons that do the same thing as their maneuvers and don't extend what they can do.
However, rather than removing the enchantments that mimic, the weapons would just need to become more rare and only appear when the class is more powerful than them.
After all, some overlap isn't bad.
Changing weapons takes an Action, I think, and weapons can be heavy, so it's not like a different class could easily switch between weapons and make the Battle Master class obsolete.


I understand that they're trying to keep it simple, so realistic things like weight, size and mistakes aren't factored greatly if at all, but with a video game, you usually don't have to worry about calculations, since the game stores the values and calculates the odds for the player.
Yeah, you'd have to watch your inventory and equipment if the game considered character and inventory Weight, but I don't think it would be too complicated.
The Souls games have a weight system, and people seem to like it and make agile but weak characters, slow but tough characters, etc.


The sandbag doesn't act the same way that a person might, because people can try to regain their balance, but the sandbag can't.
So, if someone was to be pushed, they're not necessarily going to just fall back (though that's possible).
They might be able to try to regain their balance until they stabilize or fall.
Most of the time, regaining balance would probably fail, but trying to regain it might cause them to go even farther away.
Part of that distance probably depends on the strength of the push (more momentum) and the dexterity of the one who was pushed (longer stability).
So, being able to stay on their feet after being pushed might actually work against them if they're unable to regain their footing.

As for "Mike", exactly how much weight is he bench-pressing in one day, and how far was that sandbag sent?
Also, how tall was the sandbag?
I'm not sure if it's accurate, but I read somewhere that to find the maximum weight that can be pressed in 5e, you would use: 30lb*Strength.


Well, that's not good.
I wonder why Larian seems to make so many odd decisions.

About not being able to use Shove on incapacitated targets, I'm not sure what you mean.
If you're talking about characters affected by Knocked Out, Prone or Hold Person, I can use Shove on all of them.


I still don't see why it seems like you think that the dice rolls would fail often or every time.

As for the Halflings, I don't get that either.

Geez,

Starting in a long thread like this is always hard, since a lot of issues have already been mentioned. But i want to add my opinion anyway since shoving HAS to be changed. I already have written something in another "shoving/pushing" thread, so ill copy paste a bit

" Well,

you broke it down a lot. You are not wrong but the main issue with the shove we have now is that it is no shove. Even when we are playing a fantasy game we need basic physics to work. NO matter how strong you are, if you are missing the weight to properly counter the weight of what you want to shove, it won't work.

go try to shove a car sideways. It will not move. No matter how strong you are. You will just push yourself away. if you say now you can do it when you brace yourself THINK what bracing yourself means in the formula. bracing agains something that is either immovable or WAY heavier than that car.

May be a little overcomplicated explanation but this "THROVING" needs to end.

Please larian do us all a favor and make a "shove you colleague" day and implement what you expirience.

what we have now can happen when an ogre shoves a halfling. Today a goblin "shoved" my FULLY ARMORED dwarf UPSTAIRS into a spiderpit.

I use shove on my dwarves now because they move farther that way. "

Next:

"If they keep it that way, they seriously need to have modifiers to who ist shoving whom or what.

If a halfling suceeds shoving an ogre, he should fall down max. Other way around a little flying would be ok. I mentioned a little awkwardly above, but the physic part about relation from size/weight and strenght needs to be changed. Even if they make it a full action.

And i hope they change jumping too. Having dwarves in full armor jump around the battlefield like frogs is really cringey."

Agreed - shoving is over-used and overwpowered when compared to 5E. I have also taken to using it since it's used on my party constantly. With the verticality in the is game it is often deadly. As for waking sleeping characters with shove, that is simply broken - use the same 'help' action that PCs use to wake a character. It should cost an action to do that - so you sacrifice your action to wake someone who may otehrwise be killed etc.

You might scoff at the realistic comment, but it's actually far more grounded in a realistic presentation than many people give it credit for... these are made by someone who goes by the moniker 'David the Arrow Bard', and they're actually pretty neat little clips. I smiled, I hope others do to. In particular, they pay attention to distance and timing – such as 5 foot squares and what you can do in six seconds. There isn't one on shoving specifically, unfortunately, but it does show off several other aspects of the game which are often criticised as being unrealistic, but which actually are a lot more so than people think.


You may argue that taking Battlemaster's ability to perform specialised combat actions and still do damage as well, and giving portions of that to everyone to use for free, without giving Battlemasters anything in return is not taking away from their class identity.... but it is. Maybe not a lot, but it's still taking away, no matter how dismissively you choose to talk about it... and it shouldn't be done.
You are right that, generally speaking, the new weapon arts are a bigger concern right now... In one current play through, my Fighter is an eldritch knight, and Astarion is a thief and between the various weapons we all have, and the extra shoving, Lae'zel's old battlemaster self is more or less obsoleted, and easily so – I don't take her, and she would add little to nothing to what we're already doing, at this point. That's the problem, and shove's current implementation is definitely a part of it.

If you're really set on character carry weight affecting shove, then I'd suggest that you start a thread here in the suggestion forums for yourself, formalise it, hammer out the details of how you feel it should be implemented, and then see how much traction for the idea you can get from others.

As it is, the game rules DO account for carry weight. That's what the encumbrance system IS – how much you can carry without being impeded and having your capabilities hampered. It has a variant rule that is slightly more graded, but it's generally not liked by most people and rarely used by anyone in actual PnP games. The 5e system as it is also accounts for size category, as explained. It also accounts for mistakes and fumbles, as explained. It sounds like you'd like it to do it in a more complicated, granular way; what I'm attempting to explain is that doing so would run against the system's design philosophy, to do it at the level you seem to want to suggest.

In the example, Mike is a fictional, non-existent character meant to represent the idea that a fairly strong and capable person cannot realistically shove even a 40lbs person more (or much more) than 5 feet away from themselves. This is simply, real world, factually true. Hefting and throwing that weight is a different matter – but shoving it without having a good hand on it and without carrying it first; that's indelicate. An individual might travel further than five feet if they stumble, fall and roll over a lot, but that's not what we're talking about here – we're talking about someone who is shoved by a force, staggers, and remains upright; they might move five feet, they might move a little more than that, they'll probably move much less than that, but they definitely will not move ten feet, and so a single five foot square is more than adequate for realism.

In 5e, you can comfortably carry 15 times your strength score without being impeded. You physically cannot carry more than that, and function. If you use variant encumbrance, you can carry 5 times your strength score, after which you begin to suffer penalties for being lightly, and then heavily encumbered. The rules for what you can manage to lift, as a dedicated act are more lenient – as an individual act, you can lift off the ground twice your carry capacity.

Larger creatures get to multiply these values, doubling up for each size category above medium they are. Smaller creatures halve the values. Realistically, “Small” creatures should be halving those values too, not just Tiny creatures... but it was decided that, since player characters could be small, it wasn't a fair restriction to place on players, for balance and fun, and so the halving was pushed back to 'tiny' creatures only.

One confession I'll make here: In one of my home games I DO play with variant encumbrance and my own small character halves her capacities as though the rule applied to smalls – I like the extra realism. With her eight strength she can carry 9kg (20lb) before becoming partially encumbered. I enjoy the press of playing that way, with her... but it's never a rule I would try to put onto other players, because I know most do not like that level of book-keeping or restriction.

The issue with shoving and incapacitated targets may have been something that was a problem in a previous patch. I don't know, but on reflection I know you're right, as of patch 6 right now, because I've seen how much the AI likes to shove sleeping targets to wake them up. I'm not sure what I was remembering on that score, so I'm sorry there.

The last point (the halfling line was a joke, since we were talking about shoving big creatures and small creatures and you likened it to kicking walls and balls... if the joke didn't translate, that's on me) is this:

I'm saying that the double check system as you first proposed it will cause characters to fail very often because it will: You are setting the rolling character at Disadvantage every time, just to Make the check in the first place. They have to roll twice, and if Either check fails, then they fail in totality. You are making them roll at disadvantage for the check, by definition. You are also asking them to roll two different ability scores, and a specific two such that virtually no character will have invested in both of them. On an average roll, with normal dice, they are going to roll below average on At Least One Die 75% of the time. This makes the likelihood of them failing at least one of the checks, and thus failing the entire action in totality, extremely high.

So, yes, they will fail very often; this is not conjecture - this is just math. They will fail so often in attempting this action that it will be considered a non-starter in nearly every case. If I'm not explaining this well enough, and you're not understanding it, then I apologise; I'm trying to be as clear and transparent about it as I can.