Yeah so depending your class (AC) and race (weight), you'll be shoved even more easily/often with this BA.
What an interresting thing to put in the character creation ! "Gnomes are known to be pushed more easily than other races".
It makes sense for Gnomes, Halflings, etc. to be easier to use Shove on.
With the stats that they have, it doesn't even make sense for them to be close to enemies in battle, and having them stand near ledges during a battle would be an odd decision.
Halflings have the Lucky trait, and the Lightfoot subrace is meant for stealth.
Gnomes are good at magic, and the subraces seem to be good at illusions and distractions.
If you want to have a Gnome or Halfling Fighter, you'd just have to make sure that they have a lot of Weight and Strength.
Also, they could have size affect the result of Shove.
Smaller characters should be more difficult to use Shove on, unless Dexterity was high enough.
I mean, you really shouldn't be able to easily push those squirrels off of the ledges at Druid Grove, at least not without very high Dexterity, but you can...
Make it an action instead of a bonus action is :
- the easiest solution to prevent the AI to use it to disengage so often
- the easiest solution to prevent the AI to to use it to wake up sleeping characters (and other conditions... Shove >< help)
- the best solution to make melee characters more fun (less boring) to play because you won't be shoved so much.
- the best solution to avoid fast game over if you're unlucky
- the best solution to increase the real tactical value of the game. Not using shove (or another OP/Broken bonus action) in BG3 is like keeping action point for the sake of it in games that have action point you cannot keep for the next turn...
Shove could nearly stay exactly the same as now if that's what Larian find fun (distance, how to succeed) if it was a full action. And I'd enjoy using it as a tactical option in some situation. Atm it only looks like a free cheat.
I don't know how the AI works, but they could still end up designing the AI to have an affinity for using Shove as their Action.
So, merely changing it into an Action doesn't seem like the best or even the easiest solution.
Shoving a Creature
Using the Attack action, you can make a special melee attack to shove a creature, either to knock it prone or push it away from you. If you're able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them.
The target must be no more than one size larger than you and must be within your reach. Instead of making an attack roll, you make a Strength (Athletics) check contested by the target's Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check (the target chooses the ability to use). You succeed automatically if the target is incapacitated. If you succeed, you either knock the target prone or push it 5 feet away from you.
so yes, change it back to an action and make it prone or can move them 5 feet, not across the map.
That would make similar effects like Topple for weapons overpowered, wouldn't it?
Instead of wasting an Action trying to cause a foe to become prone or move five feet through Shove, you could try to cause damage
and prone with one Action.
honest, the whole action system seems weird. you'd think climbing up a ladder during combat would be an insane effort,or worse, climbing up 3 levels of cliffs, but no! apparently because the height is a certain distance, it's no problem. Can you imagine? someone in real life trying to scale up a cliff while people are shooting arrows and magic spells at them?
Ideally, climbing would take movement with each second that passes, but since the game doesn't seem to allow stopping while climbing, it should just take a certain amount of movement, or maybe a Bonus Action.
