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

I want to try to make a case for shove as a bonus action, knowing I'm probably wrong and I can already imagine the (valid) responses to the arguments I'm going to make, but I *like* shove as a bonus action, so I want to try to make that case.

I haven't played tabletop D&D since... I think 1999? (which by the way has a cool story of IRL border guards taking the copy of Thieves Handbook that was sitting on the dashboard for a look-through before letting us cross!). So 5e rules are super new to me. I never had any reason to doubt shove was a reasonable bonus action until I saw people disagreeing with that here.

I thought about it. You're right. It should be a full action. I've never been in a sword fight that wasn't sporting in nature, where nobody gets shoved, so I don't know. I tried imagining shoving someone in combat, and maybe a two handed shove off a ledge is a full action, but stupidly trying to push them after taking swing is a bonus action? That's too convoluted for game rules, it has to be one or the other.

So while I agree it should be a full action, drinking a potion is a bonus action. Really? Do I have tactical belt of potions with quick-release tops? How in the world is *that* a bonus action? It is because it's a convenience to keep things fun by not getting your ass kicked too much.

Switching weapon sets isn't a thing at all. You can spend half your turn swapping weapon sets, and that's fine. Why isn't that an action? I think for the obvious reason that it's easy as hell to fat-finger the swap weapon sets key, and it would be really, really lousy to get your ass kicked on account of that. It makes sense as part of the game.

And I would argue the same applies to shove. Should it be a full action? Yeah, I'll admit that. But having it as a bonus action keeps the game fun. You can shove an enemy and run up stairs away from them, make a ranged attack, and force them to use dash on their next turn. This makes otherwise impossible encounters possible.

The obvious argument against that is that impossible encounters shouldn't be possible. I disagree. This is a game, not really life. Real life sucks most of the time, and we play a game because it's fun, the world makes sense, and the rules are finite and clear. If you don't like it as a bonus action, don't use it that way.

We don't have difficulty levels yet, and I while I think it's extraordinarily unlikely something like making shove a bonus action or action based on (eventual) difficulty setting would happen, you'll almost certainly have the opportunity to crank up the difficulty to compensate.

So yes, it should be a full action, but the game is more enjoyable because it isn't.

You talked me into it. Everything should be a full action. No more bonus actions.

I mean, yes? This is a common explanation for the homebrew rule that make potion drinking a bonus action. I've seen games where the DM adds "improved/superior/etc potion belts" to shops, which allow you to store multiple potions for bonus action use instead of the default-allowed single.

Another game using 5e make it a free action. Every characters have 1 free action/turn so you can change once. It's a better rule imo, but less convenient.

Shove is a very powerfull attack, not a convenient option.

I believe drinking potion should be a full action as well . There is also perk unique to rogues that later down the line allows rogues to use items as bonus action. Larian is heavily damaging uniqueness of classes - not a surprise as they preferred somewhat classless system for D:OS2.

Doesn’t changing weapons take an action? I am pretty sure it did in my recent playthrough - or is it just picking up weapons after getting disarmed?

I didn’t find potions too offending, but shove is too powerful. I think I wouldn’t mind it as much if it was much weaker giving chance to disengage from one character, rather then instant kill chance.

I'm not sure exactly how Shove works currently, but this is how I think that Shove should work to keep it balanced while letting it stay as a Bonus Action.
Shove should let you choose how far you want to have an opponent be moved, and it should be more likely that Shove will fail.

The distance is limited by:
Strength (one shoving) vs Weight (one being shoved)

Whether Shove succeeds or fails is affected by:
Dexterity (one shoving) vs AC (one being shoved)
This is because a character might miss when they try to shove a character.
Strength (one shoving) vs Strength (one being shoved)
This is because a character might not be able to shove a stronger character.

The Dexterity/AC roll is first to see if the shove misses.
If it doesn't, next is the Strength/Strength roll to see if the shove has enough strength behind it.

During the Strength/Strength roll, there is a lower goal and a higher goal.
If the lower goal is reached, the one shoved becomes prone.
This is because there was enough strength to knock the one being shoved off balance, but not enough to push them somewhere else.
If the higher goal is reached, the one shoved is moved the distance chosen.
If neither goal is reached, the Shove will fail.

Shove is always successful as if the higher goal had been reached if an opponent is prone, sleeping, dazed, charmed, etc.
The distance is still limited by Weight.


I think that equipping new weapons (from the inventory and from the ground) takes an Action, but switching between already equipped melee and ranged weapons does not.

As for drinking potions, I think that it should be Bonus Action, since spells are Actions.
The benefit of potions should be how quick they are, but the benefit of spells should be how potent they are.
Alternatively, potions should be as potent as spells, but they should be Actions, and their full effect should be seen over several turns.

@colinl8 -- You say you aren't familiar with 5th editiin DnD, so let me try yo put this somewhat into perspective. By the 5e rules, a shove/trip attempt can be made instead of a weapon attack when you take the attack action. Most characters only get one attack to make as part of their attack action, but martial classes get more, but at later levels than we currently have available in the EA (Nearly all martial classes get their second attack at level 5 for example).

As such, the capability to in the same turn both make attacks and shove is sort of a martial class feature, and making shoving a bonus action available to everyone deprives them of that profilisation much the same way making hiding a bonus action deprives Rogues of one of their class features. If we had more levels available to us than we currently do in the EA, we would no doubt reach the fifth level within the content already implemented, whereupon martial classed characters would be able to both shove and attack in the same turn, like you want to do. It would just be a feature of how characters improve with levels rather than available to everyone at level one.

I don't think anyone arguing against shove as a bonus action is doing it from a "realism" perspective. It's not about what you can realistically achieve in a turn, it's about the action economy, and the effects making shove a bonus action has on that economy in-game. Being a bonus action turns the choice of whether to try shoving from a strategical choice of whether to risk it for the possible benefit to a no-brainer, "always do this at the end of your turn" use. That's not fun design.

For example of how it messes things up: As it is now, even the AI uses shove to cheese the game mechanics. No, I am not referring to enemies pushing PCs off off ledges. In-game, there is a Help action. It reoresents a bunch of different action usage from the 5e rules, such as making Medicine checks to stabilise dying characters, or rousing sleeping characters awake. It costs a full action.

So say you use Sleep on a bunch of goblins and one stats awake. The way the Help action is intended, he could then spend his action to help one of his sleeping comrades up. But you also awake on being attacked, and shoving is a kind of attack, so the way the AI is written is that the goblin will instead bonus action shove his friend and then use his full action to attack as well. His buddy will awake and immediately run over and bonus action shove another sleeping goblin. This makes the Sleep spell (already heavily nerfed ingame) pretty much useless, and all because of how the action economy changes from making shove a bonus action instead of an action. And that isn't fun either.

As a bonus malus, it also puts you the player in the position of either having to similarly cheese the game mechanics when your characters are felled asleep or deliberately play it suboptimally -- when even the AI wouldn't do that if it had the opportunity.

And lastly:

There's no other way to use it.

lol Just got email from Tactical Adventures sharing news about upcoming DLC and free update for Solasta. To celebrate a year since Early Access the mentioned couple silly things they had at the time, including:
Maybe every 5e RPG has a "isn't it hilarious to have insta death shoves" phase? Lets just hope BG3 will grow up by 1.0 as well.

I'm guessing that an easy solution would be to change the AI so that it wouldn't use Shove on sleeping characters, and not often if ever on characters near ledges.

Alternatively, they could make it so that using Shove on a sleeping character has some sort of consequence, like a sleeping character attacking whoever used Shove on them, or a character woken like that having negative status effects (e.g. reduced AC) for a few turns.

For using Shove to push characters off of ledges, with the changes that I suggested, it shouldn't be likely for most characters to be able to consistently use Shove to push others off of ledges.
If the character being shoved has enough Weight, they wouldn't be pushed far if at all unless the character using Shove had a very high Strength stat.

This is precisely what makes it unfun for me. Nonsensical, cheesy, exploitative, overpowered and repetitive.

They should teach the AI to circle behind the PC's on elevation and use it every turn as well. See how much fun that'll be.

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".

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.

They absolutely do! Fezzek and his group at the windmill, if you take the high ground opposite the windmill, you can expect to be on your butt in the village in a hurry.

Anyway, after reading all this, I'm convinced it should be a full action. The class differentiation is the biggest selling point for me. Want to cheese shove to run and gun on a stair case? Have to be a higher level martial class to do that. I can't argue with that.

If we look at this from a 5e rules standpoints. Then shoving another creature should be an Action.

Now if we look at this with what BG3 has done. You easily see how powerful shove becomes and can instantly sway a fight. This ability can typically be more powerful than a characters standard attack. In my personal opinion this needs to be adjusted and Shove needs to be moved to a full Action and not just a Bonus Action. I get that Larian wanted to try and give people more options to use for a bonus action. But as it stands this is insanely powerful.

Of course I am of the camp that thinks Hide/Stealth needs to be moved from a Bonus action to a full action. The only class that should be getting hide as a bonus action is the Rogue with their Cunning action feature.

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?

The whole action economy must brought to the 5e values. It's a basis and changing something in it you provoke a chain reaction.

so yes, change it back to an action and make it prone or can move them 5 feet, not across the map.

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...


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.


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.


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.

While I appreciate your enthusiasm, to be honest, what you're doing and suggesting here is just turning something into an excessively, needlessly complicated mess of checks and caveats that would trip anyone up and result in a system that is less fair, less balanced and more confusing than anything yet implemented or suggested.

You're suggesting:
- Outcome variable based on something characters can't control or choose or alter beyond character creation (their weight), and which carries inherent imbalances of fairness with it, to be tied into such a tangible mechanic.
- A system that relies on two ability scores, each with their own separate, independent checks, from one person, against AC and an ability score from the defender, and which, if you are the attacker, then having a low score in EITHER stat means that you will more or less always fail to achieve your aim.
- Variable outcomes that have vastly different effects which the player cannot control or choose, because you're suggesting it be controlled by a split threshold measure on one of the two ability checks.
- Suggests a chance to miss outright where such a thing is impractical, and conversely don't allow for the defender to simply dodge your efforts - while handling this exact sort of thing is what contested ability checks are FOR in the first place.

And all this just for a single standard combat action.... I'm sorry, I don't want to sound harsh, but this whole thing is a non-starter...

You say it just 'makes sense' for Gnomes, Halflings and other small races to be easier to shove... No, it doesn't. You also later suggest that smaller creatures should be harder to shove, as determined by another, independent check. You also attempt to say that they shouldn't be melee characters anyway, because it doesn't make sense for them to be... sorry, but no. Halflings make excellent Fighters and Superlative Barbarians - some of the best builds in the game, in fact... but you'd want them to be make less capable of playing these classes fairly because they're small. No. Go away with that.


You want the halfling to be able to say in character Creation "Oh, yeah, and also, I weigh more than my Goliath friend, too, on account of I'm just choosing to, and setting it that way, because I'm the fighter, and he's the wizard." We can just 'choose' to 'have a lot of weight' - as much or more then someone with four times our body mass? Really? So, as well as making a single simple combat action dependant upon multiple checks, measuring different attributes, and having uncontrollable split outcomes based on multi-threshold DCs, you also want to bring another hitherto non-mechanical attribute INTO this calculation, on top of everything else.

The core rules already have considerations for whether a character is nimble enough to avoid being shoved, or strong enough to resist it directly, and whether a character has the strength and capability to succeed on the attack as well. It also has a consideration for the size of the attacker and defender, in determining what is feasibly possible and what isn't. It does all of this with a single die roll, and one supporting rule - Simple, elegant, easy to work with, and fairly balanced.


Yes. And that is why many people are deeply unhappy with Larian's homebrew on weapon actions. Knocking someone prone and doing damage at the same time is specifically the purview of Battle-Master Fighters: they have to dedicate specifically to get that ability... so no, it shouldn't be available to everyone for free. It's another reason why shove is an attack action, not a bonus action.

I'm sorry, but your suggestions regarding shove are completely inferior to just using the actual 5e rules for them, which are simple, elegant and straightforward... and what we should be using in BG3.

I'm not sure exactly how what I suggested would work in practice, or if it's different enough from how it works now to balance it, but I doubt that it's more unfair and unbalanced than anything that has been implemented or suggested before.
After all, we already have Shove, environmental effects, those statues in the Druid Grove and other things that are far more unbalanced than what I suggested...

As for it being confusing, it probably has more steps than it needs to have, but I don't think that it's confusing.


01 - I think that it would make sense for equipment and the weight of a character's inventory to affect Weight.
02 - It might make it only useful when dealing with characters that have lower, the same or slightly higher stats, but the point was to nerf Shove so that it wouldn't be overpowered.
03 - I suppose that the attacker could choose whether they want the defender to become prone or be pushed away before the rolls, rather than having that be decided by the Strength vs Strength roll result.
04 - How is it impractical to miss when trying to push a character?

About that all being just for a standard combat action, it's important because it's a standard action.


Gnomes and Halflings have less Weight than the other races that can be chosen, so they should be easier to push a farther distance.
Smaller creatures should be easier to miss.

As for Halflings making excellent Fighters and Barbarians, even the best in the game, if that's true, then what's wrong with their Weight giving them a disadvantage sometimes?


Aren't those rules already mostly implemented in Baldur's Gate III?
The only differences seem to be that Shove doesn't cause characters to be prone and that it's a Bonus Action.


I don't think that justifies Shove being an Action rather than a Bonus Action.

As with all things, this is an open forum, and everyone here is entitled to hold and to voice their own opinions on matters. I wasn't really seeking to debate with you, or convince you - I was just illustrating to you the ways in which your suggestion was a non-starter, so that, if you felt so inclined, you could improve upon it. You're free to think what you want, but do not be surprised if you find no traction.

You say you don't really know how it would work, and how it would play into or affect balance of other things - take your own admission to heart, and work it out, before pushing for an idea and maintaining that it is good. You might discover that it's not, and then be better able to amend it, or start over with something better.

You admit that your suggestion results in something with more steps than it needs to have - So why put it forward in that state? Fix it before putting it forward... if it is clumsy and inelegant, and has excessive steps, then fix it and get it right before arguing for it... or be prepared to take on board and listen to others pointing out why it isn't acceptable.

You say that weight of a character should account for their gear and pack - maybe so, that doesn't change the fact that bringing character weight into the equation in the first place is a terrible and needless move that adds complexity without benefit to the entire suggestion, and which runs counter to 5e's design philosophy to begin with.

You suppose that your dual ability score requirement would limit the usefulness of shove to only specific niche circumstances... but you're apparently failing to see why that's a bad thing, and not at al a good way of reducing or limiting its value. Moreover, you're not acknowledging that it means that anyone who wishes to have any hope of successfully shoving anyone at all, needs to have BOTH good strength, AND good Dexterity, in your suggestion - which is not a realistic ask, especially not for competency at a standard combat action.

You suggest that maybe players could choose whether to shove prone or to shove away, as a solution to the complaint about the variable outcome with very different effects that, in your suggestion, would be out of the player's hands... but you're pushing back against simple 5e rules for shove, which include exactly that; player choice.

You seem stumped at the contention that you can't realistically miss with a shove - as a justification for your multi-layered checks - The fact is, you are NOT going to miss a shove. That is not within the practical realms of possibility. They are there, and you are there, and you are shoving them; you're not going to simply miss them. Either they will resist your attempt to shove them, OR they will avoid the force of your shove, by ducking out of the way in some fashion... You will not 'Miss'; your target will respond to counter you. That's why it's an opposed check. Armour Class is not the correct stat to be using for something like this. These are just facts about the way the system is designed.

No, 5e rules are not what we have in BG3 currently; BG3's shove throws enemies miles away, and you also cannot choose to knock prone. It is coded to work 100% of the time fully effectively if you shove from hiding; it doesn't care about size category - you can shove anything, as long as it has not been given independent specific shove immunity, which in BG3 is a thing that some creatures have been given. Shoving characters only appear to use strength, not athletics, when shoving, and it's deeply unclear what defenders use, but it certainly does not seem to be using the target's best choice between athletics or acrobatics, and of course, Shove in BG3 is a bonus action, not an attack action... So in short, Shove in BG3 only very vaguely, and distantly, resembles 5e shove; it's just like it, except for being different from it in almost every single comparable way.


So, again, you are very much free to think and believe as you please - I was only offering some supporting information to your efforts.

Edit: Having had a night's sleep and not being over-exhausted now, I do wish to say that I apologise if this post comes off as overly condescending - it's not my intention to take that tone.