Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback SHOOOOOOOVE

Flooter,

DnD is not a physics simulator, and was never supposed to be. You are overcomplicating things.

I'd also be fine with them moving an additional 5 feet while falling, but no more than that. A shoved enemy isn't being shot out of a cannon; shoves essentially cause a character to stumble backward - a sensible physical explanation is to prevent themselves from falling prone. So there really shouldn't be that much horizontal velocity that would translate into large distances when shoved off a cliff.

+0.5 for shove distances being affected by your Atheletics/Strength/the difference in the check between you and the enemy. I'm not 100% for it, but I'm certainly not against it. The latter in particular would add some fun uncertainty to your shoves - sometimes you'd shove the enemy 5 feet, other times 10 feet, and very rarely up to like 20 feet.

Now when you mention it, if Larian were to keep current shove, they should go all the way and include ridiculous Goat Simulator rag dolls.

Difference between rolls wouldn't work because a person could roll a 1 with -1 Strength and no Athletics while the other rolls 20 with +5 Athletics, thus throwing them 25 feet, or something similar. On the other hand, a Strength 10 person could wind up shoving an ogre 15 feet just because the ogre rolled a 1.

But then, I suppose it might represent that the character caught the ogre off balance, and it stumbled backward 15 feet before catching it's balance. Hmmm...

However, someone with Strength 18 AND Athletics proficiency should probably shove someone a bit harder than a weak Strength 10 character. That's why I thought 5 feet minimum + Athletics skill modifier in feet. Then, what, maybe 15 feet is roughly the max distance shoved if you have high Athletics. Which, if you have that high of Athletics, shouldn't you see a difference between your shove ability and someone with 0 Athletics? Your skill and strength mean you know certain techniques and maneuvers that allow you to really shove someone hard.

+1, that would look ridiculous. Almost too much larfun, even for Larian.

Rolls should determine who wins the Athletics contest. The distance should be determined by Athletics (STR modifier + Athletics proficiency / expertise, if any), and maybe size category difference (say, +5 feet per unit of difference). Even Lae'zel with STR 18 can't really shove an ogre much, if at all. However she should have a much better chance sending a halfling or a goblin flying (not far, and it has to be a very low altitude flight, but still).

I wasn't trying to say that an enemy should be shoved Equal to the difference between the rolls, just that the difference could affect the distance shoved.

E.g., shover's roll is equal to the defender's roll or up to 9 higher - shove 5 feet
shover's roll is 10-19 higher - shove 10 feet
shover's roll is 20-29 higher - shove 15 feet
shover's roll is somehow 30+ higher - shove 20 feet

Something like that. This is just an example and the exact numbers could be tweaked. This could also be affected by size differences in characters (e.g, creatures one size larger get shoved 5 less feet) and/or could be your check compared to the enemy taking 10 on the Athletics skill.

I like it! +1

And if size is one larger, you shove 5 feet less, minimum of 5, so Gale shoves ogre. Ogre stumbles no more than 5. Lae'zel shoves ogre and gets natural 20+5=25, ogre gets 1, she's not shoving an ogre more than 10 feet, no matter how strong she is and how off balance the ogre is.

So, I don’t. If the shove distance would be shortened to 5 feet, then it would change he nature of how would we be using. At the moment shoves main function is sending enemies down the clif - shorten the distance and it’s function changes. Disengage, perhaps move it to another party members attack of opportunity zone.

Having an option to invest in lengthening character’s push distance might be interesting, but having variable results mean that players can’t use push tactically very much - not only it is not certain if push will succeed, but it is not certain how far it will move the enemy.

Ah, so you like your characters being thrown into lava with 100% success, then.

There are at least few problems with shove.

- Making it a bonus action "to give characters more things to do" makes it TOO convenient to use almost at every turn, which is why even the AI abuses it constantly instead of making it a highly situational action, as it should be.

- The "physics" of it are completely bonker. This becomes an issue both mechanically (in some cases there are hardly any "safe spots" a character can stand without risking being YEETED dozens of meters away)...

- ...AND it's also an issue in terms of visual presentation/suspension of disbelief, because, to put it bluntly, it looks just stupid.

It's almost like the game has an identity crisis and doesn't know if it wants to be "a somewhat realistic, gritty depiction of D&D in videogame form" or a cartoony meme factory.
The way characters fall in ample arcs and with a slow "floaty" animation rather than plummeting vertically in a quick, straight trajectory seems more fitting for a Wil E. Coyote sketch than it is for a "fantasy epic".

This last point is a somewhat similar problem to the one I highlighted in my thread about the "floppy archery" and the ridiculous way projectiles fly in this game.

Except this time the problem is reversed and the physics are far more accentuated than they should be, rather than looking unreasonably weak as it happens with arrows and bolts.

Their common trait is just looking unnecessarily wrong for no real benefit, in general.

And YES, I'm repeating myself as a broken record, but in my defense that what tends to happen when the topic being argued keep remaining the same (and going unaddressed by the devs).

Yeah, just maybe shoving someone into lava or a bottomless pit which are readily available everywhere, should require two shoves or co-operation for balance reasons? Even "just" shoving someone down a ledge for minor damage where they require a turn or two just to get back in the fight is a winning move in most scenarios. A bonus action that wins an entire fight is pretty obviously broken.

Also, if my character would get "only" 5ft. shoved towards a sea of lava with the intent of one-shotting them on the next Shove, I would like to get a chance to move away from the edge, having to deal with attacks of opportunity. That's actually much more tactical than some random duergar yeeting you into lava from basically anywhere at their leisure.

No, I hate it. I would.be most happy with shove being more faithful to 5e ruleset with shorter push distance and fullaxtion cost.

I should have made a quotation in my previous post to indicate that it was response to the idea for shove distance being decided by a roll. Making the distance of the shove a result of RNG I think is a bad idea.

I see. Well, I don't like it either, pretty much for the same reason, and that's why I suggested the proficiency approach instead:
So, full formula could look like this:

[Shove Distance in feet] = 5 + k * ( [Athletics] + b * [Creature size difference] ),

where k and b are konstants that can be tweaked. Also, I think that [Creature size difference] should work both ways, that is, it can be negative when a goblin tries to shove a medium-sized character, or human tries to shove an ogre.

I wasn't trying to suggest how shoving should be done, I was trying to surmise how it actually works in the game engine. I'll try to explain more clearly.

The shove UI shows an arc behind the target. Where that arc meets the ground is where the target lands if the shove is successful. It's the same arc whether or not you're next to a ledge, but it's cut off at a different point. My guess is that arc is calibrated to work when you're not next to a ledge.

With non-ledge shoves, the game gives the target enough momentum to lift it above the floor and drop it five feet away and everything looks good. With ledge shoves, the game gives the target the same momentum as before, except when the target is dropped, it retains all that momentum and continues forward as well as down.

That, in my assement of how the game works, is why ledge shoves look so goofy.

Honestly i would prefer Shove to push for fixed distance. :-/

BY THE GODS!

Now you can shove someone as a bonus more than 30 feet AND you can throw someone ALSO more than 30 feet... ALL IN THE SAME ROUND!!! Do NOT get into melee range with the minotaurs or you'll surely be thrown from their lair to the Arcane Tower - 2 characters at a time!

Sigh. So disappointing. It's like they're going the opposite direction than what a good number of us are asking for.

Yay! New UI. Hope it's good. Yay Barbarian. I wanted that too. It's true, but it's disheartening to me that they not only DIDN'T reduce shove distances and make them Actions, but they implemented an even more ridiculous game mechanic to THROW people as well.

On the flip side... looks cool. I like the animations of picking things up and tossing them, including goblins. I like that they are limiting them by strength so Gale can't pick up ogres and throw them.

But did you see how far they were able to throw people in the stream? I don't even care that one was a cat. How the flip you gonna throw a cat THAT far even with magical enhancements? What kind of freaking distance was that? 600 feet? 1,000? I don't even know how I'd measure that in the game. 30 feet in the game is NOT very far.

An improvised weapon has a normal range of 20 feet. TWENTY!!! Long range is 60. That's a WEAPON!!! And then, on top of that, you're supposed to get disadvantage if beyond 20 feet.

Average axe weighs 2-3 pounds. If I can only throw a 2-3 pound axe 20 feet (60 at most), then this whole throwing goblins 60 feet is ridiculous. A cat is 8-9 pounds on average. How you gonna throw a cat THAT far?

AND YOU CAN DO IT AND SHOVE IN THE SAME ROUND... AND SO CAN YOUR ENEMIES! I don't even know how fighting Ragzlin's gonna be. He's GOT to be a barbarian too.

I can't get past this one. I'm sorry. It's too much. Shoving and throwing in the same turn for double the toss into the lava pits... I'm stumped at how they think that's going to make for good gameplay.

I'm sorry. This update is the biggest disappointment to me. I was so looking forward to the Barbarian, and a new UI, and I even like throwing as an option especially for Barbarians or really strong characters like Lae'zel and ogres, but the distances are too much, and shove and throw both in the same turn because one's a bonus and one's an action is also too much.

I'm not even sure I want to play the new patch. Seriously. That's how much this has punched me in the gut for this game. Why even need weapons or spellcasters anymore? Build a barbarian tank who can throw potions for healing, use revivify scrolls to raise from the dead, throw axes for long range, and even enemies, and throw and shove everything into pits ALL IN THE SAME TURN?

I can't... I can't even right now. I'm all vaklempt. Talk amongst yourselves.

Yeah... As a "always lurks but rarely posts" person, this is disappointing. They were seemingly excited about the idea of "hey look, you can yeet the bad guys into melee range of your barbarian now....". Wut? Have they ever played DnD before?

At this point, I highly doubt they will change this behavior. They spent a lot of time talking about it and how "cool" it is. It's beyond parody. Ill play it through once to see what really happens, but I am not optimistic. Looking forward to hopefully being wrong here.

They overpower this yeeting, shoving and throwing with reckless abandon and it's getting extremely annoying. Yeah it's fun for the memes but it's really GARBAGE GAMEPLAY.

Throwing enemies or using them as weapons is actually two actions combined into one. The grapple action (which I'm not at all sure uses Athletics vs. Athletics/Acrobatics since it seems to often have 95% chance of success) and the attack or throw action.

Why would you ever again use a weapon in combat if you can just smash two enemies together for more damage with a much higher hit rate? Or throw an attacker away from melee range and damage two enemies with just one action?

And there is also a pattern of ignoring all actual D&D mechanics in the process. Where are the skill checks and saving throws??? It's just 95% to execute some OP homebrew double action move. With a lot of lava / rivers / pits thrown in for instant kills.

I don't think I can play this if combat is this dumb. It's like a small children's playground, not a tactical combat game.

Okay, now that I've calmed down a little bit about this, I think I'm literally going to try to play the game using only throw and shove just to see how broken it is. I'm going to create a barbarian and only boost their strength, dexterity, and Constitution. Then I'm going to go on a throw and shovefest. I'll use potions and scrolls and such only if necessary. I might even solo it.

Who knows, maybe I'm jumping the gun. Maybe it's not as broken as I think it'll be.

Throw is like superpowered version of shove. I assume that's why it costs whole full action I just thrown a chest by accident.

I must say though - changing shove animation for an enraged barb... [slow clap]