The distance is actually a much bigger offender than the action economy of it. The ridiculous distance is what KILLS tactics in combat, not so much the fact that you can spam it easily since you will later be able to anyway. When a random Duergar yeets a PC into lava from the center of a large room the mechanic undermines the player using good tactics and actively staying far away from the hazards.
Agreed. BA shove 5 feet would most often be equivalent to taking the Disengage (bonus) action, which while powerful is not overwhelmingly powerful. Even in areas with cliffs/lava/pits, there wouldn't be thaat many situations where an enemy was within 5 feet of a cliff, it was your turn, you can reach the enemy, and you succeed on your shove check.
In a video game they absolutely should make the system a bit more complicated and factor in the Strength of the attacker and the weight of the defender when calculating the distance. Creatures that would be anatomically hard to Throw or Shove like spiders should have a natural resistance against it. The ridiculous power Shoves that can easily decide the outcome of combat or one shot targets should be reserved for extremely strong creatures or require a Potion of Giant Strength to pull off. That would be tactical. Focus firing or disabling the Duergar that drinks such a potion when there are lethal hazards around.
Double agreed. Larian should take the opportunity to undo some of the simplification WotC did to make 5e more friendly and speedy to play, e.g., in turning everything into (Dis)Advantage. High ground +2? Good. Flanking into +1 or 2? Wouldn't be terrible. Shove distance depends on Strength/weight/size/atheletics check/# of legs? Good. I believe in Pathfinder creatures with more than 2 legs get bonuses to the Combat Maneuver Defense. And it'd be cool to put serious resources into making an important Shove attempt(s) succeed, or otherwise dealing with a shove-master enemy.
Considering Action Surge and higher level Fighters combined with the high focus on verticality in BG3, I would probably still limit Shove to max 1 attempt / turn. At least make it Shove + 3 x Pushing Attacks for a 5th level Battlemaster to expend some resources. Action Surge is a pretty insane spike tbh.
Eh I don't agree but I'm not categorically opposed. If Shove is only 5 feet then it's much less powerful, and a fighter dedicating multiple attacks and possibly AS to
attemptshove a foe multiple times to off a cliff is fine to me. As long as instant-death pits and lava aren't too common of course. Theoretically an enemy should successfully avoid a shove ~10-50% of the time depending on the relevant skills scores, so even 4 shoves in a row will only on average yield 2-3 successful shoves = 10-15 feet.
