Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Shove is a Broken, Dumb Game Mechanic

I've never played in a tabletop game where any, let alone all, of the following are true:
a) Shove is a Bonus Action
b) Shove is used anywhere close to the frequency it's seen in BG3. 10x less frequent at most.
c) Shove can push people >5 feet, or even >10 feet horizontally when off a cliff.
d) Cliffs are as prevalent as they are in BG3. 5x or more less frequent.

It's also not of a "take it or leave it type" because enemies can and will use it against you. Also against their own teammates to wake them up (unless that has been fixed).

I'm just hoping that they reduce the distance to it's appropriate 5 ft, and if they want people to be shoving more than 5 ft, make a feat for it. They're already is one. Charger is a feat it allows you to shove 10 ft. There are other things that give you this kind of ability. I'd like that implemented so that there isn't an entire room full of duergar who can shove me into lava from 30 ft away.

+1 ...
That and change it to Action.

//Edit: OH!
And remove autosucess for hidden or invisible users ...
Or replace it with either Advantage or flat bonus.

I come down on the "It's a legitimate D&D mechanic" side of this debate. Yes, it's powerful in the right context. Pushing someone into a bottomless pit or into lava immediately eliminates them. It ALSO prevents looting (or, in the specific case raised, decapitation). I've loaded a game after accidentally knocking a mimic off a ledge with an Eldritch Blast after it stole an important weapon.

(You want OP? Try starting a fight against a certain goblin leader by lining up half the people in the room with a Thunder Wave to knock them all into a spider pit.)

But the reason I come down on the 'legitimate mechanic' side is because I've seen it happen in pen-and-paper sessions. A group of low-level adventurers traipsing around the Underdark stumbles across a creature that - from appearances - we presume to be evil and VERY powerful. (We didn't finish that campaign, but my inference is that 'evil' was wrong...and that it was indeed a very powerful creature.) My character wanted to try talking to it, but got outvoted by the bloodthirsty neanderthals in the party, who charged in, attempted to push it off the cliff on the first turn of combat, and rolled a natural 20, sending this incredibly powerful (and plot-important) NPC off the edge into the depths of the Underdark.

Arguably, enemies should try to be a bit more tactical about avoiding being positioned to get pushed off a cliff. And I won't weigh in on the distance of the push. But in principle, the mechanic is fine.

I don't think anyone is against the concept - just the implementation.

Was this plot important and very powerful character positioned Right on the edge of a lethal bottomless pit, having been placed there deliberately by your DM? Were they also no more than one size larger than your party members (for medium creatures; huge or above = no can shove) ? Did they also roll a contested check against the shoving party member, using their most advantageous ability score between Dex and Strength (one of which they were presumably very good with, unless they were a spellcaster and thus not scared of simple falling), and still fail?

Unless all of those things are true, than you were benefiting from over-reaching homebrew, and it's not a good example - fine for the sake of fun and spectacle, but if it was a legitimately important figure that your DM needed to use, then they would have been completely within rights to simply tell you that that's not how it works. If all of those things were true, then you DM was almost certainly setting the character up to be killed/shoved down that pit deliberately, regardless of what they report to their players.

It was at a crossing over an effectively-bottomless pit. It made narrative sense in context; and from a campaign design perspective the proximity to the pit was to constrain player options by preventing us from avoiding the NPC altogether. Yes, the size restrictions and contested checks were all complied with. (I mean, I don't know the specifics of the NPC's end of the check, but knowing the DM and the circumstances overall, the likeliest inference by far is that the stats weren't adequate to make up for a really poor roll. Having actually been there, I have no basis to assume otherwise, as you seem to.)

The DM clearly neither expected the player choices, nor the outcome of the dice. (From a metaplay perspective, I'm quite certain that this was not meant to be a combat encounter at all.) The outcome required a lucky roll by the player, and an unlucky roll by the NPC, and was no doubt improbable - but the dice are fickle.

And here in lies the differences between your example and BG3. In BG3, shoving enemies off the cliff is both easy and an expected tactic in many combats. And while it's totally fine to create a game based around shoving enemies off of cliffs (in a sense, smash bros qualifies), the rules and goal of D&D combats (dealing damage over multiple turns to reduce enemy HP to zero) doesn't mesh well with the overpowered and common nature of shoving.

Even Power Word Kill, a 9th(!) level spell with the specific aim of being a OHKO, requires that targets have less than 100 HP. It has synergy with D&D gameplay as you have to whittle down the enemy first. Shove, on the other hand, can occur on the first turn and easily instantly end a combat. All at the low low cost of a bonus action from a single character, which is essentially a free action for classes that don't have other uses for their bonus action.

p.s. Last I heard, Barbarian's Throw Enemy was still a 100% chance to throw (not to hit, but the throw still automatically succeeds). Idk if you can Throw Enemies into pits because there might be a distance restriction, but...

Just to re-state this point.

Joe

Shove is an awesome strategic Action in 5e.

Shove that is a Bonus Action that sends people flying more than 5 feet/1 meter is broken.

Save some room for special abilities and feats, Larian. Don't make it so everyone can shove as a bonus and more than 5 feet. There are feats that can increase this ability, making feats more important and desirable.

Same goes for Throw. Tame down the throw mechanics for everyone. Then create feats that a person can take to increase your throw potential.

I mean, 2 years in EA, this pretty much a no brainer Shove will change right? <cry>
Might be that for EA purposes shove was made like that to test out the engine's reactions/limitations by pushing characters all over. aka, a good way to find bugs.
Internally at Larian they probably have it set at around 30 feet lol.

The other differences are that the enemies you're going up against...are generally hostile creatures against whom you might reasonably be able to win a contested check without it being a particularly remarkable fluke.

What I'm suggesting is that the problem isn't so much the mechanic itself as the AI's failure to account for it in their own positioning. I've found that it's generally not that difficult to avoid having your own characters knocked off cliffs. So turning it into an action? Sure, fine. Reducing the distance? That's fine, too. But if it's too easy or too common, I'm asserting that's simply because the NPCs stand near cliffs too often. (For my part, I don't often use it against bosses, if only because I generally want to loot them afterward, which bottomless pits or lava usually prevent. Nere isn't that hard to kill conventionally, and you'll break at *least* one quest by pushing him into lava.)

(BTW, jfutral and Wormerine, there's a range of views expressed in the thread, but both the original poster and mrfuji3 both seem to me to argue that the availability of a 'one-shot kill' action like pushing someone off a cliff derogates from the D&D combat system which is premised, in mrfuji3's words, on "dealing damage over multiple turns to reduce enemy HP to zero".)

Unless something changed in the recent patch, that is not my experience. Shove archs seems to autoadjust and extend to accomodate characters being shoved down, and archs can get very generous if there is even a slight decrese in elevation. In combat encounters in forge and in goblin's hideout not getting pushed down has been dominating those encounter everytime I did them and limited combat options to few limited spots on the map.

I don't understand why would you ever change what is clearly written in dnd rules unless it's difficult to implement in a videogame format - in this case it's totally understandable to change/not implement something. But there is nothing difficult in implementing the shove as the dnd shove. Action and 5 ft/prone.

Is it that they want to tweak things for the sake of tweaking and "making it their own way"? Just why. I want Larian dnd game, not Larian Larian-dnd game. Just why.

And to top all of it the current implementation is not just not in the spirit of the system but also plain bad. Let's also make a poke bonus action to poke eyes and permanently blind creatures with eyes by the way.

I agree that "enemies standing near cliffs too often" is at least partially a function of AI programming. But it also definitely depends on shove distance - the large shove distance in BG3 makes it much harder to not stand close to a cliff. Especially as you can have multiple of your party members push an enemy before it gets back to their turn - now they have to stay 2-4x the distance away from any cliff, which is impossible in many areas.

And yes, I am arguing that there shouldn't be a common/easy mechanic that one shot kills enemies. The Hag, Spider Matriarch, Absolute leaders, Nere, Githyanki patrol, boat Duergar - these are all encounters where an instant death pit is a central feature of the arena, and it's not great that so many of these are boss fights. D&D is a party-based game; a OHKO (bonus) action button devalues the rest of the game mechanics, party synergy, and any tactical combat.

If shove was reduced to 5 feet AND enemies avoided being near cliffs, then the risk-to-reward would be more fair. You'd likely have to succeed on ~2-4 shoves to push an enemy off a cliff, which would be a large investment of turns&actions: high risk, but high reward.

I think it's fine that they add their own flavor to the game.
But it looks like they tried to create "a Larian experience in a DnD setting" rather than "a DnD/BG experience enhanced with their own mechanics".

The verticality of the map really enhance the shove action of DnD. It's interresting, fun, surprising, less anecdotal...
But as a bonus action + push miles away they turned it into a barely funny joke that is repeated over and over again.

It's the same with surfaces. I guess it could be cool to put the ground on fire or to electrify water in a DnD session... But they also overdone it with tons of surfaces arrows + surfaces potions + surfaces attacks + other sources of surface + everything is burning + walking with your boots on an invisibility potion makes you become invisible + diping your wooden weapon into a fire surface makes it become a fire damage weapon + ...

It's the same with many things if you think about it.
It's a Larian game in a DnD setting rather than a DnD game with the Larian touch.

Please don't give them any ideas. You just know they will now implement an eye poke action for Minsc's hamster... "go for the eyes Boo!"

There's a book in the grove that implies that Boo may, in fact, have eaten the eyes of his enemies.

+1. can't say it better myself. i think larian mechanics design stick to abuse the mechanics to fight impossible battles rather than win challenging battles using the ruleset to counter the encounter (which pathfinder wrath of the righteous using it. of course higher difficulties resort into stacking). which makes the game challenging if you are not sure what you are doing. both has pros and cons where owlcat approach on early game on higher difficulties were really brutal.

Adding to this, have just under 8 companions, just 4 playable, less creatures, less spells, no day/night , no detailed written dialogue options (100% cinematics, so your stuck with baddly acted short one liners <short> sentences basically) ...really takes balls to pull that off calling it Baldur's Gate.
We got less content, but hey its nice and shiny and <new>.
BG3 at this current state will be completely forgettable, while BG2 will keep its legendary status.
Forget shove. Thats just peanuts.. . Am I truly the only one here who can see who BAD the cinematics look and are killing/stalling this game's development?? The acting, art style, the animations...to my eyes everything looks dated and like a cringy PG13 B flick.

My impressions on whats going on at Larian is this. They are still 95% committed to just working on cinematics right now, still after 2 years. Its so much a pain in the ass to make it work....Its a road block to more creative content. But its their ticket to become a <<AAA>> studio for the masses.
All the rest is still on back burner; we got extremely <minor> changes up to now. UI, gameplay, graphics, D&D, atmospherics, sound, classes/kits, companions...you know, stuff that actually matters to cRPG fans more than flashy Tell tale pretty face stuff. Because SEX and having a boner ( pardon the expression) sells more than anything else.