Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Patch 8 - Shove / Push / Arrows / Shockwave - Feedback and suggestion

Hello,

Just another thread to say once again how bored I am of being pushed so often in the game. I like the idea of shoving and verticality, I have absolutely no problem with that.

But a character being shoved into a pit die instantly and this may easily mean "game over". And I really don't like instant game over in games.
Some could argue that I have made some mistakes (standing next to a hole), but in many situations you just don't have any choices.
The consequence for a mistake is too punitive and as I said, sometimes there's just no mistake but a map design.

You're a cruel DM !

These instant game over may happen so often because :
- shove is a BA
- shove distance is huge
- many ennemies "push" you after a jump
- many ennemies have arrows that push you

I played the game live for something like 8 to 9 hours. Here's what I remember :

- Ennemies still shoving their allies to wake them up
- Ennemies trying to shove just because they don't know what to do with their bonus action (even if it doesn't make sense)
- Lae-zel got shoved against Dror Razglin and instant die
- Lae-zel was "shoved" by the bullette and instant die
- Lae'zel was "shoved" by the minotaurs and instant die
- Lae'zel was pushed by an arrow on the boat to grymforge and instant die

I like that we know can resurect our fallen character through their "soul". But it is still extremely frustrating to die like this.


Suggestion :
- Shove become an action, except eventually for rogues and their cunning action. I guess it could solve most issues because ennemies would not use it so often.
- Eventually reduce the distance, but TBH as I said I think it should be enough to turn shove into a full action.
- Remove the pushing arrows. It make no sense and it's just boring when you're the target.
- Remove abilities for ennemies that allow to push you. Or at least, don't put those ennemies near holes... (minotaurs, bulette,...)

Thanks for reading !

I saw your stream last night, and dang did you get brutalized! It was kinda funny as a spectator, but I would have been just as annoyed as you were had it happened to me.

I think the shove range was reduced again in patch 8 but I'm not positive. I seem to recall yeeting the bugbear assassin in the druid grove halfway to Bucharest in earlier patches, yet he plopped down only one level this time.

I think the minotaurs and bulette (and hook horrors, by the way) are deliberately placed next to death chasms as part of the encounter design. As you mentioned in your stream though, there's no counterplay. There's nothing really a player can do; they have to take it and hope not to get tpk.

Shove should absolutely be a full action. I'll help you voice these complaints, but I'm sorry to say I don't think that's changing. The words "nearly feature complete" ring out in my mind like a death knell.

In any case, keep up the great content!

I completely agree. Shove is totally overpowered and needs to be toned down. In the fight against Nere and the Duergar for example, you have literally no place to be, where you aren't in constant danger to get shoved into the lava.
I used Shove to wake up Lae'zel from Sleep once and decided, that it is not worth to take that spell anymore, because it's just so easy to wake sleeping companions up - so basically a waste of a spellslot.
I would like to see SHove as an actiontoo and the shove distance reduced. Lae'zel did get shoved by a goblin through half of the Blighted Village, which doesn't make a whoel lot of sense. She is in full armor and twice as high (and really strong) than the goblin.

Larian be like: U Mad Bro?

Yeah, agreed. Should have been fixed long ago. But alas

Haha thanks for watching !
I'm glad to hear it was fun to watch despite being boring to play

Larian is a cruel DM ! A bit too much for my taste.

they should have nerfed the shit out of push long time ago.

Shove is a full action in PnP anyway, so there's no reason why it shouldn't be here as well. It's high time to implement it correctly.

I'm pessimistic Larian will make it a full action, hopefully there will be a Mod that will fix this along with the Larian BS (Barrels and Surfaces).

Shove as a bonus action" at first sounds apparently minor, almost trivial.
"Oh well, it gives you a chance to make an additional attack for round. It gives my characters more things to do, right? What's the big deal?"

But then over time you realize it makes shove surprisingly convenient to use over and over, rather than "situationally useful", since as far as bonus actions go there's only rarely better options.

As a result, Larian's own systemic AI learned over updates to spam shove constantly: to push characters down precipices or buildings, to push characters on traps or damaging surfaces, to wake up allies that were put to sleep with a spell (something that normally would require an action of some sort), to create distance from the enemies and not incur in attacks of opportunity, etc, etc.

The aggravating factor is that shove is not even limited to push an enemy five feet away (or down a precipice when standing on its border) as it should be and instead it's occasionally able to YEET characters few meters afar.
As a result, not only it's a surprisingly convenient bonus action to use, but its potential effectiveness as a "1 hit KO" is exponentially increased. Normally you'd have to worry about sitting too close to a precipice (or a lava pit or whatever). Now being anywhere in its vague proximity can turn into a suicide.

Knock on effect on the balance aside, this also severely affects the "vibe and mood" of the fight: what should be a battle of sword and sorcery turns occasionally in a clownfest of people goofing around pushing each other at any given chance.

Edit : hadn't read Tuco's post before writing mine. +1 to all

I think the intent is to create a full action economy around the bonus action, where players always have options and decisions around the BA, as opposed to DnD's BA which isn't always used on each player's turn.

I'm not sure why Larian made that decision. Maybe they felt it would be interesting for players; maybe they needed to integrate their own abilities (like dip or jump) and couldn't let those be the only bonus actions available to every class; maybe they identified abilities players never used as candidates for promotion from full action to bonus action.

We agree there. Understanding why Larian did it this way could help us find persuasive arguments for balance to be restored to BG3. Maybe they don't mind that BA shove/hide makes all classes feel the same, that it makes Sleep read "some creature(s) next to your target(s) lose(s) one bonus action (each)", that the decision to select a BA isn't nearly as interesting as they'd hoped.

I think they mind that the current implementation of BA makes combat longer. I don't need my turn to be comprised of an interesting decision (normal action) and a dumb one (bonus action). Using the BA is like a second smaller turn within the turn, which is impactful enough that you have to engage with it, but not interesting because some abilities are way too strong. It's just a repetitive chore that has to be dealt with to keep up with the enemies' broken tactics.

Listen up Larian : if you change hide and shove to full actions, players will use their bonus action as a bonus (ie, when it actually suits their needs) and not as a second action each turn with a shrug and a "why not". Cutting those repetitive non-decision decisions can gain at least as much time in combat as Swarm AI.

Yep shove needed to be changed to a bonus action awhile ago!

I concur with the original post, and basically everything that has been said from there down to here.

I would say I particularly support the first 3 suggestions in Maximuuus' post.

• Shove should be an Action, not a Bonus Action.
• The Shoving Distance should be 1.5m/5ft.
• Standard enemies are too frequently in possession of over-powered and annoying items such as Arrows of Pushing Thunder (or Alchemist Fire of Auto-Damage-take-that-Concentrating-spellcaster)

The 4th suggestion, breaking the symmetry of access to basic action between players and enemies, sound like a bad solution to me. But at this point I'd take it if it's the best Larian can do.

I want to add a couple of things regarding Shove.

• We should be able to Shove To Prone, instead of just Shove Away. This is tactically interesting when my Fighter's turn is followed by my Barbarian and my melee Valor Bard.
• Shove should be integrated as part of the Attack action. So that, when warriors get Extra Attack at lv 5 (and Fighters get a 3rd attack at lv 11), if they miss the first Shove To Prone, they can try again (and again).

+1 to basically all.

The distance (too far) + BA cost (too cheap) + prevalence of insta-death pits/lava (1HKOs should be infrequent) + extra uses of shove (waking up allies), all together just make BG3's Shove way too much.

I just had a thought which I can’t remember seeing elsewhere on the forum.

What if the Monk was the only class to bonus action shove? I say the monk because it hasn’t come out yet but maybe another class is a better fit for that ability. Come to think of it, the paladin is a strength based class.

What if gaining access to Bonus Action Shove became a feat? It would be a neat ability we already know is quite powerful and would make for interesting builds.

Going to mention a couple things I had to go through at the goblin fight when first arriving at the Druid Grove that exemplifies why bonus action shove is absolutely insane.

1) Enemies were using bonus action shove to wake each other up if they were afflicted by the sleep spell.

2) One enemy walked up to my Bard and KO'd them, then shoved them into a fire field. With one standard action and a bonus action, they managed to push them out of range of closer range healing spells, AND immediately score 2 instant failed death saving throws from height and fire damage. If my Bard's turn was next in the initiative order, he would have immediately died before I had any chance to do anything about it. And this is from a level 2-3 enemy barely 1 hour into the game. Spells, which are a limited resource, don't even come close to doing anything like this until maybe level 10+ (and that's a low estimate), if at all.

I mean, sure, you can do all this yourself too, but with the action economy skewed against the party as is during many encounters, it has the potential to evolve into something that's more effective against the party rather than equally taken into consideration for players and enemies. Such amateur JRPG-level design is precisely why a number of people here are very concerned about it.

100%, there is no argument to make, that Shove should be an Action that can be used as an Attack Action.

Shove should be fixed. Being able to potentially do 30+ dmg as a bonus action in scenarios like Githyanki fight and then use a Full Action before or after is stupid.

Also, why do these NPC Goblins have bombs on them that do 20+ AOE (!) dmg to open a fight. Really? A low-level Goblin can potentially do 20+ dmg to all 4 of my characters, depending on initiative, with a damn item in their inventory?

That is a personal pet peeve of mine. The bombs need to go, lazy ass approach to fight balance.