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.
Last edited by Tuco; 11/07/22 12:13 PM.
