Oh. To be clear, that's all of the following enemies solo'd with only Shove and Throw and no other gimmicks, stealth, nothing. Just plain fighting:
3 imps - first fight 3 imps on deck Thralls and intellect devourer on deck - shoved several off the ship with 1-hit KO from the cannon section Intellect Devourer in pod chamber - though, to be fair, I shoved it onto a non-playable area where it didn't die. I couldn't get to it and it couldn't get to me, so I had to throw weapons at it to finish it. Imps and hellsboars in the helm section - all of them, but sadly not Zhalk, the mind flayer and cambions 3 intellect devourers in nautiloid beach Gimblebock and company Mari and Barton and company The scribes The grove gate fight - though admittedly the NPCs did a lot there. Couldn't be helped The secret tunnels goblins All but 1 harpy
Didn't do a lot of long rests. Didn't use a ton of potions until the harpy fight, and didn't die and reload to win.
Just do it like in Solasta... you can either shove prone or shove 5 feet away, as an action, or part of attacks. Like in PHB. Done.
"Just do like in Solasta" solves pretty much every problem with BG3's combat.
BG3 EA combat is way more varied and interesting than Solasta’s IMO..
Originally Posted by Gathord
+1 Solasta has such horrible encounter design too BG3 combat is more fun than Solasta in pretty much every way that matters.
No, not really. But even if it was all true (which is questionable at best), the flaws of Solasta in some areas like AI or encounter design DO NOT deny the ones of BG3 in others, like CORE mechanics. This is nothing else than some poorly disguised deflection, because you people are refusing to face the problems we are talking about. It's a little game we are witnessing constantly and I won't speak for the others but personally I'm growing fairly tired of it.
Next we'll get "Solasta sucks because faces are ugly" or "Solasta is terrible because there's less dialogue and story" (as if any of this was pertinent to the topic).
Party control in Baldur's Gate 3 is a complete mess that begs to be addressed. SAY NO TO THE TOILET CHAIN
Oh look, the Reddit apologists who haven't paused to take anything beyond EA into consideration are here.
Originally Posted by Elebhra
BG3 EA combat is way more varied and interesting than Solasta’s IMO. I understand some complaints about 5e implementation, but Solasta’s enemy behavior is incredibly dull. Being sometimes frustrated by a shove KO is still better than having enemies that just attack the closest for 90% of the time.
I don't think most people here are miffed at the idea of shove KOs in general. The argument has always been that it's too easy to use, since there's hardly anything stopping you from just doing it every turn as a bonus action, along with the other half of Shove not being implemented (the shove prone option). The latter part means that the game's overall balance seems to skew heavily mage/archer-centric on top of that, as melee characters gain very little from distance shoving unless they can score a KO with it or it's to prevent an enemy from reaching your ranged. Whereas they would benefit tons from shoving to prone.
Shifting shove from bonus action to main action, along with implementing the missing shove to prone function, would achieve the following.
1) The risk/reward calculation for utilizing Shove is suddenly going to shift towards there being much more risk to using it. Enemies could no longer freely shove each other awake and still attack in the same turn, for instance. A failed shove attempt means you can't do anything else that turn.
2) Larian's stated goal is to give martials more to do in general. I think they've done enough of that with the additional weapon actions as is. But many martials and some martial-focused mage subclasses gain Extra Attack at level 5 or beyond. This is something that points to how people not familiar with these mechanics should not consider themselves as having equal input in these discussions - Shove is also considered an Attack, and thus as a main action, a character with Extra Attack can have 2 shove attempts in a single turn if they wish, or shove prone for their first attack and use an actual attack with advantage on their second, and still have a bonus action to use. This is not possible with shove as a bonus action.
At this point, I've accepted that reactions may be gimped in BG3 forever due to engine limitations. If we're not going to get proper reactions, shove absolutely shouldn't be a bonus action either, at least not without a feat cost. The long term effects on the encounter balance is going to be really bad, potentially on the same level as the highly lambasted armor system in DOS2 that caused a total endgame rebalancing in the definitive edition. And from what I can see from the DOS2 section of this forum during the EA phase for that game, there were plenty of people that raised the alarm on that, only to get ignored.
Bonus action shove is not free, it competes with a lot of bonus actions that are either part of PHB or were added by Larian. Dipping, use object, jump, sneak, offhand attack, HM, Hex, Misty Step... all tend to have higher value than moving someone 5 feet. Using shove to disengage is one of the ways, but it's hardly reliable (Ranged and spellcasters=low str). There are simply better ways to do it.
The idea that shove being used for prone will have any impact on melee martials vs ranged martials or spell users balance is just wrong.
1) Using shove to prone a target is only really worthwhile if you are guaranteed to make 2 additional attacks at 50-65% hit chance before advantage and that assumes 100% chance to prone. Higher hit chance and lower chance increase the number of attack breakpoints even further. 75% chance to prone at 60% hit chance - 3 additional attacks. Furthermore even if calculations show it would be worthwhile to use shove prone in most cases damage increase is marginal at best.
2) Currently implemented classes that can be used as strength based melee martials (only ones that would consider using shove prone) have better ways to get advantage - Barbarian (Reckless Attack, Wildheart can Prone with Attack Action), Battlemaster Fighter (Trip Attack), Ranger (Beastmaster's animals special attacks, Ensnaring Strike).
3) Special weapon abilities often impose status effects that grant advantage.
3) One of the better uses of party spell casters is granting advantage (or other benefits) to martial characters. There's no need for balancing one against another since both roles benefit from one another.
Using shove to prone a target is only really worthwhile if you are guaranteed to make 2 additional attacks at 50-65% hit chance before advantage and that assumes 100% chance to prone?
What about forcing a tough enemy to have to get up so they use half their movement and thus can't get close to your wizard?
What about knocking prone so a rogue can get sneak attack and then dart away without AOO from a serious enemy?
What about a fighter knocking prone and then retreating without fear of AOO from a serious enemy?
What about knocking a high AC enemy with low Athletics prone so your whole team can melee beat the crap out of him/her with advantage and then fall back? Can't hit that AC 22 bad guy? Knock'em prone fighter with +7 Athletics.
Knocking prone has MANY strategic advantages.
It's not just about advantage for 1 person for one hit.
A lot of alternate methods of granting advantage have far greater costs/downsides for using them (and might only work for the attacker only, not the whole party + they're class specific while EVERYONE has shove) compared to a theoretical bonus action shove to prone, and shove being a bonus action is likely the exact reason why we don't have shove to prone implemented to begin with. It basically rounds back to one of the major arguments in regards to height advantage/disadvantage last year, in that its existence meant that the value of advantage-granting spells like Faerie Fire were diminished greatly for ranged characters. Sure, you say that shove being a bonus action is balanced out by the fact that it prevents you from using other bonus actions, but it's worth considering that shove as a bonus action is so strong that it also simultaneously diminishes the value of using the other bonus actions to begin with.
There was someone on Reddit that brought up something interesting. It's shifted my thoughts towards the possibility that the reason why Larian is leaving bonus action shove untouched is because it was only ever meant to be a bonus action for the EA period only. This, for the sake of dispelling the idea that martials have less to do at low levels, and that the devs would want us to test shoving everything down every crevice possible.
There's an extremely high probability that assuming shove to prone gets implemented, bonus action shove may get changed to a main action upon full release. Otherwise, a level 5+ martial character with Extra Attack could theoretically use a bonus action shove to prone and then immediately get 2 attacks with advantage. There isn't really anything that can match that without some kind of steep cost, like Reckless Attack allowing all enemies to attack you with advantage afterwards.
And, don't t forget, after the martial shoves and 2 attacks, your rogue can then come up and shove 30+ feet the prone person, right off a cliff.
Right after landing a sneak attack before shoving them off, if they are somehow still alive. Can't forget that part.
Though at that point, it's pretty damn redundant and might backfire on you from a time wasted standpoint, depending on how many melee are in your party.
I forgot to mention how my barbarian shoved the bugbear up on Nadira's hill (pink haired tiefling at the telescope) 20 feet to the edge of the hill we were on, another 40 feet to the edge of the shelf below that one, and then another 40 feet horizontally, at least, as he sailed like a rocket all the way down to the beach near where Orm, the bear, is fishing.
I had to run down the hill, wind my way past Aron the Halfling merchant, trigger the cutscene at the inner grove entrance with Arabellas parents, run past Volo and the druids doing the ritual, and head down the path to the beach just to loot his corpse.
Big, nasty bugbear. Yeeted 60+ feet to his doom via a single bonus action shove. Heck yeah. Better than any weapon attack.
Or the time the duergar in Grymforge yeeted Lae'zel into lava from THE CENTER of the platform while fighting Nere and company. Lae'zel! With 18 Strength and +7 Athletics! FROM THE CENTER OF THE PLATFORM!
1-Hit KO'd my strongest character who was in no way standing on the edge. And that was before she even took a single action in that combat. Round 1. She didn't win initiative. Then, just to add insult to injury, he ran up to another character and hit them with his melee weapon, dealing considerable damage.
Just do it like in Solasta... you can either shove prone or shove 5 feet away, as an action, or part of attacks. Like in PHB. Done.
"Just do like in Solasta" solves pretty much every problem with BG3's combat.
BG3 EA combat is way more varied and interesting than Solasta’s IMO. I understand some complaints about 5e implementation, but Solasta’s enemy behavior is incredibly dull. Being sometimes frustrated by a shove KO is still better than having enemies that just attack the closest for 90% of the time.
While I mostly agree with this, it's still really annoying to be one shot. I didn't really understood this complaint until my patch 8 playthrough in which I got shoved a lot lol.
Being OS like this may not happen so often. The consequence for a "not so good" position may lead to a game over and sometimes it can come just because of the map design (you cannot be far aways from holes). I usually survived in my playthrough with 3 characters but it was hard and I've played the game for 500+ hours.
My frustration was high and d I guess a new player would be frustrated even more, or eventually totally discouraged.
I also dont fully agree with what you said a bit later. Many classes don't use a bonus action at every turns so Larian's new BA became very common action.
I understand the idea behind this and I'm eventually ok with it. But shove is really powerfull in BG3 and I dont think it's a good thing to have such a powerfull "common action" available at every turn.
It may be fun when we're shoving but it's also often extremely frustrating when you're the target on top of being a very optimal move in combats. Having "over the top" options in combat is usually not very interresting in tactical games imo.
A lot of alternate methods of granting advantage have far greater costs/downsides for using them (and might only work for the attacker only, not the whole party + they're class specific while EVERYONE has shove) compared to a theoretical bonus action shove to prone, and shove being a bonus action is likely the exact reason why we don't have shove to prone implemented to begin with. It basically rounds back to one of the major arguments in regards to height advantage/disadvantage last year, in that its existence meant that the value of advantage-granting spells like Faerie Fire were diminished greatly for ranged characters.
There's massive difference between height/backstab advantage and advantage after shoving prone. The former has no real action economy cost and 100% reliability without investment, the latter costs 1 attack (or ba*) and reliability ranging from 40% to 60%. It's not even close in terms of effectiveness.
Everyone has shove, but not everyone has shove that is remotely worth using unless it results in one shot of an enemy with significant HP. Since you are targeting the better of Dex (Acrobatics) or Str (Athletics) it's almost never useful for a non-strength character without athletics proficiency.
*Most other things you wrote is based on assumptions about how Larian will or will not implement things. It's everyone's guess. If we however assume that bonus action shove prone is added, it doesn't cause any major imbalance between combat roles. DnD 5e is already skewed towards spellcasters and ranged. Giving a little and still questionable boost to melee is not a balancing issue.
So let's stop pretending that the biggest issue of bonus action shove for most people (however endowed with 5e expertise they might be) isn't the one shot potential.
Originally Posted by GM4Him
It's not just about advantage for 1 person for one hit.
I did not imply that is not. Circumstantial usefulness beside DPR increase of prone shove matters slightly, but BG3 already offers you alternatives. It's not like without shove prone you can't react accordingly to any situations you mentioned.
@Maximus In play I barely find an occasion to use BA shove. Jumping and use objects occupies a lot of my BA uses for most of melee characters even if they don't have any class BAs. But maybe it's not true for how other people play.
My point was not that shove isn't problematic. However I don't believe that changing shove from bonus to attack action helps if AI remains smart. AI should use shove to replace attacks if it has a chance to one shot a player character. Furthermore currently the enemy can't jump to high ground and shove your archer down, but if Shove was tied to just Attack it could.
Making range shorter helps, but I think that there is one other thing to consider - shoving uses contest rolls (which are core 5e rules). Contest rolls and DC 10 (which is Larian is pronanly using) makes defenses against shove just not reliable. 8 Str goblin with no athletics proficiency has 23% chance to shove 18 Str Lae'zel. If shoving was changed to use rules similar to that of the spell (base 8 DC+Dex/Str modifier+proficiency[acrobatics/athletics]) the chance drops to 5%. You can see the differences in expected success of shove attempt between contested/DC8 and DC10 here:
y axis - success chance x axis - difference between attackers and defenders modifiers
Last edited by Elebhra; 13/07/2207:59 PM. Reason: additional clarification
But they can currently dash + shove. I'm not sure how high a goblin can jump but the current solution seems worst to me.
But you're right, it would not solve all one shot ! I would personnaly find shove less powerfull if I had to choose between shove or another full action (attack or anything else) but I really don't know how works the AI in video games. Probably not like my own brain.
Reworking the rules behind it is probably necessary but it would not change the game a lot in my opinion if it's not a full action. Let's say that the RNG would have to be a bit more in favour of the enemy for the action to succeed, which it is not enough in my opinion to make it a balanced action, interesting from a tactical point of view and not frustrating as it may currently be.
I think it would be less of a problem with spells like spider climb, feather fall (as a reaction), levitate and fly. Eventually.
I thought people wanted shove as full action AND reduce the amount/distance shoved to 5ft in accordance with the 5e rules, which would make jump+shove something that is easily played around by simply standing 6ft from the edge
Don't you just hate it when people with dumb opinions have nice avatars?
I thought people wanted shove as full action AND reduce the amount/distance shoved to 5ft in accordance with the 5e rules...
In 5e it's an attack action (replaces an attack). I just want it removed as a bonus action and most of all the range reduced. It's comical how characters are being shoved - yeeted - across the map. Sometimes it looks like you play ping-pong and not a (serious) RPG. I would not currently recommend this game because of the way shove has been implemented. If that is fixed this game is in an other-wordly category to me (quite literally the best game on the market - in spite of the cutscene glitches).
Personally I don't care about 'shove to prone' as there are other ways to knock targets down - the yeeting has to go though, that thing is dumb af.
I thought people wanted shove as full action AND reduce the amount/distance shoved to 5ft in accordance with the 5e rules
This would be preferable, although if I was only able to pick one part of it to fix, it would have to be reducing the distance to 5 ft. Makes no sense that they nerfed ranges for weapons and spells but changed shove to this crap.
I've pretty much given up on hope Larian would be able to provide tactically sound and interesting combat gameplay. They are more like a meme factory in that regard. Spam flashy and exaggerated abilities as much as you can, Long Rest and repeat = fun. It's not. Or mostly ignore D&D combat rules and figure out a two piece puzzle like the Spider Matriarch or Grym. Metagame by "examining" enemies' vulnerabilities the characters wouldn't know and exploit, exploit, exploit. And always take the high ground, everywhere. Combat in BG3 is simplistic and gimmicky, a downgrade from 5e. There should be a much bigger focus on character builds, abilities and teamwork. And conserving your Long Rest resources and playing smart.
But, anyway.. a big +1 to restricting the Shove nonsense to what it's supposed to be in 5e.
What about forcing a tough enemy to have to get up so they use half their movement and thus can't get close to your wizard?
What about knocking prone so a rogue can get sneak attack and then dart away without AOO from a serious enemy?
What about a fighter knocking prone and then retreating without fear of AOO from a serious enemy?
What about knocking a high AC enemy with low Athletics prone so your whole team can melee beat the crap out of him/her with advantage and then fall back? Can't hit that AC 22 bad guy? Knock'em prone fighter with +7 Athletics.
Knocking prone has MANY strategic advantages.
It's not just about advantage for 1 person for one hit.
This is why 5e is a good tactical game. This is also the part that Larian simply don't get. They just can't get past the meme of shoving someone into lava to get to the actual beef of 5e tactics and why it's fun to work as a team.
None of the above matters anyway when they make all enemies Teleport or Jump over your Fighters to reach the Wizards and give everyone powerful ranged attacks.
They seem to have some design philosophy that it's more fun for both sides to constantly do crazy OP offensive stuff rather than control your enemies or have defensive options, which should be part of tactical combat. That's why we don't have the Dodge Action (it's "boring" because it's passive and does "nothing"), that's why you can't Shove Prone (because no instant gratification, needs something else to happen). That's why we have unlimited Long Resting, lowered AC's, jacked up height and other advantages, stupidly OP "Help" action to keep bringing PC's back into the fight 7 times in one encounter through mundane means without any expendable resource cost, beefed up Minotaurs that can be insta-killed by pushing them over a ledge, etc. etc. Larian clearly don't appreciate 5e and they don't see why it's a better game than BG3 tactically.
Nailed it.![[Linked Image from i.ibb.co]](https://i.ibb.co/T4Hy6gy/Contest-DC-8-and-DC-10.png)
