Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Poll: Are you playing BG3 the way you wish it could be played?

I just have to disagree with that - push devalues spells already weakened through homebrew (sleep), and it dominates some of the key EA fights (goblin chieftain, forge) both being the biggest threat to your teams survival, and best way of dealing with enemies. If there is elevation (which there usually is) pushing enemy down tends to be the best use of bonus action one can take.

Especially early on, push has relatively little value and that’s where I enjoy BG3 gameplay the most, even with push as it is. It is a problem later on, and a big one.

I don’t care if BG3 is different from D&D 5e - I care that some of its elements are not good (push, reactions). Push is not a dessert - it’s someone pouring a glass of salt into the main meal instead of a pinch.

I would agree with this sentiment in principle. However, the "Larianisms" that have been introduced into this game have been uniformly lousy and poorly thought out, and have not done a damn thing to make the game a better video game playing experience.

I can count on one hand how often I use shove in combat. Instead of using any other number of bonus actions.

And really, when I watch youtubers playing the game, most of the ones (especially the ones who are good at the game) don't use it all that much either. Shove is a low percentage of their use of bonus actions.

Again, so much of what folks say rely on theory. In actual practice, it's just not used that much.

*

However, I will concede that enemies use it to wake one another up from sleep.

That doesn't really bother me, though. Kind of a "so what?" thing.

Doesn't that make you not want to use the sleep spell, because enemies can both wake up an ally and still attack you? Then that woken up enemy can take their turn, waking up another enemy and still attacking you? All of which makes the Sleep spell so much more ineffective than other similarly leveled spells, or even perhaps basic actions..?

Haven't played the latest patch, but have Duergars suddenly stopped shoving your party into the lava?

Just like with shove, I can't count the number of times I've used Sleep on one hand, because 0 requires no counting. There are other reasons I would opt to not use Sleep over say Magic Missile, or Flaming Bolt. Why CC it if I can simply kill it instead? It achieves the same end, removing that mob from combat, with 0 risk of a party member, or another mob, breaking the CC. IF we want NPCs using the same rules as PCs, then some of this is to be expected, yes?

I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to say; what is the "this" in your last sentence? I do want NPCs to use the same rules, but in my mind that means neither of us should be able to wake allies up with a bonus action. Or sleep should be buffed to account for this ease of waking up.

For Sleep, the reason why you'd use it over an attack is because you *should* be able to automatically sleep 3-4 low-level enemies, whereas damaging attacks/low-level spells typically only target one creature (and might not even kill it!). Up against 10 goblins, sleeping 3 or 4 of them is much more valuable than killing a single one, as it either removes 3 enemies from combat for 1 minute, or makes 3 goblins waste their attacks to wake up their allies.

However, in BG3, Sleep will probably only affect 1-2 creatures, and they can very easily be woken up via enemy bonus actions. So I agree that in BG3 it's almost always better to use any other ability, which is a problem.

...and using it as an AoE will not result in the scenario that you argued in your previous post, one mob will not be shoving one mob, and waking up all of the sleeping mobs. However, that doesn't address my point, that I wouldn't be using sleep over other options. "This" refers to NPCs using the same tactics/rules as the PC. So you hit it on the head, despite not understanding what I said? My issue, however, is that CC can be broken, whether through an action, or a bonus action is irrelevant. I will always opt to kill before I resort to CC. As I said, there are other reasons to use something else instead. This can include things like bombs, or as I listed, other spells, some of which may break the CC anyway. The fact that an NPC can break it doesn't factor into the equation for me.

Help "Removes Burning, Downed, Ensnared, Entangled, Enwebbed, Prone and Sleeping."
Help is an action. Right now help is totally useless to remove sleeping. Something.must be done... and changing shove into a full action rather than removing "and sleep" from the help tooltip is better for a lot of reasons raised since 2 years.

I dunno, I am playing as bard and shoving seems to be in most cases a better choice then using my signature limited inspiration - chances to hit don’t really require buffing (not when getting pushed gives a chunk of your party +2 to hit). I do heal with bonus action when I need to. Other then that, not using push by default is just a self restrain rule. And bard has 9 strength giving me “only” about 50% of success.

And I haven’t fought around instant death pit, where one gets to roll every turn to permanently remove enemy from combat regardless of his HP (and vice versa).

If it was PvP push would be meta.

Again, in most cases I can just pretend it’s not broken, but then you have a fight with duergards where it’s push or be pushed to death.

No. I find the sleep spell to still be one of the most powerful first level spells available. It just has to be used effectively. I pay attention to the area where I cast it and on what enemies.

It can also be a real life saver against a powerful foe.


Help does a lot. It's a great ability.

It's also not useless to remove sleeping, as you said. It does remove sleeping. You probably meant that it's not the only way to remove the sleeping condition. And that's true. But I don't care. I'm fine with more than one way to remove the sleeping condition.

One's an action and one's a bonus action. Maybe I drink a potion and then help my companion. Great. No one's arguing that help should no longer remove the sleeping condition.

And I reject the notion that shove should be an action. It's fine as a bonus action. The game is not broken because of it, and I suspect most people who are saying it is haven't even played much when it comes to recent patches.


I never had a problem with this, mostly because I'm very careful with my positioning.

People are absurdly hyperbolic about this issue. It's like all the people who talk about pathing and how their companions run straight into the lava. That's happened to me exactly zero times, and I've played well over a thousand hours of this game.

Granted, if enemies use shove to wake up their companions, they won't use shove to send you flying halfway across the screen into lava.

No, because the game encourages cheesy tactics and metagaming over in-character class based tactics and does not reward good resource management. Tactical combat lacks depth. Puzzle boss fights don't feel like an RPG, BG or D&D.

No, because the companion pool is too small and will be too small at full release. Origin characters / multiple protagonists does not appeal to me at all. D&D is all about creating your own character and not playing someone else's.

No, because the great magic item design of D&D is being overwritten by a bland MMO style loot grind with weird gamey items.

Shove just needs to be an Action, so that feats/rules can make their way into the game that actually is suppose to make it a Bonus Action:

Shield Master Feat
Cunning Action (could be added by Larian from 5e so Rogues gain needed utility from Bonus Actions)

Then, once that is resolved, other spells/abilities that play off various interactions become more useful/interesting. Saying that certain mechanics, spells, and abilities are not broken because of Bonus Action Shove is very much ignoring why this is an issue. And like MANY have said, Sleep does nothing if everyone can just Shove to wake up instead of having to spend an Action to wake, which is the whole point of Sleep, it deprives allies an Action or risk completely losing Actions from the slept target. And, this is why Sleep is strong early but is much weaker later but is extremely effective against lower CR hordes, which is the whole point of the spell.

I wonder how many times this happened in your playthrough
😂😂😂

Then compare it to how many times the sleep spell was mostly useless because creatures wake their allies up with a bonus action (and NEVER with the help action because even the AI know how stupid it is...) to understand how ridiculous is your "argument".

'Bout as often as I use shove.

And I usually pay enough attention to where and how I'm using the sleep spell that I don't get obvious results that I wouldn't appreciate. Shrug, but you play you.

It does not follow the dnd design. And not because it has to because of computer game limitations, in many cases (like with shove or stupid mmorpg items instead of the actual dnd items that are right there ready to use) it's a conscious decision. Nor is it bold enough to use preudo real time to look closer to BG 1-2 and have a better flow.

It does have ridiculous amount of heights which coupled with other "homebrew" shove distances and such is not a good thing. Meanwhile it does not have z-axis implemented the right way to give palyers full control of the camera or Fly, for example.

It does have a lot of stupid barrels, flasks and surfaces instead of dnd classes using their own sets of skills, spells, reactions(...)

Day/night sequence? Too complicated for a small indie studio.

Right now it's trash, really. Could be a great game though.

All I know is, Aradin shoved Gale off a cliff to wake him up after he fell asleep... And that's just dumb. Help button could wake people up WITHOUT shoving allies off cliffs and injuring them.

I can even ignore that this is a Baldur's Gate game, but not being in a drug-induced mental torpor I can't really overlook how, say, "Shove as a bonus action" is actively DETRIMENTAL to the quality of the encounter design, for instance.

Of course, we had PAGES arguing in minute detail WHY exactly that would be the case, but that won't stop the willingly ignorant to pretend that it's just a matter of being some weird Taliban about "book rules".

thousands of folks playing and thoroughly enjoying the game. if only they knew they weren't having fun because of shove. sad.

sad, silly people. they think the game's working when it's actually broken because of shove.