Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Dror Razglin combat - "push" drives me crazy

In my game, I chugged a potion of Hill Giant Srength and tossed him into the spider pit. He died quite easily.

When Priestess Gut heard us and joined the fight, I picked her up and threw her into the hanging braziers of fire.
She hit it, took damage, fell to the ground, took damage, and then it fell on her. She took damage.
Then fire spread.
And she took more damage.

On one hand, I get it. Enemies pushing every turn is annoying. They should only be able to do it once a round if they have a genuine opportunity like pushing you off a cliff. Them shoving you for no reason is just silly.
The ability he keeps using is from his weapon as well, which should only be usable once per Short Rest. So, this is most likely a bug - he should only be using it once.

But on the other hand... Playing a Berserker feels SO GOOD!

+1 to limiting shove. It should obviously stay in the game in some form, and it's fun that BG3 has high ground. But, currently the ease & distance of shove plus the prevalence of pits (including instant-death pits) is just too much.

Shove should be an attack-equivalent action
This would make the AI have to choose between attacking and shoving. Importantly, NPCs with multiple attacks (should) use "Multiattack" which specifies allowed attacks and doesn't actually allow replacing individual attacks with Shoves or Grapples, whereas PCs have Extra Attacks which does allow replacement. This would limit NPCs to shoving 1x per turn, and they'd have to give up their entire attack action to do so. Whereas PCs with Extra Attack could now shove 2+ times per turn, replacing a single attack for a shove. (Add Haste and/or Action Surge for even more shoves)

Shove should move characters 5 feet
This means you'll still be punished if you leave a character right next to a pit, but will be more lenient so you don't have to keep characters super far away from a pit at all times. Currently, even if your character is currently like 20+ feet away from a pit, 2 enemies shoving your character in a row can still put them into the pit! So you can't really avoid pits without incredibly limiting your available play area.

Characters should fall mostly straight down a cliff
Shoving someone 5 feet is more akin to pushing them backward, stumbling, not flinging them in the air (throw is for that). If you shoved (stumbling backward) someone off a cliff, they'd pretty much fall straight down. You'd still take damage and should land prone, but you wouldn't have to spend as much movement getting back to the combat if e.g., there's a ladder back up.

There should be fewer instant-death pits
And they should have reasons for existing. Fewer instant-death locations would make the ones that do exist more special.
- Grymforge has a lava ambiance and a lava boss battle - sure lava being present is fine.
- The hole in the Spider Matriarch cave leads down to the underdark, so it has a use. Also it's not instant death if you have featherfall.
- The instant-death holes in the Hag Lair and in the Goblin Camp near Minthara? Nah. There's no real point to those being there. There's nothing below them, no particular reason why there should be infinite holes there.

It seems to me that the implemantation of the missing reaction system fails because Larian is desperate to keep that stupid shove-pinball-combat playstyle... Remove bunny jumping, change shove to a full action and pls start to implement a proper reaction system. Let us fight combats (e. g. give AI range weapons or heal potions for their BA instead of shove / jump...) and stop an AI spamming shove / jump etc. like a freaky Super Mario Pinball crossover... At least limit the whole thing to fewer opponents... One of the first proper reactions implemented should then ideally be an anti-shove counter. If an enemy gets close and tries to push you, use your reaction to judo-style counter their attempt and instead throw them in the direction they want to push you. If the opponent is too strong (saving throw), he is thrown off balance instead.

Yes, yes, yes and yes.

11th level Fighter being able to Shove 3 times wouldn't be such a big deal if the distance was limited to 5ft. 15+ft shoves is what we now have to deal with as a Bonus Attack.

And cut down the amount of the stupid push arrows. How do goblins or even duergar have access to such anyway? If I was fighting an order of High Elven Eldritch Knight Archers, sure, let them have magical thunder arrows. Random low level goblins, just no.

I agree with everything here. Shove needs to be an action and toned down. I don't get, how a small goblin can for example shove Wyll through half of the Blighted Village. He was standing on a roof by the windmill on the right Side and was pushed nearly back to the well that leads to the Whispering Depth.

Dodgy implementation of the action economy aside, someone making decisions at Larian seems unable to grasp the notion that things usually tend to fall VERTICALLY.

Not tracing ample arcs in the sky involving several meters of horizontal movement.

Swen constantly interrupting the last PFH to ask about throwing the gnome pretty much explains this and why it will never change.

+1000

"Shove is everywhere"

Isn't that the truth.

Shove is so ubiquitous in BGIII that to be immersive there should be a class "Shovemaster" or "Shovromancer"

Bards should sing the praises of the Pristine Push and Sublime Shove.

Where are the books on "Shove Lore"? Suggested title just for Tuco "Thar flies the Graceful Arc"

In every encounter I consider first "defense against shove". I put more energy into this than worrying about enemies magic abilities (except of course how it might relate to shove) or combat abilities. Likewise I next consider where I could shove my enemies to. Shove is the currency in the BGIII combateconomy.

Shove is to BGIII combat what tanks were to WWII combat ie "the dominant tactical concern"

Shove is everywhere

Proof that the Shove-l is the strongest Improvised Weapon in the game.
Proof that Shove-l the Quasit is secretly the strongest companion in the game.

THESE ARE THE THINGS THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT!

What a great come back, Alodar !
I won't react more considering how stupid your answers are...

He does kind of have a point, though. Or many, in this case.
The Dror Ragzlin fight is one of the very first actual boss fights in the game. Up until this point, they're all an absolute (heh) cake-walk.

It's not meant to be easy, and the AI is meant to use every trick up its sleeve to annoy and punish you. Watch any medieval movie, or even LOTR and you'll see plenty of shoving to knock opponents away or off their feet.
This (And D&D in general) is a tactical game. Your choices and positioning matter, and it should remain that way.

Remember, anything the AI can do to you, you can do to them.
Like I said in my previous post, I threw him into the spider pit. Toss a goblin or two in there and your fight might be easier.

But what the hell does it have any connexion with "easy" or "hard" ??? Haven't you ever played a hard turn based game that's hard but not because "the ennemy can OS you with a common and mostly free action" ???

This whole combat is broken because of pushing and shove is absolutely BROKEN. That's the point.

I've played for about 600 hours. The whole game is absolutely easy to me, if it pleases you to know.

Yup, the basic implementation is broken and super-exploitable. Sure, it may lead to dramatic and comic effects/death. But ultimately, it detracts from the game for many people - myself included. And it is something they can fix easily, in my view. Let's hope it makes its way into the next big update....

I didnt read the whole topic ...
But i take the liberty to presume (based on few i have read) that debate slipped to standard shove = bad -> need fix.

I just wanted to say that since Larian obviously presume that some (and it dont really matter how many) people likes shove as it is ... this is perfect ... maybe even prime example of things that can be easily fixed by options in settings.

Thats all i had on my chest, please return to your arguing.

Potentially this is a thing that can't be simply fixed by options in settings though, since Larian makes use of a learning AI to govern enemy behavior.

If the default game-mode has SuperShove, the AI will (and clearly has) learn strategies that depend on it. So if Shove is changed to an action, reduced in distance, etc, then that might break the AI behavior. E.g., the AI could default to using Action-Shove to no effect.

Full agreement to:
- Shove is an action
- Shove 5ft or prone

I still remember how someone posted in an earlier version that his easiest playthrough was when he used only shove and throw, nothing else.

Maybe you can make a fun game around only these mechanics, but you should not call this a DnD game.

But you can do the same and more, you can make AI suffer! I do this all the time... I can teach you if you want!!

Oh but this game is made in a close connection to WotC who basically created DnD. And DnD have several editions. And homebrewed DnD is still a DnD. Questionable statement, rather questionable...

upd: by created DnD I ofc meant the iteration we were used too last 20 years or so

Since you mention this tangent, I have to say that I've been made vaguely curious by this. Let's say right now Larian changes Shove to an action without any other additional change. OR a modder does (there are already few mod that force this change now)... What happens with the AI? It maintains the same exact "learned behavior" but wastes an attack to shove just as frequently? Or does "weight" the modified shove as an action, decides it's less appealing that it used to be (outside of specific circumstances) and makes a different decision?

Basically I guess you could summarize the question as "To what degree is the AI based on calculating on the spot and to what gets the best result and to what degree it just acquires a learned behavior running thousands of simulations over time?"