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

Alodar, his complaint isn't indefensible. But the conclusion in his #1 post is definitely weird to say the least.
Doesn't change the initial statement about shove being a bit over-represented in the game.

Shove it where the Drow live.

Ill start with where I agree with you...

the pits / holes in here where you can endlessly fall or have some other weird stuff is unacceptable. I have similar experiences in other parts of the Goblin keep.

But I just did this fight the other day and had such a different experience that I am dumbfounded.

So first, Any character I have on the rafters I keep distance between them and him. I also use grease, ice, etc to keep him away and make him slip. I dont do this because I think the shove here is over represented, I do it because the rafters feel like a high risk high reward area to fight, so i choose to be very tactical and slow about fighting in places where i can get shoved into very bad spots.

Second, I pushed three enemies into the spider pit where they were gobbled up by spiders, and not once did i get shoved.

Third, any character vulnerable to shove (melee for example) i used on the ground to fight enemies. Range played on rafters.

Fourth, Shove is 100% success from an invis enemy - so I use githyanki mage hand which is invis to shove people off. You can also use mage hands between you and enemies with a narrow path so that they have to kill it to get to you.

I do not say this at all to be like, "get better" or "you're wrong". Its just that my experience is so opposite i'm wondering if we are playing different game,, different versions, or something?

The one place where I do disagree with you personally is saying stuff like "made me fight in a way that i should not have to" and things like that. I love that the game makes you strategize, think, plan, position, react, etc so well. But as I said earlier, there are some things that def need to be fixed. I just didn't realize shove was an issue for people? Is there a stat that having or lacking makes you more vulnerable to shove? Etc.

Question: you said shadowheart would have to aggro all kinds of other enemies to just get back to the party. How are you getting to the boss without killing the other rooms? Are you sneaking through the upstairs area just to get to him? I say this in just a roleplay/DND sense - but if your''e killing him in his room with all the other rooms full you're choosing 1 of multiple options on how to confront him and the rest of the goblin camp. You can draw out most of them to a big fight at the grove.

Since you're not doing that (which is totally fine, it's fun to do things different ways), you're opting to go into the fully guarded goblin place and sneaking to his room to assasinate him. A valid choice. He has teammates. wouldn't it make sense that your characters are punished when you don't succeed at keeping the fight contained to a very tight spot? Since you opted not to kill other rooms en route to him? Whereas if you did fight goblins en route to him, you'd have a clear path. (I do agree with you though that it creates a situation where the game takes 6 million rounds just to get a character back even if no enemies were out there. That is a very unfun and unecessary thing).

Do you play with any mods or on an older version? Im on the most current version and don't use mods.

What is shove?
Baby don't hurl me
Don't hurl me
No more

Mage Hand is a Cantrip that can carry 10 pounds of weight. It's purpose is to push buttons and open doors from a distance or carry small items, not to attack or push anyone. It's D&D description even says it can't attack. But for Larian, it was an excuse to have even more Shoving in combat. Even though there actually IS a spell called Telekinesis that IS meant to grab and push creatures. And it's 5th level for a good reason, because of the insta-kill potential. But why wait if you can ruin combat with fun insta-kill moves against bosses starting at level 1?

I didnt say mage hand i said githyanki mage hand. I dunno if thats in DND? (its labeled as a psionic spell, so it sounds like it lines up with TK).

But I don't disagree with you re: regular mage hand.

Also, mage hand has a very very weak chance to succeed shoving. Its the invis part. I dont generally think it's op. Its invis making shove 100% success thats the powerful part. Can be done with low strength players too.

Same thing, just invisible.

Diff labels and one is invisible and one isn't. Doesn't sound the same to me since only Githyanki can do this.

The point is either version of Mage Hand should not be able to Shove anything. Larian changed it because they like the OP slapstick style combat that degenerates into a shove fest rather than playing by D&D rules.

In DND can a player not say "I use mage hand to try and push soandso" and the DM would make you do some sort of roll / skill check or something? Like for abilities and things that aren't ACTUAL abilities or spells.

Also mage hand can "try" to shove anything. You'll almost never succeed unless it's invisible. So is the issue that a useless shove button is on a regular mage hand, that githyanki mage hand is invisible, that invisible = 100% shove success, or that a shove mechanic exists? (Sincerely just trying to figure out what part is the issue - I realize it sounds like I'm being a dick, just more interested in learning which part you don't like).

I don't play a ton of DND. So I'm being sincere, not a jerk. Sorry if it comes off that way. I thought DND allowed all kinds of flexibility with your imagination, it's just all about getting the dice roll and your proficiency).

Love the feather fall reaction suggestion. There are a few abilities that the buff duration / type of action don't make much sense so it's much harder to utilize.

The point, for me at least, is not that you can't win the fight (knowing about shove + holes etc) - it's that shove is not meant to be that powerful.

As others have stated - multiple times, here and elsewhere - It needs to be returned to an action and and work as noted in the rules. It is simply too unbalanced in its current form.

Ditto for magehand.

I don't know how I can explain it any clearer. But I'll try.

The Mage Hand description explicitly states the hand is a weak force (carries 10 pounds/4.5kg) and can not attack. A Shove is an attack action. Larian allowed the attack and changed Shove into a Bonus Action.

The Shove rule states the Shove distance is 5ft. Larian tripled that distance and then some.

A Cantrip allowing an extra Shove per turn is insanely overpowered when every battlefield has long falls and even insta-kill falls.

An invisible hand or PC getting a 100% success rate with Shove is another Larian invention. Invisible or not, the hand should not be able to Shove anything. And invisible or not, Gale with his negative Strength modifier should not be power shoving Dror Ragzlin into a hole with a 100% success rate.

Larian ignored or changed the rules at every possible point, and created highly vertical battlefields everywhere, to make combat a dumb shove fest.

Questions:

1. In DND rules, does invisibility give more success chance for a shove? (mage hand irrelevant, just in general).

If not, seems invis buffing shove is a dissectable issue. For example, what does make shove in DND more or less likely to fail? Strength? If so, then move on to next step:

2. In DND rules, can mage hand try to shove, but it would almost never succeed because of how weak it is?

If so, that's like the current game so it's consistent. I don't think my regular mage hand, under current build, has ever sucessfuly shoved. Only the invisible Githyanki one.

On the other hand, If a mage hand can't even try to shove in real DND, then yea I can see the issue with mage hand having a shove button in game (though in practice, it's a useless button unless it is invis, which may make sense depending on answer to my first question.

What makes shove s overpowered in BG vs DND? Why dont more players use it to push enemies off cliffs and/orr away from themselves? (besides the action vs bonus action difference - thanks for poiinting that out as i didnt know that.

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Lastly, and Im not implying anything about anyone with this, but I have probably been shoved two or three times in my 570 clocked hours of gameplay. Not exaggerating. So I am also curious if there's other things happening like game version, stat preferences, strategy choices, or what, because I remember patch notes a while back "nerfing" shove. Or maybe I just happen to like characters with whatever makes you resistant to shove. Or not having mods. I really don't know.

I kinda hate the fact that I immediately got this reference and heard the music in my head.

Thanks. That's all very helpful and objective. This post negates some things i asked in previous post,so ignore any related questions i asked.

Shove distance too far.
Action vs bonus action.
Invisibility improving shove chance.

All BG3 and not DND. Makes sense.

I do think games should have a little creative freedom as theres a couple key differences. Namely, the main goal of a DM in tabletop isn't to actively permanently kill every player, whereas that is the "DM" goal in a video game.

But I can definitely agree deviating from these speicifc rules is too much.

I still stand by githyanki mage hand as it's it's own distinctly named ability, which I assume is not in DND rules. So we can say maybe they shouldn't have invented githyanki mage hand, but I am fine with an invented ability having it's own rules.

When push comes to shove...

I guess most tactical turn based games fans would agree with you (and I am) but having to avoid HALF of the combat arena doesn't make you strategize more... it makes you strategize towards "positionning behind the stairs" and nothing more.
And that's only after gathering a few informations through metagaming.

I'm fine with more traps and holes that makes positioning more complicated in some area (or destructible wooden plank uppo n holes and things like that).
I'm not if the ennemy can always throw me in holes 10m away.
Being 10m away from a hole should not be considered a positionning MISTAKE, especially against such an ennemy.

The lack of mechanics that would make "positionning" more important (i.e cover system) isnt an excuse for pushing to define some combats so much.

You're free to enjoy being able to OS the spider matriarch or any other ennemies with unbal1nced skills but it's not how I'm enjoying turn based games. I want to have balanced choices among others and I want the ennemy to be smart enough to challenge me with balanced choices.

I just did some quick manual reading that made me realize other fights would be better at making the point that shove is OP in this game.

This boss has multiple buffs and actions he's doing that make his shoves either more likely to land, more effective, and more often, while also making him virtualy impossible to shut down with CCs to help yourself.


Between Raging, Aura of Commandment, Terroize, Meance, Pushing attacks (different than shove- it can push people up to 15 feet as designed in DND), sometimes having 3-4 active at the same time, this guy is uniquely designed to do all the things he's doing. Not saying BG doesn't have a shove problem, just that this fight is biased in proving the point.

He also is using the weapon faithbreaker, which has an additional bonus action of pushing your target.

It makes for good entertainment though. What a badass. I haven't had a problem with him but in restrospect if i saw/knew all of this i would have stayed even more spread out / at range.

Also whats the translation for the paroles aceres buff he has? I can't find a google match. Also curious what aura of commandment does, couldn't find that either.

Edit: also just noticed his weapon (on all warhammers) is capable of "backbreaker", which can knock enemies down.

The list never ends.

Damn, he's the shove boss. Didn't realize it as he went down first in both of my playthroughs( point blank range cleric with inflict wounds + rest of party assisting from stairs).

But ngl if someone at Larian wants some fights to revolve around shove make it a dragon fight.
If you get pushed by his wings and there's a brick wall behind it you are also stunned for 1 turn and go THROUGH the brick wall which then collapse dealing 1d2 per brick. There's at least 60 bricks.