I want to try to make a case for shove as a bonus action, knowing I'm probably wrong and I can already imagine the (valid) responses to the arguments I'm going to make, but I *like* shove as a bonus action, so I want to try to make that case.

I haven't played tabletop D&D since... I think 1999? (which by the way has a cool story of IRL border guards taking the copy of Thieves Handbook that was sitting on the dashboard for a look-through before letting us cross!). So 5e rules are super new to me. I never had any reason to doubt shove was a reasonable bonus action until I saw people disagreeing with that here.

I thought about it. You're right. It should be a full action. I've never been in a sword fight that wasn't sporting in nature, where nobody gets shoved, so I don't know. I tried imagining shoving someone in combat, and maybe a two handed shove off a ledge is a full action, but stupidly trying to push them after taking swing is a bonus action? That's too convoluted for game rules, it has to be one or the other.

So while I agree it should be a full action, drinking a potion is a bonus action. Really? Do I have tactical belt of potions with quick-release tops? How in the world is *that* a bonus action? It is because it's a convenience to keep things fun by not getting your ass kicked too much.

Switching weapon sets isn't a thing at all. You can spend half your turn swapping weapon sets, and that's fine. Why isn't that an action? I think for the obvious reason that it's easy as hell to fat-finger the swap weapon sets key, and it would be really, really lousy to get your ass kicked on account of that. It makes sense as part of the game.

And I would argue the same applies to shove. Should it be a full action? Yeah, I'll admit that. But having it as a bonus action keeps the game fun. You can shove an enemy and run up stairs away from them, make a ranged attack, and force them to use dash on their next turn. This makes otherwise impossible encounters possible.

The obvious argument against that is that impossible encounters shouldn't be possible. I disagree. This is a game, not really life. Real life sucks most of the time, and we play a game because it's fun, the world makes sense, and the rules are finite and clear. If you don't like it as a bonus action, don't use it that way.

We don't have difficulty levels yet, and I while I think it's extraordinarily unlikely something like making shove a bonus action or action based on (eventual) difficulty setting would happen, you'll almost certainly have the opportunity to crank up the difficulty to compensate.

So yes, it should be a full action, but the game is more enjoyable because it isn't.

You talked me into it. Everything should be a full action. No more bonus actions.

I mean, yes? This is a common explanation for the homebrew rule that make potion drinking a bonus action. I've seen games where the DM adds "improved/superior/etc potion belts" to shops, which allow you to store multiple potions for bonus action use instead of the default-allowed single.

Another game using 5e make it a free action. Every characters have 1 free action/turn so you can change once. It's a better rule imo, but less convenient.

Shove is a very powerfull attack, not a convenient option.

I believe drinking potion should be a full action as well . There is also perk unique to rogues that later down the line allows rogues to use items as bonus action. Larian is heavily damaging uniqueness of classes - not a surprise as they preferred somewhat classless system for D:OS2.

Doesn’t changing weapons take an action? I am pretty sure it did in my recent playthrough - or is it just picking up weapons after getting disarmed?

I didn’t find potions too offending, but shove is too powerful. I think I wouldn’t mind it as much if it was much weaker giving chance to disengage from one character, rather then instant kill chance.

I'm not sure exactly how Shove works currently, but this is how I think that Shove should work to keep it balanced while letting it stay as a Bonus Action.
Shove should let you choose how far you want to have an opponent be moved, and it should be more likely that Shove will fail.

The distance is limited by:
Strength (one shoving) vs Weight (one being shoved)

Whether Shove succeeds or fails is affected by:
Dexterity (one shoving) vs AC (one being shoved)
This is because a character might miss when they try to shove a character.
Strength (one shoving) vs Strength (one being shoved)
This is because a character might not be able to shove a stronger character.

The Dexterity/AC roll is first to see if the shove misses.
If it doesn't, next is the Strength/Strength roll to see if the shove has enough strength behind it.

During the Strength/Strength roll, there is a lower goal and a higher goal.
If the lower goal is reached, the one shoved becomes prone.
This is because there was enough strength to knock the one being shoved off balance, but not enough to push them somewhere else.
If the higher goal is reached, the one shoved is moved the distance chosen.
If neither goal is reached, the Shove will fail.

Shove is always successful as if the higher goal had been reached if an opponent is prone, sleeping, dazed, charmed, etc.
The distance is still limited by Weight.


I think that equipping new weapons (from the inventory and from the ground) takes an Action, but switching between already equipped melee and ranged weapons does not.

As for drinking potions, I think that it should be Bonus Action, since spells are Actions.
The benefit of potions should be how quick they are, but the benefit of spells should be how potent they are.
Alternatively, potions should be as potent as spells, but they should be Actions, and their full effect should be seen over several turns.

@colinl8 -- You say you aren't familiar with 5th editiin DnD, so let me try yo put this somewhat into perspective. By the 5e rules, a shove/trip attempt can be made instead of a weapon attack when you take the attack action. Most characters only get one attack to make as part of their attack action, but martial classes get more, but at later levels than we currently have available in the EA (Nearly all martial classes get their second attack at level 5 for example).

As such, the capability to in the same turn both make attacks and shove is sort of a martial class feature, and making shoving a bonus action available to everyone deprives them of that profilisation much the same way making hiding a bonus action deprives Rogues of one of their class features. If we had more levels available to us than we currently do in the EA, we would no doubt reach the fifth level within the content already implemented, whereupon martial classed characters would be able to both shove and attack in the same turn, like you want to do. It would just be a feature of how characters improve with levels rather than available to everyone at level one.

I don't think anyone arguing against shove as a bonus action is doing it from a "realism" perspective. It's not about what you can realistically achieve in a turn, it's about the action economy, and the effects making shove a bonus action has on that economy in-game. Being a bonus action turns the choice of whether to try shoving from a strategical choice of whether to risk it for the possible benefit to a no-brainer, "always do this at the end of your turn" use. That's not fun design.

For example of how it messes things up: As it is now, even the AI uses shove to cheese the game mechanics. No, I am not referring to enemies pushing PCs off off ledges. In-game, there is a Help action. It reoresents a bunch of different action usage from the 5e rules, such as making Medicine checks to stabilise dying characters, or rousing sleeping characters awake. It costs a full action.

So say you use Sleep on a bunch of goblins and one stats awake. The way the Help action is intended, he could then spend his action to help one of his sleeping comrades up. But you also awake on being attacked, and shoving is a kind of attack, so the way the AI is written is that the goblin will instead bonus action shove his friend and then use his full action to attack as well. His buddy will awake and immediately run over and bonus action shove another sleeping goblin. This makes the Sleep spell (already heavily nerfed ingame) pretty much useless, and all because of how the action economy changes from making shove a bonus action instead of an action. And that isn't fun either.

As a bonus malus, it also puts you the player in the position of either having to similarly cheese the game mechanics when your characters are felled asleep or deliberately play it suboptimally -- when even the AI wouldn't do that if it had the opportunity.

And lastly:

There's no other way to use it.

lol Just got email from Tactical Adventures sharing news about upcoming DLC and free update for Solasta. To celebrate a year since Early Access the mentioned couple silly things they had at the time, including:
Maybe every 5e RPG has a "isn't it hilarious to have insta death shoves" phase? Lets just hope BG3 will grow up by 1.0 as well.

I'm guessing that an easy solution would be to change the AI so that it wouldn't use Shove on sleeping characters, and not often if ever on characters near ledges.

Alternatively, they could make it so that using Shove on a sleeping character has some sort of consequence, like a sleeping character attacking whoever used Shove on them, or a character woken like that having negative status effects (e.g. reduced AC) for a few turns.

For using Shove to push characters off of ledges, with the changes that I suggested, it shouldn't be likely for most characters to be able to consistently use Shove to push others off of ledges.
If the character being shoved has enough Weight, they wouldn't be pushed far if at all unless the character using Shove had a very high Strength stat.

This is precisely what makes it unfun for me. Nonsensical, cheesy, exploitative, overpowered and repetitive.

They should teach the AI to circle behind the PC's on elevation and use it every turn as well. See how much fun that'll be.

Yeah so depending your class (AC) and race (weight), you'll be shoved even more easily/often with this BA.

What an interresting thing to put in the character creation ! "Gnomes are known to be pushed more easily than other races".

Make it an action instead of a bonus action is :
- the easiest solution to prevent the AI to use it to disengage so often
- the easiest solution to prevent the AI to to use it to wake up sleeping characters (and other conditions... Shove >< help)
- the best solution to make melee characters more fun (less boring) to play because you won't be shoved so much.
- the best solution to avoid fast game over if you're unlucky
- the best solution to increase the real tactical value of the game. Not using shove (or another OP/Broken bonus action) in BG3 is like keeping action point for the sake of it in games that have action point you cannot keep for the next turn...

Shove could nearly stay exactly the same as now if that's what Larian find fun (distance, how to succeed) if it was a full action. And I'd enjoy using it as a tactical option in some situation. Atm it only looks like a free cheat.

They absolutely do! Fezzek and his group at the windmill, if you take the high ground opposite the windmill, you can expect to be on your butt in the village in a hurry.

Anyway, after reading all this, I'm convinced it should be a full action. The class differentiation is the biggest selling point for me. Want to cheese shove to run and gun on a stair case? Have to be a higher level martial class to do that. I can't argue with that.

If we look at this from a 5e rules standpoints. Then shoving another creature should be an Action.

Now if we look at this with what BG3 has done. You easily see how powerful shove becomes and can instantly sway a fight. This ability can typically be more powerful than a characters standard attack. In my personal opinion this needs to be adjusted and Shove needs to be moved to a full Action and not just a Bonus Action. I get that Larian wanted to try and give people more options to use for a bonus action. But as it stands this is insanely powerful.

Of course I am of the camp that thinks Hide/Stealth needs to be moved from a Bonus action to a full action. The only class that should be getting hide as a bonus action is the Rogue with their Cunning action feature.

honest, the whole action system seems weird. you'd think climbing up a ladder during combat would be an insane effort,or worse, climbing up 3 levels of cliffs, but no! apparently because the height is a certain distance, it's no problem. Can you imagine? someone in real life trying to scale up a cliff while people are shooting arrows and magic spells at them?

The whole action economy must brought to the 5e values. It's a basis and changing something in it you provoke a chain reaction.

so yes, change it back to an action and make it prone or can move them 5 feet, not across the map.

It makes sense for Gnomes, Halflings, etc. to be easier to use Shove on.
With the stats that they have, it doesn't even make sense for them to be close to enemies in battle, and having them stand near ledges during a battle would be an odd decision.

Halflings have the Lucky trait, and the Lightfoot subrace is meant for stealth.
Gnomes are good at magic, and the subraces seem to be good at illusions and distractions.
If you want to have a Gnome or Halfling Fighter, you'd just have to make sure that they have a lot of Weight and Strength.

Also, they could have size affect the result of Shove.
Smaller characters should be more difficult to use Shove on, unless Dexterity was high enough.
I mean, you really shouldn't be able to easily push those squirrels off of the ledges at Druid Grove, at least not without very high Dexterity, but you can...


I don't know how the AI works, but they could still end up designing the AI to have an affinity for using Shove as their Action.
So, merely changing it into an Action doesn't seem like the best or even the easiest solution.


That would make similar effects like Topple for weapons overpowered, wouldn't it?
Instead of wasting an Action trying to cause a foe to become prone or move five feet through Shove, you could try to cause damage and prone with one Action.


Ideally, climbing would take movement with each second that passes, but since the game doesn't seem to allow stopping while climbing, it should just take a certain amount of movement, or maybe a Bonus Action.

While I appreciate your enthusiasm, to be honest, what you're doing and suggesting here is just turning something into an excessively, needlessly complicated mess of checks and caveats that would trip anyone up and result in a system that is less fair, less balanced and more confusing than anything yet implemented or suggested.

You're suggesting:
- Outcome variable based on something characters can't control or choose or alter beyond character creation (their weight), and which carries inherent imbalances of fairness with it, to be tied into such a tangible mechanic.
- A system that relies on two ability scores, each with their own separate, independent checks, from one person, against AC and an ability score from the defender, and which, if you are the attacker, then having a low score in EITHER stat means that you will more or less always fail to achieve your aim.
- Variable outcomes that have vastly different effects which the player cannot control or choose, because you're suggesting it be controlled by a split threshold measure on one of the two ability checks.
- Suggests a chance to miss outright where such a thing is impractical, and conversely don't allow for the defender to simply dodge your efforts - while handling this exact sort of thing is what contested ability checks are FOR in the first place.

And all this just for a single standard combat action.... I'm sorry, I don't want to sound harsh, but this whole thing is a non-starter...

You say it just 'makes sense' for Gnomes, Halflings and other small races to be easier to shove... No, it doesn't. You also later suggest that smaller creatures should be harder to shove, as determined by another, independent check. You also attempt to say that they shouldn't be melee characters anyway, because it doesn't make sense for them to be... sorry, but no. Halflings make excellent Fighters and Superlative Barbarians - some of the best builds in the game, in fact... but you'd want them to be make less capable of playing these classes fairly because they're small. No. Go away with that.


You want the halfling to be able to say in character Creation "Oh, yeah, and also, I weigh more than my Goliath friend, too, on account of I'm just choosing to, and setting it that way, because I'm the fighter, and he's the wizard." We can just 'choose' to 'have a lot of weight' - as much or more then someone with four times our body mass? Really? So, as well as making a single simple combat action dependant upon multiple checks, measuring different attributes, and having uncontrollable split outcomes based on multi-threshold DCs, you also want to bring another hitherto non-mechanical attribute INTO this calculation, on top of everything else.

The core rules already have considerations for whether a character is nimble enough to avoid being shoved, or strong enough to resist it directly, and whether a character has the strength and capability to succeed on the attack as well. It also has a consideration for the size of the attacker and defender, in determining what is feasibly possible and what isn't. It does all of this with a single die roll, and one supporting rule - Simple, elegant, easy to work with, and fairly balanced.


Yes. And that is why many people are deeply unhappy with Larian's homebrew on weapon actions. Knocking someone prone and doing damage at the same time is specifically the purview of Battle-Master Fighters: they have to dedicate specifically to get that ability... so no, it shouldn't be available to everyone for free. It's another reason why shove is an attack action, not a bonus action.

I'm sorry, but your suggestions regarding shove are completely inferior to just using the actual 5e rules for them, which are simple, elegant and straightforward... and what we should be using in BG3.

I'm not sure exactly how what I suggested would work in practice, or if it's different enough from how it works now to balance it, but I doubt that it's more unfair and unbalanced than anything that has been implemented or suggested before.
After all, we already have Shove, environmental effects, those statues in the Druid Grove and other things that are far more unbalanced than what I suggested...

As for it being confusing, it probably has more steps than it needs to have, but I don't think that it's confusing.


01 - I think that it would make sense for equipment and the weight of a character's inventory to affect Weight.
02 - It might make it only useful when dealing with characters that have lower, the same or slightly higher stats, but the point was to nerf Shove so that it wouldn't be overpowered.
03 - I suppose that the attacker could choose whether they want the defender to become prone or be pushed away before the rolls, rather than having that be decided by the Strength vs Strength roll result.
04 - How is it impractical to miss when trying to push a character?

About that all being just for a standard combat action, it's important because it's a standard action.


Gnomes and Halflings have less Weight than the other races that can be chosen, so they should be easier to push a farther distance.
Smaller creatures should be easier to miss.

As for Halflings making excellent Fighters and Barbarians, even the best in the game, if that's true, then what's wrong with their Weight giving them a disadvantage sometimes?


Aren't those rules already mostly implemented in Baldur's Gate III?
The only differences seem to be that Shove doesn't cause characters to be prone and that it's a Bonus Action.


I don't think that justifies Shove being an Action rather than a Bonus Action.

As with all things, this is an open forum, and everyone here is entitled to hold and to voice their own opinions on matters. I wasn't really seeking to debate with you, or convince you - I was just illustrating to you the ways in which your suggestion was a non-starter, so that, if you felt so inclined, you could improve upon it. You're free to think what you want, but do not be surprised if you find no traction.

You say you don't really know how it would work, and how it would play into or affect balance of other things - take your own admission to heart, and work it out, before pushing for an idea and maintaining that it is good. You might discover that it's not, and then be better able to amend it, or start over with something better.

You admit that your suggestion results in something with more steps than it needs to have - So why put it forward in that state? Fix it before putting it forward... if it is clumsy and inelegant, and has excessive steps, then fix it and get it right before arguing for it... or be prepared to take on board and listen to others pointing out why it isn't acceptable.

You say that weight of a character should account for their gear and pack - maybe so, that doesn't change the fact that bringing character weight into the equation in the first place is a terrible and needless move that adds complexity without benefit to the entire suggestion, and which runs counter to 5e's design philosophy to begin with.

You suppose that your dual ability score requirement would limit the usefulness of shove to only specific niche circumstances... but you're apparently failing to see why that's a bad thing, and not at al a good way of reducing or limiting its value. Moreover, you're not acknowledging that it means that anyone who wishes to have any hope of successfully shoving anyone at all, needs to have BOTH good strength, AND good Dexterity, in your suggestion - which is not a realistic ask, especially not for competency at a standard combat action.

You suggest that maybe players could choose whether to shove prone or to shove away, as a solution to the complaint about the variable outcome with very different effects that, in your suggestion, would be out of the player's hands... but you're pushing back against simple 5e rules for shove, which include exactly that; player choice.

You seem stumped at the contention that you can't realistically miss with a shove - as a justification for your multi-layered checks - The fact is, you are NOT going to miss a shove. That is not within the practical realms of possibility. They are there, and you are there, and you are shoving them; you're not going to simply miss them. Either they will resist your attempt to shove them, OR they will avoid the force of your shove, by ducking out of the way in some fashion... You will not 'Miss'; your target will respond to counter you. That's why it's an opposed check. Armour Class is not the correct stat to be using for something like this. These are just facts about the way the system is designed.

No, 5e rules are not what we have in BG3 currently; BG3's shove throws enemies miles away, and you also cannot choose to knock prone. It is coded to work 100% of the time fully effectively if you shove from hiding; it doesn't care about size category - you can shove anything, as long as it has not been given independent specific shove immunity, which in BG3 is a thing that some creatures have been given. Shoving characters only appear to use strength, not athletics, when shoving, and it's deeply unclear what defenders use, but it certainly does not seem to be using the target's best choice between athletics or acrobatics, and of course, Shove in BG3 is a bonus action, not an attack action... So in short, Shove in BG3 only very vaguely, and distantly, resembles 5e shove; it's just like it, except for being different from it in almost every single comparable way.


So, again, you are very much free to think and believe as you please - I was only offering some supporting information to your efforts.

Edit: Having had a night's sleep and not being over-exhausted now, I do wish to say that I apologise if this post comes off as overly condescending - it's not my intention to take that tone.

I appreciate your criticism and advice since I often can't see the flaws in what I suggest, but I have a habit of debating.
If you don't want to debate, that's fine, but I'm probably still going to reply with what I think and why I'm thinking that.

Anyway, I said that I have no idea how it would work or if it would be balanced because I have no way to implement those changes and test them.
However, the way that I see it is that with a few changes, Shove would probably work as a Bonus Action without being overpowered while also making more sense.


I wasn't aware that it had too many steps before you mentioned it.
If more simple systems already exist for certain things (like the contests), I wouldn't know, since I'm not versed in the systems of Dungeons & Dragons or of Baldur's Gate III.
I'm just trying to think of ways for Shove to stay as a Bonus Action without being overpowered.
Making it into an Action seems like it wouldn't have much of a positive effect, since it wouldn't entirely fix it or have it make much sense.


I don't know what the design philosophy is for the 5e rules (though I'd guess that it's to make the game faster and easier to play for people who don't care if things make sense), but I think that adding Weight into the equation can lead to better results.

Having Weight included seems odd if it's not going to affect much.
It might affect fall damage right now in Baldur's Gate III, which would make sense, but I'm not sure.
Weight isn't customizable and doesn't affect appearance in Baldur's Gate III, but in Dungeons & Dragons, it's supposed to.


I don't know how the systems work exactly, but wouldn't characters be making die rolls with modifiers based on their Abilities?
If I'm right, while having very good Strength and Dexterity would make Shove more likely to succeed, even without high Strength and Dexterity, it shouldn't always or often fail.
If I'm wrong, I agree that it shouldn't work like that.


I'm not sure how I'm pushing back against those rules regarding that, since I'm apparently saying to do what it says to do for Shove.
When I read the rules for it, I assumed that there was some die roll deciding whether it pushed a character or caused them to become prone.


Imagine kicking a ball vs kicking a wall.
It's easier to miss the ball than it is to miss the wall (...and it's possible to miss the wall if distance is miscalculated).


Considering the Range in the description of Shove in Baldur's Gate III, if characters are being pushed more than five feet away, it's probably a bug.
Likewise for Shove always working when hiding and for Athletics and Acrobatics not being used correctly.


No problem.

+1

I'm mostly trying to ensure that things stay friendly, even though I suspect there is at least one aspect that we will disagree over at a fundamental level. That's okay, the system isn't perfect and there are places it can and should still be adjusted, but generally speaking 5e is very sound and well balanced, and its solutions are, in most cases, the best solutions in terms of maintaining the balance between practicality, approachability and realism... Simple and approachable, easy to understand, and a rule system that is internally consistent wit itself without too many exceptions or irregularities, so that it is easy for newcomers to pick up and play with, but without sacrificing attention to realism and relatability to in-setting sense is a strong element of the design philosophy I mentioned.

So, here's the reasoning discussion:

In 5e, classes are intended to retain strong senses of individuality and uniqueness as you move into their various archetypes, and while each can fill a variety of roles, and they are all intended to be able to fill those roles comparatively well to each other, they maintain a sense of unique flavour to them while doing so - A Cleric can be your party healer, and so can your Druid, and so can your Sorcerer - but they will each feel different, to play, and they will feel different and distinct from each other in the process. That's the goal. What this often means is that some classes and class archetypes are allowed to maintain something of a near-monopoly on being able to do certain things particularly well, because doing those certain things better than anyone else are is part of what helps them maintain that unique flavour. It's rarely a very big thing, but it's a poignant one all the same in these cases.

Battle-master Fighter is one example of this design philosophy - All characters can try most of the various things that battle-masters can do, but for everyone else, it's a comparative cost investment - for example, they can try to knock an enemy prone, OR they can settle for attempting to do damage - the Battle-master is unique in this sense because they have the capability, by contrast, to knock something prone without giving up their attempt to deal damage. There's more to it than this, of course, and it's not that cut and dry either, but that's one example.

So, at base, in order to turn shove into a bonus action that everyone can use, you would need to find a way to do that that didn't steal that class-identifying uniqueness form Battle-masters and give it to everyone for free - because if you do, then you remove part of the value and appeal of playing a battle-master, and you take one step closer to homogenising all classes - a point which Larian's BG3 is treading far too many dangerous steps towards already.

As for Shove itself... You are attempting to take an action, and your targeted opponent is attempting to prevent that from occurring. This is the simplest, straightforward description of what is happening. Both parties must have a chance here, but the design philosophy is focused on keeping these things as simple and clear as possible, while still maintaining a much of an element of realism as possible.

So, when you try to shove your opponent, who is standing right in front of you, you are not going to 'miss' them unless they do something to make you miss them - if they were an inanimate sandbag, even a small one that's only three feet high, you are not going to 'miss' them - there is no practical situation where you would or could. You'll miss, rather, if your opponent deftly ducks under or around you, or manages to dart aside in time. You might also fail to shove them if they surprised you with their planted feet and stoic resilience, and they straight up resist your effort directly. This is the realistic description of what might happen.

We can handle this with a single check, because 5e has a system of checks that is designed expressly for this type of situation - a situation where two or more forces are acting on a goal or outcome, with differing intent and in opposition to each other, wherein both may have a reasonable chance of succeeding or failing. That system is the Opposed Ability Check system - The forces in play roll against one another, using whatever ability score is most appropriate for them in the situation, and adding a skill proficiency if a particular skill is suitable. These can be different for each acting force. Whoever wins the roll achieves their goal, and in the case of a tie, the status quo remains as it was, unchanged. What this means is that if you are trying to force a door open, and someone on the other side is struggling to hold it shut, and you tie, then the door remains shut. If you are struggling to hold a door open against someone who is attempting to wrench it closed, and you tie, then the door remains open. For shoving, this means that in the case of a tie, the character remains where they are, and is not shoved away/down.

In 5e, Shove is defined as an opposed check, but leaves the choice of how to resist in the defender's hands - So, while the shover must use their Strength (Athletics) to attempt the shove, the defender can choose to resist with Strength (Athletics), or they can try to resist with Dexterity (Acrobatics). This makes it one simple check, but it covers the concept of the many different ways that the shove could succeed or fail; it covers 'missing' because your target evaded you, as well as failing because they resisted you, etc.

So you can try to knock them down, sure, that's one option (and importantly, it's a choice that the attacker makes, based on what they are trying to do - having an ability that can drastically change what it does base don chance is not something you want as a standard combat action; when you shove someone away from you, you usually, specifically, don't want them prone, and vice-versa) - but what if you want to move them away? Well, that's potentially more complicated, says the thought process... how strong a character is, and the weight of what they're pushing must come into it surely? Yes, but... We can account for that and still keep it simple and approachable using the elements already defined for regular use within the system, without bringing new elements in. For starters: it's impractical to introduce maths or scales relating to character weight that both realised on an aspect of a character's weight that will give some races a heavy disadvantage compared to others (something they wish very strongly to avoid), and also that expects players to book-keep their equipment weight - carry capacity rules have variants and are often treated as optional by many, so introducing a mechanic to s standard action that demands book-keeping for it is an immediate no.

Instead... Many class features already take into account size category of the target creature - and size category and weight go more or less hand in hand anyway, most of the time. So, what we do instead is say that you can only shove something that is no more than one size category larger than you - something bigger than that is, by proxy, going to be too massive and too heavy for you to effectively shove. This is how that is accounted for and worked into the consideration without making the whole mechanic more complicated... and it works well for doing that, the majority of the time.

In terms of shoving distance: Well, we can actually return to realism for this one. Mike, who bench-presses an excessive number at the gym three days a week can set up a 50lb sand bag on a gym mat, and then, with a single action, in the course of less than six seconds, attempt to shove it just as far as he can - not pick it up and throw it, mind you - that would be a grapple - but just shove it. How far CAN he actually shove it? The reality is, not actually that far. More than five feet clear of its original position? Actually, not really, as it turns out. This makes it much easier, and helps settle back some realism in the process - we can just say that if you're shoving something away, rather than knocking it prone, you can shove it into the next square - five feet away. If you want to shove something further than that, you'll need a special ability, magic, or something above and beyond what a regular person could do. Some classes will have just such special abilities... but regular people, and basic shove - five feet is actually simple, easy and much more realistic than giving them more than five feet based on strength/weight.

==

Right now, in BG3, weight affects the impact damage that something does when thrown into another target - that's all entirely homebrew from Larian, however, and it's also hard to comment on because they don't let us see the calculation in the log. It just happens... and it's one of those things that pays up a lot, for free, and detracts from class abilities in the process. Unfortunately, having enemies going flying dozens of feet is not unintended by Larian - the 5ft range notifier on shove itself is just saying how close you have to be to use it - which is melee range - in BGT3 distance is affected, or so it claims, by strength and weight of target... the exact math is obfuscated from us though. The 100% success rate of shove form hiding is also, currently at least, intended by Larian... shove is supposed to work 100% of the time on an incapacitated target (which, ironically, in BG3 we aren't allowed to shove incapacitated targets... only dead ones), but simply hiding from them should, at most give you advantage on the opposed check, for being an unseen attacker.... but then I'd have to get into a rant about their shonky implementation of stealth, and that's a whole other thread...

==

For the rest - the main issue with proposing a two-check system for this simple combat action is that it's required that you pass both checks to do anything at all - you are rolling two d20s and if Either of them is low enough to fail, then you fail utterly - if that sounds familiar, it's because it is. You've just forced the player to roll at innate disadvantage every time they try to shove someone, by definition. Beyond that, it's measuring against two different ability scores, which virtually no class will ever have high scores for both, so they are very likely to fail at least one of those checks, no matter who they are, and thus fail the shove in totality.

((Addendum: Halflings are not balls, do not kick the halflings, please))

It always baffles me that creatures 1 size larger than you don't get advantage to resist grapple & shove checks (and/or advantage on shoving a smaller creature). The Enlarge spell grants characters Advantage on strength checks, but simply being 1 size larger naturally doesn't...? I recognize that this is probably for balance purposes to prevent small PCs from being underpowered, but it still feels weird. (I would prefer if larger creatures got advantage on STR checks, but smaller creatures get +1 AC as in 3.5e).

Yeah, it is one quirk that is odd, I admit... and you're right, it's primarily for system balance reasons that it is that way.

Oh, a point a forgot that I had in my mind while typing the above: most of our small races get a natural racial boost to Dexterity, either as their major or their minor - this is how the system represents the benefits of their smaller size now. (And incidentally, one of the many minor yet pervasive minor factors that make Tasha's lineage system removing racial ability score bonuses actually a very BAD move from wizards, and not one I supported)

I've been doing a couple of tests recently to see how exactly shove works. Let me copy a post from another topic.


In my opinion, the shove should also depend on the size difference between target and pusher.
This would solve a lot of shove problems. Currently, the size only affects the push range.
I think a -2 / + 2 penalty / bonus would be ideal for each level of difference between the target and the pusher.
Thanks to this, a player who does not have indecently much strength would not be able to push large creatures without a lot of luck.
On the other hand, it would practically protect players from being pushed by small creatures like goblins (as long as the character invests in athletics / acrobatics), which is perhaps the biggest complaint about shove.
Of course, it also has some drawbacks (or advantages depending on how you look).
If the player were the victim of some large creature, he would fall over much more often. This is quite logical, the minotaur shouldn't have any problems with throwing a wizard from a rock.

The complaint is not that it is by goblin.
The complaint is that it happen too often.

It would be the same / even worse if goblins in the goblins camp were humans.

If you are often thrown from a height, it means that the player is not positioning correctly. Otherwise, it has practically no effect.
I remember there were complaints about martial classes not being able to use attacks of opportunity meaningfully due to shove. However, in the case of standard enemies in EA, they have a very low chance of pushing a properly built warrior away.
Virtually the only classes that suffer from shove are magic classes that should be physically weak.

Laezel disagrees. And sure enemies will fail more often then not, but if you have more goblins then party members shoving every single turn, with push distance shockingly generous the odds are that unless you focus on not being nowhere near the pit ( and I don't mean- don't stand on edge - I mean nowhere near) your party member sooner or later will end up falling down - no matter what class or build they are. It's silly. It is free a disintegration spell - sure it will fail most of the time, when if you fail RNG once it can end your fighting chance (or at least cost you a resurect). It becomes the game of shove them down, before they shove you.

Pits should be a nice gimmick but should not overpower core combat system.

Okay.


I'm not sure about it being realistic or practical, but I'll believe that it's approachable and balanced.


You're only talking about...what? Two of the Battle Master's maneuvers, Trip Attack and Pushing Attack?
Either way, it's not really taking away from the uniqueness of the class.

If you use those maneuvers, unlike most other classes, you'd be able to use a Bonus Action in addition to those, right?
So, you could use Trip Attack, which causes damage and can knock a foe prone, and then use Shove to push them.
Alternatively, you could use Shove and then Push Attack, or Push Attack and Dash.
So, still a lot of combinations, and that's not even mentioning the other maneuvers.

What might be somewhat more of a problem for Battle Master is enchanted weapons that do the same thing as their maneuvers and don't extend what they can do.
However, rather than removing the enchantments that mimic, the weapons would just need to become more rare and only appear when the class is more powerful than them.
After all, some overlap isn't bad.
Changing weapons takes an Action, I think, and weapons can be heavy, so it's not like a different class could easily switch between weapons and make the Battle Master class obsolete.


I understand that they're trying to keep it simple, so realistic things like weight, size and mistakes aren't factored greatly if at all, but with a video game, you usually don't have to worry about calculations, since the game stores the values and calculates the odds for the player.
Yeah, you'd have to watch your inventory and equipment if the game considered character and inventory Weight, but I don't think it would be too complicated.
The Souls games have a weight system, and people seem to like it and make agile but weak characters, slow but tough characters, etc.


The sandbag doesn't act the same way that a person might, because people can try to regain their balance, but the sandbag can't.
So, if someone was to be pushed, they're not necessarily going to just fall back (though that's possible).
They might be able to try to regain their balance until they stabilize or fall.
Most of the time, regaining balance would probably fail, but trying to regain it might cause them to go even farther away.
Part of that distance probably depends on the strength of the push (more momentum) and the dexterity of the one who was pushed (longer stability).
So, being able to stay on their feet after being pushed might actually work against them if they're unable to regain their footing.

As for "Mike", exactly how much weight is he bench-pressing in one day, and how far was that sandbag sent?
Also, how tall was the sandbag?
I'm not sure if it's accurate, but I read somewhere that to find the maximum weight that can be pressed in 5e, you would use: 30lb*Strength.


Well, that's not good.
I wonder why Larian seems to make so many odd decisions.

About not being able to use Shove on incapacitated targets, I'm not sure what you mean.
If you're talking about characters affected by Knocked Out, Prone or Hold Person, I can use Shove on all of them.


I still don't see why it seems like you think that the dice rolls would fail often or every time.

As for the Halflings, I don't get that either.

Geez,

Starting in a long thread like this is always hard, since a lot of issues have already been mentioned. But i want to add my opinion anyway since shoving HAS to be changed. I already have written something in another "shoving/pushing" thread, so ill copy paste a bit

" Well,

you broke it down a lot. You are not wrong but the main issue with the shove we have now is that it is no shove. Even when we are playing a fantasy game we need basic physics to work. NO matter how strong you are, if you are missing the weight to properly counter the weight of what you want to shove, it won't work.

go try to shove a car sideways. It will not move. No matter how strong you are. You will just push yourself away. if you say now you can do it when you brace yourself THINK what bracing yourself means in the formula. bracing agains something that is either immovable or WAY heavier than that car.

May be a little overcomplicated explanation but this "THROVING" needs to end.

Please larian do us all a favor and make a "shove you colleague" day and implement what you expirience.

what we have now can happen when an ogre shoves a halfling. Today a goblin "shoved" my FULLY ARMORED dwarf UPSTAIRS into a spiderpit.

I use shove on my dwarves now because they move farther that way. "

Next:

"If they keep it that way, they seriously need to have modifiers to who ist shoving whom or what.

If a halfling suceeds shoving an ogre, he should fall down max. Other way around a little flying would be ok. I mentioned a little awkwardly above, but the physic part about relation from size/weight and strenght needs to be changed. Even if they make it a full action.

And i hope they change jumping too. Having dwarves in full armor jump around the battlefield like frogs is really cringey."

Agreed - shoving is over-used and overwpowered when compared to 5E. I have also taken to using it since it's used on my party constantly. With the verticality in the is game it is often deadly. As for waking sleeping characters with shove, that is simply broken - use the same 'help' action that PCs use to wake a character. It should cost an action to do that - so you sacrifice your action to wake someone who may otehrwise be killed etc.

You might scoff at the realistic comment, but it's actually far more grounded in a realistic presentation than many people give it credit for... these are made by someone who goes by the moniker 'David the Arrow Bard', and they're actually pretty neat little clips. I smiled, I hope others do to. In particular, they pay attention to distance and timing – such as 5 foot squares and what you can do in six seconds. There isn't one on shoving specifically, unfortunately, but it does show off several other aspects of the game which are often criticised as being unrealistic, but which actually are a lot more so than people think.


You may argue that taking Battlemaster's ability to perform specialised combat actions and still do damage as well, and giving portions of that to everyone to use for free, without giving Battlemasters anything in return is not taking away from their class identity.... but it is. Maybe not a lot, but it's still taking away, no matter how dismissively you choose to talk about it... and it shouldn't be done.
You are right that, generally speaking, the new weapon arts are a bigger concern right now... In one current play through, my Fighter is an eldritch knight, and Astarion is a thief and between the various weapons we all have, and the extra shoving, Lae'zel's old battlemaster self is more or less obsoleted, and easily so – I don't take her, and she would add little to nothing to what we're already doing, at this point. That's the problem, and shove's current implementation is definitely a part of it.

If you're really set on character carry weight affecting shove, then I'd suggest that you start a thread here in the suggestion forums for yourself, formalise it, hammer out the details of how you feel it should be implemented, and then see how much traction for the idea you can get from others.

As it is, the game rules DO account for carry weight. That's what the encumbrance system IS – how much you can carry without being impeded and having your capabilities hampered. It has a variant rule that is slightly more graded, but it's generally not liked by most people and rarely used by anyone in actual PnP games. The 5e system as it is also accounts for size category, as explained. It also accounts for mistakes and fumbles, as explained. It sounds like you'd like it to do it in a more complicated, granular way; what I'm attempting to explain is that doing so would run against the system's design philosophy, to do it at the level you seem to want to suggest.

In the example, Mike is a fictional, non-existent character meant to represent the idea that a fairly strong and capable person cannot realistically shove even a 40lbs person more (or much more) than 5 feet away from themselves. This is simply, real world, factually true. Hefting and throwing that weight is a different matter – but shoving it without having a good hand on it and without carrying it first; that's indelicate. An individual might travel further than five feet if they stumble, fall and roll over a lot, but that's not what we're talking about here – we're talking about someone who is shoved by a force, staggers, and remains upright; they might move five feet, they might move a little more than that, they'll probably move much less than that, but they definitely will not move ten feet, and so a single five foot square is more than adequate for realism.

In 5e, you can comfortably carry 15 times your strength score without being impeded. You physically cannot carry more than that, and function. If you use variant encumbrance, you can carry 5 times your strength score, after which you begin to suffer penalties for being lightly, and then heavily encumbered. The rules for what you can manage to lift, as a dedicated act are more lenient – as an individual act, you can lift off the ground twice your carry capacity.

Larger creatures get to multiply these values, doubling up for each size category above medium they are. Smaller creatures halve the values. Realistically, “Small” creatures should be halving those values too, not just Tiny creatures... but it was decided that, since player characters could be small, it wasn't a fair restriction to place on players, for balance and fun, and so the halving was pushed back to 'tiny' creatures only.

One confession I'll make here: In one of my home games I DO play with variant encumbrance and my own small character halves her capacities as though the rule applied to smalls – I like the extra realism. With her eight strength she can carry 9kg (20lb) before becoming partially encumbered. I enjoy the press of playing that way, with her... but it's never a rule I would try to put onto other players, because I know most do not like that level of book-keeping or restriction.

The issue with shoving and incapacitated targets may have been something that was a problem in a previous patch. I don't know, but on reflection I know you're right, as of patch 6 right now, because I've seen how much the AI likes to shove sleeping targets to wake them up. I'm not sure what I was remembering on that score, so I'm sorry there.

The last point (the halfling line was a joke, since we were talking about shoving big creatures and small creatures and you likened it to kicking walls and balls... if the joke didn't translate, that's on me) is this:

I'm saying that the double check system as you first proposed it will cause characters to fail very often because it will: You are setting the rolling character at Disadvantage every time, just to Make the check in the first place. They have to roll twice, and if Either check fails, then they fail in totality. You are making them roll at disadvantage for the check, by definition. You are also asking them to roll two different ability scores, and a specific two such that virtually no character will have invested in both of them. On an average roll, with normal dice, they are going to roll below average on At Least One Die 75% of the time. This makes the likelihood of them failing at least one of the checks, and thus failing the entire action in totality, extremely high.

So, yes, they will fail very often; this is not conjecture - this is just math. They will fail so often in attempting this action that it will be considered a non-starter in nearly every case. If I'm not explaining this well enough, and you're not understanding it, then I apologise; I'm trying to be as clear and transparent about it as I can.