OK. Gotta fix shove. Playing in the Underdark and suddenly the Spectator pops up and Drow, etc. I shoved a Drow like 15 feet off a cliff and he flew another 300 feet onto a ledge way far away.

Then, much to my displeasure, one of the Drow shoved my main. I kid you not, I was at least 30 feet away from the edge. My Drow Main went flying 100 feet, off the cliff, another 300 feet and kept plummeting. She landed on a ledge really far away, but by the gods it was a massive shove.

We can't be having these huge shoves. Have you read the 5e rules?

Using the Attack action, you can make a Special melee Attack to shove a creature, either to knock it prone or push it away from you. If you’re able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this Attack replaces one of them.
The target must be no more than one size larger than you and must be within your reach. Instead of making an Attack roll, you make a Strength (Athletics) check contested by the target’s Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check (the target chooses the ability to use). If you win the contest, you either knock the target prone or push it 5 feet away from you.

Big plus. Especially to the action part. It's too impactful to be a bonus action.

Very, very agreed.

Making shoves an action would make it a right PITA to actually control space and not simply get overrun by the relatively large amount of enemies that we're going to face every so often, which is presumably the main reason Larian made that little house rule change.

And I don't really mind that, to be honest. AI can do it to us as well, after all. But shoves obviously should not send people flying like they're shot out of a cannon. It seems very much like there's no change of horizontal speed until the victim of a shove has stopped falling. If that's 50 feet below then that means the character flies literally 100 feet away, which is nuts.

Short version, don't "fix" shove by letting it remain as nuts as it is and turning it into an action, fix it by letting it remain a bonus action but tone the shove distance down significantly.

Nah, the change to action IS needed, even if they will fix physics of shove. Because you still would be able to kill some targets with shove. And not by damaging them for their last few HP, but by damaging them for their whole HP pool. Too impactful.

A little house rule change that currently nerfs the Shield Master feat.

I mean, if it only shoves them 5 feet like it should then shoving would be much less powerful and less likely to actually kill an enemy unless you're right up against a cliff ledge or something.

But it should knock prone as an option as well. That's one of Shove's biggest abilities. Take that away and reduce to 5 feet, and I agree, a Bonus. Do Shove right and allow to knock prone and ot should be an Action.

I'd find a perfectly acceptable compromise if it would spare us the choice between the "option" and just merged the two functions in one: knocking people prone AND five feet away. You would still have the option to push people down a cliff (IF they were on the edge of it where it made sense).

Anything is better than having it as a bonus action AND the equivalent of a trebuchet (bordering into the intercontinental missile), by capable to throw people kilometers away.

Also, if it's not too much to ask, we could have that enemies falling down would... you know, fall down, instead of flying horizontally for meters in the best Wil E. Coyote tradition.

You know, I thought the same thing just today. When you shove someone, they fall prone in the game right now. However, Larian has them immediately get right up. Why not knock them prone, like you said, every time if shove succeeds? The animation is already there.

Then, absolutely yes, Shove = Action not Bonus.

100% agree.
The distance is still ridiculous and now that the AI is smarter... It often (dash+)shove.
Shove should be an action.

Fun fact : I get a game over in the last boat, 2 turns to die. That was so ridiculous. combo shove + arrows.

Did 5e remove all that CMB and CMD thing? "Shove" sounds just like Bull Rush from 3.5e. I've been playing Pathfinder Kingmaker and I think the Trip and Bull Rush maneuvers are handled quite nicely. Each attempt is one standard action. The push back distance from Bull Rush is about right, I think. Don't know about other combat maneuvers, but at least, the mechanics for CMB and CMD seem solid to me (base attack bonus + STR mod + size bonus + misc mods, and all that).

Yes. There are no CMB and CMD in 5e.

Yes, it's much simpler in 5e - they just have one system for contested checks, which is used any time any two creatures are using ability checks against each other - this is everything from insight and deception in conversation, to holding a door closed against forcing it open, and includes attempting to shove a creature down or away.

So, in the case of shove, you use the attack action (so that martial characters with extra attack invest the same as anyone else - one attack - and can still use their other attacks before or afterwards if they wish), in order to make a contested ability check against your opponent: you use your athletics, and the enemy can choose whether to use their athletics or acrobatics to contest your effort. In the case of a tie, the status quo remains unchanged - so a door held closed remains close, and a creature remains un-shoved.

It's simply ridiculous and stupid how everyone is constantly pushing and shoving each other in combat after attacking normally. Because it's literally turned into a bonus action. If you can shove an opponent, why can't you do another regular attack instead?

The distance buff is beyond stupid. This is Forgotten Realms, not Marvel. And super strong creatures do exist in Forgotten Realms too. How is being slammed by a giant going to be at all special if any halfling with 10 Strength can do it?

How come Acrobatics and Athletics have no purpose at all in the game? There should be ways to resist those long falls since they are literally everywhere. A distance nerf into the correct 5ft. would go a long way into fixing it too.

So, to summarize:

1. Shove = 5ft. That's what makes Pushing Attack for Fighters and Eldritch Blast with special trait to push others special... they can shove farther as special abilities and magic.

2. Shove = Knock Prone automatically as well. Thus, making it so melee attackers gain advantage on prone targets. Thus, strategy. Thus, it is worth it to shove.

3. Shove = Action. It is an attack. It is not some minor extra ability. If Shove is a Bonus, one still does not need Disengage. I can shove an enemy 30 feet away and then shoot them or run to high ground or whatever. Why waste an Action to disengage if I can shove and still move and shoot?

Also, D&D is a team based tactical combat system. If a lone archer can both shove a melee attacker away AND shoot them with an arrow on the same turn, you don't even need team mechanics. I'm not sure them folks at Larian understand how to make party based combat fun since they insist on allowing more actions in BG3 that undermine the teamwork. Protecting the archers by shoving away attackers gives melee tanks a purpose. Rogue archers are special because they can Disengage and attack compared to Fighter archers who are otherwise better and tougher but lack that ability.

I wish they would just stop changing the rules. The only changes to 5e that didn't make BG3 a worse game are potions as a BA and Wizards getting access to more cantrips. (It's frustrating you can learn all level 3 spells in the world but can't somehow learn mage 101 like Mage Hand or Light if you picked something else.)

Hear, hear! +1 from me.

Ideally I would like to see both a nerf and increase the cost to main action, but if I had to choose one, I would go with nerf. I think pushing off cliff is fine, but as of now one doesn't need to be even near enough a cliff to fall off. I think push should move enemy far away to break engagement, but not much further then that.

That's precisely why it's "5 feet" by the rulebook.

I do not think it is entirely irrelevant that the 5E rulebook is designed for encounters controlled by a usually somewhat sentient person, the DM, whereas the encounters we are going to face in the game are run by a pocket calculator.

A DM would probably have the courtesy to line up an encounter in a way that doesn't become insanely frustrating for the party, because otherwise the party will start whining like babies in real life, making the DM's life rather miserable. Our pocket calculator AI friend has no such reservations and will happily drop all the chaff right on the squishiest party member as a matter of principle.

And we currently have very little control over the area occupied by the party without using shove. Sure, battlemasters can use a superiority die, we can use one of a handful of arrows of thunder, or maybe we will have a chance to use a one of our limited supply of void bulbs with an action before the position of the party becomes completely entangled with the horde of enemies. Or maybe we have a scroll of thunderwave. Or maybe we have someone who has a cast of spell slot of thunderwave. There are options for those who know where to look, but those are fairly exhaustible resources that it probably wouldn't be good game design to assume a party has a sufficient supply of.

And the enemy horde will always have way more actions than the party. And they can jump. And sprint. And use cunning action disengage or cunning action dash, or just plain dash and action surge. Or just tank that one or two AoO reactions, if necessary. But they can absolutely engage the group and neutralize any ranged characters in the group.

The concept of tanking with whomever has tank duty and using that to occupy the enemy chaff while the damage dealers neutralize the bigger threats is a very common element of party based RPGs, but that only works if the tank can actually occupy or slow down enemies. This is not the case in BG3, in my so far very limited experience. The enemies can and happily will ignore the tank and just flood towards the squishies, and there is just not a whole lot the tank can do about it.

Shove as a bonus action isn't pretty, but it does give the tank more of a zone of control. The tank can now use an action to either control space or deal damage, use a bonus action to have a decent chance to further control the space, and then use positioning to try and hold another hostile through the presense of threat and AoO. And the squishy characters can then actually be squishy characters and still have some chance to be productive.

In my view, shove as a bonus action is fine IF it is reduced to just being a 5-6 foot thing unless the shover has an overwhelming strength and size advantage on the shovee. Let ogres and minos throw party members around, why not? Obviously that doesn't mean 6 foot lateral movement per 4 feet drop, like it is currently. And to fix shieldmaster perk, probably give shieldmasters a +2 to their shove DC.

Shove sending targets fully prone at the cost of an action does not sound entirely terrible, but the AI could then do that to the player party as well. And the enemy horde has probably 6 or 8 or 10 actions per full turn, and most of the companion NPCs are not all that shove resistant. How would a player really combat this, save for more cheesecake tactics?

If they follow 5E, melee types can use one attack (after getting extra attack) to shove the enemy rather than the full action. If the character is a fighter, (and if they allow shove to be two different tiles, one for 5ft shove one for prone) they can get nasty. Ex: Shove prone, attack with advantage, action surge, and two more attacks with advantage. To your point, though, so can the enemies.

I haven’t had an issue with my ranged characters being overwhelmed in melee. If you position your characters correctly you can take advantage of the same things the AI does. Shove needs to be fixed, no question.

As far as it being a BA, I think it’s too OP for both sides. If you face (or are) a thief Rogue you can dash twice and shove. I’ve had a gnoll use dash as an action, move 60 ft, and launch my main melee off a cliff for almost all his HP. This wouldn’t and shouldn’t be possible at the table. Granted, we can do this too. I just think it’s too much for a BA.

When there has been change to shove that you can not shove to instant death anymore? Monster won't even budge if "landing" zone is not concrete ground.

This needs to be fixed also.

Btw. Any discussion about this going on somewhere?

Big shoves on enemies is fun but can feel unearned when you can just do them without any kind of resource or skill or stat expenditure. Enemies using it on the player is pretty infuriating and there is some balance weirdness to handling large groups of enemies any one of which can just dash-shove the player off something tall and there's not much counterplay. I don't quite know how you'd balance it to drop the feels bad moments without sacrificing the feels good ones but there's already something of a framework in Shoving attack, Eldritch blast, Thunderwave et al.

Shove as a bonus action should be possible if you :

- pick a homebrew feat at lvl 4/8/12.

- choose a class that can shove as a bonus action (that would replace something that don't translate well in a video game (in exemple think about what they did with the ranger lvl 1 features... One of the choices could be "shove is a bonus action")