Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Shove should be an action

Elephant isn't exactly delicious, we eat it one bite at a time because we have to. There's no reason a game's combat can only be altered one change at a time, especially if you already know your changes will leave vacuums in other areas.

Ok, you just ate a leg, the rest of the elephant fell down. Also, as a solutions architect, my career is based on stopping people from fixing things one at a time like rats at a feeder bar taking in issues. Its how you end up with "accidental" or "organic" systems that you now have a system the way it is because a dev team pulled a tetsuo and trapper-keepered in quick hits.

You have to try to see why its like the way it is. Here are some of my theories

- Jump / Disengage as an action. Because you are consistently put into clusterF scenarios with environmental issues, elevation traps, and an *incredibly* ambiguous "threatened" v "in melee and will get an AOO" range. You will die without this mechanic. I have never used jump and never even come close in all of my D&D years playing to come to what I have had to do in this game to date. So if we looked at "fixing" that (not saying this thread is) it wouldnt solve the issue of why it needs to be so heavily used and why changing its economy would make the game extremely difficult.

- Dip. Sure. Only a few things are actually worth wasting a BA on doing that instead of getting a solid hit with a magical weapon, so it should be done prior to battle if possible anyway. Good early game if you find some poison though.

- Shove. Why are you shoving in the first place? That never happens in D&D. We also know Larian loves elevation so they needed a way to take advantage of that. Start a fire, sneak up, shove them off the cliff into it. Or put feather fall on yourself and have a team mate shove you across something. Some fun stuff. But why is it a combat mechanic that is so easily executed when you have jump and disengage. Shove doesnt even knock them prone. Jump is your disengage, this is a combat maneuver and has a 100% success rate on "unsuspecting" (whatever that means) creatures. Its grossly overpowered and you can take most of the encounters and set up a push-centric battle strategy that takes almost no resources, limits your damage, and makes it so they can't close effectively. It is also not based on str for distance.

My theory: I don't have one. it doesn't make any sense. It should be a str based athletics v athletics/Acrobatics contest with a max distance of 10. As someone mentioned, an attack that is a special attack like grapple. Not going to be used very much at that point except ring-out fighting tactics. A nice pocket option, not heavily used by anyone other than fighters and later barbs. I think there is a context missing of why they aren't letting eldritch blast with a push and thunderwave shine. Forget the mage hand thing, its so dumb and turns it into an action once every 3 rounds to keep doing it. Why not let the people with actual force mechanics do the force stuff? What are we gaining by ring-out tactics in this game? It gives a "heh" factor, but I only catch myself doing it if the fight is entirely too difficult. So, if it is going to be an option at all, Im down with it being a type of attack. I get through the game just fine without it and if it went away entirely, wouldn't really care. If they have introduced an issue with it becoming a pushing match like it does in the duergar fight in the underdark, that needs to be solved. I think it would be better served being replaced with grapple and being able to drag people to the edge and drop with checks at the start of every turn.

Hide: Shouldn't be needed by anyone other than rogues. You don't really get a benefit from it other than it breaking aggro. Which is the real problem. They will run across the map to nail a squish even though it puts them into imminent danger from 3 murder monsters. They will do anything to kill that person. Hide automatically removes them from the aggro order. Breaking LOS doesn't make them recalculate, only hiding. Hiding is a band-aid to the larger issue of AI tactic precedence. To me.

Throw/dash/knock out/help - no real issues there. Help expanded to giving someone advantage would be nice. But that is your action in all the cases they have listed


I think there is a larger issue regarding the nature of the combat and the environments you get put into that are making people need it as much as they are. It being a bonus action is good if you need it that much. Making it an action makes sense if it doesnt mean a TPK every other fight. But just doing it based on what it technically would be in the book is merely solving a pedantic gripe.

I just figured I would add my +1 to this request. It's all in title :

Shove should cost an Action.

I am tempted to add the following requests.

• The shove-distance should be 1.5m (5ft). Or perhaps depend on the Strength of the shover.
• It should be possible to Shove-to-prone, in addition to Shove-push.
• When a character is able to make multiple attacks with their Attack action, they should be able to replace one of them by a Shove.

+1 For all those people who love shoving enemies, at level 5 currently your fighter/paladin/barbarian/ranger will still only be able to shove once per turn. However, if shove is modified to match RAW (replace an attack with a shove) then you'll be able to shove twice per turn!

If your fighter Action Surges, then they could shove 4x in a single turn at level 5!
If you get hasted, then you'll get another shove attempt! (Possibly 2 more depending on how Larian implements the interaction between Haste and Extra Attack)
At level 11, your fighter could shove 3x per turn, 6x if action surged, 7-9x if Hasted!

None of the above happens with a bonus action shove. It will always be only once per turn, except for I suppose rogues maybe with their additional BA...?

Love the new Shovemaster fighter subclass
In all seriousness tho; Scaling shove-length with STR is a good suggestion, so much so im surprised it doesnt work like that already. I think now its only shove chance?
STR is often a undervalued stat imo, would add more value to it.


This is a good point. I think currently there is too few bonus actions in general for a lot of classes, so I agree its better as a bonus action. That way you avoid excessive shove attempts. And thief rogues dont usually have high STR so they might need an extra attempt anyway.

Also, by shoving people into lava and such you often dont get their loot. Its not all sunshine and rainbows.

To complete : You forgot to mention that as a BA, it will only be once / turn but at every single turns because most classes and ennemies won't ever have anything better to do with their BA (than using shove to push, to disengage, to awake a sleeping ally,...)

There's no choice between "shoving or doing nothing" ?

We use D&D 5e as base for the rules of this game. Changing a single thing in a ruleset can break it. Implementing shove as bonus action did exactly that.

As per PHB of D&D5e :

"Using the Attack action to shove a creature, either to knock it prone or push (not throw) it away from you. If you're able to to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this replaces one of them.
The target of your shove must be no more than one size larger than you, and it must be within your reach. You make a Strenght (Athletics) check contestet by the target's Strenght (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."

This is the exact wording. No Bonus action, no throwing over walls or to the moon. 5 feet are approx 1,5m.

We also miss the "ready" ready action, which has a big impact on combat.

Dash, Disengage, Dodge, Help, Hide and Grapple (wich we don't have) are also actions.

The bonus action as per PHB:

"Various features, spells, and other alilities let you take an additional action on your turn called a bonus action. The Cunning Action feature, for example, allows a rogue to take a bonus action. You can take a bonus action only when a
special ability, spell or other feature of the games states that you can do someting as a bonus action. You otherwise don't have bonus actions to take.
You can only take one bonus action on your turn, so you must choose which bonus action to use when you have more than one available.
You choose to take when to take a bonus action during your turn, unless the bonus action's timing is specified, and anything that deprives you of your ability to take actions also prevents you from taking a bonus action."

That makes it pretty clear why Larians decision to change the bonus action almost totally changes the dynamics of 5e combat. 'nuff said.

12 attacks or shoves for a haste surprise attack by an 11th level Fighter before the enemy gets to do anything will do a great job at highlighting the strengths of turn based combat.

/sarcasm

But seriously, how is that not going to be a huge problem? You can shove someone across the map if you don't just feel like killing them with a Greatsword.

There are two problems with shove in BG3. As already noted, it is currently a bonus action. Secondly, the physics are exaggerated so characters that get shoved fly much further than they should. Per the PHB, the max distance is 5ft, which is obviously way different from the BG3 implementation.

I have never seen shove abused in D&D, like it currently is BG3.