Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback SHOOOOOOOVE

All I know is, shove STILL sucks, and it's been broken since Day 1, we've complained about it since Day 1 with a gazillion threads and pages, and it STILL sucks; mostly because the AI uses it to hurl my characters off the map, not because I exploit it.

Which I don't because I absolutely detest it. It's absolutely broken.

The fact that it's not fixed yet makes me feel like we don't really matter out here.

So... Maybe this was pointless. 😔

My vote is take it out or turn its power level down %2000 percent because currently its more powerful than any magic item or spell or class ability.

Bottom line... if Larian does not fix this... they can take this game and "Shove it".

HAHA! Love it! 👹

Games still on my computer but I haven't touched it since october. If your talking forum wise, for updates, Niara's posts on halflings, and generally anyone new or old that posts fresh topics.

I personally love shove, but maybe that's just because I get a perverse pleasure from yeeting enemies off cliffs.
But if I'm not mistaken, Shove is suppose to be an action, not a bonus action like it is in BG3.
I think that's really more the problem, not the mechanic itself, but just the fact that it's a bonus action right now.
We are essentially getting to double dip right now with being able to shove an enemy, and then also still be able to attack another one.

Being a Bonus it's only one small problem. The bigger issue is the distance. If an enemy can shove my character 30 feet off a ledge into lava, that's broken.

1 time, while fighting Drow after spectator, a Drow shoved my Drow Battle master with high Strength 30+ feet from the edge, and she landed WAY down by the Torchstalks outside the area near the Festering Cove. Somehow, she survived with 2 HP, but the point is she was so far from the battle it was ridiculous. More than 300 feet, I can assure you. It's like she was thrown by the Hulk.

I'd accept 10 feet at most if your character has high strength. More than 10 is utterly ridiculous, and even 10 is really too much. God forbid you even get remotely close to an edge... EVER!

Well, I tend to focus on shoving enemies off cliffs, so I'm not often in the position of having my back to one. I can understand why that would be frustrating to deal with though. It is a really powerful strategy, that's why I use it myself.
With the spectator/drow encounter you can kill all the drow while they are still petrified, before spawning the spectator. This way there are no drow for the spectator to send against you, and no way for them to yeet you off a cliff.

Lol. I know. I like to not cheat, though. I mean, first playthrough was like, "What? They turned flesh? What the crap!". Once you know, yeah, you can kill them right away, but what fun is that?

Besides, that's contrary to the point. The point isn't about that particular fight. It happens WAY too often that enemies shove ME and my party off cliffs, etc. as a Bonus action and for 30+ feet, so I have to stay super far away from edges for fear of getting tossed even by goblins as if they are ogres.

Personally, if an enemy is dropping his weapon into a position they can use both hands and get in close enough to shove me, I should get a free attack of opportunity.

And to push me off or over they need to be able to hit me at or above my center of gravity. Otherwise, at most it is a tackle, fancy trip, or maybe a flip.

Joe

Right. Shove is supposed to be an Attack action symbolizing a combatant maybe clashing with their opponent and shoving to try to knock them back a pace or lose their footing and fall prone. Imagine Luke and Vader clashing, Vader shoves against Luke's sabre, and Luke falls on his butt OR he manages to keep his footing and stumbles a few steps backward.

THAT is D&D shove. It is an Action because you are physically engaging your opponent in a Strength contest and using a bit of extra force to knock opponents back or prone. It allows players to knock an enemy back so they don't get attack of opportunities on you or potentially on allies OR if prone you can provide allies with advantage when they attack with melee.

So, Fighter shoves Hobgoblin prone. Rogue rushes up and gets advantage and Sneak Attack. Cleric runs up and gets advantage. Even wizard can run up and have a better chance of hitting in melee. It's especially effective against high AC enemies, and gives more chance of Crits. Also gives buff Fighters a solid tactic that they can use in conjunction with other team members besides just Attack with weapon. And IF, you happen to have an enemy five feet from a ledge, THEN you can shove them off.

I just wish we could finally get rid of this power Shoving nonsense and start at least pretending BG3 has a tactical combat component that doesn't degenerate to abusing the same OP homebrew cheese over and over.

With such a big focus on verticality literally everywhere, Shove needs to be nerfed from 5e if anything, not buffed.

I'm sorry but these types of posts always leave me puzzled, to say the least.

I mean... Yeah? What did you think we talked about for the entire last year or so? No one has a problem with "shove" existing per se, especially since shove IS part of D&D core rules.
A lot of us have a problem specifically with its current implementation in this game: the fact that it's a bonus action, its insane range, that both players and AI can abuse it constantly and (on a more personal note) the way it's visually presented.

Agreed!

I think shove as implemented tries to solve two problems: making the vertical axis and bonus actions more relevant.

As far as I know, the bonus action in 5e isn't used by every class, and certainly not at beginner levels. "Unlocking" a character's bonus action is meant to be a satisfying power up moment. I'm not sure why Larian made bonus actions ubiquitous (maybe it's to give players options, maybe it feels weird to have a bonus action and not be able to use it...) but they clearly feel being able to use them every turn is important. This cascades into a myriad of balancing issues. Classes built around the bonus action get comparatively worse and turning some actions into bonus actions opens the door to all kinds of cheese and exploits. I'd like to see the bonus action being more of a bonus than a second action. It's a sliding scale, of course. You could keep potions and offhand attack (without a main attack first) and ditch the rest.

I understand trying to make the vertical axis as relevant as possible. It's a huge part of the engine and Larian want to make the most of it. It's probably why height advantage was so strong at the start of early access. Besides high ground and shove there are only a handful of mechanisms that use height: line of sight, flight, fall damage, ladders (specifically, breaking wooden ones). Meanwhile, some low hanging fruit remains unpicked. I don't think high ground extends weapon range. Cone spells aren't actually conical and won't hit anything on a lower plane. Jumping on enemies works sometimes but the UI needs to be clearer to help avoid situations where I jump next an enemy and trigger combat damaged and prone.

In conclusion, I hate bonus action superman shove as much as the next player. There are other, better ways to accomplish Larian's goals.

Not using a Bonus Action every turn is not a problem. It's by 5e design.

Larian thinking it is, is a problem. They turned a lot of things into a BA and butchered class balance in the process. Which is an actual problem. A huge one. Rogues effectively lost their abilities, and how do they balance that... by giving Rogues an extra Bonus Action. Which means they can now Shove twice per turn or dish out much more damage than Fighters, or drink two potions per turn for some really OP effects. Larian fixed something that wasn't broken and then made it even worse and actually broke the game.

Getting more actions per turn does not somehow make the game "better". In fact, it highlights the flaws of a turn based system where someone gets to do multiple actions before anyone can react to them in any way. E.g. insane alpha stikes that neutralize entire encounters before the enemies get to act. The less you do per turn, the more reactive and dynamic a turn based game is. There is a balance of course because getting to do very little at a time can get boring and tedious. But BG3 already suffers from players being able to do alpha strikes (even solo) that just obliterate hard encounters before it even becomes a fight. The Gith patrol can do a total party wipe before you even get a turn, and on the other hand a solo player can easily dispatch them. And level 5 will make those alpha strikes exponentially more powerful.

What's especially annoying is how they're not letting us even play with proper 5e rules in Early Access. They just decided "D&D will be better this way" and have everyone spamming Shoves and Stealth like mindless bots pretending to play a tactical game.

Verticality can remain relevant and important with Shove being a normal attack-replacing action instead of a BA. Shoving an enemy off a cliff deals damage to them, sends them to low ground where you get a slight bonus to attack, and can require the enemy to spend turns climbing back up. That is well worth losing out on a single attack. Additionally, other classes can still shove characters via Thunderwave, Monk's Way of Open Hands shoves, and the Shield Master feat; letting shove be a BA weakens those spells/abilities/feats.

The most important mechanic necessary for Shove being an attack-replacing action is that of ladders&climbing. Ladders should cost (double) movement, and perhaps enemies should be unable to get on/off a ladder if an enemy is blocking the entrance/exit space. This would ensure that a shove gains you an entire turn - likely multiple - where the enemy is only moving back up to high ground. This would open up tactical options much more interesting and impactful than "Shove enemy dealing ~4 damage -> enemy climbs back up using ~0 movement and attacks you -> shove enemy again."

Shove
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.

I would accept this homebrew as an intelligent homebrew for shove:

Shove is Action. If you successfully shove an opponent, you push them 5 + your Athletics skill feet, minimum of 5 feet. So, have Athletics +5, you can Shove 10 feet.

Also, roll double your opponent's roll and knock the target prone as well, thus symbolizing that you caught them off balance.

Anyone who is shoved off a ledge should travel horizontally as normal and then drop straight down. So, if you are 5 feet from the edge and pushed 8 feet, you travel 5 feet to the edge, 3 feet further, and then straight down.

Those who have higher Acrobatics for resisting should have dodge animations for shove if they resist. Those who use Athletics to resist should be shown resisting like American football players smashing into their opponent and not budging. Weapon to weapon or shoulder to shoulder, etc. Shoving back.

And please make knock prone an option. It's one of the ways a fighter can give rogues and other advantage against higher AC enemies.

This sentence made me think of the classic physics problem of determining a cannon ball's trajectory given an initial impulse and gravity. It's a well worn problem whose solution is an equation that has been deeply studied and is easy to compute. This is probably the very equation the game uses for projectiles and shoved characters. The problem is that it doesn't really work for shoving on flat terrain because, for the enemy to travel any distance, the initial impulse needs to be angled upward, if only slightly.

I'd wager most of the distance travelled when getting shoved on flat terrain is the body rotating from vertical to horizontal. Professional athletes playing in contact sports don't lift their opponents, which is difficult and inefficient, but try to use their weight against them. All this to say that hacking the cannon ball equation to function for flat terrain shoving has obvious side effects when shoving from a ledge.

I'm not sure it's possible to reconcile both needs (flat shoving and ledge shoving) with one equation. You could add an air friction term to limit horizontal speed and make ledge shoves more realistic, but that might break the small arc used for flat shoving. You could angle the initial impulse much higher and make it stronger to make the impact spots more realistic though the trajectories would be hilarious. My guess is for both situations to feel right, the game needs to treat them seperately.

In any case I'd like to see an overhaul to the entire projectile arc system because arrows don't arc like that, nor do magic missiles and certainly not bodies.

???

I was just trying to simplify it.

😳