[two fairly long posts completely full of technical details, caveats, exceptions, extra checks and rolls, extra rulings for specific cases and so on]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
