By now, it can be safely said that Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the best RPGs of all time—perhaps not for the originality of its setting, as Faerun has been playing host to adventures since 1987, but for the sheer mind-boggling depth of its mechanics and the immense amount of options available to players. Given the multitude of ways to tackle any given situation, players could be forgiven for overlooking perhaps the most useful of them all: the humble Shove action.
Shove sits tucked away unobtrusively in your toolbar from the moment you create your character, just waiting to be unleashed on the world. For the low price of a bonus action, you can do just what it says on the tin: target a nearby enemy and give them a firm shove. Whether or not the shove succeeds depends on your Athletics, but it will always work if you’re invisible or otherwise hidden, meaning that with the right build, you can turn Astarion—or even a player-created Rogue—into a veritable shoving machine.
“Okay,” you may be wondering, “but why would I want to?” Easy! How does a one-hit kill on any enemy in the entirety of BG3 sound? Take, for instance, an early-game quest in Act One, where you’re tasked with deciding to save or raid the peaceful, druidic settlement of Emerald Grove, which may have a few secrets of its own.
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Normally, Minthara, the Drow mastermind behind the potential attack, is a brutal fight for low-level players, in equal parts for her ability to constantly heal herself and her goblin backup. Not so for the shrewd shover. You see, Minthara has made the questionable leadership decision of setting up her war table right next to a bottomless chasm—and one little shove is enough to send her plummeting down, never to be seen again. For the record, you can also romance Minthara, but you lose out on the chance to righteously shove her.
Many bosses, including the goblin chief one room over from Minthara, fall victim to similar lapses in planning, and if anything, helping them realize their folly with a push is the party’s obligation as OSHA-compliant adventurers.
There are, regrettably, a couple of caveats: namely, that you can’t recover loot from enemies dispatched in this manner, and that enemies are also wise to this strategy (which you may find out the hard way). Armed with the knowledge that the means to instantly kill any enemy is literally at your fingertips, however, do you really need all of that gear?
