Let me just say fist, to everyone, that I dislike and have little respect for pedantry, and pretty much never consider semantics important outside of formal debate/academic discussions.
So, if I come across as dismissive toward an argument, that is probably why.
I don't think your definition of "cheese" is universally shared. In my experience, whether or not an individual considers a game element to be "cheese" is based on their own subjective sense of notions of "fair play". For some people, using options that they consider overly powerful exceeds what they would consider "fair play" and are thus viewed as "cheese" even if the high power level was intentional on the part of the designers. Your definition of "cheese" would preclude this apparently-common usage of the term.
Further, I don't see any utility to your more-restrictive definition. The emotional response to a game element viewed by an individual as "cheesy" appears to be fairly consistent, even if individuals wildly disagree as to which elements provoke that response. Accordingly, the term appears to have descriptive utility under a broader definition than yours. Restriciting the term, as your definition would, to apply only to non-intended usage of a game element would sacrifice this descriptive utility.
There is a word for that, already. Several, in fact. While I’ve no problem with people defining words differently, there is nothing restrictive about what I said. I’ve simply never encountered “cheese/cheesy/cheesing(the system/game)” being used to mean the same thing as “overpowered”, “broken”, or similar. I’ve only seen it used to suggest that a person is exploiting the system in a “cheesy” manner, ie, a manner that bends or perverts the intention of the thing being used.
The “bag of rats” is cheese, counterspell is (in some opinions) overpowered. To some people, readying an action to cast dispel magic for when a caster casts a spell can be cheesy-bordering on outright cheating, especially if you exploit the wording and previous DM rulings about readied actions to abuse reaction timing, and effectively counterspell without having it prepared/known.
I don’t see what is restrictive about the “cheese”/“overpowered” distinction. It just seems more useful than having them mean ge same thing, to me.
I've been playing D&D for a few decades now. Shoving someone after an attack is useful once in a hundred combats. Does it happen? I guess. Does it happen often enough to matter? No. If it's really that useful to push someone around I can always use an attack to to a shove.
Knocking enemies down for my allies is only useful if they go before the enemy, and penalizes them if they are ranged. So once again, not useful.
For defense, the evasion requires a dex save (which my PC is not great at) and uses my reaction. Because I use a shield I'm protection style which already uses my reaction 90% of the time.
The bonus to reflex is only if I'm the only target. Resilience is far superior.
So a bonus action to do something I almost never use and could use an attack for anyway, a damage reduction I can't use often, a dexterity bonus that only rarely applies.
All of that is fine if it had been clear before. Sword-and-board don't get anything iconic like the other fighting styles, but oh well. I just wouldn't have taken the feat. Changing the ruling after it had been state to work the other way is the problem.
Knocking people down after/instead of/as part of attacking has been useful in my group literally hundreds of times, between several editions. Doing it without sacrificing any attacks per round, which are *much* more important than your bonus action for nearly any S&B combatant in 5e, is very useful for any group that bothers to strategize as a group. If your group is too range heavy to benefit from it, then using it as you have been sounds rather counter to teamwork. Either you are imposing disadvantage on ally attacks in order to get advantage on your own, or you’re splitting fire to avoid that.
I guarantee, even in a group that is mostly ranged, in an initiative where the enemy goes right after me, I can use the feat to destroy an enemy while the team is largely unharmed by them (assuming fight where shoving even works at all and we aren’t being swarmed, which just calls for very different tactics). Either I’m knocking them down and then moving away, because they are primarily melee, forcing them to either waste a turn dashing or use their less effective ranged attack while the team safely rains death, or I’m keeping the caster/archer from getting away from me by halving their effective speed per round. Without losing any attacks, which is a big deal for any character. Even a paladin or ranger usually won’t need to be using their bonus most rounds for other stuff, but giveng up a normal attack hurts. A feat that lets you get full use out of shoving without any loss in attack power, plus some defensive abilities, is really nice.
If someone online says that a feat is ‘nerfed’ or OP I know that they don’t actually know what they are talking about and that the feat works fine.
Helps that I’ve see these things in action and they all... work... great.
yep. I’m not too worried about small changes that only really “hurt” in optimized games.
I said the ODDS are much worse in this scenario. Which is not a "strained" argument at all. You have two other issues going against you: 1) Your Dex was not naturally high because you're a Strength fighter, and 2) that bonus doesn't increase with proficiency bonus increasing. Those make "the odds" worse. You don't get the benefit as often as almost any other PC (because almost every other PC has independent motivation to increase Dex) and also you likely are not a race that benefits from a Dex boost (because you went in as sword and board) and you don't have proficiency in Dex saves like many do. So yeah, it's not that you don't get any benefit from it (you do, which is what I said), it's that you have much worse odds of getting that benefit than most others.
So, the feat helps shore up a weakness in heavy armored characters, making them not dreadful at dex saves?
Seems pretty good.
You keep bringing up Resilient. Why do you think it’s relevant here? Does it make you better with a shield?
It’s almost like different feats serve differing purposes! Crazy!
if you want to be significantly better as succeeding on dex saves, you build for that, one way or another. If you want a small suite of shield benefits to help you better make use of a shield and better fulfill the image of a shield user in fantasy, you build for that. SM accomplishes the thing it’s built to do.
If what it does isn’t interesting to you, especially if you aren’t subjected to dex saves that often (seriously +2 difference in a very common save comes up *frequently* at my table, I don’t know what to say about it almost never coming up at yours. Statistical probabilities play out IRL in sometimes strange ways), or don’t see the blue in the teamwork aspects of the tactics that take advantage of the feat, that’s fine. Just means it’s not for you, barring houserule.
That doesn't make this a bad “ruling”.
