Multiple soft cover bonuses, do they stack?


Rules Questions


My search-fu may be lacking, but I cannot find anything on the boards that clarifies this issue that came up in game last night.

From the PRD

"Soft Cover: Creatures, even your enemies, can provide you with cover against ranged attacks, giving you a +4 bonus to AC. However, such soft cover provides no bonus on Reflex saves, nor does soft cover allow you to make a Stealth check."

As this bonus has no name, if the party ranger shoots at a target, through two allies, will that target get a +8 bonus to AC, +4 soft cover from each ally?

I cannot find anything to go against this, but applying this to the game table is going to make the player of said ranger very sad.

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

DM Klumz wrote:

My search-fu may be lacking, but I cannot find anything on the boards that clarifies this issue that came up in game last night.

From the PRD

"Soft Cover: Creatures, even your enemies, can provide you with cover against ranged attacks, giving you a +4 bonus to AC. However, such soft cover provides no bonus on Reflex saves, nor does soft cover allow you to make a Stealth check."

As this bonus has no name, if the party ranger shoots at a target, through two allies, will that target get a +8 bonus to AC, +4 soft cover from each ally?

I cannot find anything to go against this, but applying this to the game table is going to make the player of said ranger very sad.

Hm... Well, it also doesn't say "+4 per creature". It talks about "creatures" (plural and nonspecific), which seems to mean that either you have soft cover or you don't: if one or more creatures are between the attacker and the target, then there's soft cover. Sort of an "either it's on or off" type of thing.


Jiggy

Thanks for the prompt reply. I like your thinking and in the absence of any else, I shall be leaning along these lines.

Cheers


I'd agree with Jiggy as well on this. There's no indication that a +4 per person is intended.

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

DM Klumz wrote:

Jiggy

Thanks for the prompt reply. I like your thinking and in the absence of any else, I shall be leaning along these lines.

Cheers

I just looked up the section on Cover in general and saw that "soft" cover is a subcategory of cover (and weaker, too). And the gist of cover does seem to be that you either have it or you don't, so I'm pretty confident with the "no stacking multiple sources of cover" thing.


Multiple bonuses of the same type do not stack, so a fighter could not wear plate mail and then chain mail expecting a higher AC then just plate by itself. Also the same fighter would not see any benefit from a wizard casting mage armor on him while he is already in armor (though the mage armor may come into effect with incorporeals because the plate would be ignored). That being said, there is no reason to believe that soft cover from several different sources would stack, though it dose bring up the idea of different levels such as partial and full cover.

The Exchange Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16

I don't think you apply it more than once. It does stack with the -4 for firing into melee though for a total of -8 unless you have Precise Shot.

Improved Precise Shot and his cousins are your friend.

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