Surface of water provides total cover from land, anybody know why?

[GM Rednal]

*Glances up*

You know, to be totally honest... if I was going to have a giant squid attack as a thing, complete with tentacles, I'd probably run it as each tentacle being a separate 'creature' the PCs could target. There's no good story reason to prevent people from attacking a huge aquatic creature just because part of it is underwater.

[Starbuck_II]

Ravingdork wrote:

You can't target something with total cover, not even with a spell like hostile levitation, Ridiculon.

You can cast spread effects since they keep going through covers if they beat the Hardness/HP which is 0 fpr water's surface.

[Ravingdork]

Starbuck_II wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

You can't target something with total cover, not even with a spell like hostile levitation, Ridiculon.

You can cast spread effects since they keep going through covers if they beat the Hardness/HP which is 0 fpr water's surface.

Spreads go AROUND cover, not through it. Only specific spells can go through cover, and even then only when they say that they do.

[Ravingdork]

From the recently released Aquatic Adventures book:

Due to water’s surface tension, creatures attempting to attack through water’s surface count its surface as total cover (if a creature is partially submerged, it gains proportionally less cover); this applies even to spells that require attack rolls.

The exception to this rule is attacks that deal piercing damage—these can penetrate the water’s surface but take a –2 penalty to do so. This is a change from the rule on cover from the water’s surface in the Core Rulebook, but it allows actions like spearfishing and firing harpoons from whaling ships.

:D

[Alexandros Satorum]

It's good to see a good change to the rules for a change. though, it seems that you still can't target the underwater creatures with targeted spells.

[Mark Seifter]

Only attacks: "this applies even to spells that require attack rolls."

[Alexandros Satorum]

Gotcha.

[Skeld]

Don't be a slave to the rules.

-Skeld

[MichaelCullen]

Ravingdork wrote:

From the recently released Aquatic Adventures book:

Due to water’s surface tension, creatures attempting to attack through water’s surface count its surface as total cover (if a creature is partially submerged, it gains proportionally less cover); this applies even to spells that require attack rolls.

The exception to this rule is attacks that deal piercing damage—these can penetrate the water’s surface but take a –2 penalty to do so. This is a change from the rule on cover from the water’s surface in the Core Rulebook, but it allows actions like spearfishing and firing harpoons from whaling ships.

:D

Yay!

[Raynor Cordite]

What? carrying a piercing weapon actually provides some kind of advantage now? :)