| Nycathis |
Im sorry Shifty but Id have to rule with the majority here.
There are 2 different modifiers for 2 different events.
-4 to YOUR hit chance for firing into melee (attack roll penalty)
+4 to TARGETS AC for firing through soft cover (AC bonus).
Effectively this can be treated as either a -8 to your to hit chance or +8 to their AC but the reality is that it is 2 different circumstance modifiers that are occurring.
Nowhere does it state that if you fire into a melee you can ignore the effects of softcover if the cause of that soft cover is the meleer.
Edit:
Seems others ninja'ed my post reasons.
Also there are 2 separate feats that allow you to ignore each of one of these situations.
*sigh* as was mentioned before (ninja'ed again :P )