wolfvahn's page

But the argument that's being made is that because you use the Take Cover action while Prone, you gain soft cover in addition to the Greater Cover against Ranged attacks. Both Prone and Tower Shields use the Take Cover Action. (Just to restate my stance, as a DM I don't think you do, nor do you get any bonuses from tower shield outside of what the items says you do.)

So would you get the +4 Stealth bonus from cover as well while holding up a quite frankly very large shield. Like, I'm just picturing that in my head where a player readies their shield and takes cover with it and makes their stealth check because of the shield in the middle of an otherwise open field.

Some metal gear solid box shenanigan's.

And I think you're wrong on all counts.

Going taking cover while prone is using the ground itself to provide cover for you, and effectively making yourself a much smaller target by reducing the area that you're exposing to the enemy. At a distance, this can make a very large difference. But, standing next to someone who is prone, their entire body is still exposed as though they were standing next to you.

To quote the Take Cover action. "You press yourself against a wall or duck behind an obstacle to take better advantage of cover" So yes, it is simply putting something between you and your attacker.

As far as RAW goes, prone details that you may use the Take Cover option to gain Greater Cover against ranged attacks. That's all it says. By RAW that's all you should get.

Also, per RAW from Take Cover. "If you would have standard cover, you instead gain greater cover, which provides a +4 circumstance bonus to AC; to Reflex saves against area effects; and to Stealth checks to Hide, Sneak, or otherwise avoid detection. Otherwise, you gain the benefits of standard cover"

Note that last sentence. Otherwise, you gain the benefits of Standard Cover.

You are gaining Greater Cover by using the action while prone, and while it only applies to ranged attacks, you are still gaining Greater Cover, so the Otherwise part of the rule doesn't trigger because you are gaining Greater Cover.

Hello, I'm the DM for the group in question.

For Seravix's questions my answer has been No to all accounts, in large part due to the rules regarding cover and how it is relative, but also because the Take Cover action while Prone does not include any language that might seem like it is in addition to what a creature might get if they were to take cover. It simply says that they game Greater Cover Against Ranged Attacks.

Additionally, it just doesn't make sense for someone that's hunkering down on the ground to be as hard to hit as someone that's standing on their feet and actually able to respond to melee attacks.

One of the arguements that a non-seravix player brought up was the wood elf racial feat that allows them to take cover in the forest even if they're not adjacent to anything, and that if I wouldn't allow them to gain cover from melee attacks from that.

My answer to that is "It depends." if it's a sparse forest and there's nothing to really hide behind then I'd probably not give cover bonuses within a certain range. However if the forest was considered difficult terrain then I'd allow soft cover against melee attacks and probably greater cover against ranged attacks.

Which I think is fair, but if I'm wrong I'm open to correction on that part.

I kind of got fed up with arguing about the rules and told my players(Not Seravix) that if they got a designer to clarify I'd change my ruling.

Say I ready for the vampire to come within 5 feet of me.

```Weaknesses: Vampires cannot tolerate the strong odor of garlic and will not enter an area laced with it. Similarly, they recoil from mirrors or strongly presented holy symbols. These things don’t harm the vampire—they merely keep it at bay. A recoiling vampire must stay at least 5 feet away from the mirror or holy symbol and cannot touch or make melee attacks against that creature. Holding a vampire at bay takes a standard action. After 1 round, a vampire can overcome its revulsion of the object and function normally each round it makes a DC 25 Will save.```

The vampire charges me and I brandish my holy symbol at him during its round. What happens?

Going off the kensai magus idea, Dipping into the Swashbuckler is a great idea, Largely because of the swasbucklers finesse which allows you to use a one handed slashing weapon with weapon finesse.

I did this so that I could have a Dex based Katana wielding Kensai, much fun.