Why does cover grant stealth?
More specifically, outside of your cover being transparent, why wouldn't it grant concealment?
And if your cover is transparent, why would it grant stealth?
GM Call. If your cover is transparent, such as a thick block of ice or glass or something, then I'd say you couldn't use it to make a Stealth check.
Concealment is better than a +4 bonus AC all the time.
AC just means it's harder to hit you, so why should that stop you from being harder to see?
It's harder to hit someone behind a cloud than to hit someone behind a wall?
The fact that they have different effects is what makes the problem.
Concealment is better than a +4 bonus AC all the time.
How do you figure? -4 on a d20 = -20% success rate.
Whether you take a -4 penalty on your attack roll, a 20% miss chance on each strike or deal 20% less damage on each hit, all yields the same average damage per round.
I agree that in the case of a +4 to AC, the distribution of the probability curve depends on the attack bonus of the attacker vs AC of the defender, but both yield similar results in my experience.
In the case of concealment, getting to your opponent isn't problematic but you have problems determining its position. In the case of cover, you know where your opponent is but you have problems getting there.
These seem like two different issues, and the fact that the system offers two different mechanical advantages doesn't bother me. A bit gamey perhaps, but in the spirit of 3.5/Pathfinder IMO.
In the case of concealment, getting to your opponent isn't problematic but you have problems determining its position. In the case of cover, you know where your opponent is but you have problems getting there.
I had in mind total concealment.
Even with partial concealment it may not always be better, but it's never worse. If your AC is below the attacker's BAB by 4 or more, the AC bonus won't help; if your AC is 20 above the attacker's BAB, the AC bonus doesn't help. And even if your AC is between that, concealment has a much better chance to save you from a crit.
I agree that there's a difference between cover and concealment; I just think that many of the things that grant cover also grant concealment, and those that don't shouldn't be usable for stealth.
Well, as I said, total cover is always better.You can't make an attack against a target that has total cover.
Yep. Well improved cover can be better for stealthy types than total cover, because improved cover gives a bonus to stealth (which total cover does not).
Sometimes partial cover is better: Best case is he hits you on a 16, with a +4 from partial cover, he'll need a 20. 80% of blows that would have hit you now miss instead of just 20%. The same for confirming criticals.
Ah you got me there. Though I feel that's it's only a small range where the AC is somewhere between 14 and 18 higher that it's advantageous. I'm feeling particularly un math savvy at the moment however, so I don't know.
In fact, does the miss chance apply to confirming criticals at all?
I have no clue. In all the games I've been we've always rolled miss chance after the attack roll. If you roll miss chance first, I guess it wouldn't matter.
Anyway, I think this should probably be in the Rules Questions section
In the case of concealment, getting to your opponent isn't problematic but you have problems determining its position. In the case of cover, you know where your opponent is but you have problems getting there.
I know it's unethical to quote your own post, but the bold part got me thinking:
Why indeed does cover allows for Stealth? And if its does make the opponent "less visible", why doesn't cover also grant concealment?
The question is pertinent.
I'm just going to assume that certain many things that provide cover also provide concealment. I don't remember reading anywhere in the rules that it doesn't.
Why does cover grant stealth?
More specifically, outside of your cover being transparent, why wouldn't it grant concealment?
And if your cover is transparent, why would it grant stealth?
I think the idea is that cover totally obscures part of your body, while concealment partially obscures all of your body. Compare a guy peaking out from behind a rock with a shadowy figure in the fog.
I agree someone peeking out over a sheet of glass would have neither cover nor concealment with regard to hiding.
But overgrowth provides concealment and it totally obscures parts of your body.
And say you have something like a metal fence, does that provide cover or concealment?
Also if cover represents something that leaves part of your body visible, how would you ever use it for stealth?
re: glass wall thing, stealth says
Although that entire line conflicts with the idea of using non-total cover or normal concealment to stealth, since sans Stealth anybody should be able to see you with those conditions, barring stealth when those are supposedly enabling conditions for Stealth.
And what that means for a rogue on the opposite side of a wooden wall from a guard, who might HEAR/smell the rogue but couldn't possibly SEE them, isn't totally clear to me...
But since we know the current Stealth RAW is worthy of Errata which may be released any time now, worrying about the current state of RAW is kind of silly, since Paizo's already said it's broken, pretty much.
if cover represents something that leaves part of your body visible, how would you ever use it for stealth?
I believe the idea is that with parts of your body covered, there is much less of you to notice, so that combined with silent movement, and well-timed swift movement, you can evade the attention of others. The system doesnt actually need the Stealther to be aware of the Perceivers whose attention they are evading, which models some situations ok and others not so well, but everything in this game is a compromise, 100% modelling reality isnt going to happen, but you can play this neat game anyways (well, Stealth really does need Errata, but that aside...)
You can check out the two Stealt blog posts to see a mostly workable that Paizo was working on.h