Attack of Opportunity, Huge Creature

[joep]

So in a recent session the players came up against a Huge Demon. The Barbarian immediately engaged the Demon in combat. The multiclass Rogue cast Greater Invisibility and tried to walk into the combat but found out Demon had True Seeing and was hit with Attack of Opportunity.

Since the players knew the Demon used his AOO the cleric walk right behind the Barbarian and then would cast Cure spells on him.

I know the rules state;
Cover and Attacks of Opportunity: You can't execute an attack of opportunity against an opponent with cover relative to you.

If the Demon occupies a 15'x15' area and has 15' reach Does the cleric still have cover?

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D - Demon
R - Rogue
B - Barbarian
C - Cleric

Thanks,
Joe

[kestral287]

Yes, the Cleric has cover.

Cover rules:

Quote:

To determine whether your target has cover from your ranged attack, choose a corner of your square. If any line from this corner to any corner of the target's square passes through a square or border that blocks line of effect or provides cover, or through a square occupied by a creature, the target has cover (+4 to AC).

When making a melee attack against an adjacent target, your target has cover if any line from any corner of your square to the target's square goes through a wall (including a low wall). When making a melee attack against a target that isn't adjacent to you (such as with a reach weapon), use the rules for determining cover from ranged attacks.

The demon is using the rules for ranged attacks because the target is nonadjacent. Even in the corner most advantageous for it (top-left), the Barbarian is blocking the line to the Cleric's bottom-right corner.

[Trekkie90909]

More relevant quote:

Cover wrote:

Big Creatures and Cover

Any creature with a space larger than 5 feet (1 square) determines cover against melee attacks slightly differently than smaller creatures do. Such a creature can choose any square that it occupies to determine if an opponent has cover against its melee attacks. Similarly, when making a melee attack against such a creature, you can pick any of the squares it occupies to determine if it has cover against you.

In this case the demon would select the top left square which has the most favorable line of effect to the cleric and determine cover based on that. Assuming the demon has combat reflexes in the first round, when the cleric is moving, the cleric does not provoke from directly behind the barbarian but instead provokes from the square behind that (The first x in xcbdddxxx) so that there is no line of effect through the barbarian and the cleric does not have cover. Later, when the cleric is casting directly behind the barbarian it would have partial soft cover since half of it is visible from the top left square. This is however still enough to negate the AoOs.

In other instances, given how short the barbarian is compared to the huge demon the rules for low obstacles might become relevant:

Quote:

A low obstacle (such as a wall no higher than half your height) provides cover, but only to creatures within 30 feet (6 squares) of it. The attacker can ignore the cover if he's closer to the obstacle than his target.

But players would be more likely to call rulings based on that as shenanigans.