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Does earthgliding waist-deep into the ground provide cover or improved cover from attacks? on that same train of thought, if your foot sticks out of the wall does your foot have cover?
I'm asking because of a pathfinder society scenario where the boss was constantly half in the ground, and because of that cover it was really hard to hit him, but after checking it isnt noted in his tactics.
As a GM, I have long just ruled creatures are either completely exposed or have total cover when earth gliding. Mostly because the next step becomes "Only the arms are exposed to make attacks, and I use tremorsense to detect where the enemy is. When I'm done attacking I pull my arm back underground." Basically making it impossible to fight effectively against such opponents.
How it's supposed to be ran...I'm not sure.
I'd use the "partially in water" rules. There's not a clean summary, but you can piece it together from these links:
General cover rules: I would probably use the "low obstacles" ruling while waist-deep in anything.
Underwater combat has sections on shooting into water from land: creatures treading water have "improved cover".
When I'm done attacking I pull my arm back underground." Basically making it impossible to fight effectively against such opponents.
This only works if you believe that the initiative rules force everyone to stand around and take turns fighting.
Pathfinder initiative is not baseball. The other 8 guys are not sitting on a bench in the dugout while the batter takes his turn swinging his club, and the next guy doesn't have to wait for the batter to finish swinging before he can step up to plate and take his turn.
In a single melee round, everyone is acting at the same time. Every combatant is moving around, attacking, defending, ducking, dodging, whatever, all simultaneously. The only reason we have turns is because we need some way for everyone to get a chance to say what they're doing and keep track of that in our one-track human brains - we simply cannot process combat like a computer, so we break it into turns to keep track of what we're doing.
But that doesn't change the fact that these separate turns are simply a break-down of the simultaneous combat they represent.
There is no way for a creature to stick its arm out of a wall, attack, and put its arm back in the wall without exposing itself to attacks from its enemies. It absolutely definitely can be attacked.
How it's supposed to be ran...I'm not sure.
First, if it doesn't also stick its face out, then all its enemies have total concealment and a 50% miss chance, even with tremorsense. If it does stick out its face and its arm, then it's also sticking out a shoulder and part of its torso. Suddenly that's quite a bit of enemy out there. This is not RAI, it's RAW, but admittedly, you have to assume that earthgliding through the ground is mechanically the same as inocorporeal creatures hiding in the ground:
It can sense the presence of creatures or objects within a square adjacent to its current location, but enemies have total concealment (50% miss chance) from an incorporeal creature that is inside an object. In order to see beyond the object it is in and attack normally, the incorporeal creature must emerge. An incorporeal creature inside an object has total cover, but when it attacks a creature outside the object it only has cover, so a creature outside with a readied action could strike at it as it attacks.
Second, because the game mechanics do have us taking turns, the only effective way to attack the creature is to ready an action. When it "emerges" to attack, it only has Cover, not Total Cover, so it gets +4 to AC, but otherwise you can attack as normal, per the cover rules. Of course, this means you cannot Sneak Attack and you cannot use iteratives or other full attacks, which hopefully is included in the creature's CR.
As for the OP's scenario, the "boss" was half in the ground but apparently never went fully into the ground for Total Cover, so it was basically "emerged" the whole time. Totally appropriate to give the creature Cover but not Total Cover.
As for it not being in his "Tactics", I think any creature with the ability to have permanent cover must use that ability. If the adventure was written so that this boss had the ability to do this, then it should do so. If not, then why did the developers include this ability in the first place?