Self Sacrifice trait

[Markov Spiked Chain]

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/traits/religion-traits/self-sacrifice

Quote:

Benefit: As a move action, you can use your own body to grant soft cover to an adjacent ally regardless of the difference in your respective sizes.

How do I use this? It seems pretty weirdly written, and I want to understand it before I take it. The last cause implies that it's only ignoring size issues, but it's pretty unclear, and the cover rules don't say anything about needing to be the same size or larger to provide cover.

I think I can:
Stand behind an ally and give them +4 AC and allow them to back out of melee without taking an AoO?
Give my mount cover as a move action, and not take AoOs from movement? (It's not clear to me if I would provoke as well.)

[Arcane Addict]

It means that if you're a capital S small halfling and a capital L large giant is standing next to you you can still give the giant soft cover, despite your size. Your position doesn't matter either.
It might seem a little 'off' but if you think of combat as something more cinematic and less static it makes a lot of sense.

I've actually not looked at the rules for cover in years so I don't feel comfortable answering your specific questions.

That said, if rules 'don't say something' it doesn't necessarily mean anything (most of the time it is brought up as a fallacious argument in order to justify something a player or DM wants). I suspect, in this case, not mentioning it might've fallen under the 'common sense ruling' that cover can only be provided by that which is at least large enough to actually cover you ;)

[Archaeik]

Soft Cover: wrote:

Creatures, even your enemies, can provide you with cover against ranged attacks, giving you a +4 bonus to AC. However, such soft cover provides no bonus on Reflex saves, nor does soft cover allow you to make a Stealth check.

As I read it, soft cover doesn't prevent AoO's unless it's a reach weapon (or Snap Shot), so it won't work for most of what you're hoping to accomplish.

Otherwise, I agree it's pretty weird, the soft cover rules don't mention anything about size, only an interposed creature (however, creatures that occupy lots of space have a harder time utilizing this cover.)

That said, you're using a move action to provide the soft cover with this trait, so it does seem to work "from behind", with the additional benefit of removing the restrictions large creatures have on receiving cover because you're thematically "moving" to whatever position they need you in (although your actual square does not change).

What I find less believable is that this trait isn't limited to a single creature per round (unless you pedantically read "an adjacent ally" to somehow limit its entirety rather than just the move action).

ps. Re: mounts, the rules are rather ill-defined, but from what I can tell, you both provoke for movement together, so the attacker only gets a single AoO to use against either of you. If your mount had cover vs that attack and you did not, the AoO should still be able to target you.
Cover does not prevent the provocation, but only prevents them from being able to use the opportunity. (expect some table variation though)

[Markov Spiked Chain]

Cool, it sounds like everything it's regular cover, even if I'm on the other side from the opponent.

Quote:

You can't execute an attack of opportunity against an opponent with cover relative to you.

Reach just has different rules for determining cover, so I think it will still stop AoOs.

[Archaeik]

I'm not sure what you mean, if the attacker is also adjacent to your ally and uses a melee attack, this trait cannot provide cover to them vs that attack because soft cover only works against ranged attacks.

It should stop reach AoO's since they determine cover using the ranged rules.