Does having total cover also grant that +10 to Stealth? If not, why not?If you have total cover, you're not visible. If you're not visible, you're invisible. That's +20 to stealth.
Yeah, but do those stack. I would think the bonus for cover and the bonus for invisibility should stack. It's not just about not being seen, it's about having even your sounds blocked by an object.
Continuing the stealth shenanigans, I just noticed:
Cover and Stealth Checks: You can use cover to make a Stealth check. Without cover, you usually need concealment (see below) to make a Stealth check.
So, since teammates can provide cover, a rogue can end his turn behind his teammates to restealth, which is not an action unless the rogue used a ranged attack, which means he needs to take a move action to restealth. I wonder how many rogues use this?
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Because the 3.0 cover rules are simpler and more intuitive so we use them instead. The 3.5/Pathfinder rules for cover are just obtuse.They're the same rules, dude.Nope, they are completely different. The 3.0 rules are much clearer and simpler to apply.
EDIT: removed the actual rules list since the formatting was terrible. Check here for the rule instead (under Combat Modifiers).
If you look at the rules for Cover under the d20srd.org webpage, I think you'll find they are. Though, that may be 3.5 rules, now that I think of it.
Also, how in the name of the lord of all unholy eldritch horrors is THIS simpler to apply?!?
My issues with the rules are the dumb way its presented.
"So here is how you determine cover. This is what cover means. Oh, and here is a different type of cover with different rules. And here's another type of cover. Oh, and here's a third type of cover that is sort of like the first type but different. Oh, and here's the rules for large creatures and cover."
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Sometimes I ignore the cover rules because I am the most rules savvy person in the group, and not all of them can handle too much rules bloat at once. Most of my players are casual and typically we have a rotating seat for a new and inexperienced player.
I will sometimes incorporate the cover rules into my enemy designs though. Once I had a cleric lich undead master who had literally an army of undead. She surrounded herself with 8 burning zombies whom she commanded to aid her every turn for increased AC, which made her nigh impossible to get to. It was a fun exercise in strategy because at that point the players were used to "cast dispel, run in and kill it" kind of fights.
My issues with the rules are the dumb way its presented.
"So here is how you determine cover. This is what cover means. Oh, and here is a different type of cover with different rules. And here's another type of cover. Oh, and here's a third type of cover that is sort of like the first type but different. Oh, and here's the rules for large creatures and cover."
It's really just giving another name to the types of cover (of which there is one fewer type now), but I see your point. Though, I'd still take away major points as far as simplicity goes for 3.0's "Striking the Cover Instead of a Missed Target" bit. I mean, that's just a bit of a mess right there.
I often see the rules applied incorrectly, but I'm not sure I've seen them totally ignored.
When GMing PFS, I get a lot of "if I move here does he have cover? How about here?" and "Why does he have cover?", often in an annoyed tone, as though I personally wrote the cover rules. :P
Also, like many things in Pathfinder, the cover rules are saddled with too many exceptions in service of (a misguided attempt at) realism.
Does having total cover also grant that +10 to Stealth? If not, why not?If you have total cover, you're not visible. If you're not visible, you're invisible. That's +20 to stealth.
I...don't think that's true. Not being seen is not the same as the invisible condition.
Does that mean that using stealth gives the invisible condition and thus lets a stealth user move around without cover(since they have total concealment).
I like that this also applies to hearing based perception rolls as well
I...don't think that's true. Not being seen is not the same as the invisible condition.Does having total cover also grant that +10 to Stealth? If not, why not?If you have total cover, you're not visible. If you're not visible, you're invisible. That's +20 to stealth.
I don't think he meant it by rules. I just took it as hilarious. Also, I love it.
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I don't think he meant it by rules. I just took it as hilarious. Also, I love it.I...don't think that's true. Not being seen is not the same as the invisible condition.Does having total cover also grant that +10 to Stealth? If not, why not?If you have total cover, you're not visible. If you're not visible, you're invisible. That's +20 to stealth.
It's true by the rules I play by. If there's a rules difference between being unable to see someone because of ten feet of thick fog, invisibility, a brick wall, darkness, or my hat slipping down over my eyes, I don't want to know about it.
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IMO merging Spot and Listen sounded great, but was ultimately a BAD IDEA(tm).
Some of the cove rules are kinda silly. A gargantuan dragon with a tiny bat familiar in front of it is almost guaranteed to have cover from an archer in the same direction as the bat.
It would actually make more sense than the current rules. Being on the other side of a wall is only +10 per foot of thickness. (I don't know if that rounds up or down, assuming it was a standard couple of inches or less interior wall.)
Being invisible on the other side of the wall would add another +20. Even though you couldn't have seen them anyway.Edit: This all makes a little more sense if you remember it's caused by a merging of the Spot & Listen (or the Move Silently and Hide) skills. In 3.x, you couldn't Spot the person on the other side of the wall, but you might hear them, with a +10 to the DC for foot of thickness. The invisibility wouldn't have mattered to the Listen roll and you couldn't Spot them anyway, so there was no weirdness with an invisible person on the other side of a wall being harder to detect than a visible one.
Again: that's why I love it. It merges two different rules designs that, otherwise, would be weirdly conflicting.
Incidentally, I drop the +20 for invisibility, and just make it grant concealment/automatically allow stealth checks.
Fun fun fun (with house rules).
This may be unusual, but I've played or GMed across six campaigns, and I've never seen an optimized archer.
With a non-optimized ranged attack, cover works like this:
Cleric: "Well, I'm low on spells, and I can't get into melee, so I throw my spear at the ogre. Let's see, my BAB is 2 and I've got +1 for Dex, and +1 for Divine Favor, and +1 for Bless. I rolled a 19, so that's 24 total. AC of 17, you said?"
GM: "Right, but you're firing into melee with -4, and the barbarian acts as cover between you and the ogre for a second -4... So you miss."
I've only ever applied the -4 for "firing into melee" with your ally/ies engaged - adding a second -4 for cover seems overly pernicious and redundant/repetitive, especially if there are only two combatants... your ally, and the target.
As an aside, and so I can break this all down - what if you are "firing into melee" that has only two hostiles fighting each other, perpendicular to your position? That is just straight firing at an enemy, is it not?
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Draw a line from one corner of your square to each corner of the opponent's square, if any one of those lines crosses something solid (including another creature) the opponent has cover.
Draw a line from one corner of your square to each corner of the opponent's square, if any one of those lines crosses something solid (including another creature) the opponent has cover.
But if more than 50% of the square doesn't have cover then it only has partial cover.
Draw a line from one corner of your square to each corner of the opponent's square, if any one of those lines crosses something solid (including another creature) the opponent has cover.But if more than 50% of the square doesn't have cover then it only has partial cover.
This partial cover is subject to the GM's discretion.
Edit: all that said, it certainly isn't anywhere near the most fiddly bit of the Pathfinder system.
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Some of the cove rules are kinda silly. A gargantuan dragon with a tiny bat familiar in front of it is almost guaranteed to have cover from an archer in the same direction as the bat.
*sigh* No. A bat is tiny, meaning it has a 0 ft. by 0 ft. presence on the battlefield. It's all but IMPOSSIBLE for such a creature to provide cover for the rules. More importantly, when attacking a large creature at range (from the way this scenario is phrased that seems to be what you're hinting at), you get to chose the line of attack from any corner of your square to all of the corners of ANY of the target's occupied squares. That means every 5 ft. cube the dragon occupies is fair game. It's gargantuan, 20 ft. by 20 ft. by 20 ft. I'll let others do that math.
I've only ever applied the -4 for "firing into melee" with your ally/ies engaged - adding a second -4 for cover seems overly pernicious and redundant/repetitive, especially if there are only two combatants... your ally, and the target.
Then you're doing it wrong and missing the point. See below.
As an aside, and so I can break this all down - what if you are "firing into melee" that has only two hostiles fighting each other, perpendicular to your position? That is just straight firing at an enemy, is it not?
No, it is not. You are firing into melee. Remember that those two combatants are moving around. A lot. Even if their figures are just standing still. You, as the archer, now have extra difficulty trying to pick the timing and the location of your shot to guarantee that you don't accidentally hit your ally. It could be bad if you fire off a quick shot, just as your target took a half step back and your ally lunged in, only to get your arrow in his arm instead of in your enemy where it belonged.
So you make the extra effort and it costs you a -4 penalty for firing into melee.
This is true no matter the relative position to you. In a straight line perpendicular to you, in a straight line with your enemy between you and your ally (hate to see that enemy juke left just as your arrow passes through the now empty air and into your ally's face), in a diagonal line, whatever - you always have to be extra careful so you take the penalty.
Now, if your ally is between you and the target, you get both penalties. One for timing your shot so carefully to miss your ally (firing into melee, -4 on the attack roll), and one for the fact that your target has cover (soft cover from your ally, +4 to the target's AC).
It actually kind of makes sense when you think of it this way.
Some of the cove rules are kinda silly. A gargantuan dragon with a tiny bat familiar in front of it is almost guaranteed to have cover from an archer in the same direction as the bat.*sigh* No. A bat is tiny, meaning it has a 0 ft. by 0 ft. presence on the battlefield. It's all but IMPOSSIBLE for such a creature to provide cover for the rules. More importantly, when attacking a large creature at range (from the way this scenario is phrased that seems to be what you're hinting at), you get to chose the line of attack from any corner of your square to all of the corners of ANY of the target's occupied squares. That means every 5 ft. cube the dragon occupies is fair game. It's gargantuan, 20 ft. by 20 ft. by 20 ft. I'll let others do that math.
Right there you're demonstrating why no one follows the cover rules. They're complicated enough that you got a rule wrong (you check to all corners so the defender effectively picks what square to defend from) and silly enough that you have to find some raw workaround to avoid some aspects of it. You felt confident enough in your answer to sigh at the ignorance of other posters... when you were in fact wrong twice.
or through a square occupied by a creature, the target has cover (+4 to AC).
You can try to say that the square isn't "occupied" by a tiny creature but that's a rules argument, not the rules.
I read any corner as any of 1 4 corners, which USUALLY means a line through the bat. Reading that as one of the corners of any square guarantees a line through the bat.
I've only ever applied the -4 for "firing into melee" with your ally/ies engaged - adding a second -4 for cover seems overly pernicious and redundant/repetitive, especially if there are only two combatants... your ally, and the target.Then you're doing it wrong and missing the point. See below.
As an aside, and so I can break this all down - what if you are "firing into melee" that has only two hostiles fighting each other, perpendicular to your position? That is just straight firing at an enemy, is it not?No, it is not. You are firing into melee. Remember that those two combatants are moving around. A lot. Even if their figures are just standing still. You, as the archer, now have extra difficulty trying to pick the timing and the location of your shot to guarantee that you don't accidentally hit your ally. It could be bad if you fire off a quick shot, just as your target took a half step back and your ally lunged in, only to get your arrow in his arm instead of in your enemy where it belonged.
So you make the extra effort and it costs you a -4 penalty for firing into melee.
This is true no matter the relative position to you. In a straight line perpendicular to you, in a straight line with your enemy between you and your ally (hate to see that enemy juke left just as your arrow passes through the now empty air and into your ally's face), in a diagonal line, whatever - you always have to be extra careful so you take the penalty.
Now, if your ally is between you and the target, you get both penalties. One for timing your shot so carefully to miss your ally (firing into melee, -4 on the attack roll), and one for the fact that your target has cover (soft cover from your ally, +4 to the target's AC).
It actually kind of makes sense when you think of it this way.
Thanks DM_Blake. That does clear things up a lot.
Although I think you miss the point about melee in which there is no ally. Essentially what you are saying is that if you are firing at any creature that isn't just standing there, not fighting, you get -4 to hit. Which means you are saying archers (without feat support/abilities) are always hit with a -4 penalty unless combat has not started. Is that right?
from the quotes provided thusfar on the thread, it actually states that the creature attacked gets to determine cover from whatever square they choose... not the attackers choice, the defenders.
What quote are you thinking of? I see this one giving the attacker a choice:
"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."...and nothing about whether the same rule applies to ranged attacks.
So you make the extra effort and it costs you a -4 penalty for firing into melee.
This is true no matter the relative position to you. In a straight line perpendicular to you, in a straight line with your enemy between you and your ally (hate to see that enemy juke left just as your arrow passes through the now empty air and into your ally's face), in a diagonal line, whatever - you always have to be extra careful so you take the penalty.
Now, if your ally is between you and the target, you get both penalties. One for timing your shot so carefully to miss your ally (firing into melee, -4 on the attack roll), and one for the fact that your target has cover (soft cover from your ally, +4 to the target's AC).
It actually kind of makes sense when you think of it this way.
See - I always thought the -4 penalty for firing into melee (without the appropriate Feat) WAS the soft cover penalty. I never imposed both.
Maybe a more 'interesting' option might be to use a variation on critical fumble rules. If you normally run a chance of a fumble on a natural 1, then perhaps partial cover could expand that to a 1-2, and full cover to 1-3 (similar to expanding critical hit threat range). This makes the chances still relatively low that you're actually going to shoot your buddy in the back, but the chance will actually be there, making it at least part of the conversation.
Critical fumbles are never a viable variant.
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It's not really FAQ worthy, but it'd be nice if we could get a blog post that has a more comprehensive list of cover examples. There is a little diagram in the book, with several examples of cover in one image. But I think several images each detailing their own example would probably be easier for people to understand. This would be perfect for a blog post.
On another topic, I don't think creatures smaller than small should grant cover as they "take up less than 1 square of space". At the best these little creatures should only offer partial cover. I know that's a house rule, but I feel it's the sort of house rule that is supported by the RAI.
Critical fumbles are never a viable variant.
Briefly getting off topic here, but in case he's wondering why, critical fumbles are only bad, because they punish martials while being completely ignorable by casters. I could easily make a very powerful caster who only ever needs to roll a d20 to make a save. And in a game where casters already have a bit of an advantage over martials, something that penalizes martials while ignoring casters is a bad idea.
This point is why firearms have critical fumbles baked in. Their ability to hit touch AC is supposed to be offset by the possibility of a misfire.
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Does having total cover also grant that +10 to Stealth? If not, why not?If you have total cover, you're not visible. If you're not visible, you're invisible. That's +20 to stealth.
While I'm 99% sure this is incorrect, I find the reasoning both flawless and hilarious. :D
On topic, I wonder if part of the archer dominance is that people are reading the cover rules, ahem... Creatively. Luckily Precise Shot removes the firing into melee factor pretty early on.
Cover gives an AC bonus, so the defender should add the bonus to his armor class.So, is it the responsibility of the defender to determine if he has cover or the responsibility of the attacker to inform the defender that he gets a +4 to his AC. It seems like a really backwards design.
I agree with Ravingdork, I'd say it's the GM's responsibility to adjudicate the cover rules. Most times a quick eyeball should be enough, though at least with Roll20 the measuring tool is a literal mouse click away.
Looks like you're misquoting me, Kudaku. I never said any of that.
Looks like you're misquoting me, Kudaku. I never said any of that.
My apologies, I did indeed misquote you! I was referring to this post:
So, is it the responsibility of the defender to determine if he has cover or the responsibility of the attacker to inform the defender that he gets a +4 to his AC.It's the responsibility of the GM to determine who gets cover and to make sure it's applied.
I'd go back and edit but the one-hour window has closed. :-(
Honestly, I haven't played PF for long, but archery as a combat style completely underwhelmed me. Our group is all melee except for a wizard and an archer bard. We're not high level yet, but our archer has missed the vast majority of his shots, because it is ridiculously easy for bad guys to get cover. If any of us are engaged with a bad guy, that's cover right there, and with 3 melee combatants in our group, the bad guys pretty much always have cover. That -4 penalty to hit is a real b--ch too.
I can see archery being awesome for a Ranger or ZA Monk, but without Improved Precise Shot or some other way to reduce or eliminate cover penalties, archers seem pretty bad to me.
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Honestly, I haven't played PF for long, but archery as a combat style completely underwhelmed me. Our group is all melee except for a wizard and an archer bard. We're not high level yet, but our archer has missed the vast majority of his shots, because it is ridiculously easy for bad guys to get cover. If any of us are engaged with a bad guy, that's cover right there, and with 3 melee combatants in our group, the bad guys pretty much always have cover. That -4 penalty to hit is a real b--ch too.
I can see archery being awesome for a Ranger or ZA Monk, but without Improved Precise Shot or some other way to reduce or eliminate cover penalties, archers seem pretty bad to me.
Hit starts outpacing AC badly after a certain point, and the "move or do damage" dichotomy for melee starts to kick in. Trust the people that have been around a few times, archery gets nasty.
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Honestly, I haven't played PF for long, but archery as a combat style completely underwhelmed me. Our group is all melee except for a wizard and an archer bard. We're not high level yet, but our archer has missed the vast majority of his shots, because it is ridiculously easy for bad guys to get cover. If any of us are engaged with a bad guy, that's cover right there, and with 3 melee combatants in our group, the bad guys pretty much always have cover. That -4 penalty to hit is a real b--ch too.
I can see archery being awesome for a Ranger or ZA Monk, but without Improved Precise Shot or some other way to reduce or eliminate cover penalties, archers seem pretty bad to me.
I think the key word you are missing is archer bard. Bards aren't ever that good at combat, ranged or otherwise.
But yes, any ranged build that doesn't include Improved Precise Shot isn't really a ranged build.
Hit starts outpacing AC badly after a certain point, and the "move or do damage" dichotomy for melee starts to kick in. Trust the people that have been around a few times, archery gets nasty.Honestly, I haven't played PF for long, but archery as a combat style completely underwhelmed me. Our group is all melee except for a wizard and an archer bard. We're not high level yet, but our archer has missed the vast majority of his shots, because it is ridiculously easy for bad guys to get cover. If any of us are engaged with a bad guy, that's cover right there, and with 3 melee combatants in our group, the bad guys pretty much always have cover. That -4 penalty to hit is a real b--ch too.
I can see archery being awesome for a Ranger or ZA Monk, but without Improved Precise Shot or some other way to reduce or eliminate cover penalties, archers seem pretty bad to me.
Ah, understood. Thanks for clearing this up for me, our group is only 6th lvl, so I didn't understand what made archers so great. I guess we're too low level to see how nasty archers can get.
Ah, understood. Thanks for clearing this up for me, our group is only 6th lvl, so I didn't understand what made archers so great. I guess we're too low level to see how nasty archers can get.Hit starts outpacing AC badly after a certain point, and the "move or do damage" dichotomy for melee starts to kick in. Trust the people that have been around a few times, archery gets nasty.Honestly, I haven't played PF for long, but archery as a combat style completely underwhelmed me. Our group is all melee except for a wizard and an archer bard. We're not high level yet, but our archer has missed the vast majority of his shots, because it is ridiculously easy for bad guys to get cover. If any of us are engaged with a bad guy, that's cover right there, and with 3 melee combatants in our group, the bad guys pretty much always have cover. That -4 penalty to hit is a real b--ch too.
I can see archery being awesome for a Ranger or ZA Monk, but without Improved Precise Shot or some other way to reduce or eliminate cover penalties, archers seem pretty bad to me.
Lv6/lv7 full BAB archers can get off at least 4 arrows a turn, doing at least 1d8+10 damage. Also they can do that EVERY TURN because people are always in range for a full attack. Where a melee will do 2d6+14 per hit, but has 2 attacks and often only 1 attack.
Yeah I see how that would be very powerful.
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Lv6/lv7 full BAB archers can get off at least 4 arrows a turn, doing at least 1d8+10 damage. Also they can do that EVERY TURN because people are always in range for a full attack. Where a melee will do 2d6+14 per hit, but has 2 attacks and often only 1 attack.Ah, understood. Thanks for clearing this up for me, our group is only 6th lvl, so I didn't understand what made archers so great. I guess we're too low level to see how nasty archers can get.Hit starts outpacing AC badly after a certain point, and the "move or do damage" dichotomy for melee starts to kick in. Trust the people that have been around a few times, archery gets nasty.Honestly, I haven't played PF for long, but archery as a combat style completely underwhelmed me. Our group is all melee except for a wizard and an archer bard. We're not high level yet, but our archer has missed the vast majority of his shots, because it is ridiculously easy for bad guys to get cover. If any of us are engaged with a bad guy, that's cover right there, and with 3 melee combatants in our group, the bad guys pretty much always have cover. That -4 penalty to hit is a real b--ch too.
I can see archery being awesome for a Ranger or ZA Monk, but without Improved Precise Shot or some other way to reduce or eliminate cover penalties, archers seem pretty bad to me.
Also an archer can switch special materials much easier when encountering DR. Unless the melee guy spends a feat he loses his full attack to switch weapons if he needs to switch materials. And then there is Cluster Shot.
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Even worse, when a melee character switches weapons he likely loses +'s, because you can't afford to enchant all of your weapons equally.
Some of the cove rules are kinda silly. A gargantuan dragon with a tiny bat familiar in front of it is almost guaranteed to have cover from an archer in the same direction as the bat.*sigh* No. A bat is tiny, meaning it has a 0 ft. by 0 ft. presence on the battlefield. It's all but IMPOSSIBLE for such a creature to provide cover for the rules. More importantly, when attacking a large creature at range (from the way this scenario is phrased that seems to be what you're hinting at), you get to chose the line of attack from any corner of your square to all of the corners of ANY of the target's occupied squares. That means every 5 ft. cube the dragon occupies is fair game. It's gargantuan, 20 ft. by 20 ft. by 20 ft. I'll let others do that math.Right there you're demonstrating why no one follows the cover rules. They're complicated enough that you got a rule wrong (you check to all corners so the defender effectively picks what square to defend from) and silly enough that you have to find some raw workaround to avoid some aspects of it. You felt confident enough in your answer to sigh at the ignorance of other posters... when you were in fact wrong twice.
or through a square occupied by a creature, the target has cover (+4 to AC).
You can try to say that the square isn't "occupied" by a tiny creature but that's a rules argument, not the rules.
I read any corner as any of 1 4 corners, which USUALLY means a line through the bat. Reading that as one of the corners of any square guarantees a line through the bat.
*reads the rules again more closely* Well, dammit it. I hereby retract my arguments in this thread in favor of the cover rules. Sorry about that. Guess I need to put down something else on my house rules list to get around an incredibly stupid as-written rules set.
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Draw a line from one corner of your square to each corner of the opponent's square, if any one of those lines crosses something solid (including another creature) the opponent has cover.
I wish that was the wording in the book, it means the same thing but they imply but skip saying explicitly to trace each of those lines. I have a lot of players who interpret it that if any of the lines don't cross than no cover exists, which is wrong.
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The discussion of gaining various bonuses to Stealth for having cover is kind of interesting. The fact that you get a -20 on your Perception check to notice an invisible Ninja sneaking into your camp with a running chainsaw seems pretty weird to me, so I've been thinking about house rules to let the Perception skill be used to hear creatures without seeing them (and perhaps see them without hearing them though situations where you'd have a penalty to hear but not see might not come up as often)
I disagree with thorin001's statement that, "Critical fumbles are never a viable variant". Everybody I play with uses the Fumble Deck, and most of them love it. It probably helps that we also use Hero Points and you can spend a point to make a card go away. Honestly we get far more complaints about the Critical Hit deck since there's one guy who rolls lots of crits and has an uncanny ability to draw the "normal damage" cards.
That said, I think that expanding the fumble range when there's cover would be a bad idea. I suppose that a DM who wants to really stress the value of cover could have attacks which miss due to cover target the cover instead. Too much of this might get people thinking about where all the other arrows which miss end up though. We already track where misses end up for bombs, but I'm not sure how many groups would want to do it for arrows and bullets too.
Why do a lot of groups not use the cover rules?
Pure unbridled hatred and a cold, dead heart, mostly.
I've seen this mentioned on the boards and I've seen it in actual play. It seems that a lot of people just don't use the rules for cover. Does anyone have any ideas on why, though? Are those rules too complicated? Are they somehow not fun?
I used cover once so far. It made sense in the situation (alchemist throwing bombs up a tower), favored the players (they were on the tower) and was easy to grasp (+x AC for you).
Since they are rather new to the game, I like to keep things simple. If they face a new encounter, they might also face one or two new rulesets (e.g. cover), but more would cause confusion and stress. And it's good if both sides can profit from a ruleset, else the players will simply hate it.
Personally, I'd put these many cover rules in some 'advanced' book. They can be great in some situations, but I wouldn't stress new players and GMs with them.
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Does having total cover also grant that +10 to Stealth? If not, why not?If you have total cover, you're not visible. If you're not visible, you're invisible. That's +20 to stealth.Yeah, but do those stack. I would think the bonus for cover and the bonus for invisibility should stack. It's not just about not being seen, it's about having even your sounds blocked by an object.
Continuing the stealth shenanigans, I just noticed:
Cover and Stealth Checks: You can use cover to make a Stealth check. Without cover, you usually need concealment (see below) to make a Stealth check.So, since teammates can provide cover, a rogue can end his turn behind his teammates to restealth, which is not an action unless the rogue used a ranged attack, which means he needs to take a move action to restealth. I wonder how many rogues use this?
I'm pretty sure there's an exception under soft cover against using it for stealth. Though the Giant Hunter's Handbook has new rules for hiding behind larger creatures.
On topic, I'm surprised so many people have trouble with the cover rules. All my games use them and we've never had much difficulty.
Even at levels 10-11 the penalty can be noticeable. Same as my ranger losing his favored enemy bonus! :o
We don't usually care who applies the modifiers (attack penalty or AC bonus) since they have the same result.
Little disappointed this turned into a rules discussion. =/ I think the idea of "choosing the square you aim at" as being melee-only is misguided. I believe the penalty for "in combat" is removed once creatures reach a certain size because you can aim elsewhere on their body. Seems like the rules are just incomplete on soft cover in that situation (nothing new).
If your target (or the part of your target you're aiming at, if it's a big target) is at least 10 feet away from the nearest friendly character, you can avoid the –4 penalty, even if the creature you're aiming at is engaged in melee with a friendly character.If your target is two size categories larger than the friendly characters it is engaged with, this penalty is reduced to –2. There is no penalty for firing at a creature that is three size categories larger than the friendly characters it is engaged with.
You can aim at different parts of a large creature with ranged attacks.
As an aside, and so I can break this all down - what if you are "firing into melee" that has only two hostiles fighting each other, perpendicular to your position?
"If your target (or the part of your target you're aiming at, if it's a big target) is at least 10 feet away from the nearest friendly character, you can avoid the –4 penalty."
So firing-into-melee penalties really only apply to melees where an ally is involved.
So, since teammates can provide cover, a rogue can end his turn behind his teammates to restealth, which is not an action unless the rogue used a ranged attack, which means he needs to take a move action to restealth. I wonder how many rogues use this?I'm pretty sure there's an exception under soft cover against using it for stealth.
Soft Cover: 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, .