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Well, the cover rules give us a lot to work with;
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.
Low Obstacles and Cover: 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.
You might want to argue about a medium creature being only a low obstacle to a large creature, although that might not be the intent of the rule since there's a separate rule for large creatures.
Cover and Attacks of Opportunity: You can't execute an attack of opportunity against an opponent with cover relative to you.
Cover and Reflex Saves: Cover grants you a +2 bonus on Reflex saves against attacks that originate or burst out from a point on the other side of the cover from you. Note that spread effects can extend around corners and thus negate this cover bonus.
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.
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, nor does soft cover allow you to make a Stealth check.
Creatures can't provide you with cover against melee attacks, except for the proviso all the way at the top of the cover that melee attacks against non-adjacent targets used the ranged cover rules!
Further, this states that Soft Cover is a special variant of cover, and it goes on to outline the exact differences:
- Only against "ranged" attacks.
- No bonus to reflex saves.
- No Stealth
Everything that is not in that list remains the same!
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.
Also important. So it's entirely possible that some of the large enemy's squares are fully exposed to your attack, because your ally isn't big enough to fully shield it off. If there is even one square of your enemy (that you can attack, of course) that doesn't have cover, the enemy doesn't have cover from you.
Note that this rule talks about squares, not cubes. It's popular to think in cubes when handling 3D combat, but it's not actually a rule that formally exists.
Partial Cover: If a creature has cover, but more than half the creature is visible, its cover bonus is reduced to a +2 to AC and a +1 bonus on Reflex saving throws. This partial cover is subject to the GM's discretion.
Here we can, at the GM's discretion, account for a large creature towering over a smaller one and thus not getting complete cover. The problem is that not all creatures have well-known height. Some large creatures are as short as 5ft tall (horses), while others are 14 feet (trolls/giants). Meanwhile many medium creatures are more than 5ft tall. So you can't easily decide this based on creature sizes.
Because we have rules for determining cover of large creatures already, I'm inclined not to use partial cover rules but rather the rules for large creatures ("horizontal") and maybe Low Obstacles ("vertical") to perhaps fully deny a large creature cover if all he has to hide behind is someone much smaller.
To determine cover you need to go to all 4 corners of the square the enemy is. SO large is all 4 corners, not all four of 1 square in the enemy.
So if you're like this
.
Y
F
EE
EE
The enemy has partial cover since you have clear access to half of him, but your F still blocks some of your attack lines granting some sort of cover.
The rules clearly state that partial cover is at the GMs discretion, so the GM is always 100% right on that one.
That being said, I don't see anything that would indicate that a GM can't apply partial cover to soft cover just like any other type of cover.
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Hi everyone, was hoping to get some input on a rules dispute. The event organizer contends that Partial Cover does not apply to Soft Cover, arguing that Soft Cover is a unique case of the Cover rules (he used the Square-Rectangle analogy). I argue that there's nothing in the rules which supports his assertion and that it would of course make no sense that a Large-sized creature would receive the same amount of AC bonus versus a ranged attack from hiding behind Medium-sized creature as a Medium-sized creature would.
However, he's the event organizer and his word carries more weight than mine. However, he said that if I manage to get a consensus from the rules form or a ruling from a developer that he would change his mind.
So, what are people's thoughts on the matter?
Sounds like a GM discretion thing. So if the event requires all the GMs to rule a certain way on a specific rule, then does seem like this is the choice of the Event Organizer.
This is likely to avoid abuse of the cover rules. Otherwise you'll have people hiding behind pebbles claiming partial cover negates an attack of opportunity.
But yeah, since terrain is very often 'theatre of the mind' as to what is actually present in the room with you, the GM has to adjudicate how it all interacts.
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But yeah, since terrain is very often 'theatre of the mind' as to what is actually present in the room with you, the GM has to adjudicate how it all interacts.
Hmmm...would you suggest handling this one differently if the Game included WYSIWYG minatures for all the terrain and characters?
WYSIWYG is a tabletop wargame term. "What You See Is What You Get." The idea is that the models and terrain are exactly as big as they are modeled, a character has no more equipment than is shown on the model, and so forth. It can be fun to play like this, if the players (including the GM) are ambitious enough to actually keep up their models.
Can you draw a line from the corner of your square to all four corners of the opponent's squares and not have your ranged attack go through another creature's square?
No: Soft cover applies.
Yes: Soft cover doesn't apply.
Note that Big Creatures and Cover only specifies melee attacks choose a single one of its squares. Ranged attacks have to use the creature's full square area to determine cover by RAW.
As for partial soft cover, no such specific term exists in the rules. Partial cover gives a +1 bonus to Reflex saves by RAW, soft cover provides no bonus to Reflex saves by RAW. I don't see it being an unreasonable house rule, but it's not supported by RAW.
As for WYSIWYG, there's no way in hell I'm hand-crafting every damned mini my players fight with their exact equipment list!
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WYSIWYG: that would make sense for a LEGO-based RPG, but otherwise, crikey.
It's ambitious, but it's really fun. Takes some of the burden off the GM during play to describe what is what, since things (other than illusions) are exactly as they appear on the tabletop. More work for the GM and the players in preparation, but less work during the game. Once you get a sizable collection, it becomes less work in both preparation and during the game.
It's more common if the players already have existing Warhammer Armies (or a similar game). Really common for players of the Deathwatch RPG. Legos could work too (if using legos, playmobil weapons make great oversized weapons).
And for player characters, it really just means modeling the weapons/items they are holding, and then modeling a backpack or pockets. Not everything needs to be shown, just everything as it would appear to someone observing your character.
If a creature has cover, but more than half the creature is visible, its cover bonus is reduced to a +2 to AC and a +1 bonus on Reflex saving throws. This partial cover is subject to the GM's discretion.
If Soft Cover is cover, then, at the GMs's discretion, its bonus can be reduced to +2. If it's not cover then it doesn't interact with things like IPS. Only two possible readings of this. Either a thing is a thing or it is not a thing.