2 Stealth / Cover questions

[Krunk CN]

I know stealth is grossly open to interpretation. I wanted to check with people on how we are doing 2 things and make sure they sound right.

#1 Say there is an L shaped hallway with some players down one leg. The players are in combat fighting goblins. If there are an bunch of goblins coming around the corner using stealth, we handled it such that the player made a perception check opposed by their stealth on each turn one of them moved around the corner. If the player failed, the goblin got to shoot at the player using their flat footed ac. Does this seem right? If you have reasonable intent to assume things are coming but they are coming from cover using stealth do they all get that 1 flat footed shot on you assuming you fail the perception check?

#2 A player is standing in a tile that has shrubbery. They get Cover(or should it be partial) but can shoot out of the shrubbery using the corner of their tile without penalty because the corner is not in cover.

Thanks in advance

[Souel]

#1 Players do get a perception check, like you did. But they take negatives to perception for being in combat (distracted.) You would get that one flat-footed shot, also known as a surprise round.

#2 Player gets Concealment from the bush, because you can see through it but not clearly. Player can shoot from that square without penalty. HOWEVER if that square would be impassible you could, as a GM, rule he could not occupy that space. In any square that has some difficult/impassible terrain the whole square is treated as difficult/impassable terrain.
Additionally, if player is attempting to hide/conceal his actions he's taking a -20 stealth (without feats) to hide and shoot in the same round. If he's got redundant attacks he would need to take only one attack instead of 2, 3 or 4 to hide in his bush and maintain his stealth.

Respectfully,
Souel

[Ascalaphus]

1) Yes, the goblins can indeed keep coming out of the shadows one by one to attack the players flat-footed.

The reason this works is that to adequately defend yourself against an enemy, you need to have a relatively clear view of him. If you can't quite see him, it's much harder to defend against his blows. So even though you know there's a goblin somewhere in that shadowy corner, if you can't see him, you don't know when to dodge his arrow.

2) You can indeed keep hiding in the bushes. It's a classic tactic.

For archers there are two different types of stealth that you should distinguish:

a) sniping
b) simple hiding after each shot, as long as you have cover or concealment

Sniping is harder, that's the one with the -20 on the check. But if you succeed, people don't know where the arrow came from so they have a hard time either finding cover or going after the sniper.

Simple hiding is much much easier, but people know where the shot came from, because your attack reveals your position. It can still work though, if enemies can't get to your position for example.

[Krunk CN]

Souel wrote:

#1 Players do get a perception check, like you did. But they take negatives to perception for being in combat (distracted.) You would get that one flat-footed shot, also known as a surprise round.

#2 Player gets Concealment from the bush, because you can see through it but not clearly. Player can shoot from that square without penalty. HOWEVER if that square would be impassible you could, as a GM, rule he could not occupy that space. In any square that has some difficult/impassible terrain the whole square is treated as difficult/impassable terrain.
Additionally, if player is attempting to hide/conceal his actions he's taking a -20 stealth (without feats) to hide and shoot in the same round. If he's got redundant attacks he would need to take only one attack instead of 2, 3 or 4 to hide in his bush and maintain his stealth.

Respectfully,
Souel

Just for clarification, combat is already started so its not a surprise round, but I think your and the other guys answer concludes this question. Thanks all!