Leaning around Cover

[Erez Ben-Aharon]

The rulebook says:

"Your GM might let you reduce or negate cover by leaning around a corner to shoot or the like. This usually takes an action to set up, and the GM might measure cover from an edge or corner of your space instead of your center."

Assuming that I want to incorporate it (and I think it is a cool rule), would you say that if they want to attack twice the procedure is Lean->Strike->Strike->UnLean(for free),
or do they have to Re-Lean before the 2nd Strike (with the leaning being an in/out for only a single strike)?

[Claxon]

I would say leaning in or out costs an action. So if you want to begin and end your turn with cover you need to spend two actions.

Although thinking about it that would be equivalent to just steping in and out from cover some I'm not sure if that's fair.

The rulebook implies the whole thing should cost at least one action.

Not sure what to do really.

[Captain Morgan]

The idea of leaning around cover is that you keep the cover bonus for your own AC but remove it from your Target's AC bonus. "Leaning back" wouldn't be a thing. The closest equivalent would be using the "Take Cover" action, but that's specifically increasing your AC bonus to +4.

You could stride out of the line of fire completely instead, but you'd need to use an action to reposition yourself where you wouldn't for the Take Cover action. That just ends when you attack. (Though a Running Reload ranger could utilize that stride option pretty well I reckon.)

It helps when you consider that turns are supposed to be happening simultaneously and you look at combat in a cover based shooter like Gears of War. Using Leans or Take Cover are pretty much popping in and out of cover to take shots; it makes you harder to hit but you can still get shot while you're popped up.