Here's the situation. A huge flying creature is trying to attack past a wall of stone. The wall of stone has a 5' gap along its top parallel to the ceiling. Assuming our huge flying creature makes its hover check, can it use its natural reach through that gap to attack creatures on the other side? Do those creatures get cover?
Conversely, assume that our huge flying creature is flush with the ceiling. Two thirds of its body are concealed by the wall of stone. Does it get cover from creatures attacking from the far side of the wall?
I assume that the answer likes somewhere in the "Big Creatures and Cover" rules...
Combat Chapter wrote: 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. ...But the squeezing rules and the differences between melee and ranged cover are messing with my head. Could I get a hand breaking this mess down?
assuming the people on the other side are strait ahead and not diagonal to the hole there should be no cover. hes not squeezing in just attacking in. its most likely they will have cover though.
Point 2 of the Cover Example diagram mentions "The ogre has melee cover from her, but if it attacks her, the rogue does not have cover from it, as the ogre has reach (so it figures attacks as if attacking with a ranged weapon)." So creatures with reach factor cover as if using ranged weapons. The first sentence at the top of the Cover paragraph states:
"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)."
In your scenario, there are tons of corners of the Huge Flying Creature's square, whichever he picks I'd assume, that would pass through walls, so we've determined these creatures have cover of some sort. Now, after "drawing" (hopefully mentally) all the lines from your chosen corner of a square of the Huge Flying Creature's squares to the corners of the square(s) of the target it's attacking, calculate if more if than half of those lines *DO NOT* pass through walls (it's not half, it's more than half). If more than half of the lines do not pass through walls, the target only has soft cover.
So, to reiterate: The attacking Huge Flying Creature picks a corner of any square it inhabits (obviously it would pick the best square possible, unless you wanted to play a creature less than optimally), after picking that corner, you draw lines to every corner of squares that the creature you're attacking inhabits. If even a single line makes it, the victim has cover but the creature can attack. If more than half of the lines make it, but even one does not, the creature has soft cover. If every line makes it, the victim has no cover.
Don't get this confused with non-ranged or non-reach cover rules. If your target is adjacent to you and you do not have natural reach, "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)". As far as I am aware, there is no rule for soft cover in melee attacks. The target either has cover or it does not. Creatures with natural reach *always* factor cover as a ranged character, whether their target is adjacent or not.
Although to be honest, you should be asking how thick the wall of stone is. Default is one inch thick per 4 caster levels. Rules for breaking it, which your Huge Flying Creature should consider, are
"If a creature tries to break through the wall with a single attack, the DC for the Strength check is 20 + 2 per inch of thickness."
So, unless he intentionally made his wall shorter to make it thicker, the thickest it's going to be is 5 inches... DC 30 Strength check for a huge sized creature? My guess is your Huge Flying Creature has about an 80%+ chance to bust through the wall on his first try.
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The results of the rules RAWmonger gave is the following:
- The monster always choose the top right corner of the top right square to attack
- adventurers in 'a' positions have no cover (lines from chosen corner can go to all corners of 'a' without hindrance
- adventurers in 'b' positions have light cover (lines from chosen corner can go to 3 corners of 'b' without hindrance, for 1 corner the line passes on a border
-adventurer in 'c' position have cover (lines from chosen corner can go to 2 corners of 'c' without hindrance, for 2 corners the line passes on a border)
RAWmonger wrote: Point 2 of the Cover Example diagram mentions "The ogre has melee cover from her, but if it attacks her, the rogue does not have cover from it, as the ogre has reach (so it figures attacks as if attacking with a ranged weapon)." So creatures with reach factor cover as if using ranged weapons. The first sentence at the top of the Cover paragraph states:
"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)."
In your scenario, there are tons of corners of the Huge Flying Creature's square, whichever he picks I'd assume, that would pass through walls, so we've determined these creatures have cover of some sort. Now, after "drawing" (hopefully mentally) all the lines from your chosen corner of a square of the Huge Flying Creature's squares to the corners of the square(s) of the target it's attacking, calculate if more if than half of those lines *DO NOT* pass through walls (it's not half, it's more than half). If more than half of the lines do not pass through walls, the target only has soft cover.
So, to reiterate: The attacking Huge Flying Creature picks a corner of any square it inhabits (obviously it would pick the best square possible, unless you wanted to play a creature less than optimally), after picking that corner, you draw lines to every corner of squares that the creature you're attacking inhabits. If even a single line makes it, the victim has cover but the creature can attack. If more than half of the lines make it, but even one does not, the creature has soft cover. If every line makes it, the victim has no cover.
Don't get this confused with non-ranged or non-reach cover rules. If your target is adjacent to you and you do not have natural...
This, except substitute "partial cover" for "soft cover", which is a different thing.
Edit: Depending on the size differences between the attacker and the opening, the GM might call it improved cover, but there's no hard and fast rule for determining that.
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