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My experienced group who've played some 2E Playtest, feel that cover needs fixing. We like that 1E's Cover rules stimulated more tactical decisions and encouraged movement and thus a more dynamic and less stagnant combat.
With 2E cover penalties being much less an issue, and with Starfinder being MORE ranged combat focused, cover needs fixing.
Here's one idea.
Find Defensive Position
[one-action] Move up to half your speed. If you end up in a position of lesser cover relative to your attacker, increase your cover to normal cover. If you end up in a position with cover relative to your attacker, increase your cover to greater cover.
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I very much agree with the criticism; I've encountered the same problem in my games where ranged combat would have characters entrenching themselves in cover all the way through. Nobody really budged unless they were a Solarian or a rotolaser Soldier, because exposing yourself put you at a disadvantage, and the best you could do when negating an enemy's cover is put them back on the same level as you. Exocist appears to have a different, but similar experience in their playtests where enemies would Stride out of a wall, Strike, then Stride back behind the wall so that they'd protect themselves from ranged attacks entirely, drawing fights out even further. Things need to change so that Taking Cover becomes only desirable for short periods of time, with characters having to move in-between.
A few people have suggested a single action to move and Take Cover at the same time, and I'll be interested in trying the version suggested in the OP. My one fear with it is that it would make it even easier to get entrenched in cover, as from my experience characters who Took Cover rarely left it unless forced to. With the version suggested in the OP specifically, it also looks like once someone's in cover, that character could just Find Defensive Position to immediately get into greater cover each turn after Striking if they're near cover.
Similarly, I really like the idea behind using differences in elevation to reduce or ignore cover, though not every map will feature those differences, and not every character will be able to fly or create that difference either. In general, though, the idea of catching enemies at an angle where they're exposed as a gameplay mechanic I think ought to be implemented in some form, as that would make gameplay much more dynamic.
In my playtests, I also tried out a few changes to make ranged fighting more dynamic. If interested, there's a rules adjustment to Taking Cover and two universal actions in the spoiler below:
Cover Exposure: Taking cover exposes you from angles where you’re not covered. If you’re Taking Cover at the end of your turn, you’re off-guard to attacks against which you don’t benefit from cover until the start of your next turn.
You pull a willing adjacent ally into cover, or help them retreat further into cover. The ally Takes Cover.
You help a willing adjacent ally’s shot find its mark against a designated target you’re observing. Choose how you help your ally, which gives Spot a corresponding trait: you can help your ally with advice, adding the auditory trait, by pointing to the target, adding the visual trait, or by using an appendage to guide their attack, adding the manipulate trait. The GM might allow other ways to help your ally.
Until the start of your next turn, the ally’s next ranged attack against the target gains a circumstance bonus to damage equal to half your level (minimum 1). A target benefiting from greater cover against the attack has the benefits of standard cover against it instead, and a target benefiting from standard cover has the benefits of lesser cover instead.
The net result was that although characters still Took Cover (and could help each other Take Cover if an ally needed to do something else), characters also moved around more to try to catch enemies off-guard behind cover. Spot incentivized characters to group together, which was of major benefit to the Soldier in particular, and the combination of these changes accelerated fights by quite a bit, making them closer in pace to Pathfinder fights.
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I’ve been using Starfinder flip-mats for my playtests, and it tends to go one of three ways
1) You get the wide open flip mat, in which case no one takes cover because there isn’t really much cover to take in the first place.
2) You get the incredibly densely walled flip mat, in which case no one takes cover because it’s better to just move out of line of sight instead.
3) You get the rare flipmat which has an okay amount of cover and open spaces. In which case Taking Cover has still been a rarity for me because it’s so easy to get around it, and cover is bidirectional (by the center to center rule) meaning that if you go into cover you make your own attacks worse.
From the classes we’ve seen
Operatives typically don’t care about cover. With Mobile Aim they have such good mobility (the level 8 operative is currently sporting a 45ft land speed without really giving up much) that they can easily move to a position where Center to Center cover doesn’t apply. Not to mention Aim itself reducing cover bonuses (though it doesn’t ignore standard cover until 11th).
Soldiers have the same bonus. With Shot on the Run they can easily move to get around the enemy’s cover.
Solarians are primarily melee and therefore don’t really care about cover, they’ll often need to move close enough to attack, which means moving close enough to get around cover.
Witchwarpers and Mystics, being spellcasters, also don’t really care as they can just launch a will or fort spell.
That only leaves the Envoy truly caring about enemy cover because of their action economy being worse.
As a result, in the playtesting I’ve done, Take Cover has generally not been used on either side due to the action economy (1 action to move into cover, 1 action to take cover, 1 action to strike is quite rigid), the bidirectional nature of cover and the ease at which characters can get around it. Breaking line of sight, particularly by closing doors, by contrast requires much more actions on the opposing side to counter.
I think the most important thing with regard to cover is to have map building guidelines that Paizo actually sticks to. Making good maps for ranged combat is not easy by any means, but it’s doable. There’s considerations required for cover, sightlines, what positions have too much or too little visibility, and how game mechanics can interact with all of that by chokepoints or cover busting.
Then I would also like to see a reversion from Center to Center cover back to Corner to Corner (not counting running along a blocker as having your line blocked), so it’s possible to outflank an enemy in cover, having no penalties yourself while still having bonuses.
I'm not sure cover is bidirectional when you use the Take Cover action. It only states you gain the benefits of standard cover, or greater cover, which to me sounds like it's a one-way street. In practice, cover works both ways because both sides Take Cover, but a character Taking Cover isn't going to limit their own attacks against characters who aren't Taking Cover themselves.
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I'm not sure cover is bidirectional when you use the Take Cover action. It only states you gain the benefits of standard cover, or greater cover, which to me sounds like it's a one-way street. In practice, cover works both ways because both sides Take Cover, but a character Taking Cover isn't going to limit their own attacks against characters who aren't Taking Cover themselves.
Taking cover is not bidirectional but moving into cover in the first place is. If you move behind standard cover so you can get greater cover, now pretty much everything you shoot will be in standard cover from you due to Center to Center making it hard to draw the line such that it doesn't pass through the cover directly in front of you (and if it does, the thing you're shooting can shoot you without cover, making taking cover against them useless).
That is still not completely bidirectional, though, as having greater cover still gives you a relative +2 to AC over your opponent. If everyone's Taking Cover this way, everyone gets greater cover, but for +2 AC it's still an arms race to get to cover.
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I think that is a good way to describe it, after all if the thing you have taken cover behind is no longer between you and the enemy, I would expect it to do anything.
Personally, taking cover has not really worked out in my playtest games, particularly A Cosmic Birthday, moving away always made more sense.
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That is still not completely bidirectional, though, as having greater cover still gives you a relative +2 to AC over your opponent. If everyone's Taking Cover this way, everyone gets greater cover, but for +2 AC it's still an arms race to get to cover.
Sure, but so does raising a shield, and that can't be gotten around by moving and also doesn't give you an effective penalty to hit things. Requires use of a non 2 handed weapon, but it (or the shield cantrip) is far more effective IME.
If I need to move to shoot (maybe because my opponent is in cover), I don't want to move into cover first because then my shot is at an effective penalty. If I don't need to move to shoot, I'm looking to then back out of line of sight instead of taking cover as "can't be targeted" is a better AC buff than +4. In many cases, due to the speed of the enemy team, striding to cover and taking cover is wasting 2 actions because the enemies can trivially get around it while not affecting their turns all that much, which happened a lot IME.
Cover was just not often worth the action cost of getting into it considering how easy it was to get around it. Compared to ducking out of line of sight and closing a door, which always demanded a lot more actions (particularly because many of the best weapons are two handed, so it requires an extra action to regrip the weapon afterwards).
I don't think shields really relate to the topic of the directionality of cover. Using a 1-handed weapon instead of a 2-handed weapon is also a major downgrade, so it's not something everyone can do without a significant tradeoff. Cover is basically how you shield yourself as a ranged character, and in my experience it's not particularly desirable to try to move around it because during this time you're exposed and the enemy isn't, so you're putting yourself at a disadvantage and spending potentially a lot of actions just to equalize with the enemy in the same way you did before. This is why I think enemies hugging cover all the time ought to be off-guard, because that in my opinion would actually incentivize trying to catch enemies where they're exposed.
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I think the bidirectionality is the heart of the problem. We don't have to go full PF1 because that was fairly crazy too.
But if for example the rule was "if the thing causing cover is adjacent to you and not the enemy, it doesn't hinder your attack rolls", we'd probably be good. Then it's always worth the action to move from the open to cover, and great if you're already there.
And yeah, if you're in cover, staying there should be good. There's plenty of ways to make it not so good, like dropping (ongoing) AoEs there; it's the job of the enemy, not the game system, to force you out.
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It's sort of fascinating how everyone here seems to agree that ranged combat isn't dynamic enough and there isn't a lot of incentive to maneuver, but we have different people complaining both that being entrenched in cover is too good and others seem to be concerned that cover isn't relevant at all.
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I feel like SF2 will require much more map making skill than PF2. You need sight lines, sight blockers, paths of action, and purposeful cover. If you can make a combat X% better with a great map in PF2, you can make a combat 2x% or 3x% in SF2.
I think the city side of the Starfinder Flip-Mat: Enormous Battlefield fills all the criteria you list. The hard part is doing all of that on a map smaller than a normal flip mat if you want there to be cover for everyone.
Another thing that makes placing cover on a map hard is the amount of cover needed depends on party size. If you want everyone to have cover there's a simple solution if the map doesn't provide it, Starfinder Pawns: Tech Terrain Pawn Collection. Although there's nothing saying there should be cover on every map for everyone.
I think it would take 4 maps to cover the basic variations of how much cover there is or not.
1: No cover
2: cover for some of the party
3: Cover for all of the party
4: More cover than the party needs at one time.
Something else that using Tech Terrain Pawns lets you do is have movable cover the PCs or the other side can push around to set up defensive positions.
I think the bidirectionality is the heart of the problem.
Agreed.
But if for example the rule was "if the thing causing cover is adjacent to you and not the enemy, it doesn't hinder your attack rolls", we'd probably be good. Then it's always worth the action to move from the open to cover, and great if you're already there.
There is rules support for that too.
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.
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There is rules support for that too.
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.
I don't think that's good enough;
- We want to set good base expectations for a ranged-oriented game. "The GM might let you" is not enough to set a good baseline.
- Sometimes measuring from corners and sometimes measuring from the center is a bit fussy mechanic. I prefer "if you're adjacent to the cover and they're not", that's less likely to require pulling out a ruler.
- Having to pay an action tax is also not helping make this an attractive thing. I think the baseline should be that spending a total of 1 action to move from an open space to a space with cover should be enough to attain an advantage. Not move to cover, and then having to spend more actions getting settled in before you actually get an improved result.
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There is rules support for that too.
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.I don't think that's good enough;
- We want to set good base expectations for a ranged-oriented game. "The GM might let you" is not enough to set a good baseline.
- Sometimes measuring from corners and sometimes measuring from the center is a bit fussy mechanic. I prefer "if you're adjacent to the cover and they're not", that's less likely to require pulling out a ruler.
- Having to pay an action tax is also not helping make this an attractive thing. I think the baseline should be that spending a total of 1 action to move from an open space to a space with cover should be enough to attain an advantage. Not move to cover, and then having to spend more actions getting settled in before you actually get an improved result.
How about always measuring the defender from the center and the attacker from the corners?
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How about always measuring the defender from the center and the attacker from the corners?There is rules support for that too.
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.I don't think that's good enough;
- We want to set good base expectations for a ranged-oriented game. "The GM might let you" is not enough to set a good baseline.
- Sometimes measuring from corners and sometimes measuring from the center is a bit fussy mechanic. I prefer "if you're adjacent to the cover and they're not", that's less likely to require pulling out a ruler.
- Having to pay an action tax is also not helping make this an attractive thing. I think the baseline should be that spending a total of 1 action to move from an open space to a space with cover should be enough to attain an advantage. Not move to cover, and then having to spend more actions getting settled in before you actually get an improved result.
I think that wouldn't work well. Consider the situation when there's a boulder that's big enough to provide some cover, but that you could still fire over, say about chest high.
E_______bY
Enemy, boulder, you.
If you measured from the corner of your space, your line would still intersect the boulder. While this definitely looks like the sort of situation where you should be better off than the enemy.
With what I'm proposing, you would use all the current cover rules, plus one extra bit:
* If you're adjacent to the source of cover but your enemy is not, you aren't hindered by it.
So you could easily veer up a bit to get a clear shot (so the enemy doesn't get cover), and veer down a bit when done so that you keep enjoying cover. That's so little effort that it shouldn't take an action, just like we don't require people to spend an action to get their Dexterity bonus to AC.
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I fully agree with other posters who have observed that it should be possible for characters using an adjacent feature for cover, to shoot at characters "in the open" without the adjacent feature granting cover to the target. This feels like a simple flaw in the existing rules which should be addressed with a qualifier or errata.
On the subject of making cover use more dynamic during fights: we've seen several good suggestions here, such as...
1) Teridax's suggestion of making characters who Take Cover become off guard to attacks against which they don't have cover bonuses, thus encouraging attackers to move into a flanking position
2) Increase the damage on Grenades but make them explode at the start of the attacker's next turn, so that the enemy is encouraged to run away from them and break cover in the process.
To build on point #2, it would be trivial to add a qualifier about using the Ready action to "cook" a grenade, priming it on your turn but not throwing it until later in the initiative order so that the enemy has less time to react! Of course, this comes with the risk of being disarmed or disrupted, at which point it blows up at your feet...
Slight tangent:
There have been discussions elsewhere about area weapons and autofire attacks and whether they should be re-written in the form of Strikes which deal splash damage, instead of AoE effects with Reflex saves. This could still work with dynamic cover use if characters who have cover against a source of splash damage, can ignore splash damage or perhaps reduce it by the hardness of their cover. Thus, getting into cover is still a good counter to explosions and autofire, but if you get hit directly despite your increased AC then the cover can't help you.
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Using cover to reduce splash damage I think is a very good idea. Given how the first reaction to an enemy pulling out a shotgun or a similar spray-and-pray weapon is to duck for cover, that should probably be reflected in the mechanics, and would benefit gameplay even now in Pathfinder.
It also sounds like there should be a specification in the rules that states explicitly that Taking Cover by default does not give enemies cover from the thing you're Taking Cover with, unless the cover is so ungainly or you're so deeply-entrenched that attacking through it is exceptionally impractical. I've never ruled cover this way, and I would find it extremely silly to do so, as fights already get bogged down enough when everyone's taking cover that just one character spending actions to do so shouldn't also lower their accuracy.