Superior Cover from Allies?

[godfear]

It's well established that allies can grant you cover from enemies, but is there a reason why they couldn't grant superior cover? By the cover RAW, it seems like they should.

Determining Cover: To determine if a target has cover, choose a corner of a square you occupy (or a corner of your attack’s origin square) and trace imaginary lines from that corner to every corner of any one square the target occupies. If one or two of those lines are blocked by an obstacle or an enemy, the target has cover. (A line isn’t blocked if it runs along the edge of an obstacle’s or an enemy’s square.) If three or four of those lines are blocked but you have line of effect, the target has superior cover.

So, wouldn't a set up like this:

#A##
MA#E
#A##

# = Open space
M = Me
A = Ally
E = Enemy

...result in superior cover for me? The enemy can't draw an unblocked line to any part of my square. Logically, he'd have line of sight and line of effect, but it seems to me that he'd suffer the penalty for superior cover rather than just cover.

-g

Edit: Or is the "Creatures and Cover" part of the cover rules the exception, and the extra mention of creatures in the Determining Cover part just more confusing than is strictly necessary?

[Lauberfen]

I think you probably can technically get superior cover as you've described.

However it's pretty dodgy, depending on diagonals and fine positioning- in my group we just say the best you get from allies is cover, to avoid fiddling around with lines, stepping sideways etc. It might be fair to say that if you have 2 ranks of allies granting cover then you have superior cover, but this is not RAW- with any depth of ranks, you could still have regular cover firing straight down one of the lines.

[bfreakb999]

i can see what you mean, and i suppose it would really be up to the DM. I'm a firm believer that anything the players do to stay out of harms way like what you have mentioned, my monsters should be able to do the same. I however can sense the large amount of complaints i would get if i had minions/soldiers all guard a controller/artillery(leader) that consistently does massive amounts of dpr to the PC's. So far we've only allowed to have the best defense be "cover", but i'm interested in seeing how this idea might play out just for fun...

I would ask your DM to see if it's causes any difficulty in your game. if so, then just accept the cover. (besides.. i doubt your defenses are really that low. )

[NMcCoy]

Strictly speaking per your diagram and the rules phrasing, even with your interpretation you wouldn't have superior cover in that particular arrangement - Two of the lines run between two of your allies, along the edge of those allies' spaces and thus are not blocked. Two allies are not a single coherent obstacle. If you moved the enemy two squares northward, you'd have a better case.

As you can see, determining superior cover from allies is a tricky situation, and often unintuitive - for speed of play, I recommend not allowing it.

[Whimsical]

I think that the ability to get superior cover from an ally would make a great feat, or a special for a controller, artillery, skirmisher, or, lurker.

[BobTheNob]

Originally Posted by Whimsical

I think that the ability to get superior cover from an ally would make a great feat, or a special for a controller, artillery, skirmisher, or, lurker.

This is the way to think about it. To try an construe superior cover above what is currently the acecpted norm through positioning is just handing the players a freebie in that they have a new way to become more powerful without really having done much for it.
However, if you make it a feat...that gets interesting.
Something like
Feat : Shield Wall (not sure if name already used)
Prequisites : whatever (sort out some other time), requires Large Shield
You count as superior cover for ranged fire
Then you have something that allows your defender to act like mobile superior cover i.e. clunks around the battlefield keeping his shield high and offering very little room for enemies to shoot around, making the character very tactically interesting. Being a feat it ties this into character build and growth and adds that "Cool, I just got alot better" effect, rewarding player investment

[Tremorsense]

Originally Posted by godfear

The enemy can't draw an unblocked line to any part of my square. Logically, he'd have line of sight and line of effect, but it seems to me that he'd suffer the penalty for superior cover rather than just cover.

Under Determining Cover in the phb is says:

(A line isn’t blocked if it
runs along the edge of an obstacle’s or an enemy’s
square.)

As far as I can tell, that means a row of medium or small creatures will only ever provide normal cover. Perhaps large allies can provide superior cover, but I wouldn't play it that way (just to keep things speedy).

[godfear]

Thanks for the feedback. A player of mine asked this question and so I started obsessing about it yesterday while bored at work. Regular cover it is. : )

-g

[Ladislaus]

Originally Posted by godfear

It's well established that allies can grant you cover from enemies, but is there a reason why they couldn't grant superior cover? By the cover RAW, it seems like they should.

Yes, allies may grant Superior Cover from an enemy's ranged attack. Note my emphasis in the rules quote above. Since enemies may grant Cover, they may also grant Superior Cover.

Originally Posted by godfear

So, wouldn't a set up like this:

#A##
MA#E
#A##

# = Open space
M = Me
A = Ally
E = Enemy

...result in superior cover for me?

In your example, M would only have Cover from E's ranged attack because of the "(A line isn't blocked if it runs along the edge of an obstacle's or an enemy's square.)" rule.

However, in the following examples M would have Superior Cover from E's ranged attack:

#A#E
#A##
MA##

A##E
#A##
M#A#

[N0Man]

Originally Posted by Ladislaus

However, in the following examples M would have Superior Cover from E's ranged attack:

#A#E
#A##
MA##

A##E
#A##
M#A#

Good examples, I would agree that those would provide superior cover. I'd also agree with above that by the rules, a large creature would provide superior cover as well.

I'm glad this was brought up though, I had not really considered these situations, but I'll make sure to keep this in mind next time I'm in a ranged situation.

[Flipguarder]

Something I really don't like is that the rules for cover don't account for height as I can find. If you drop a sword and decide its an obstacle (about as plausible as deciding an ally is an obstacle imo) then it grants you cover.

[N0Man]

Originally Posted by Flipguarder

Something I really don't like is that the rules for cover don't account for height as I can find. If you drop a sword and decide its an obstacle (about as plausible as deciding an ally is an obstacle imo) then it grants you cover.

The rules don't address 3D combat. However, 4E is not a computer game that is easily fooled by such a silly exploit. It is run by a DM, and no reasonable DM is going to say that a sword on the ground is going to provide cover to anyone, with the possible exception of if the sword is dropped between 2 combatants that are 3 inches tall.

Though 3D isn't explicitly covered, a DM can very reasonably adapt the 2D rules to a 3rd Dimension. *Usually* (and I emphasize "usually" in an attempt to ward off some atypical crazy exception someone might want to argue), again, *usually* ranged attacks from a medium creature are going to originate from within a 5' cube that the player *roughly* occupies (even if their head does poke out of it).

So, imagine that cube, pick a corner of that cube, and draw imaginary lines to the corners of the target's cube. If you have line of effect, then you have cover if up to half (1 to 4) of the corners are blocked and superior cover if more than half (5 to 8). Both 2D and 3D follow the basic rule that if half or less of the lines are obstructed then you have cover, and if more than half are obstructed then you have superior cover.

If you can visualize the 3D space, then I think the rule works fairly well. If this is too complex to visualize (and some people are more spatially minded than others) then just use the best guess and judgment of the DM (which is the default "rule" anyway).

Either of those 2 methods would completely rule out something as silly as trying to hide behind a discarded sword on the floor...

[Flipguarder]

What I meant is that because it's all due to DM it means.... its all up to the DM.

In my games Allies won't provide superior cover. My own reasoning is that a character never takes up an entire 5 x 5 space, so unless the character is impossibly wide in girth, you are going to be able to see them.

But again, that's just my opinion, there is no rules and therefore whatever the DM says is what goes.

[N0Man]

Originally Posted by Flipguarder

In my games Allies won't provide superior cover. My own reasoning is that a character never takes up an entire 5 x 5 space, so unless the character is impossibly wide in girth, you are going to be able to see them.

They don't have to take up the 5x5 space to provide superior cover. In fact, I drew out the examples Ladislaus gave on graph paper to help visualize it, and even using small circles (that took up only a portion of the square), superior cover was granted by the allies. In both examples, about the best the enemy could do is to get 1 single line from his corner to one of the corners of the target which draws a line that goes right between 2 of the allies (and the line actually brushed up right on the side of one of the allies).

[DracoSuave]

One reason that allies might not be superior cover for you is because superior cover doesn't want to step out of the way when it gets large amounts of destructive force fired at it. Allies, on the other hand, may wish not to die today.

[N0Man]

Originally Posted by DracoSuave

One reason that allies might not be superior cover for you is because superior cover doesn't want to step out of the way when it gets large amounts of destructive force fired at it. Allies, on the other hand, may wish not to die today.

The rules say explicitly that allies provide cover, so I'm confused. Are you disputing cover, or Superior Cover?

The standard "Cover" and "Superior Cover" are different degrees of cover, and it appears that with the examples given, Superior Cover is possible.

[DracoSuave]

Originally Posted by N0Man

The rules say explicitly that allies provide cover, so I'm confused. Are you disputing cover, or Superior Cover?

The standard "Cover" and "Superior Cover" are different degrees of cover, and it appears that with the examples given, Superior Cover is possible.

Subjunctive case, introducing a hypothesis that does not portend to have a truth value. Offering a possibility, in this case, for a DM to decide--as DMs do have that option to decide on a case by case basis--determined through examination of the use of the words 'might' or 'may' or 'could'. Also, regarding the case of superior cover, as shown by the use of the words 'superior cover'. Not an intent to make a ruling as per exact RAW, but an offering of how a DM might rule such an instance as per Rule 0.

From a personal standpoint, I'm considering a house rule that your allies provide concealment, not cover, as they don't take the shot for you, but they screen the shot. Not a big deal mathematicly, but it gives a difference in how combat works out with obscuring effects.

[Lauberfen]

that would make sense actually, as allies already don't affect blasts and bursts, which is the same as concealment.