D&D 5E Does being Heavily Obscured grant Cover... And should it???

[BookTenTiger]

I was thinking about two niche rules issues:

1) Advantage can be very prolific and easy to grant, making it less special.

2) The classic "shooting at a target in a Fog Cloud" scenario in which advantage and disadvantage always cancel out.

It made me wonder: would a creature in a Fog Cloud or Darkness, or otherwise Heavily Obscured, have cover?

Here's what the PHB says about being Heavily Obscured:

A heavily obscured area—such as darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage—blocks vision entirely. A creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition when trying to see something in that area.

And Total Cover:

A target with total cover can't be targeted directly by an attack or a spell, although some spells can reach such a target by including it in an area of effect. A target has total cover if it is completely concealed by an obstacle.

Now I'm assuming that if the game designers wanted concealment to grant cover, they would have said so (or just combined the rules), so RAW it probably doesn't. Especially with that word "obstacle" in there, the designers were obviously thinking about being behind a wall, not a cloud.

But should it grant cover???

I could see a House Rule granting characters who are heavily obscured 3/4 cover or even total cover. This may make effects like Fog Cloud and Darkness more effective. What other consequences would it have?

 

[commandercrud]

Cover and not being seen are totally different things.

 

[iserith]

The description of cover in the PHB clearly seems to indicate a solid object by my reading.

 

[Oofta]

Attacking a creature you can't see is covered in PHB chapter 9

When you attack a target that you can't see, you have disadvantage on the attack roll. This is true whether you're guessing the target's location or you're targeting a creature you can hear but not see. If the target isn't in the location you targeted, you automatically miss, but the DM typically just says that the attack missed, not whether you guessed the target's location correctly.​

​

When a creature can't see you, you have advantage on attack rolls against it.​

So any obscurement that goes both ways (fog cloud) cancels each other out.

When it comes to spells, it just depends. Many spells specify that you must see the target others just state.

The target of a spell must be within the spell's range. For a spell like magic missile, the target is a creature. For a spell like fireball, the target is the point in space where the ball of fire erupts.​

So you can't magic missile the darkness but you can fireball it. Cover does not come into play.

 

[embee]

I was thinking about two niche rules issues:

1) Advantage can be very prolific and easy to grant, making it less special.

2) The classic "shooting at a target in a Fog Cloud" scenario in which advantage and disadvantage always cancel out.

It made me wonder: would a creature in a Fog Cloud or Darkness, or otherwise Heavily Obscured, have cover?

Here's what the PHB says about being Heavily Obscured:



And Total Cover:



Now I'm assuming that if the game designers wanted concealment to grant cover, they would have said so (or just combined the rules), so RAW it probably doesn't. Especially with that word "obstacle" in there, the designers were obviously thinking about being behind a wall, not a cloud.

But should it grant cover???

I could see a House Rule granting characters who are heavily obscured 3/4 cover or even total cover. This may make effects like Fog Cloud and Darkness more effective. What other consequences would it have?

Heavily Obscured: Hidden in the bushes

Total Cover: Crouching behind a concrete jersey barrier

The bushes affect the ability to aim at someone. The jersey barrier affects the ability of that person to be hit by some kind of damage.

Think of an action movie. Any action movie. There will be that scene where the hero has set off some kind of explosive, runs and vaults over a jersey barrier, and takes cover behind it just before the big bang. The explosion goes off and the wall of fire spreads out. It hits the concrete jersey barrier and the hero is left unharmed.

But what if he jumped into the bushes instead? Would he have been unharmed? No. The wall of fire would have taken him out. Roll credits.

Concealment negates aim, but not damage. Cover negates damage. They are two separate concepts. Bushes provide concealment but will not provide cover from an attack.

 

[DND_Reborn]

You shouldn't grant an AC bonus to a creature that is heavily obscured because they, also, are unaware of potential attacks (hence the advantage/disadvantage cancelling out). Heavy obscurement prevents you from being targeted by spells which the caster must see, so it is still a good thing. It should also grand advantage on Stealth checks, so if the creature a makes the stealth check and becomes "Hidden", an attack should not be able to target them at all unless the DM determines (via minis or ToM) that the attack is in the space occupied by the target.

Total cover does not prevent the creature with total cover from seeing everything else around them. Keep in mind, while a creature has total cover, any target they might attack also effectively has total cover, which is why the creature must move out from behind cover to attack and then move back.

 

[LordEntrails]

No they should not, and are not, the same thing. See all the reasons given by others.

 

[toucanbuzz]

Obscured = vision

Cover = barrier

A cloud/darkness doesn't impede the progress of an arrow.

Think of it this way. If 20 archers fire arrows blindly into a fog, they might still hit something. If 20 archers fire arrows at a brick wall barrier, they won't hit whoever is behind that wall so the "attack" on anyone behind that wall is invalid. If 20 archers fire arrows into the darkness at someone hiding behind a table (3/4 cover), they might hit something. It's possible. In that scenario, both the "blind" and "cover" effects apply.

The same applies to spells. Remember, some spells don't function like arrows. Some can't "blindly" be fired and hope to hit something. They require a specific target "that you can see" to be valid.

That's all old news Sage Advice and Errata.

If you're talking a homebrew rule, I wouldn't because you're turning insubstantial barriers into physical barriers and adding a lot more power to low level effects.

 

[loverdrive]

I could see a House Rule granting characters who are heavily obscured 3/4 cover or even total cover. This may make effects like Fog Cloud and Darkness more effective. What other consequences would it have?

It would make the game slower, as everyone would miss more often.

That's just as bad idea as making attacks in the darkness with disadvantage.

 

[Spohedus]

Another thought... even to fire into a heavily obscured area, how do they know where to attack? Perhaps with an opposed Perception check? The obscured target may still be moving about a bit. At our table, there's two steps to try to hit something obscured. Determining which square you are attacking, then resolving the roll based on advantage/disadvantage the particulars of the attacker and target.