WOIN Cover Clarifications

[Belisarion]

I also want to add a couple things here.

You can in fact move from one place of cover to another, firing in the middle.

Though being new I try to add my view to this shooting from cover.
In NEW there are two activities listed you can do on your turn who would cover this situation:

• Stand from prone (1 action)
• Drop to prone or crouch (free action)

So, let's say if you are already prone from a drop to prone in a previous round you stand up from prone (1 action), take a shot (1 action), drop to prone (free action).
If you have the Quickstand exploit, standing up from prone is a free action, so you could even shot twice on your turn before dropping prone.

The antidote to this strategy would (could?) be a triggered reaction. I haven't seen anything like a "ready" actions in WOIN but I could imagine declaring a trigger could be one.

 

[Suskeyhose]

Though being new I try to add my view to this shooting from cover.
In NEW there are two activities listed you can do on your turn who would cover this situation:

• Stand from prone (1 action)
• Drop to prone or crouch (free action)

So, let's say if you are already prone from a drop to prone in a previous round you stand up from prone (1 action), take a shot (1 action), drop to prone (free action).
If you have the Quickstand exploit, standing up from prone is a free action, so you could even shot twice on your turn before dropping prone.

The antidote to this strategy would (could?) be a triggered reaction. I haven't seen anything like a "ready" actions in WOIN but I could imagine declaring a trigger could be one.

In particular what I would look at is the section on cover itself. This is from OLD p.149

It's important to distinguish between cover and a blocked line of sight. A character cannot be completely protected against ranged attacks and simultaneously able to make ranged attacks, and cannot be in a position where line of sight is completely blocked except for when he pops up to make a ranged attack.
There are three positions which require a move action to switch between:

I consider to be the highest priority rule when it comes to moving in and out of cover. The Blocked position goes on to say:

The move action need not involve leaving the square, but it is important that the move action is needed to move to a firing position, and another one is needed to move back to the fully blocked position.

This means the quickstand and dropping to prone do not as far as I'm concerned constitute moving between the positions. Allowing that breaks the action economy and requires you introduce houserules for readied actions or overwatch allowing attacking in-cover characters.

I consider the rulings on cover to simply operate at a more coarse grained level of detail than the "popping up and firing" level that this thread seems to want.

If a character is "blocked" with no line of sight to someone and they make a ranged attack, firing around a corner, blind throwing a grenade, etc. they are in cover and not blocked until they take an additional move action to change that.

Dropping to prone behind cover so you are "blocked" is already handled in the rules, as being prone inflicts a -1d6 penalty to hit from ranged, and being in cover gives another -2d6, which means that attackers are already strongly disadvantaged without allowing you to move to blocked for free.

The case of running from one place of blocked line of sight to another is different because ending in a blocked state means you must make a move action on your next turn in order to make further attacks. This naturally deals with the idea of a "snap shot" by not allowing the aim action to be used, as said earlier in this thread.

I also want to take the chance to say that pinning down working with more abstract types of cover can also make sense even without "chipping away" at the cover, because it can also stand in for zeroing in your aim. After repeated shots if you know where your target is approximately (so the target is in cover and not blocked) then after repeated shots you can aim better.

When referring to how the spray attack on automatic weapons works, I would propose the folowing house rules:

• Consider obscuring cover distinct from protective cover
• Characters in obscuring cover can be targeted
• Characters in obscuring cover will have their defenses boosted by 7

Finally I'd consider the case of fully obscured characters by smoke grenades as not directly targetable, but by spray attacks they would be considered in obscuring cover, and I would also allow people trying to fire on opponents in the smoke with non-spray weapons by targeting specific squares at -2d6 cover penalty. If the player targets a square that is unoccupied (even if there are occupied squares on the path of the attack), their attack is wasted, although all they would be told is that the attack missed.

 

[Belisarion]

[...]

You make excellent points, thank you very much for the clarifications!

 

[TheHirumaChico]

In particular what I would look at is the section on cover itself. This is from OLD p.149

I consider to be the highest priority rule when it comes to moving in and out of cover. The Blocked position goes on to say:

This means the quickstand and dropping to prone do not as far as I'm concerned constitute moving between the positions. Allowing that breaks the action economy and requires you introduce houserules for readied actions or overwatch allowing attacking in-cover characters.

I consider the rulings on cover to simply operate at a more coarse grained level of detail than the "popping up and firing" level that this thread seems to want.

If a character is "blocked" with no line of sight to someone and they make a ranged attack, firing around a corner, blind throwing a grenade, etc. they are in cover and not blocked until they take an additional move action to change that.

Dropping to prone behind cover so you are "blocked" is already handled in the rules, as being prone inflicts a -1d6 penalty to hit from ranged, and being in cover gives another -2d6, which means that attackers are already strongly disadvantaged without allowing you to move to blocked for free.

The case of running from one place of blocked line of sight to another is different because ending in a blocked state means you must make a move action on your next turn in order to make further attacks. This naturally deals with the idea of a "snap shot" by not allowing the aim action to be used, as said earlier in this thread.

I also want to take the chance to say that pinning down working with more abstract types of cover can also make sense even without "chipping away" at the cover, because it can also stand in for zeroing in your aim. After repeated shots if you know where your target is approximately (so the target is in cover and not blocked) then after repeated shots you can aim better.

When referring to how the spray attack on automatic weapons works, I would propose the folowing house rules:

• Consider obscuring cover distinct from protective cover
• Characters in obscuring cover can be targeted
• Characters in obscuring cover will have their defenses boosted by 7

Finally I'd consider the case of fully obscured characters by smoke grenades as not directly targetable, but by spray attacks they would be considered in obscuring cover, and I would also allow people trying to fire on opponents in the smoke with non-spray weapons by targeting specific squares at -2d6 cover penalty. If the player targets a square that is unoccupied (even if there are occupied squares on the path of the attack), their attack is wasted, although all they would be told is that the attack missed.

I very much appreciate seeing the details of your thinking regarding these questions @Suskeyhose. I definitely like the distinction between types of Cover as per your Obscuring Cover vs. Protective Cover. I'd add Suppressive Fire as a 3rd Cover type in my house rules as I think it is distinctly different from Obscuring Cover (like smoke, fog, and dim light) and Protective Cover (like walls, trees, etc.). I think I will use that for determining which Cover penalties I will allow to stack in my games house rules. I'll say the same type cannot stack, but I'll allow different types to stack. BTW, in the third bullet in your automatic weapon spray attack house rules, can I presume the flat +7 to defense is derived from the average result of the standard -2d6 cover penalty?

I am also thinking that I will make a house rule for my game that Suppressive Fire has a special interaction with Overwatch in that only Suppressive Fire can negate Overwatch, but otherwise I'll stick with my prior house rule that Overwatch can react to targets moving from Blocked to either In Cover or Open. My rationale for this idea is that PCs/NPCs in Overwatch will be forced to break their Overwatch to avoid being hit by a hail of Suppressive Fire, but that other passive forms of cover do not prevent the PC/NPC in Overwatch from reacting to a visual trigger, although that visual trigger might still mean the target is benefitting from Cover.