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D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
Determining cover in 4e: The pingpong dilemma
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<blockquote data-quote="Kariotis" data-source="post: 9409016" data-attributes="member: 7035116"><p>Cover in 4th edition has pretty good, intuitive, usable rules. I've always had one minor issue with them though in terms of clarity, and I've attached the relevant page from the Rules Compendium for reference.</p><p></p><p>The issue is that, <em>as written</em>, not necessarily as intended, cover is presented as a situation that both combatants find themselves in, not as something that would usually confer an advantage of one combatant over the other. The rules present few clear-cut cases where cover is a one-way street. The clearest one would be the fact that allies grant you cover from enemy attacks, while you are able to shoot through squares occupied by allies. I miss clearer rules for more cases like this, especially when it comes to terrain, as, arguably, terrain advantage used for cover (obstacles, walls, height advantage) is used both in the real world and in fiction and would make intuitive sense, too.</p><p></p><p>To be more specific, the issue is that the rules are unclear about obstacles conferring one-way bonuses. Two examples:</p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The pictured example from the rules compendium, the Zombie right next to the edge of the wall receives the same bonus to cover as the Attacker around the edge even though the attacker is out in the open and NOT next to a wall.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Even more egregious is RAW for superior cover, where the more "fluffy" and more "crunchy" part of the explanation are in tension with another. Quoted from the Rules Compendium:</li> </ul><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The crunch part effectively guarantees that a combatant and their opponent will almost always confer the SAME cover bonus to each other when staying in place, because the imaginary lines drawn from the edges of their squares are necessarily bidirectionally equivalent. If combatant A has partial cover, combatant B has, too. If combatant A has superior cover, combatant B has too. It doesn't matter if one is out in the open and the other can press directly against the corner of the wall. It doesn't matter if one is directly behind the arrow slits and can shoot through them, and one is 10 m away and has to aim through the tiny arrow slit from afar. It doesn't matter if one stands on the ground and the other on a roof, leveraging the edge of the roof for cover. The invisible lines dictate the cover, and as the lines pingpong from A to B and back, their cover is always identical unless the DM takes the more "fluffy" explanation in the rules to heart, uses common sense and says that "of course only the guy directly behind the arrow slits has superior cover, and not the guy 10 squares away out in the open, even though they are both <em>technically</em> <em>behind an arrow slit</em> for each other".</p><p></p><p>I wanted to ask about your experience with this aspect of cover in 4e. Also, maybe my gaming groups have always missed something in the crunch, in that case please correct me <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool :cool:" data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Kariotis, post: 9409016, member: 7035116"] Cover in 4th edition has pretty good, intuitive, usable rules. I've always had one minor issue with them though in terms of clarity, and I've attached the relevant page from the Rules Compendium for reference. The issue is that, [I]as written[/I], not necessarily as intended, cover is presented as a situation that both combatants find themselves in, not as something that would usually confer an advantage of one combatant over the other. The rules present few clear-cut cases where cover is a one-way street. The clearest one would be the fact that allies grant you cover from enemy attacks, while you are able to shoot through squares occupied by allies. I miss clearer rules for more cases like this, especially when it comes to terrain, as, arguably, terrain advantage used for cover (obstacles, walls, height advantage) is used both in the real world and in fiction and would make intuitive sense, too. To be more specific, the issue is that the rules are unclear about obstacles conferring one-way bonuses. Two examples: [LIST] [*]The pictured example from the rules compendium, the Zombie right next to the edge of the wall receives the same bonus to cover as the Attacker around the edge even though the attacker is out in the open and NOT next to a wall. [*]Even more egregious is RAW for superior cover, where the more "fluffy" and more "crunchy" part of the explanation are in tension with another. Quoted from the Rules Compendium: [/LIST] The crunch part effectively guarantees that a combatant and their opponent will almost always confer the SAME cover bonus to each other when staying in place, because the imaginary lines drawn from the edges of their squares are necessarily bidirectionally equivalent. If combatant A has partial cover, combatant B has, too. If combatant A has superior cover, combatant B has too. It doesn't matter if one is out in the open and the other can press directly against the corner of the wall. It doesn't matter if one is directly behind the arrow slits and can shoot through them, and one is 10 m away and has to aim through the tiny arrow slit from afar. It doesn't matter if one stands on the ground and the other on a roof, leveraging the edge of the roof for cover. The invisible lines dictate the cover, and as the lines pingpong from A to B and back, their cover is always identical unless the DM takes the more "fluffy" explanation in the rules to heart, uses common sense and says that "of course only the guy directly behind the arrow slits has superior cover, and not the guy 10 squares away out in the open, even though they are both [I]technically[/I] [I]behind an arrow slit[/I] for each other". I wanted to ask about your experience with this aspect of cover in 4e. Also, maybe my gaming groups have always missed something in the crunch, in that case please correct me :cool: [/QUOTE]
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