Reach weapon (longspear) through ally space?

[Sorry_Charry]

Time Stop.

I thought Cover rules only applied to opponents and the like? From what I recall, an archer shooting someone who is behind an ally isn't effected by any sort of Cover rules, because he's shooting through allies, and not enemies. If he were shooting through an enemy, then cover would apply to that target.

That is the case in 4E.

In 3.5, however, the creature being an ally/enemy has nothing to do with cover granted. If something is in your way, then cover applies (and possibly the penalty for shooting into melee)

(PHB pg 151 shows an example of an ally granting cover to one of the enemies. Lidda is targeting a gnoll that is past Redgar. For her effort, she buys a -4 penalty for shooting into melee, and the gnoll is granted +4 AC due to cover.)

Shouldn't this apply to melee as well?

It does apply for melee reach attacks, since they are determined using the ranged attack rules. Bur for regular old 'adjacent' melee... cover only comes into play when any line from your square passes through a wall (including low walls) on its way toward your target.