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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tetrasodium" data-source="post: 9013993" data-attributes="member: 93670">I think that asterisk is exactly the reason why the range wordings should empower the GM to be in a position of allowing players to be awesome through fiat rather than forcing the GM to justify why a player's range is getting "nerfed" this time.  It comes down to design priorities... Should the rules fail safe in a way that allows the GM to use fiat for fun when ensuring everyone has fun is part of GM'ing -OR- Should they be written with some assumption of a high percentage of GM's being adversarial in ways that need restraining so those rules fail secure in ensuring players can trivially challenge even the faintest use of fiat from a gm trying to pursue that fun for everyone goal.The cover rules do indeed exist, but you are describing leans more into the omitted concealment rules*.  With only the cover half of the toolset they provided it's an incomplete toolset  on top of having a fairly high bar to meet & that forces the GM to quickly fall back to fiat.  Here are the rules for 5e's lowest form of cover[spoiler="PHB196 cover & half cover"]C o v e rWalls, trees, creatures, and other obstacles can provide cover during combat, making a target m ore difficult to harm. A target can benefit from cover only when an attack or other effect originates on the opposite side of the cover.There are three degrees of cover. If a target is behind multiple sources of cover, only the most protective degree of cover applies; the degrees aren't added together. For example, if a target is behind a creature that gives half cover and a tree trunk that gives three- quarters cover, the target has three-quarters cover.A target with half cover has a +2 bonus to AC and Dexterity saving throws. A target has half cover if an obstacle blocks at least half of its body. The obstacle might be a low wall, a large piece of furniture, a narrow tree trunk, or a creature, whether that creature is an enemy or a friend.[/spoiler]All of those bold bits (especially the non-additive one) add up to setting a fairly high bar rarely seen by chance with wide enough presence to make it difficult to simply step a bit into clear line of sight to avoid the cover entirely.  3.x had fairly similar rules for cover but included the other half the toolset for the GM that had existed snice at least 2e.  Cover works alongside the more quantum concealment that had a much lower bar[spoiler="3.5 concealment"]CONCEALMENT Besides cover, another way to avoid attacks is to make it hard for opponents to know where you are. Concealment encompasses all circumstances where nothing physically blocks a blow or shot but where something interferes with an attacker’s accuracy. Concealment gives the subject of a successful attack a chance that the attacker missed because of the concealment. Typically, concealment is provided by fog, smoke, a shadowy area, darkness, tall grass, foliage, or magical effects that make it difficult to pinpoint a target’s location. To determine whether your target has concealment from your ranged attack, choose a corner of your square. If any line from this corner to any corner of the target’s square passes through a square or border that provides concealment, the target has concealment. When making a melee attack against an adjacent target, yourtarget has concealment if his space is entirely within an effect that grants concealment (such as a cloud of smoke). When making a melee attack against a target that isn’t adjacent to you (for instance, with a reach weapon), use the rules for determining concealment from ranged attacks. In addition, some magical effects (such as the blur and displace-ment spells) provide concealment against all attacks, regardless of whether any intervening concealment exists. Concealment Miss Chance: Concealment gives the subject of a successful attack a 20% chance that the attacker missed because of the concealment. If the attacker hits, the defender must make a miss chance percentile roll to avoid being struck. (To expedite play, make both rolls at the same time). Multiple concealment conditions (such as a defender in a dog and under the effect of a blur spell) do not stack. Concealment and Hide Checks: You can use concealment to make a Hide check. Without concealment, you usually need cover to make a Hide check. Total Concealment: If you have line of effect to a target but not line of sight (for instance, if he is in total darkness or invisible, or if you’re blinded), he is considered to have total concealment from you. You can’t attack an opponent that has total concealment, though you can attack into a square that you think he occupies. A successful attack into a square occupied by an enemy with total concealment has a 50% miss chance (instead of the normal 20% miss chance for an opponent with concealment). You can’t execute an attack of opportunity against an opponent with total concealment, even if you know what square or squares the opponent occupies. Ignoring Concealment: Concealment isn’t always effective. For instance, a shadowy area or darkness doesn’t provide any conceal-ment against an opponent with darkvision. Remember also that characters with low-light vision can see clearly for a greater distance with the same light source than other characters. A torch, for example, lets an elf see clearly for 40 feet in all directions from the torch, while a human can see clearly for only 20 feet with the same [/spoiler][spoiler="2e concealment"] There are two types of protection a character can have. The first is concealment, also called soft cover. A character hiding behind a clump of bushes is concealed. He can be seen, but only with difficulty, and it’s no easy task to determine exactly where he is. The bushes cannot stop an arrow, but they do make it less likely that the character is hit. Other types of con-cealment include curtains, tapestries, smoke, fog, and brambles. The other type of protection is cover, sometimes called, more precisely, hard cover. It is, as its name implies, something a character can hide behind that will block a missile. Hard cover includes stone walls, the corner of a building, tables, doors, earth embankments, tree trunks, and magical walls of force.[/spoiler]Concealment is the missing & sometimes semiquantum terrain/"battlefield features" low bar that doesn't need to obstruct a straight line drawn or clicked between two points like cover that once applied to the examples you had italicized " 'this is wild plains, once you get off the trail the grass is chest high,' or 'you are amongst deciduous trees, anything after a certain distance is likely to have a branch in the way,' and 'there is a gradual incline here I'm not treating as difficult terrain, but it means you will not have a straight shot to your opponent after X feet."  * The word concealment does not appear to be  in phb dmg xge or tcoe.  It does appear in VRGtR(pg70), but it's a very different use & talking about how tatyna is hiding from strahd.[USER=6787503]@Hriston[/USER] Yea, they used to be in an actual book in the past too (2e  dmg139/140 & I hear 3.0 dmg)</blockquote>

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