D&D rules lawyering: cover and stealth
I was recently reading up on the stealth and cover mechanics, and even though I was fairly certain about what is and what is not possible, I found out that one edge case isn’t particularly well-documented.
The rules, to be exact the Stealth rules correction from Player’s Handbook 2, state:
Becoming Hidden: You can make a Stealth check against an enemy only if you have superior cover or total concealment against the enemy or if you’re outside the enemy’s line of sight. Outside combat, the DM can allow you to make a Stealth check against a distracted enemy, even if you don’t have superior cover or total concealment and aren’t outside the enemy’s line of sight. The distracted enemy might be focused on something in a different direction, allowing you to sneak up.
So, what it especially says is that “superior cover” works as a basis to get hidden behind. According to the Dungeon Master’s Guide on determining cover for ranged attacks:
Choose a Corner: The attacker chooses one corner of a square he occupies, and draws imaginary lines from that corner to every corner of any one square the defender occupies. If none of those lines are blocked by a solid object or an enemy creature, the attacker has a clear shot. The defender doesn’t have cover. (A line that runs parallel right along a wall isn’t blocked.)
Superior Cover: The defender has superior cover if no matter which corner in your space you choose and no matter which square of the target’s space you choose, three or four lines are blocked. If four lines are blocked from every corner, you can’t target the defender.
So, in theory, if you’d have a situation where you’d have superior cover from an enemy, e.g.
you’d be able to stealth yourself and gain combat advantage.
The only thing that really denies this possibility are, again, the Stealth updates from Player’s Handbook 2, this time the “Remaining Hidden” section [emphasis mine]:
Keep Out of Sight: If you no longer have any cover or concealment against an enemy, you don’t remain hidden from that enemy. You don’t need superior cover, total concealment, or to stay outside line of sight, but you do need some degree of cover or concealment to remain hidden. You can’t use another creature as cover to remain hidden.
Many thanks to @Milambus for looking up that passage. [And making me feel stupid for not having found it myself, by the way.]
And that’s the only problem. So, you could gain stealth moving behind enemies, but immediately lose stealth status again by being only behind a creature.
In a sense, this is balanced, since your rogue strikers could then just continue to camp behind your own fighters and shoot sneak attacks at enemies from just behind their buddies (since they don’t block for the player), which would make combat encounters quick enough, but also a bit boring.
Then again, as my player rogue pointed out, when there’s two huge dragonborn warriors pounding away at an enemy, how are they not supposed to be able to hide behind them? They aren’t 5′ wide, surely, but certainly bigger than a half-elf in every other dimension.
I just think that with a further update (yuck), we might be able to get a bit of clarification on the fact how allies grant cover, but cannot grant superior cover.
towo has been writing stuff on the Internet on and off for years. He also thinks that author blurbs are silly.
First, a bit of nit-picking re: the example presented. As noted, the lines used to determine cover aren’t blocked by parallel edges on obstacles or creatures. Your rogue isn’t hiding behind a single 2-square obstacle, he’s hiding behind 2 single square allies. The line drawn between the two allies in the diagram is not blocked, therefore the rogue has cover, but not superior cover.
Of course if he was behind more than one rank of allies and at more of an angle, or if he was in the right place behind a Large or larger creature, then it would be possible to get superior cover from allies. Since the relevant section of the Cover rules (Creatures and Cover) begins “When you make a ranged attack..” it’s possible to argue that those rules aren’t intended to grant cover for anything but ranged attacks. In fact, I suspect that’s why the 1st printing rules didn’t include the caveat in the errataed Stealth rules, but that’s a bit too nitpicky even for me. Still, the presence of that caveat (and exceptions to it) pretty clearly rules out stealth from allies even without resorting to the literal interpretation of “You gain stealth from total concealment but then immediately lose it for failing to remain hidden”.
In response to your rogue, though, in terms of RP justification: Yes, he is supposed to hide behind the big burly fighters. They grant him cover from ranged attacks and prevent the enemy from advancing on his poorly armored self without suffering attacks of opportunity. You are, in essence, hiding behind the fat kid during dodgeball. Yes, he shields you from attacks quite well, but you’re not going to fool the opposing team into thinking you’re not even there. Without some truly supernatural hiding ability (ie. feats or powers that grant an exception) there’s just too much moving around in combat, even when the participants are stationary, for you to remain well concealed enough to avoid notice. Absolute best case you might manage to stay unnoticed long enough to get in a sneak attack, but you’re not fooling anyone by ducking back behind him. Combat advantage from stealth relies on the enemy not knowing where you are, not just being unseen. And they know you’re hiding behind the fat kid.
That said, outside of combat I’m perfectly happy allowing stealthers to lose themselves in the crowd. Maybe even in a grand melee, with lots of additional combatants in the background. But even that would require enough maneuvering between attacks that the rogue would be better off flanking rather than making infrequent but damaging attacks. Which, I think, is how it should be. Rogues darting from the shadows to deliver a deadly surprise attack is awesome. Ducking back into the shadows and being immediately forgotten so they can do it next turn and the turn after that ad nauseum is just silly.
Yes, reading what I wrote in retrospect, my rules lawyering tries to limit itself a bit too much to the rules, and doesn’t really take into account just the pinch of salt I should’ve taken at first. Which I actually had taken at first, but then some comments irritated me enough to go into the nitpicky mode.
Anyhow, thanks for your insight; your points are all valid and good.
Found your post via Google. This is a great writeup, even though for a standard rogue it doesn’t work. However have you taken a look at the Cunning Sneak rules from Martial Power 2?
Here is the following scenario that I was wondering about. A Cunning Sneak has the power that if they move 3 or more squares in a round and they have partial Cover or Concealment they can make a Stealth check to hide. So if the character runs behind their allies they gain partial cover and can make a Stealth check. As you have pointed out they can’t remain hidden, but what if they then use the rogue At-will power Chameleon (level 6 Utility, PHB). The power lets you make a stealth check to remain hidden when you lose cover or concealment, and on success retain the benefits of being hidden until the end of your next turn.
In theory the Cunning Sneak can run behind an ally, become hidden, and retain that for their entire next turn.