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.

On why rogues can't really hide behind other players.

As a bit of a side occupa­tion, I like to engage in some cha­rac­ter design for role-playing games, as it just comes as a natu­ral exten­sion of being a hobby-ish wri­ter person.

Thus, I pre­sent: Shamorn Fal­len­he­art, a tief­ling bard from High Imaskar.

Birth — and over misgivings

Shamorn was born in Gheld­an­eth, the fading Mula­nian metro­po­lis of High Imas­kar, and his par­ents belie­ved in the pro­phe­cies sta­ting Shamorn to bring forth bet­ter times for the tief­ling folk of the Gheld­an­eth slums. Being rai­sed in a com­mu­nity of hired hands to accom­pany adven­tu­rers on dan­ge­rous tre­a­sure hunts through the depths of the sun­ken city, hopes were laid on him, and him alone, to libe­rate them from this life of unof­fi­cial slavery.

Early life

Our young tief­ling was always a bit pam­pe­red. The male role models of the com­mu­nity were often too busy get­ting kil­led on a foolish quest, as was Shamorn’s own father — shortly before his fourth birth­day. As it were, there was none of the usual goading and tes­ting a tief­ling endu­res as part of gro­wing up. The con­se­quen­ces of this, as well as the pam­pe­ring he recei­ved by his mother and other “faith­fuls”, would be dire indeed.

Thus Shamorn grew to be a young adult, hel­ping out ever­y­where in the com­mu­nity, wit­hout ever taking up a real job. He had many on and off teachers, ver­sing him in skills as @skills and the heri­tage of the tief­ling race, trai­ning him in the use of wea­pons and tel­ling sto­ries of heroic deeds throug­hout time.

Con­stantly sur­roun­ded by an app­re­cia­tion for life, for hero­ism, the history and cul­ture of his people and a will to bring good to them, it came as a great sur­prise to many that Shamorn Fal­len­he­art, Pro­phe­sied Saviour of the Gheld­an­eth Tief­lings, came to start trai­ning to be…

… a bard.

There was a wan­de­ring Elven Bard in Gheld­an­eth at the time, and Shamorn choose to app­ren­tice him­self to him, belie­ving that beco­m­ing a bard, a herald of their people, would be worth much more than sim­ply slaugh­te­ring any would-be opp­res­sors or being a lea­der to guide the people to their Pro­mi­sed Land.

As was to be expec­ted, his deci­sion did not sit well with some, if not most, of his elders. His mother came just short of disin­heri­t­ing him, and he was fore­ver bran­ded as a wimp by most others. Still, there were some people who still belie­ved in him, and he mana­ged to stay in the com­mu­nity, even though ever­yone tried to for­get about any kind of pro­phesy laid upon him.

The turning point

His app­ren­ti­ce­ship was going well, all things con­side­red. But his teacher, unbe­kno­west to him, was a bit of a brag­gart and igno­rant, that is to say: not a very good bard. Still, Shamorn mana­ged to mas­ter his natu­ral graps of the Arcane under his tutor­ship, even though the social values might have been slightly distorted.

Sadly, this dis­tor­tion and the infu­sion of heroic tales led to an unfor­t­u­nate inci­dent. A rough band of tre­a­sure hun­ters, with a fierce repu­ta­tion for their harsh effec­tiv­en­ess and rumours of a bru­tal and unrelen­ting man­ner towards oppo­si­tion, sought out their enclave to hire some of their men for help. So, after a few minu­tes of shouting, waving of wea­pons and dragging people out of their hovels, Shamorn thought it was time to act.

Bra­vely step­ping for­ward, he con­fron­ted the lea­der of the sca­ven­gers, deman­ding of him to cease these des­pica­ble acts and appealing to his good sense, as a man, to respect his people’s wishes.

The screams as the leader’s mini­ons star­ted slaugh­te­ring the women and child­ren are still stuck in Shamorn’s head. He still only has vague memo­ries of that moment, but there is one thing he is quite con­fi­dent of:

As his mother’s life­l­ess body was thrown in front of him, crump­led up in a heap, he snap­ped. Shamorn went into a rage, slamming into the mini­ons and fight­ing them fier­cely. It see­med the demon in him had taken con­trol, for he was full of laugh­ter at the slaugh­ter he was cau­sing, taun­ting his enemies as he smas­hed their faces in with his $wea­pon or embed­ded his dag­gers into their hearts, even just rip­ping into them with his claws and bit­ing as he went along.

It did not take long for him to cut through the mini­ons, emer­ging bathed in blood, eldritch powers abound and fla­mes crack­ling around his body. His Elven mas­ter bard was asto­nis­hed at the dis­play, and reco­gnized the poten­tial of a war­lock in him should he have even been trai­ned thusly. As it was, the teacher pre­fer­red to cower in fear and observe what hap­pened next.

Shamorn con­fron­ted the lea­der of the sca­ven­gers who was just stan­ding there, sho­cked to his core.

“This is what hap­pens when you try to com­pel my folk, human!” the bard sta­ted in an almost neu­tral voice, only a hint of a burning dark­fire notica­ble in the voice. And with that, he slew the lea­der of the group that brought death to his kin.

And as if by mira­cle, Shamorn imme­dia­tely cal­med down to his usual, naive self. The only hint at his mons­tro­sity was the fact that he sur­veyed the slaugh­ter he had cau­sed wit­hout fear, shame or dis­gust. Loo­king around him, he found few people left alive. Some were cower­ing inside their hovels, eit­her hiding their faces or sta­ring out at him with fear. Others seem to have run a way, and it was eerily silent.

Shamorn clea­red his throat. “My mas­ter, I will be lea­ving now. Do you wish to accom­pany me?”

His mas­ter, still shaking slightly, replied “No, my app­ren­tice. I do not think that you need me any fur­ther. Con­sider your trai­ning complete.”

And with these short words, the recently orpha­ned Shamorn Fal­len­he­art set out into the Realms, ven­tu­ring forth to herald his people — and to leave this bligh­ted home which has been cur­sed by his deeds.

The cha­rac­ter sta­tistics will fol­low as soon as I have access to the rele­vant docu­ments again. I might also write a short story or two detailing the back­ground or later adventures.

D&D4e character description Shamorn Fallenheart, tiefling bard of High Imaskar in the Forgotten Realms.

See­ing how ever­yone else is cur­rently crea­ting inte­res­ting items, I thought that I should throw one of my ideas into the mix. And after a bit of tin­ke­ring with how it should work, I present:

Nobody really knows how these devices ever came to be, but they seem to have been used by devout and loyal war­ri­ors throug­hout time to save com­ra­des from cer­tain death by using their own life to shield them. The ulti­mate heroic sacri­fice, most souls sacri­fi­cing their bodies this way ascend to the Astral Sea.

A new magic item for D&D, allowing a character to heroically sacrifice himself to save his friends.