--- In imperium_40k@..., "yarry23" <yarry23@y...> wrote:
> In reading through the Combat Section, I noticed there were no
> explicit rules for to hit modifiers for being in cover. Was this
> intentional, or just forgotten/left out?
>
> What are the rules for shooting at someone in cover?

There are no modifiers to hit for shooting at someone in cover,
because they take up exactly the same amount of physical space as
someone in the open.

If the location hit is exposed, blam. Roll damage etc. as normal.

If the location's behind cover, that piece of cover provides a certain
degree of protection against damage (there's a fairly broad list of
examples). That way, someone standing behind a waist-high pile of
sandbags is better protected than someone standing behind a waist-high
wooden fence, which is as it should be.

(The cover rules are given on page 245, in the Injuries section. In
hindsight, I should maybe have flagged this up more clearly in the
Shooting section, particularly since there's a sentence right at the
beginning that seems to suggest that there should be modifiers to hit.
Damn this whole self-editing lark.)


~Awareness~ rolls, to spot people hiding in cover, have modifiers.
Maybe use these when people are concealing themselves in bushes and
whatnot.


All this is rules stuff inherited from Inquisitor (main source of the
Imperium combat system), but I do like the idea of cover simply being
extra armour when you've got a system that involves hit locations.

(I've since included cover modifiers in another game I'm writing, but
that one doesn't use hit locations, so it's probably the best way of
handling cover in that kind of game.)


>may I
> suggest you do something like simply make it a To Hit Modifier based
> on how much of the target is exposed/hiddden. Perhaps generalize it a
> little bit, making it abstract such as "Partial Cover", "Moderate
> Cover", and "Extreme Cover" or some such, assigning each increasingly
> higher to hit penalties for the shooter.

If you wanted to use to hit modifiers, I'd probably go for something
like -10 for being barely in cover (behind a lamp post, in a bush
etc.), -20 for half coverage behind something reasonably solid
(packing crates, sandbags and so on), and -30 for being almost entire
concealed (head visible over cover, lying in rubble, that kind of thing).


> Tell me what you think. FWIW I am planning on running an Imperium
> Game in the near future, so I will probably impliment one of these in
> my game (modern warfar requires a LOT of ducking behind conver if you
> want to survive longer than 30 seconds in a firefight!). Ill tell you
> how it works out for me.

With most humans having a base 50% chance of hitting a target with a
weapon (although most of the modifiers to shooting are negative, in
practice), cover's vital in an Imperium shootout, something that came
up a lot during playtesting. (Of course, hiding behind a wall's
useless if someone gets you in the head, so helmets are handy too.)