Concealment & Cover
From D20advanced
Concealment
| CONCEALMENT | Condition |
| Partial | -2 penalty to attack rolls against concealed character, can hide, Combat Advantage |
| Total | -5 penalty to attack rolls against concealed character, can hide, Combat Advantage |
Concealment includes circumstances where nothing physically blocks an attack, but something interferes with the attacker’s accuracy. Typically, concealment is provided by things like fog, smoke, shadows, darkness, foliage, and so forth.
- Concealment Attack Penalty: Partial concealment imposes a -2 penalty on attack rolls made against a concealed character. Multiple concealment conditions do not stack.
- Concealment and Infiltration Checks: You can use concealment to make a Infiltration check to avoid being seen. Without concealment, you usually need cover to make an Infiltration check.
- Combat Advantage: If you have concealment and your opponent is unable to perceive you clearly, you gain Combat Advantage over that opponent.
- Total Concealment: A target you cannot perceive with any of your accurate senses has total concealment from you. You can't directly attack an opponent with total concealment, though you can attack into the area you think he occupies. Any attacks made against a character's space with total concealment is made at a -5 penalty.
- Concealment and Area Attacks: The attack penalty concealment imposes on attackers does not apply to their area attacks, which are made at no penalty.
- Ignoring Concealment: Concealment isn't always effective. A shadowy area or darkness doesn’t provide concealment against an opponent with darkvision. Smoke provides no concealment against a character with X-ray vision, and so forth. Characters with low-light vision can see clearly for a greater distance with the same light source than other characters. See Enhanced Senses for more information.
 Option: Percent Miss Chance
If you prefer, it is possible to replicate the difficulty of attacking a concealed foe with a flat percent chance to miss on a given attack rather than suffering a penalty to attack rolls. While the outcomes for these systems are mathematically very similar, this system includes an extra "blind" roll which does tend to help the feeling of "stumbling around in the dark" more than the above streamlined rules. You cannot use hero dice to reroll a miss chance.
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Cover
| COVER | Condition |
| Light Cover (Bush, Fence, Weak Barrier) | -2 penalty to attack rolls against covered character, can hide |
| Heavy Cover (Stone Walls, Large Tree, Heavy Machinery) | -5 penalty to attack rolls against concealed character, can hide |
Taking cover behind a wall, tree, or other obstacle provides some of the benefits of concealment (making you more difficult to hit by imposing a -2 penalty on attack rolls against you), but does not grant you Combat Advantage (though if you use cover to hide, you can gain combat advantage over foes who can't perceive you). Further, the penalty to attack cover imposes on your opponents applies to both normal and area attacks (since cover can shield you from explosions very well). Cover is measured relative to the attacker. For example, hiding behind a low wall provides no cover against an opponent hovering above you, but does provide cover against an opponent on the other side of the wall.
- Cover and Infiltration Checks: You can use cover to make an Infiltration check to avoid being seen. Without cover, you need concealment to make an Infiltration check to hide.
- Total Cover: If you cannot draw a line between you and a target without intersecting cover, the target has total cover. You can’t make an attack against a target with total cover without using a Ricochet attack or an Indirect FX.
- Varying Degrees of Cover: In some cases, cover may provide a impose a greater penalty on attack rolls. In such situations, characters attacking you suffer a -5 penalty to attack rolls.
- Striking Cover: If it ever becomes important to know whether the cover was actually hit by an incoming attack, the GM should determine if the attack roll would have hit the protected target without the cover. If the attack roll falls within a range low enough to miss the target with cover but high enough to hit the target if there had been no cover, the cover is hit. This can be particularly important to know in cases when a character uses another character as cover. In such a case, if the cover is struck and the attack roll exceeds the Defense of the covering character, the covering character takes the damage intended for the target. If the attack roll is lower than the Defense of the covering character, but higher than the Defense of the covered character, the original target is hit instead. The covering character avoided the attack and didn't provide cover after all! Covering characters can voluntarily lower defense bonus to ensure they provide cover.
