I like firefights where using cover and the terrain is the way you keep your body from sprouting messy plasma-burned tunnels with glowing embers highlighting the edges. I know Star Wars has a lot of running and shooting sequences, and old west style gun fights, but I still see a lot of taking cover going on like it should. Whenever I watch the Stormtroopers and Rebels do their mini Normandy Beach on the Tantive IV it makes me really want to highlight the cover rules.
Cover: The RAW give a character taking cover a Ranged Defense of 1 or 2, with 2 being really good cover like a fighting position or some other very advantageous position where the character cannot easily be hit but can still return fire. Taking cover is achieved by using the Interact with the Environment Maneuver.
My players told me they found the Cover 1 situation not worth using a lot of the time, because of the rules about not stacking ranged defense, they gain no advantage if they had Ranged Defense of 1 already, and have to use a maneuver to get into cover.
I am playtesting a new rule to help with this and the first session use of it was last night. Here is the rule I am using:
- A character who is Not in cover at Engaged, Short, Medium range gives an opponent firing at them an automatic 1️⃣ Boost. This does not apply to Prone characters, even if they don't have cover unless they are at Engaged Range from their shooter.
The first thing was that people would forget about it both when they were being shot at and also shooting. Also, keeping track of who was in cover or not was important and had to be tracked each round, so that was an extra detail.
The upside was that the players were seeking cover a lot in the fight, and were describing movements they normally gloss over. Also as a side effect, they started trying to focus on removing the cover that the enemies had and wanted to use Advantage and Triumphs even to do that at times.
A bit of a conflict with the RAW is that the Upgrades you suffer for using Ranged at Engaged are a bit offset by the Blue for no Cover. I don't feel like this is too big a deal however because in actuality firing a weapon at a closer target is not generally harder, and represents the danger of Brawl/Melee combat against someone with a Gun. FBI shooting data shows that accuracy drops off sharply after 3 ft. so I feel pretty comfortable with the Blue for people you are shooting who are in your face.
Has any one else experimented with this or something like it to encourage combatants taking cover? Also we tend to not have jedi in the party so they don't get used a lot, and as a result I am not as familiar with how this would affect a lightsaber-wielding character. I would be willing to make exception for a Force User who can Reflect such attacks, as it seems that the intention is for jedi/sith to be able to face guns with melee weapons.
