If someone has armour and is behind cover I've been effectively adding the cover onto the armour value. The consequence is that I've been limiting the cover somewhat and it basically falls between fairly light and practicle indestructable.

Looking at it, i could potentially be treated as armour and only the highest value takes effect. I can see some people not being happy with this.

I've had another thought, what I might start doing is treat them seperately but reduce both the cover and the armour by weapons penetration. High pen weapons would get a boost but I don't think it's unbalancing as in practise I'll be using the cover values better anyway but it means a dreadnought doesn't benefit from some crates when hit with a lascannon (extreme example ofc).

Face Eater said:

What I usually do with cover, is have it's armour value deduct from the damage caused by the shot. The person hit takes the remaining damage as normal. Essentially what you've been doing. Ignoring a character's armour because he's in cover is a bit mean, though we've had the opposite with our old GM, he seemed to forget that cover can actually stop shots.

What I never took into account, but probably should have, was the AP of the weapon firing the shot: clearly weapons with higher penetration are more likely to punch holes in cover as well as armour.

I have once used indestructible cover, but that was a special case. It seemed wrong that bullets could get through it seeing as it withstood a massive explosion.

Cover provides additional protection to the location behind it. Therefore, if you have a character in Guard Flak Armor (All 4) with his legs and torso behind flakboard cover (AP 8) he technically gets a total of 12 points of armor on those locations. However, any hit with Penetration applies its penetration to the Cover AP and then again to the worn armor's AP.

Example: Operating in the Soot Warrens of Tranch, Trooper Jamison is crouched behind a flakboard barricade when his position comes under attack from a hulking mutant shouldering a heavy stubber. While the brutes bulk and strength are quite impressive, it's aim borders on that of the myopic. Most of the rounds from the attack impact harmlessly short into the ground, but 3 round "hit" Jamison. The attack roll indicates an initial hit to the left leg. Using Table 7-6 on page 190 we determine the subsequent rounds will strike the leg again and then the body.

• The Heavy Stubber does 1d10+4 I with a penetration of 3.
• The Flakboard is cover providing AP 8.
• Jamison's Guard Flak provides him AP 4.
• Jamison has a TB of 3 and 10 wounds.

The first heavy stubber round does 12 points of damage. This is reduced by 5 for the flakboard (AP 8 vs. Pen 3) to 7, and the cover's AP is reduced by 1 to a total of 7. The damage is reduced a further 1 for Jamison's armor (AP 4 vs. Pen 3) to 6. Finally, Jamison's TB drops the damage a further 3 points down to a total of 3 actual damage received from the first round to hit him, reducing his wounds to 7.

The second round does 9 damage. The flakbaord absorbs 4 damage (Now AP 7 vs. Pen 3) allowing 5 points to pass through, and further shredding the cover (AP drops another 1 point). Jamison's armor once again stops 1 point (AP 4 vs. Pen 3) and his TB handles 3 more, leaving a net total of 1 damage with this hit. Jamison has now been reduced to 6 wounds.

Round three does an impressive 14 points of damage . The cover now only stops 3 damage (AP 6 vs. Pen 3) meaning 11 point bypass it; and it's AP is reduced yet again, now down to AP6. Jamison's Flak Armor stops 1 more damage (again AP 4 vs. Pen 3), dropping the damage to 10. Finally his TB knocks another 3 points off, leaving 7 damage to Jamison's body . This will be bring Jamison into critical damage of -1 Impact to his body; knocking the breath out of him and allowing him only a Half Action on his next turn.

That's personally how I use cover. It balances it nicely.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Seems a bit harsh.

What happens if a 4 dam 2 pen shot hits a cover 5 object? Bearing in mind that the next incremental step down in terms of damage or penetration is stopped dead.

I would suggest the penetration is spent before the damage i.e. 1 dam 0 pen gets through to hit the armour. A bullet coming out of a breeze block isn't going to look like the bullet that went into it.

This preserves the incremental nature of the damage.

Of course, it means almost anything that penetrates even light cover will lose all its penetration. I would still argue this is better than it preserving its entire penetration. Just doesn't seem right to me that a shot which just scrapes through cover carries its full penetration value.

On the other hand a melta-shot that penetrates light armor is going to be just as hot and nasty when it reaches you, the only thing that will change is that less of it will impact on you (less damage, same pen). The same could go for any energy weapons, so the argument goes both ways.

It's an abstraction but its a pretty good one. It gives some clear benefits to staying in cover but doesn't make it over the top. If you "spend" the pen on the cover most cover will be significantly increased.

The rules that Preatus wrote also has the nice function that powerfull enough weaponry simply ignores light cover. If the penetration of the weapon is enough to reduce the cover to 0, the shot will not loose anything in the process. Which in my opinion is as it should be, a bolter shot would not be slowed down by a few pieces of wood, and a plasma shot would pass straight through light metals.

I like that plan. A bolters going to be reduced a bit by light cover (8) where as you'll still get a lot of protection from 12 or 16 points even if you don't have the armour. I mean what's point of a bolter if you can't shoot people in cover with it. It just means that in a bolter fight you don't want to be hiding behind a upturned table.

ok now lets bring in the refractor field, amulet of warding and the rosarius. Hows that gonna add up.

Basically you can be behind cover, carrying a refractor field AND have armour.

should the same rule just apply to the field as well? So penetration works on all 3 'layers' and what remains will reduce the damage?

Doesn't the shield have explicit rules for how it works, or does it just say "count as cover" or something vague like that?

Honn said:

The fields have their own rules. Per Ascension they either absorb ALL damage from a hit, or fail to apply at all. Though how that works against auto-fire has been debated and discussed previously. Pre- Ascension they provided a variable level of protection, more or less determined on a per-hit-basis.

As to how cover works and why I have interpreted it the way I have is a matter of the wording of the last sentence of the Cover rules on page 199 of Dark Heresy .

• If the shot would hit a body location that is concealed behind cover, work out the Damage against the Armor Points of the cover instead, with any excess being applied to the target as normal (see table 7-10: Cover Types for a guide to the Armor Points of different kinds of cover).

While others may say I'm wrong, my interpretation for what is meant by " with any excess being applied to the target as normal " would mean that the attacks penetration would still apply to the damage against the target after cover; as that is part of the normal process. Nowhere is it said that penetration is expended like damage.

-=Brother Praetus=-

I'm with Praetus on this one - PEN is not temporarily reduced, if it can blow through the cover it can blow through the cover - if its got high enough PEN to blow through it, its going to blow through it.

Cover works to stop shots if cover is strong enough, but otherwise it simply takes a bit of the punch out of the damage roll if it manages to blow through it.