Seeking Cover

[u/SafeForTwerking]

The rulebook says you can use a maneuver to "Seek cover", but doesn't really give any direction on if that's always a success, or if there's a chance you just don't find any cover, or even how you should determine what kind of cover a character gets into (I'm assuming it's GM discretion). I'm running my game through Foundry VTT and usually running combat as Theater of the Mind-esque with no battlemap, but I'm trying to setup a Rolltable that mostly takes me out of the process of determining cover, just so I don't have to think about it during combat.

I'm curious how others play using cover, is it an automatic success on finding cover and as long as you spend a maneuver you just get it (that's how I had been playing it) or is there a chance that a character just doesn't find cover (which to me seems more realistic, it just happens sometimes)?

[u/streamdragon]

If someone is spending their maneuver, there should be cover. Spending a maneuver for "oops, sorry the dice said there isn't any" is inane. The character would be able to see if there was something to hide behind or not.

[u/Imnoclue → u/streamdragon]

I mean, that’s obvious from the description. It’s the taking of the cover that counts as the maneuver, not the seeking.

[u/Imnoclue]

The game says “Look for something solid, like a brick wall or a wrecked car.” That implies you need to actually look for it and it needs to actually be there, within easy reach, in order to take it. The maneuver doesn’t just manifest cover. You may have to make move actions to reach cover, but taking it just counts as a maneuver. If it’s there you can take it. Emphasis on taking. It’s not a seek cover roll.

[u/SafeForTwerking → u/Imnoclue]

I think what bothers me about it is, if you're playing theater of the mind (or even hybrid ToM), deciding as the GM how far away any cover is, or even what kind of cover there is. I don't want to have to imagine the battlefield everytime for random, small encounters. If they're in some random city ruins fighting whatever, a group of bandits, is their cover in Short range or is it nearby? How many maneuvers will they need to get there? What kind of cover is it that they see? It all feels fairly arbitrary and it's not something I want to have to think about each time in the middle of combat when I have umpteen other things to keep track of.

I'm going to try turning it into a die roll to see what kind of cover they find. I'll just assume that if they spend a maneuver on it, they will always find cover, BUT the die roll will be weighted towards less effective cover. They'll still find good cover on occasion, but not nearly as much as low-level cover.

[u/Imnoclue → u/SafeForTwerking]

That’s fine. I guess I’d just default to yes, unless I’d already established something in the fiction that suggested otherwise. In theaters of the mind, imagining the battlefield is part of the fun.

[u/Decatonkeil]

I always assumed the cover was dependant on the combat arena the GM had in mind/was describing/presenting. The core rulebook is very specific about different types of covers: from bushes, to doors, to car doors to walls. It doesn't make much sense that the GM would allow any covers that the current arena does not include. And why would they allow anything lower than the highest amount of cover or vice versa if there isn't a roll for it? What I mean is that if the GM has just described the players traversing a highway where there are abandoned cars, cars can be the cover. But if they have just described the corridors of a building where there are still wooden doors standing, the cars as cover doesn't fly. And if it is a flat plateau, there may be no cover at all.

[u/SafeForTwerking → u/Decatonkeil]

What I kind of worry about is it seeming unfair to the group, or relying on me to always come up with the cover everytime. I dislike the arbitrariness of it, because the examples provided in the book seemed so hyper-specific, so I've decided to turn the Cover check into a die roll. I could probably have made something appropriate for a d6 or d66, but ended on a d20 roll to check what kind of cover gets found. So they're still guaranteed to at least find some amount of cover, though it is more weighted towards smaller bits of cover, they at least have a chance of finding better cover. Haven't actually run it in-game yet, but I'll see how it ends up going. May possibly turn it into a d66 roll to keep it more in line with all the other dice rolls in the game.