True LOS and Shooting over barriers issue

[KopMcGinty]

You can't be out of LoS behind the wall, lean out to take a shot, then be out of LoS again in your opponent's turn.

But sometimes the pose of the model and/or the base makes it difficult to place them exactly where you want. I've always played that, if necessary, you can declare 'he's just poking round this corner'. Players then assume LoS each way and cover, even if the model isn't quite in the right place.

Yup, have done this sort of thing with opponents agreement before too. Sometimes the way a gun sticks out for example can make it impossible to place correctly and maintain the faxing you want.

Maybe we are just lucky with the relaxed nature of those we play with but it doesn't take much to make this work with two people cooperating to make it a fun game rather than getting twisted in the rules.

That said it would be nice if there was a standard rule. Eg a shadow/default figure to sub in for this sort of stuff so you didn't have to rely on reaching a consensus.

Maybe I'll just house rule it in anyway.

 

[UbiquitousFUD]

Hey guys,

I don't mean to rez this post to try to bounce it up, but I did want to say that the guy I was playing was absolutely correct in enforcing the rule, because that's how the rule works, and he was correct in calling it out. I had thought it unfair (the rule, not the choice to enforce it) because I was framing the issue using a point of view that tried to make sense of the rule in terms of real world situations, not an artificial game situation. My friend had previously played a lot of Necro, and I think for him True LOS was sort of ingrained in how he thought about the rule system, and there is a 'fairness' about true LOS when it is equally applied to each player, its ubiquity and even application to all players makes the rule seem absolutely fair, and in that sense it is. Its just not very realistic. Now I was an old school 40k player (before the dominance of true LOS came to be), so I was framing the whole situation by comparing it to what it would be like in real life. (Not that the old 40k was realistic, but terrain rules were not true LOS enforces - one tree could represent a forest that you could not shoot through, etc..) This is obviously problematic because the game is ultimately artificial. It's easy to slip into this frame of reference because the artificiality is based on a simulation of reality. So I guess I want to say that if I inferred that my friend was being unfair in enforcing the rule, then that's on me, and I was wrong. He was right about the rule, how it works, and how it applied to that situation. Do I think its a good rule? Well lets just say that most people here seem to recognize that it is problematic and can lead to some strange and very unrealistic situations. Do I think its fair - well yes, in that if you know the rule going into the game, and realize its limitations, and keep it in mind while your setting up your approach and tactics, then it is fair because its applied evenly, and both players know the situation before going in. So in a way, the frustration that this causes is on me as well, because I tend to frame situations in simulation games around an ideological framework that always asks first - how would this work in the real world... I should probably know better, because as everyone knows, the more you try to bring in realism to a game, the more it gets bogged down by situational rules. I still think that in this situation the rule is not very realistic, and it will certainly make me think twice when I set up on higher ground And I personally would prefer a house rule or some approach that tries to compensate for these problems - particularly if the pose of the model is causing issues. But choosing to enforce it, thats 100% legitimate, and I can also see how from one perspective you could view the rule as perfectly fair. I think seeing it that way is legitimate too. Anyway, I appreciate all the discussion around this, and am sorry if I rezzing this is not cool with the forum, but I felt I should follow up in case there was some sense that I was saying that my opponent was being unfair in enforcing the rule.

 

[Ben_S]

Do I think its fair - well yes, in that if you know the rule going into the game, and realize its limitations, and keep it in mind while your setting up your approach and tactics, then it is fair because its applied evenly, and both players know the situation before going in.

I wouldn't say that applying a rule evenly to both parties is sufficient to make the rule itself fair. A rule itself can be unfair, even if applied evenly to everyone.

As pointed out above, it's not clear whether 'from the model's point of view' must mean 'from their head' but, certainly if it does, will have odd effects from some poses (e.g. the cartwheeling not Delaque posted above will often be visible to enemies that he can't see back).

 

[Lachi]

Hej folks,

We also had several ‚discussions‘ about the line of sight. One of our group argued that the RB states that you have to check LoS from the shooting models head (I deliberately use the term model instead of fighter). We believed it (we couldn’t remember the exact wording of the RB). However, you only have to be able to see a hand or a foot of the target so have a LoS. Applying this LoS interpretation (it was an actual interpretation since the RB does not mention the head but the point of view) lead us into some problematic situations: A model was almost completely obscured, only the left shoulder and a small part of the arm was visible. The model was shot at (since it was visible) and was missed. In its own activation, the player wanted to aim and shoot back. Rules as interpreted, it could not (and so the player of the target argued), since from the head of the model, no line of sight could be drawn. This made me consult the RB and I told them ‘it’s the point of view, not the head’. ‘What’s the difference?’ was a counterargument.

As we are from Germany, we communicate in German, even though we use the original English books. Sometimes, this make conversations quite funny, since we usually do not translate the English expression into German. For the issue at hand it as worth doing so. The translation for ‘point of view’ are manifold and depend on the situation. Here, the word ‘Standpunkt’ makes sense. Literally, it is the point where someone stands. Combined with the idea ‘I can see you, you can see me’ we agreed that the model could fire back. Thus, we now handle it in our games.

Now, we are considering using something like the silhouette thing in infinity or something similar because we had another problem:

The rules state, that when a part of the model is obscured, the model benefits from partial cover, ignoring insignificant part such as hairstyle, weapon barrels etc. In the first occasion, the target’s right foot was obscured by some pebbles on the ground and the player insisted on partial cover. In a second instance, the model’s hand was ‘obscured’ by a ladder. Again, the (same) player insisted on partial cover. In the first instance, only the two of us were present and went with the RAW. This led to ridiculous attempts to position the models that the right ear was obscured by a suspended chain to get partial cover. In the second instance, we were six players and I could bring up my arguments against cover in that situation and the other one his. Then, we settle this democratically by having five votes against cover and one for it.

Did you have these situations? How do you interpret ‘insignificant parts’?



Cheers (and sorry for my wordiness)

Daniel

 

[Ben_S]

I'd suggest that what needs to be hidden to claim cover is something that, if seen, could allow line of sight.

If your outstretched hand gives you cover, then you can also be shot when only the outstretched hand is visible.