How does Cover maneuver work?

[Tywyll]

So how does this work in regards to actions. The way it seems to read is that if someone establishes Cover before a combat starts, they could effectively attack twice once it does (since inflicting the damage 'takes no time'). 

 

We had a scerario where a character was covered last night (the cover being established before the characters were in actual combat), and when the pc took his action, the covering npc took the shot (in phase 12) and then when it rolled around to the npcs DEX, he was going to go again. 

 

Is that correct? Or should his phase have been spent already?

[Steve Long]

My apologies for the delay in responding.

 

The Cover Optional Combat Maneuver lets a character make his Attack Roll, and if he succeeds, then he doesn’t roll the damage yet. He “holds” the damage (so to speak) so he can threaten the target or do other things that might help him in this situation (such as making a Presence Attack). When he decides he wants to go ahead and do the damage, he just rolls it — since he already succeeded with his Attack Roll, he doesn’t need to roll to hit.

 

Covered does not allow a character to make two Attack Actions in a Segment. If a character is maintaining Covered on a target and the Segment in which he began Covering the target ends, the character can continue to maintain the Covered, but doing so automatically uses up his next Attack Action in his next Phase (this is similar to Aborting an Action, but isn’t precisely the same because it’s not exactly a defensive action). If he doesn’t want that to happen, then before the Segment in which he began Covering the target ends, the character either has to go ahead and do damage to the target, or he has to declare that he’s ending his Covered.

 

If a character uses his next Phase “in advance” to maintain his Covered, when the Segment in which that Phase occurs begins, the character is automatically considered to act first, regardless of everyone’s DEX, but all he’s allowed to do is maintain or use his Covered. He cannot take any other Actions until he either uses his Covered, or declares that he’s ending it. If he wants to, he can do the damage from Cover in one of the intervening Segments in which he ordinarily wouldn’t get to act. (The character is also automatically considered to act first in the intervening Segments, but again only to maintain or use his Covered.)

 

Example:  Captain X (DEX 20, SPD 5) declares that he will use his Phase in Segment 5 to Cover a thug (DEX 11, SPD 3) with his handgun. He succeeds with his Attack Roll, so the thug is Covered. If Segment 5 is ending and Captain X still hasn’t done anything further, he has three options. First, he can go ahead and do damage to the thug, per the rules for Covered. Second, he can declare that he’s going to stop Covering the thug, in which case the thug takes no damage and nothing else happens. Third, he can declare that he’s maintaining his Covered into Segments 6 and beyond. His next Phase isn’t until Segment 8, so maintaining his Covered requires him to use his Phase from Segment 8 “in advance.”

 

Segment 8 arrives. Ordinarily the first character to act in Segment 8 would be Blaze (DEX 25, SPD 6). However, since Captain X is maintaining his Covered, he’s considered to act first automatically — but all he can do is maintain or use the Covered. (He could, if desired, use the Cover to do damage to the thug in Segments 6 or 7, even though he normally doesn’t have a Phase in those Segments.)

 

Does that clarify things? If not, please PM me or post a follow-up question, and I’ll try again. Sometimes issues of who acts first, and how many actions a character gets, can become confusing.