Cover and Concealment

Hiding behind a rock outcropping or activating a cloaking field are beneficial to your survival in combat, providing cover and concealment. Objects that physically block attacks provide cover. Effects that obscure you from perception provide concealment. You can get bonuses from both cover and concealment, which apply independently and therefore stack.

Cover: Different terrain features provide cover from attacks, giving you increased defenses.

• Some Cover: +2 to all defenses.
• Moderate Cover: +4 to all defenses.
• Good Cover: +8 to all defenses.
• Near Total Cover: +16 to all defenses.
• Total Cover: If you have total cover, you cannot be attacked.

If you can't get a good look at your target, it has concealment from you, which means it has increased defenses from your attacks.

Concealment

• Concealment: +3 to all defenses, you are in a lightly obscured square.
• Total Concealment: +6 to all defenses, you can't be seen, are invisible, or are in total darkness.
• Area Attacks: You don't get a concealment bonus to defense against attacks that damage an area.

In some cases, being invisible offers more than a few points of defense. If you are both hidden and invisible (Skulduggery [pp]), you can neither be seen nor heard, and your enemies have to guess what space you occupy. If you aren't hidden, you simply have total concealment. On your turn, you can make a Perception check as a minor action [pp] to try to determine the location of an invisible creature that is hidden from you.