Stairs and cover

If you declare a surface as stairs they're going to be one homogenous tilted surface.
As the rule example shows, you treat them as a straight line, not individual steps. (The rules should really mention this, but the example picture was why it was that way in N3 too, so this is merely unchanged between editions.)


However, given your individual steps are big enough to fully support at least S2 via normal rules, there's no need to declare them to use stair/ladder rules and just Move (Vault) up and down with regular Movement. (it won't really come up either way in a real game, the main difference is if the trooper's Silhouette is tilted while moving/standing on stairs vs completely vertical and vaulting from step to step if it's not classified as stairs).

What actually denies you cover is being on a vertical surface or climbing/holding on to a vertical surface.
"Troopers who are Climbing or holding on to a vertical surface cannot benefit from Partial Cover MODs."
This is part of the Climb restrictions and listed under the Climb Skill page in an IMPORTANT box.

General Movement Rules:
"Those pieces of scenery representing stairs and ladders allow Troopers to treat those vertical or diagonal surfaces as a horizontal surface. Therefore, the Trooper can use any Skill or ARO with the Movement Label without needing to declare Jump or Climb, and without applying restrictions for Jump or Climb."
A trooper treats stairs and ladders as a horizontal surface (this is a blanket statement), which by itself is enough to allow the trooper to claim cover.
He also can ignore restrictions for (Jump or) Climb, which should let him ignore the Cover restrictions on vertical surfaces for stairs and ladders (this one isn't 100% conclusive because the Climb restrictions are in an IMPORTANT box rather than part of the Climb Skill itself).

 

Please let me know in what capacity that isn't a direct answer to your question.

General Movement Rules:
"Those pieces of scenery representing stairs and ladders allow Troopers to treat those vertical or diagonal surfaces as a horizontal surface. Therefore, the Trooper can use any Skill or ARO with the Movement Label without needing to declare Jump or Climb, and without applying restrictions for Jump or Climb."
A trooper treats stairs and ladders as a horizontal surface (this is a blanket statement), which by itself is enough to allow the trooper to claim cover.
He also can ignore restrictions for (Jump or) Climb, which should let him ignore the Cover restrictions on vertical surfaces for stairs and ladders (this one isn't 100% conclusive because the Climb restrictions are in an IMPORTANT box rather than part of the Climb Skill itself).


Oh and I'm gonna become a bit unhinged if someone gets pissy about the use of colors to make the reading comprehension easier. It was obviously too hard to spot. So I made it easier to see the relevant bits, you're welcome.

 

Because you're quoting the Movement rules to talk about Cover. [emoji14]

Honestly, Cover is Cover and how the terrain is treated for Movement is irrelevant.

Yes, you can get cover from individual steps.

 

I'm also quoting the Climb rules talking about Cover.
Climb talking about conditions invalidating Cover is irrelevant too then?
Where a rule is placed has no bearing on it being invalid for other aspects of the game, especially for Movement and Cover which are very closely related to each other. How are rules not rules just because they're in the Movement section?

Wait you want to know if the individual STEPS grant cover?

If they're classified as in game stairs then no.
Stairs are one smooth surface in the rules and you stand on that surface with a tilted Silhouette rather than the physical steps.

Assuming you are talking about 2 troopers on the same staircase shooting each other:
1. If the stairs as classified as stairs neither of them would have Cover.

2. If the stairs are not classified as stairs the guy in the lower elevation has Cover, the guy in higher elevation only has Cover if the lowest point of his Silhouette is above the other guys highest point, same as for a roof.

 

You treat it as a flat surface for measuring Movement and for placing the model.

Consider stairs with a 30mm run and a 20mm rise. It's trivial to place an S2 SIL on each stair but if you don't designate them as stairs it's possible to place that mini in such a way that it's impossible to engage in Close Combat. This is a bad thing (I know, because when I pointed it out mid game Hachiman Taro made his displeasure clear, so we rapidly designated them as stairs and moved on). But equally in such a situation it would be ridiculous to say that the trooper doesn't get Cover when touching the edge of a stair.

This does run into the "irregularly shaped terrain piece" cover problem, but it's solved by the standard (albeit unofficial) rubric of "along the Attack's LOF air-terrain-SIL = cover; terrain-air-SIL = no cover". Which basically means that they need to be pressed up against the next rise to get cover.

I'm not 100% clear on how the SIL moves, but I've always assumed/recalled it's exactly the same was as for vaulting.

 

You don't just treat stairs as horizontal surface for Movement purposes.
You treat stairs as horizontal surface (blanket statement).

If you don't designate the usual stairs as such then you can't end your Movement on them altogether if the steps aren't big enough to support your Silhouette as normal. Most stairs are entirely unuseable for their main purpose.


On stairs the red position is incorrect.
It will be how your model is physically placed on the stairs more often than not, but it's not how your trooper is going to be on those stairs in game terms.
The Blue position on the green ramp is how your trooper "exists" on stairs during, before and after Movement. And he counts is if on a horizontal surface and can claim Cover.

Because that's how this:

and this:


Work when you apply both together.
Your base moves and stands on the green line, same as N3 btw. (I blame the stair example missing a middle position for making this unneccessarily hard)

 

Vaulting up the stairs seems like it would be significantly different than defining them as stairs and treating them as a horizontal surface since vaulting models can’t benefit from partial cover.

 

Vault models can benefit from partial cover. They just can't benefit from the object the vault on top of. So while moving you'll usually lose cover.

The biggest difference is model placement. In vaulting you need to end fully supported. With stairs you don't, you can end half on half off a stair.

@Teslarod your diagram and the rules diagram are different. The rules diagram has the green arrow at the base of the rise not at the top of the rise, this would mean that the rise and run of the stairs are obstacles that jut out, so you'd need to vault them. This creates lots of problems, so it's far easier to treat the green line as an illustration of distance not base movement.

Practically measuring base of the rise to base of the rise as illustrated in the rules is impossible, so we need to treat the diagram as illustrative rather than definitive anyway. Your argument hinges on the green arrow showing base movement: it doesn't, it shows distance.



Also, did you miss the bit where I pointed out that the thing you said "would not come up in a game" came up in a game?

Large stairs are a feature of many tables (Battle Kiwi has a piece that basically fits my description), and you need to account for them. Just going "you can vault them" massively changes how they play (for the worse).

From a gameplay POV, placing the SIL as Red is SIGNIFICANTLY preferred as it's FAR easier to consistently achieve. It's also consistent with how Climb on uneven terrain would work.



In this case Red is the correct position, even if it had been declared to be a ladder.

 

Wouldn't this make many sizes of steps just "unassailable positions for CC"? (just like the ones in your picture). That alone would be a huge and very ugly isse (it already comes up on some small roof tops, but not as bad as it would here).

"You can't fight me, Anakin, I am on a ramp of stairs!"

 

No - because you treat it all as horizontal terrain for the purposes of placing the model: by which I mean that you can overhang a lower stair when placing it. This gets around the 'unassailable CC position' that you create by leaving the stairs as something to be vaulted.

Teslarod is going to tell me I'm wrong overhanging the SIL like that, because 'it's not fully supported'. But I literally have never met anyone who plays it like Blue: everyone places the SIL flat on the stairs.

Honestly,
* placing it like Red;
* allowing SILs to overhang lower stairs; and
* individual steps grant cover.

That's the only way dealing with large stairs makes sense. Otherwise you run into way too many unintuitive outcomes.

 

Makes sense.

Just on this subject, a small off-topic, since it's more a confirmation than a real question and probably there is no need for a full new post.

In cases where the base is barely fitting on a top roof with no space for a full new base (like any 40mm base models on top of paper square crates, or smt like that), do you all simply play out the "unassailable position" for CC?

Because, with some effort, one can almost create a similar disposition on a bigger roof with a fireteam. And it's really an ugly consequence of the rules.

 

Yes - it's possible to place troopers in positions where it is impossible to enter the Engaged state with them because there is no legal position.

 

Thanks.
As I said, I was quite sure, but I needed a confirmation since I hoped there had been some way out.
I still think it's quite an ugly rule, both realistically and strategically, but, alas, it's here to stay.

Well, at least stairs are ok with this using these rules.

 

No you're wrong.
Red is not happening and blue is.
Good catch on the rule example drawing the "ramp" below the steps though. That's the plane you move on, which puts the trooper moving on it INSIDE of scenery here:


That is if the steps were part of the scenery and the Red position would be correct, which it is not.
The rules consider stairs one smooth surface to move on and the trooper sticks to that smooth surface accordingly. When using the stair rules, the steps are not there in game terms, it's a smooth ramp.

Again, unchanged from N3 - where stairs essentially had all their steps sawed off too.
While it sure is badly this is communicated in N4, I can't see why it would be different than in N3 given the matching examples between editions.

Ofc you SHOULD play stairs as stairs and especially CC becomes very annoying if you don't. The point was that most stairs are unplayable under your interpretation because you can't stop movement on the majority of stairs using their physical shape.
Vertical S position is impossible achieve for stairs made of steps that can't support your full base.

Look at it yet again:

The end position is higher than the starting Silhouette.
You couldn't get up the stairs even using vault rules to begin with.
The steps are too small to support the base and end Movement on.
While on those stairs, standing or moving, the trooper will follow the green line's angle with his base. That's the way it used to work and N4 doesn't provide a different solution on how to handle it.

 

I'm not saying that's not how you played it in N3, I'm saying that that's certainly how every meta I ever interacted with played it in N3: measure the diagonal, place the Trooper on the terrain wherever it ended up, even if it wasn't fully supported by an individual step.

Yes, you can't vault the stairs in the diagram, that does not mean that all things that should be designated as stairs can't be vaulted. It's why I described a set of stairs with a 30mm run and a 20mm rise and then used that for discussion: it's representative of a design that is widely commercially available and causes significant in game effects if not treated as stairs by S2 models. It's the sort of terrain that you create wicked problem if you force players to choose between it granting cover or it being able to be moved up as if it was horizontal terrain. The smaller each step (and therefore the closer it is to being a slope) the closer the position of Blue and Red, which makes the distinction we're discussing far less relevant: where the issues are most apparent is on large steps, particularly those with a run of more than 26mm.

And yes, for the purposes of measuring you measuring from the same point on the SIL. Which in this case is the lowest leading edge, which - for measuring - will clip through individual steps. That is what the rules describe. Thankfully the distance from the bottom of the first rise to the bottom of the last rise is the same as from the top on the vast majority of terrain.

However, if the Green line is the plane you move on then you're arguing that to place the SIL accurately it needs to be placed within the stairs. That's patently impractical and, moreover, results in a significant difference in SIL coverage.

Rather, I'm saying that the Green line is the distance you measure but that the placement of the SIL follows the contours of the steps. This has the SIL touching the green line whenever it is on a step and abutting the next rise (ie it is occupying the entire step). This means that the SIL is following the green line as closely as possible without clipping into terrain: this is in line with the General Movement Rules and how small protuberances in terrain are handled.

From discussions on vault and Climb it's patently clear that the Green line does not represent how the SIL moves (see the discussion where both you and IJW told me I was wrong for arguing that with respect to Climb).

Mostly I'm approaching this from a "practically how can we reliably place a SIL on any piece of terrain designated as stairs or ladders?" The only way to do that is to have the SIL follow the contour of the terrain while measuring the diagonal. This is intuitive, is in line with how similar movement is handled, is consistent, can be practically achieved on a table and does not contradict the rules (again, because nowhere else does that Green line represent SIL movement rather it only represents the distance measured).

If you accept that the SIL follows the contours of the terrain rather than either gliding over them or clipping through them, as you successively describe, then it follows that they can benefit from cover derived from the contours of this terrain in line with general practice.

 

Extra question. Can you move in prone on stairs? If you consider them as horizontal surface then you should, but on the other hand each step is higher than your current sil. So what do you guys think?

 

You can. That's one of the benefits of designating them as stairs.

They may be in total cover though.