Passive cover bonus from shield and cloak?

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by tbone

Since there's nothing in the rules for handling normal shields as cover

Shields are cited as an example of cover. It's even a pull quote on B379. B408 gives you several options for dealing with cover (target a non-covered hit location; roll a random location and see if that's covered). The weakness here is that there's no rule in Basic specifically detailing what locations are covered by various sizes of shield, much less a table to cover all the possible cases of postures and motion during combat. The Overpenetration section (also on B408) cites a successfully Blocking shield as cover that counts as an automatic hit on the person behind it.