Passive cover bonus from shield and cloak?

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by tbone

1. Abstract cover
Treat DB as a bonus on AD (that's RAW), or as a penalty TH.

I like this one for the no-fuss category.

treat a shield as cover appropriate to shield size.

The purist in me suggests that relative SM ought to play a role here, if you wanted to value arbitrarily-sized shields. But taking a quick glance, it doesn't look like that would work out very different from just using -DB.

As a minor variation, you could use a "miss by DB" rule: a hit at TH-DB is a hit, a miss by <= DB means the arrow hits the shield (you'd have hit, too, if it weren't for that meddling shield); a miss by > DB is a miss.