Hostages as Cover

[CountD]

So I was DMing a game of 3.5 last night and in an improv, thinking-on-the-feet kind of action I had an enemy take cover behind an NPC hostage. After the standoff was established I didn't know how the conventional rules handled this situation, so I ruled that if the attack would have landed if not for the +4 cover bonus the attack would be made against the NPC instead. It worked pretty well, but I was wondering how the rules/other people would handle the gameplay behind attacking an enemy with a hostage.

[Slipperychicken]

You pretty much adhered to the Soft Cover (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/combatModifiers.htm) rules, plus a common-sense alteration. What you did is almost word-for-word what I thought of at first.


I would additionally treat the hostage and hostage-taker as in a Grapple, meaning that ranged attackers have a 50% chance of accidentally shooting the hostage instead, and they both lose Dex to AC.