What happens when an angel in Cover takes Lethal damage?

Question

The rules are clear on Manifested Ephemerals (CoD, p. 129):

Physical attacks on a Manifested entity that would normally cause lethal damage only cause bashing damage unless the attack utilizes the entity’s bane. Despite appearing to the naked eye and being solid, a Manifested spirit, ghost, or angel doesn’t have any internal organs to injure...

Ephemeral entities that lose all Corpus from lethal or aggravated wounds explode into a burst of ephemera, stylized to their nature.... The entity isn’t actually dead, though, unless it has also run out of Essence. If it has even a single Essence point remaining, it reforms, hibernating, in a safe place (a Conditioned location, usually).

However, do the same rules apply to angels in Cover? Does an angel who receives only Lethal damage equal to its Corpus survive in Twilight to perhaps return one day to avenge themselves?

Answer 1

There are no mechanical differences for taking damage while having a Cover.

Cover for an Angel is not mechanical like it is for a Demon PC. There are only a few occasions where an Angel having Cover has game mechanic implications (Falling and Angel Jacking come to mind). Most of the time the game mechanics operate the same regardless of Cover.

Further, this question is written from the perspective of Cover being a special case. However throughout the Demon rulebook as well as The God Machine Chronicle, an Angel having Cover is the normal case. There are a few example stories in GMC where the PCs venture deep into Infrastructure and find Angels without Cover. But overall, the example Angels in both books, the story examples, and the setting details are written with the Angels having Cover.

This isn’t a special case and no special rules are needed to handle the mechanics.