Authrym's page

Hi folks!

Not wanting to spam or anything such, but I found a new Patreon (not mine) trying to take off, I think it looks quite interesting. It offers RPG city maps which look quite nice, for every genre. For those like myself, who run sandbox hexcrawls with a healthy dose of random content generation, this is a boon.

https://www.patreon.com/Heriss

Sorry, but I don't automatically buy anything that someone post in the web. ANY story has two sides, and hearing only one of the sides is never helpful. Not because I think the OP is lying, I give him the benefit of the doubt. It's because his point of view is biased by his feelings just like the other guy's point of view is too. You are believing the OP because he is the one coming first to tell the story. I'm sure the other guy can make a post telling the other side of the story about how the group is bullying him with a character which is perfectly normal and doing just average baseline damage, but they don't allow him to play with it and I'm sure he'd get a lot of pats in the shoulder too, but not mine.

Apparently, you missed the part of my post that says "Of course, this takes into account the only side of the story that we have been told".

I see a pile of posts banding together in defense of the "power gamer" in the OP's group, and frankly, it does not surprise me at all. I guess a lot of very vocal posters feel identified with that player's style and immediately get on the defensive by trying to turn the situation around by "blaming the victim", so to speak. This is not a tirade against power gaming or optimization. No offense intended to anyone, seriously, but I think that the OP's complaints are legitimate and understandable.

First, the group as a whole is fairly new to RPGs. The behavior described can be very disruptive to the general enjoyment and learning process of all involved. Second, the guy is not a power gamer, he is a cheater. "Rolling" only 14s to 18s, always, is plain cheating, there is no way around it, and at least in my case it predisposes me to believe he is the "guilty party". Trying to hide the fact that his 2d8 Bastard Sword is oversized to avoid the penalties is an even worse kind of cheating. This demonstrates an utter lack of respect towards his fellow players. Him consulting optimization guides and copying cookie-cutter munchkin builds may not be cheating, but certainly can leave a bitter taste in the mouth of his gaming buddies, who are trying to learn the intricacies of character building on their own. If he on top of that tries to claim all that supposed "system mastery" as his own superior command of the game, it can be completely irritating to the rest. Finally, the urge to be always under the spotlight and be the hero of the story (with the rest of the PCs relegated to the role of mere sidekicks) speaks volumes of that person's incapacity or unwillingness to play as a team player. Of course, this takes into account the only side of the story that we have been told.

In short, I do not think that reactions such as "he's not op, is the rest of you that suck at chargen", or accusing the OP of wanting to win an ego war are entirely justified. Different groups seek different things in RPGs, and not everyone is interested in DPR olympics or number-crunching and rules-lawyering to be above other PCs. In my opinion, the OP is not really wrong in wanting to try other systems less prone to this approach. There are hundreds of excellent games out there.

As far as I know, you must move at half speed when using Acrobatics to avoid AoOs. I see that as incompatible with the double speed of a charge, but I can't check at the moment if it is specified in the rules. Edit: I just remembered that you can accept a +10 to the DC in order to move at your normal speed. Since a charge is not normal speed, I still think it is not possible.

Regarding your second question, my interpretation is that the one that does the move action is the one that has to check Acrobatics. However, I would ask the rider a Ride check to stay in the saddle, probably with the same DC of the Acrobatics check.

What you describe here is not a charge nor a Ride-By Attack, it is a double move of your mount, with your attack in between. With a Ride-By Attack, your mount does not stop moving: it's charging at full speed. The benefit of the feat is that your mount can keep moving after the charge if it has remaining movement (and AoO avoidance). Try to picture two knights jousting: that's the idea. In my opinion, it is absolutely against both RAW and RAI to suggest that you can Ride-By Attack a foe in the opposite direction of the charge. Trying to get the damage benefits of the charge in top of that... well... it would never fly with any DM I know, including me.

Here goes another Wish-related fiasco... because we can't have too many of those. It was back in the days of 2E. A rather excentric PC had befriended a critter with the power to grant a Wish per day... unfortunately, the thing was an embodiment of pure chaos who enjoyed twisting the wishes it granted to ensure maximum mayhem. After several ill-formulated wishes that almost resulted in a TPK, the rest of the party -which included a Wu Jen wizard, a greatsword-wielding barbarian and a dual-wielding ranger- tried to persuade, cajole and even intimidate the PC in question to get rid of the damn thing, to no avail of course.

One day, raiding a dungeon, they entered a room with a mechanism that left them trapped inside while hundreds of crawling hands entered the room through tiny holes in the ceiling and the floor (nowadays that would have been constructed as a swarm, I guess). Things looked bleak, and suddenly Mr Excentric's player's face glowed of pure joy, and immediately asked his pet: "I wish all the f*&*%ing hands in the room would disappear!"

The crawling hands vanished to the last... alongside their non-crawling, fully functional and previously-attached-to-an-arm counterparts. Needless to say, the barbarian, the ranger and the wizard were not amused. So not amused, in fact, that the barbarian tried to strangle Mr Excentric -hard to do without hands- and crush the little wish-granting bugger under his sandaled feet.

 I'm all for preserving culture, language and history.  I think Spain would be better off if those aspects of the Catalan people were rigidly protected, not at the exclusion of other things, but that people can't mess with it (like not forcing children to only speak certain languages, or banning certain languages in school).

I agree. The Catalan society is 99.9% bilingual, we learn Catalan and Spanish from the cradle, so to speak. One of those languages predominated, of course, depending on your upbringing (what is known as L1 in linguistics), but we have no troubles shifting between both languages at a moment's notice. We are used to that. I will use myself as an example: I speak with my parents, brothers and most of my friends in Catalan, and with my wife, in-laws and some friends in Castillian (a.k.a. Spanish, though that's somewhat of a misnomer.) I speak Catalan to my 2-year-old son, and my wife speaks Spanish to him. And that's absolutely normal here. We study both at school, alongside a foreign language, usually English, sometimes French.  

No one who has ever lived in Catalonia can say that the Spanish language is endangered here, on the contrary, it still has a hegemonic position as the official language of the state. Catalan, on the other hand, is an endangered language that is still recovering from almost 40 years of banning and suppression, and it needs a certain amount of protection to ensure its long-term survival. This reality, that can be confirmed by 7 millions of people, is often attacked by certain extreme-right Spanish propaganda that attempts to paint Catalans as some sort of linguistic fascists. How anyone in their right mind can believe that a language like Spanish, with more than 400 millions of native speakers and second only  in number of speakers to Mandarin Chinese, can be endangered by the Catalan language and its about 11 milions of speakers beats me completely, but that doesn't stop them from trying.

 From an economic, and political view point though, the world doesn't need more smaller countries that are more rigidly divided by ethnic and cultural backgrounds.  It only entrenches differences between countries making stability and cooperation harder to maintain.

As an outsider, I would see a peaceful way to stay united as more beneficial than a peaceful way to separate.  Both Catalan's and Spain's bargaining position and political influence will be greater if you remain together than if you part.  There are too many examples of countries that have split and had horrible conflicts afterwards.  Pakistan and India being one example.

For most Catalans, independence hasn't been the first option until now. The party that governed for the best part of 30 years with ample support by the people is characterized by its tendency to deal-making and negotiation, always fighting for more autonomy but always within Spanish boundaries. It is seen as a moderately conservative and very cautious party, and it has been a force for stability in the Spanish government, acting as a balancing element in the heavily bipartisan state politics. So you can imagine that when such a non-independentist party decides that its political trajectory is a dead end and that the popular claims for independence have to be heard, it is not on a whim and it is not a decision lightly taken.  We know that it will be a difficult process, made more difficult by a confrontational Spain that resists aggressively against what president Obama rightly called universal values: freedom and self-determination. If we Catalans decide by an ample majority that we want to be independent, we'll want that done peacefully and democratically. It is the task of our politicians to figure out how to do it, and to explain us how they will do it, so we can cast an informed vote. For now, all we're asking for is the chance to decide.

Oh, by the way, did you know what Spaniards like to call Catalans as an insult? Polacos, i.e. Polish/Poles. For years, our elected president was received in Madrid with multitudes in the streets shouting "Polaco, Polaco" and "Pujol, enano, habla en cristiano" ("Pujol, you dwarf, speak like a Christian"). It goes without saying that most Catalans are really puzzled as to why being Polish can be considered an insult in their minds, and usually assume that is because we speak a different language. The truth is that it originated during the Civil War and it makes reference to the 1939 Invasion of Poland, which has much, much nastier connotations.

I know how important that is to remember what happened to ones forebearers, but I also know how less than ethical people can use such experiences to rubber stamp the most egregious of practices  

Yes, I'm well aware of that, and I thank you for your sympathies.  Bear in mind, though, that I was not speaking about events that happened two hundred years ago, those things happened within living memory, a mere 40 and 50 years ago. The victims and witnesses are still living and they remember. In mentioning that, I was merely enumerating the reasons for the growing independentist feelings in Catalonia, because I realize it must be difficult to understand from the outside, without the whole historical and social context. 

In that regard, one of the major claims by the victims of the dictatorship (not only in Catalonia but across all Spain) is that, unlike other armed conflicts of the 20th century, after the Spanish Civil War (which began as a fascist military coup against a democratically elected government) there hasn't been any kind of reparation or compensation for the victims, there wasn't a true attempt to mend wounds or to repair the social fracture that still very much divides Spain in manichean "good and evil" sides (both right-wing and left-wing sides see themselves as the good ones, of couse). All there was was an attempt to turn a blind eye and the hope that people will eventually forget. Fat chance, in my opinion, as long as the generations involved are still living.

Also, please remember that the only threats of violence have come from the Spanish side, from retired military officers and even right-wing politicians (one of them suggested three days ago in a tv program a military intervention to dissolve the Catalan government and arrest our political leaders, stating that "and if the Catalan people take to the streets, let them! After a month or so they will go back home. They will have to eat and work, eventually" (my translation). A true lesson in democratic thought!

Like Aralyth, I'm a Catalan. However, I do support the movement towards independence. Please allow me a little rant to explain why I feel what I feel. 

Like a large (and growing) sector of the Catalan people, I consider myself Catalan by birth, culture, language and heritage, and Spanish by legal imposition. Lots of people around me and my family who weren't independentists, now they are. The reasons for this need to be recognized as a free, sovereign nation with its own state should not be attributed to merely economic factors, though. They are a part of it, undoubtedly, but in my opinion the current crisis is just the last straw. We've been overtaxed for decades, with a ridiculous imbalance between what we contribute and what we get in return, and yet most Catalans preferred to reach a solution to the widening rift between Catalonia and Spain via negotiation and agreement. But even the calmest, most thoughtful and moderate people have limits to what they are able or willing to endure. The problems between both nations go back centuries, but in the recent years the Spanish government (especially the right-wing, closet-Francoist Partido Popular) has ramped up its attacks against the Catalan people and language, engendering widespread feelings of catalanophobia among Spaniards with clear electoral purposes. 

Catalans are insulted and threatened in some rancid Spanish media on a daily basis, our language -a language as old if not older than Spanish and equally rich in its literature (and I say this as a philologist, so I'm not saying that lightly) which we hold dear as a symbol of who we are and how we think, is constantly endangered by aggressive interventionist policies from Madrid, with the intention to wipe off any differential element (the most common Spanish attitude towards Catalan, in my experience is perplexity: lots of people apparently think that we speak Catalan just to piss them off). We endured a 36-year dictatorship that oppressed brutally our rights and our idiosyncracies, my own 
parents and grandparents risked being beaten by the police if they were caught speaking in Catalan, their mother tongue. The sad thing is that after 30 years of pretended democracy, certain attitudes have not changed in the least. The aggressive, patronizing views of Spain towards Catalonia is very much the colonialistic rage of a faded once-glorious empire that, after 4 centuries of decadence, refuses to lose the few jewels it still has in its clutches. 

We've seen our language endangered, our identity insulted, the decisions made by our Parliament trampled and our otherwise-thriving economy 
destroyed, and in Spain they still think that we've gone crazy overnight. We're not crazy, and this didn't happen overnight. A million and a half people demonstrated peacefully and democratically asking for their right -the universal right of every people to self-determination- to be respected. As a believer in democracy, I think that the Catalan people should be allowed to speak in a referendum and decide who and what they want to be, and the world should accept the result, whatever it may be.

And I want to make abundantly clear that I have nothing at all against Spain and the Spaniards, just like I have nothing against the British, the Americans or the Japanese. On the contrary, I admire certain aspects of each of those nationalities. However, that doesn't make me want to be British, American or Japanese. I'm Catalan, simple as that.