Help me With a My little Pony Templates..and maybe some other help.

[Disliker of the mary sue]

When I first bought gurps it was also the same time I was into my little pony friendship is magic. I not as much as into as I used to but I think there some interesting ideas that could be done in that world. So I wrote up a template, untested templates since I have never played gurps...trying to convince people to give it a shot but eh you know they think it too complex but that's another story.

Pony: advantageMagery 0 +5
Extra legs (4) +5

claws(hooves) +3
talent (represent cutie mark...might be a better way but I am bit new to the system) +5-15
Regeneration (regular) +25
disadvantage
no fine manipulators -30
horizontal -10
total: 3

Earth Pony Lens:
str+3 +30
ht+3 +30
very fit +15
total=+75

Pegasus lens:
dx+3 +60
Flight (winged) +22
Total= +82

Unicorn lens:
Striker(impale(limited arc) +5
magery+1 +10
int +3 +60
total=+75


Yeah like i said I am a total amateur, is there anything I am missing, anything that is probably unnecessary? I did not make an alicorn lens because well I probably would never allow anyone to play an alicorn (maybe let that be an goal of your character, but never at the start.)

Of course the main issues is well no hands tends to be a bit of massive disadvantage.I was thinking this campaign would be theoretically more combat focus so one has to figure out what weapons one can use without fine manipulators. I don't know I just putting this out here and asking for feedback on my attempt to make a template.

[David Johnston2]

Don't use No Fine Manipulators if you are trying to represent the cartoon characters because they don't have it. They can in fact handle objects fairly well with their forelimbs and mouths.

[McAllister]

1. I don't think No Fine Manipulators is appropriate. They make everything from clothing to cider, for crying out loud: regardless of the fact that all they have is hooves and mouths, they get by just fine.

2. Do Earth Ponies and Pegasi have any Magery at all? I think not, actually. So I'd remove Magery from the general template, remove one of the IQ points from Unicorns, and replace it with "Unusual Background: can use magic [20]".

3. Equal-value lenses, maybe I'm just OCD, but give Pegasi a little disadvantage or something to even them up. Also Winged Flight is 40 - 25%, so 30, right? So maybe Winged Flight [30], DX+1 [20], Basic Speed +1 [20] and Basic Move +1 [5]. They're less good at DX-based skills, but they're faster by a nice margin.

4. There are more disads that are absolutely appropriate, Pacifism (Cannot Kill) at the mare minimum.

5. Why Regeneration?

6. I'd say cutie marks are something like 40 points that can be spent freely, within the bounds of the setting. Rainbow Dash, for example, has Enhanced Move 2 (at least) as her cutie mark, right?. Fluttershy, I'm thinking Animal Empathy [5], Empathy [15], and Wild Talent 1 (Emergencies Only, Reliable 6) [20]: if she can't whip out an otherwise-untrained Intimidate check with +6 when she needs to, then I'm baffled about how that thing with the dragon worked.

How do those look? It's been awhile since I saw the show, so.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by McAllister

6. I'd say cutie marks are something like 40 points that can be spent freely, within the bounds of the setting. Rainbow Dash, for example, has Enhanced Move 2 (at least) as her cutie mark, right?. Fluttershy, I'm thinking Animal Empathy [5], Empathy [15], and Wild Talent 1 (Emergencies Only, Reliable 6) [20]: if she can't whip out an otherwise-untrained Intimidate check with +6 when she needs to, then I'm baffled about how that thing with the dragon worked.

Yeah...all marks are not created equal. In fact there's not much point in putting them in a standard template. We've seen talents in "popping things", comic pratfalls, sleeping, knowing what time it is, humbling the powerful, addressing audiences, doing paperwork, sound system gadgeteering, gadgeteering in general, making plants grow, animal communication and control, making things pretty, being strong to lift a small house, singing and bowling. These are not all going to add up to the same point value.

[Disliker of the mary sue]

Originally Posted by McAllister

1. I don't think No Fine Manipulators is appropriate. They make everything from clothing to cider, for crying out loud: regardless of the fact that all they have is hooves and mouths, they get by just fine.

2. Do Earth Ponies and Pegasi have any Magery at all? I think not, actually. So I'd remove Magery from the general template, remove one of the IQ points from Unicorns, and replace it with "Unusual Background: can use magic [20]".

3. Equal-value lenses, maybe I'm just OCD, but give Pegasi a little disadvantage or something to even them up. Also Winged Flight is 40 - 25%, so 30, right? So maybe Winged Flight [30], DX+1 [20], Basic Speed +1 [20] and Basic Move +1 [5]. They're less good at DX-based skills, but they're faster by a nice margin.

4. There are more disads that are absolutely appropriate, Pacifism (Cannot Kill) at the mare minimum.

5. Why Regeneration?

6. I'd say cutie marks are something like 40 points that can be spent freely, within the bounds of the setting. Rainbow Dash, for example, has Enhanced Move 2 (at least) as her cutie mark, right?. Fluttershy, I'm thinking Animal Empathy [5], Empathy [15], and Wild Talent 1 (Emergencies Only, Reliable 6) [20]: if she can't whip out an otherwise-untrained Intimidate check with +6 when she needs to, then I'm baffled about how that thing with the dragon worked.

How do those look? It's been awhile since I saw the show, so.

1. Yeah perhaps...it just some weird part of me says using a weapon in the mouth would break teeth...

2. I'd argue that they have at least magery 0, they are inherently magical creatures but only unicorns can focus it. I heard theories that the reason pegsus can fly with small wings is because of magic.

3. perhaps, though the abilty to fly seems like a game changer enough to be expensive but again I don't know how gurps plays in practice.

4.yeah I thought about pacifism...it just for player charecters I assume they don't have that by default.

5. I was trying to represent the sort of difficulty to get hurt by pianos falling on them. Might not be the right advantage

6. that is an idea about cutie marks, though in the show they can be taken away and when they are they have no ability to do anything well.

[McAllister]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Yeah...all marks are not created equal. In fact there's not much point in putting them in a standard template. We've seen talents in "popping things", comic pratfalls, sleeping, knowing what time it is, humbling the powerful, addressing audiences, doing paperwork, sound system gadgeteering, gadgeteering in general, making plants grow, animal communication and control, making things pretty, being strong to lift a small house, singing and bowling. These are not all going to add up to the same point value.

Fortunate, isn't it, that the characters in a TV show don't need to have balanced power levels? But in an RPG, if you're using point values, it's either to have a balanced party, or to know how imbalanced it is. For PCs, a 40pt Cutie Mark should suffice to begin.

Also, in case it wasn't obvious, we're not mentioning Pinkie Pie in this thread. She'd eat her own character sheet, blast the GM dead in the face with a confetti cannon, and bounce away to wreak some other havoc. The RPG party is the only sort of party she has no place in.

[Ulzgoroth]

Well, on the level of making a template (or a template plus 3 lenses), you appear to have succeeded. It seems like you miscalculated or mis-described the Pegasus' flight Advantage, since Flight (Winged) is 30 points. And given No Fine Manipulators, the Earth Pony ST bonus should be given a discount. Aside from that I disagree with a number of your decisions WRT actually making ponies...

While I don't necessarily disagree with it, you might want to think about whether ST 10 is actually the right baseline for ponies. You could change it! But it might be good to just go with that.

The big issue in the basic template is that ponies don't lack fine manipulators. Sure, their body plan doesn't look like it offers any, but they routinely demonstrate otherwise, and you'll make the setting unrecognizable if you ignore that. Ponies often use either their forehooves or their mouth for grabbing things and other fine manipulation tasks. If anything, the ability to perform fine manipulation with the mouth might warrant an extra arm! Horizontal is useful, though it may not work if you go with the extra arm (because it's overly specific, basically). Also, if you drop No Fine Manipulators you probably don't need Extra Legs, because the front legs are counted as arms. The alternative arrangement, without Horizontal, would be to keep Extra Legs but add Foot Manipulators (2x) [-6].

I have no idea why you decided ponies have Regeneration. I'd also suggest holding Cutie Marks a bit more open, as at least some of them seem to bestow extraordinary abilities, not just a minor edge in certain skills. (Fluttershy's animal speech being the most basic example.)

Finally, giving all ponies Magery 0 may be a problem. As you've written it, all ponies could cast spells reasonably well! Non-unicorns would have a somewhat limited range if they're not allowed to buy additional Magery, but that's still way more spell-casting than seen from them. It's true that non-unicorns can often see magic, but that might be better represented with a setting rule that magic almost always involves glowy fields that normal vision can see just fine.

On the specific templates, your attribute bonuses are...troubling. Giving unicorns +3 IQ is enormously over the top. I wouldn't suggest unicorns are any smarter than anyone else as a group, but certainly they're not that much smarter. IQ+3 would make them totally crush the other races in a huge spectrum of roles, which is not what we see at all. On the other hand giving them more levels of Magery might not be wrong. I'd also strongly suggest giving them Telekinesis and maybe Accessory (light source) because those seem to be native abilities that don't require formal spellcasting.

+3 DX for pegasi isn't a great idea either. DX is the core skill of most athletic activities, and other than flight earth ponies usually can at least hold their own against pegasi in athletic activities. If you're giving a DX bonus at all, I'd make it smaller and give it to both. The earth pony bonuses might be okay, but I'd probably suggest at least scaling down the HT a little.

Pegasi also need something to represent their ability to treat clouds as solid and manipulate them. The first is probably a modified Walk on Air, the second I'm not sure exactly how to deal with, probably a very small area Control Weather with Environmental?

[McAllister]

Originally Posted by Disliker of the mary sue

1. Yeah perhaps...it just some weird part of me says using a weapon in the mouth would break teeth...

I'm finding a few pictures where ponies are portrayed holding spears with their hooves. http://mlp.wikia.com/wiki/Royal_guards, for example. So probably best just to let their hooves act like hands whenever they want them to.

2. I'd argue that they have at least magery 0, they are inherently magical creatures but only unicorns can focus it. I heard theories that the reason pegsus can fly with small wings is because of magic.

There's a difference between things that are bound by all the laws of physics, and things that are spellcasters. Ponies can have some supernatural Advantages without needing Magery. That's how I'd play it.

3. perhaps, though the abilty to fly seems like a game changer enough to be expensive but again I don't know how gurps plays in practice.

It probably changes some games more than others, but I'd leave it at the price GURPS puts it at unless playtesting reveals that all or no players play Pegasi.

But what skill is weather manipulation by physically moving clouds around... I'm thinking there are skills that exist in Equestria that just don't make sense in general GURPS.

5. I was trying to represent the sort of difficulty to get hurt by pianos falling on them. Might not be the right advantage

Uhhh... dropping a 1,000lb piano on someone from 15 yards up deals 7d crushing damage, which is ~24 damage, which, if you have 10 HP and 10 HT, has a 50-50 chance of killing you instantly. And that's assuming it doesn't impact against the skull, if it hits you in the skull first, 88 damage will end your freaking life. I have no idea how to make PCs that can shrug off a piano but are scared of angry wolves attacking them (as an example of something pony PCs should be afraid of).

So, my advice is to have a subset of damage called comical damage, done by things like pianos and boxing-gloves-on-sticks and whatnot. Compare it to HT to see if it stuns someone or knocks them out, double it to see what kind of knockback/knockdown it inflicts, and then ignore any actual HP loss (including any collisions that result from the knockback).

Now, giving all the PCs a bit of Regeneration because natural healing takes way too long and you want them to wake up with all their HP every morning, that might be a good idea. But if you're using the RAW for pianos, they kill people. As well they should!

6. that is an idea about cutie marks, though in the show they can be taken away and when they are they have no ability to do anything well.

I never saw that happen in the show. If specific magic can take them away but this power is inherent and most people can't use it, then anything you get from a cutie mark should get a -5% discount based on the off chance it gets disabled: if it's some sort of gadget that anyone could use, it's -10%. This is from Powers, btw: if you don't have the book, take my word for that bit.

This is fun, I hope it's helpful.

[McAllister]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Many words

Good words! I agree with almost all of them. Only quibble is that the ability to manipulate weather by moving clouds doesn't seem like a Pegasus ability, it seems like a setting feature. Maybe Cloudshaping (DX/average) is a skill, like Kick-Harvesting (HT/average) for how Applejack gets apples out of a tree or how "Pinkie Pie's various tics" is a viable specialization of Fortune Telling.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by McAllister

Good words! I agree with almost all of them. Only quibble is that the ability to manipulate weather by moving clouds doesn't seem like a Pegasus ability, it seems like a setting feature. Maybe Cloudshaping (DX/average) is a skill, like Kick-Harvesting (HT/average) for how Applejack gets apples out of a tree or how "Pinkie Pie's various tics" is a viable specialization of Fortune Telling.

I don't think non-pegasi can do the things pegasi can with clouds even if they have means to reach the clouds. It's not the moving clouds that I'm looking to represent, which could be done by other means in the setting, it's the ability to kick an individual cloud into emitting rain or lightning, which we seem to see at times.

(It's a pretty minor point either way, though it could get hairy to model it the way I'm proposing.)