So I watched Luna Eclipsed the other day, and I noticed something I hadn't before. When Luna lands in Ponyville, the cloak she is wearing turns into a flight of bats, and flies away. I got the biggest kick out of this because it showed just a small cantrip of what the Princesses are able to do.

Since then I have wondered what other cool little tricks the Alicorns are able to do. Could Luna manipulate shadows; maybe bend light? What are the little cool tricks Celestia might be able to pull off? What (if any) little glamours are Cadance, and Twilight capable of doing. They are both very young, and probably haven't realized that their powers can be as big; or as small as the want them to be.

I think that Alicorns are able to use a lot of magic, like Twilight, as opposed to only having a little bit of magic related to their talents. That would mean that they can perform any spell, provided that they learn it first. Be it time travel, age spells, bat cloaks, or love spells.

961806 Luna and her sister can do just about any thing you care to think up. its just a mater of power and imagination.

It seems more of an illusion to me. Most of those things like what you mentioned seem to be for show, sort of like a less ostentatious version of what Trixie does (meaning that Trixie does it in a very tacky way). Remember, alicorns are able to influence reality, not bend it to their own will. They are deus-like, not actual gods. Also, Celestia, as well as Luna, are very old, and most likely very powerful, and they also have very powerful magic abilities to go with it. But because of their age, they have probably learned the patience and control to not use their powers in a wanton manner. Celestia and Luna, because of their age and wisdom, would not use their powers unless it were absolutely necessary - that is what it truly means to be god-like.

I like to think that Luna is capable of all the things that Nightmare Moon was able to pull off. She certainly displays signs of shape shifting and object transmogrification.

Celestia's, though, perhaps she's quite proficient in the come-to-life spell, teleportation, that sort of thing.

Maybe she has a form of the "Phoenix Blast" seen during the Dragon Migration? *Ka-Thoom-Zeeeeoooooo...*

And obviously, a way to teleport things to the moon.

961806 961817 Pretty much anything provided they work at it, and don't do too much too often.

Just remember...
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The cloak thing honestly sounds like a trifle of a spell to do. I bet any ordinary unicorn with a little talent could conjure such a thing.

Now, what it DOES say, is that Luna enjoys theatrics.

961806
I weaponized the bat-cloak. It's great fun.

She also seems to have hair-trigger control over the weather. Like, the whole weather. All of it.

See my story "Scratching a Diamond". Note that Celestia was redirecting all the solar photons passing through a theoretical disk at least a few hundred feet in diameter onto a single point when she got her injury. I also give them a much more refined and powerful version of Pinkie Sense, which goes as far as intentionalistically saying "If I do X, what will the result with regard to Y be?"

I'm also maybe going to do a fic where It turns out that Celestia considers her personal ball of fusioning plasma to be a dandy jacuzzi to teleport into after her REALLY hard days (such as after she got beat up by Chrysalis).

961806
The alicorns are exactly as awesome or weaksauce as you want them to be. Canon is pretty open on that front.

Certainly, as you said, they seem to be able to pull off some neat magical tricks. Luna has her shapeshifting, weather control, dream-walking, ability to turn into mist, CANTERLOCK and batcloaks. Celestia can apparently teleport long distances, dispel nasty enchantments from whole towns, get with the (ineffective) energy beams, and even bust out dark magic. Cadance can make people fall in love, with disturbing and hilarious implications. And she can apparently project a shield of happiness and sunshine to keep generic shadow monsters away. Twilight... can... umm... clone albino Fluttershys to be her slaves?

961817
...There is no canon to back up any of that. At all, really.

In truth, we have no real idea what alicorns, especially Celestia and Luna, are capable of, how quick they are to use their powers, or for what ends. Celestia seems to take a hands-off approach, but that might have just been to give Twilight a chance to learn, to fulfill her destiny. Luna was more than happy to get her hooves dirty in the Crystal Empire, but Celestia forbid it.

My personal take on it is that Celestia and Luna are both powerful mages to begin with, (read: orders of magnitude above Star Swirl the Bearded) and beyond that, they have a couple of other abilities.
1. Immortality. Yes, yes, I know, we don't know whether Cadence or Twilicorn will have this immortality, but going by just Celestia and Luna, both are thousands of years old, and probably will continue to live for thousands more years.
2. Skilled. A natural alicorn is able to attempt to perform any task they have ever experienced; even if they only ever experienced it once, even if they have had no formal training, they are able to perform it, and their natural capabilities far exceed most mortal ponies.
***3. Supernatural power. Alicorns are much more attuned to magic and the supernatural than other ponies, and are likely able to gain additional abilities much more freely.***

Of course, all this is beyond their abilities as highly skilled magic users. That alone should cover most of the things they're able to do.

961806

The only tricks that alicorns have are access to two races magic and access to to that astral plane. And I doubt the astral plane is unique to them, discord or an extremely gifted teleporter could probably get there.

Other than that in canon there is pretty much nothing suggesting that they are at a level of power thats untouchable by any mortal ponies. I also dont buy spikes line about unicorns having a little magic outside of thier special talent. It implies that its impossible for any unicorn to advance themselves in the magical field beyond one area.

Ponies are just complacent, when you have a brand that tells you want you do better than anyone else... What you love and money making skill is why bother learning anything more complicated than basics. Spikes statement conflicts directly with the existence of Celestias School.

962229 I know, and upon rereading my own comment, I should have taken a moment to add that what I wrote is how I utilize the alicorns in my stories. My apologies.

I imagine them as having a domain, and they can cast any spells related to that domain. That's what I'd call "Alicorn Magic", magic that normal unicorns don't have access to.
Despite this, they are perfectly capable of casting any and all unicorn magic, they just need to learn it first.

Then there's the matter of how their domain may affect them. I see Celestia as one with ludicrous amounts of raw power, so much that she was forced to restrain herself to a level where Chrysalis could beat her, but could have (more or less) evaporated her if she wanted to, albeit destroying half of Canterlot at the same time.

Luna, on the other hand, is elusive and tactical. Where her raw power is smaller than Celestia's, she's far, far smarter and will always be five steps ahead of you when it comes to combat.
She'll fire an ice bolt at you and you'll block it with an ice-attuned shield, the ice will explode and reveal the binding spell hidden within. (Something simple).

I think Cadence is a little bit of both, albeit much weaker and far from as clever, though she's able to play with ponies' emotions, making her incredibly dangerous as she can make one who only feels a tiny bit of fear tremble before her in terror.

Twilight, I think, is possibly the most dangerous of them all. Where Celestia is the Sun, Luna is the Moon and Stars, and Cadence is Love and Emotions, Twilight is Magic.
She has so much raw power that she can challenge Celestia, but she's incredibly cunning as well.
That said, she isn't as strong as Celestia or as cunning as Luna. So while Twilight, if she really went for it, could best both Luna and Celestia (though not at the same time), she has one very big weakness, one that makes her nearly incapable of using her full power; her compassion.

She's too caring, too soft and too innocent to actually hurt someone. She won't be able to bring herself to hurt anyone. This is why I think Twilight is both the strongest and the weakest Alicorn at the same time.

...Aaand I went a little off topic.
But you get the point, I hope.

I like to keep my alicorn's powers within their purviews so to speak.

For example, while I think that Luna could learn to shoot superheated solar rays at people and potentially control the sun, it doesn't really fit her schtick of being the princess of the night. Leave the brilliant displays of radiance to Celestia; Luna specializes in shapeshifting, illusion and shadowy magic. By contrast, Celestia's spells are all ostentatious. To compare, Luna might teleport in a swarm of bats while Celestia always appears in a flash of brilliant light.

Twilight presents a different challenge because she's got "all da magicks" as her special ability. To balance her out, I like to think that she's capable of learning any spell but completely incapable of creating her own unique magic. Even her Princess Spell was derivative of Starswirl's magic. In addition, even though she can Sharinganhax and copy any spell just by seeing it performed, she usually can't perform it as well as the creator (i.e. she can do Rarity's gem finding spell but Rarity will find more/find them quicker)

It's tricky playing with nigh immortal demigoddesses and I think you have to actively work to keep them from doing everything in a story (unless the story is exclusively about them)

I want to toss my hat on this pile, because I've had a few revelations with some of the new content coming out.

When I think of what powers the high level entities in MLP have, I usually end up grouping them into domains, and from this stance, everything I've seen in the show seems to be fitting together properly.

I have pretty much 5 characters that I look at as even having domains: Celestia, Luna, Cadance, Twilight (post ascension) and Discord

Discord - Full God Tier (Omniscient, Omnipotent, Immortal)
Domains of Alteration, Chaos, Conflict, and Change

Celestia - Minor God Tier (Semi-Omniscient, Semi-Omnipotent, Semi-Immortal)
Domains of Energy, Bastion, Guidance, and Paths

Luna - Minor God Tier (Semi-Omniscient, Semi-Omnipotent, Semi-Immortal)
Domains of Illusions, Advancements, Assertion, and Dreams

Cadance - Super Tier (Semi-Omnipotent, Non-Immortal)
Domains of Love, Empathy, and Emotions

Twilight - Super Tier (Semi-Omnipotent, Non-Immortal)
Domains of Harmony, Learning, and Knowledge

It is my belief that Discord is the oldest creature that has been depicted on the show. He is not evil, and in fact may even care the most about Equestria, but unfortunately he has a very "tough love" type of attitude, he sees strife and conflict as the only true proponent to advancement, and Celestia's rule as a complete stagnation of the species. Currently his primary focus is on finding pure selfish entertainment, but I feel this stems basically from feeling spurned and misunderstood for everything he tried to do for Equestria.
He is Immortal, and can't be killed, only sealed, and he's perfectly capable of knowing everything that happens everywhere, but only bothers paying attention to things that actually interest him, typically only events of conflict.
As a piece of headcanon, I believe that Starswirl was merely a disguise Discord used, so that he could work on making his own reality warping abilities available to Unicorns, who until that time in history had only energy magic, like levitation, energy shields/beams, and illumination, and that accessing this type of magic is what separates average everyday unicorns from full scale wizards. This is also why you see so many situations where Twilight uses one of these reality altering spells, only to have complete chaos as a result.

Celestia and Luna basically have to be considered together, as they are almost a perfect example of Yin/Yang relationship. Celestia moves the sun, Luna moves the moon. The comic series depicts the moon as being home to some sort of varied species of moon creature, and I believe that Phoenix are the exact same thing in relation to Celestia's sun.
I actually believe that Celestia and Luna's parents were the Original creation gods. Faust, the indirect and passive Goddess of Form/Heavens and their father, the direct and active God of Function/Earth, that predate even Discord, and that the earth originally turned while the Sun/Moon remained stationary. Their father died in a major conflict, which caused the earth to stop turning, forcing Celestia and Luna to each leave earth and move their respective sun and moon directly. At the time they didn't have enough power alone, so they had to rely on all unicorns to supplement them with enough power to keep the sun and moon turning. After enough time, Unicorns began to believe (or at least try to convince everyone else) that they were directly responsible for the movement of the sun and moon. This headcanon explains why at the end of the whole Hearth's Warming Eve play, their flag had a banner of Celestia and Luna, and clears up much of the confusion over the limits of unicorn magic. I also believe that the Elements of Harmony were formed by the residual energy left behind by Celestia and Luna's father.
Where Celestia almost never imposes her dominion over her pony subjects, and instead tries to guide them towards the answers and into doing the right thing, Luna is much more aggressive and assertive in the authority she wields. Celestia likely wields far more raw power, but you never see her use anything other than the standard Unicorn energy magic that I mentioned while talking about Discord. Contrast that with Luna, who doesn't display the same power in her magic, but shows an incredible amount of variety in the types of spells she wields. If Celestia represented Power, then Luna would represent Skill.
Further along this line it should be noted that other than the Nightmare Moon conflict itself, Celestia has only been victorious in battles that Luna aided in. When fighting Chrysalis, she was beaten. From this, I believe that Luna and Celestia are a Sword and Shield combination. Celestia has had 1000 years of peace because that is really the only way in which her power expresses itself. Luna was actually the primary force responsible for taking down Discord and Sombra. (For Celestia managing to beat Luna, it was primarily due to the Elements abandoning Luna and siding completely with Celestia, without them in a pony-a-pony duel she would likely only be able to, at BEST, bring Luna to a stalemate)
To continue this contrast is that in 1000 years under Celestia's rule, there haven't really been any cultural advancements or changes in the language (as can be shown by Luna and Crystal ponies still knowing the language even after being displaced for all that time) Yet within months of Luna's return to power, you are suddenly seeing major technological advancements; Trains are making upgrades from pony power to steam engines, music is going from simple record players to speaker supported sound systems, Flim Flam brothers are developing an automated harvesting and cider processing system. I believe all of these technological advancements have been pushed foremost by Luna.
The final contrast I note in them is that Luna is shown as a Dreamwalker. Able to freely see into, guide, and guard the subconscious thoughts of her subjects. For a while i was left stumped on what Celestia's manifestation of this ability would be, but then I realized that Twilight's ascension actually spells this out perfectly, as Celestia shows Twilight many scenes depicting Twilight's "journey" showing that Celestia also has some sort of domain of omniscience. The only other time that this "realm" is shown or mentioned is in "Twilight Sparkle and the Crystal Heart" in which Cadance mentions the same realm when she turned into an Alicorn when she used to be a Pegasus. It would be silly if Celestia's omniscient domain only had to do with Alicorns, so it's my belief that Celestia's domain deals with ponies that are making conscious decisions that guide them along a specific path with a goal (even if the pony in question doesn't realize there is a goal) Effectively this might let Celestia see teh events surrounding ponies like Rarity and Rainbow Dash, who are trying to achieve something, but not Applejack, Pinkie Pie, or Fluttershy, who are basically in a "status quo" situation.

Now getting down into the last two. I consider Cadance and Twilight TOTALLY different than Celestia and Luna. The show calls Cad/Twi Alicorns, but I always treated that as a term that is used simply because there are so few Alicorns that it's not even WORTH coming up with a distinction, and there is so little known about Cadance and Twilight's situations that no one even knows what those distinctions are anyway.
Effectively, I would propose that Twilight and Cadance aren't even really Alicorns (who have access to Earth, Pegasi, and Unicorn Magic/Abilities) at all, but instead Pegacorns (who only have access to Unicorn and Pegasi Magic/Abilities)
However I also recognize that season 4 will probably go out of its way to screw that simple explanation over, so I'll also offer the alternate take that Cadance and Twilight are "Ascended Alicorns" who were born as a regular ponies, and gained Alicorn abilities by tapping into new magic, while Celestia and Luna are "Divine"

Cadance is an interesting deviation in almost every respect. I have a TON of headcanon surrounding her, but pretty much everything deals with explaining her existence, her relation to the Crystal Empire, and the whole "she used to be a pegasus, but isn't now" thing.
It is basically my belief that the whole "alicorn ascension" package doesn't come from simply making up a new spell, but from making up an entirely new expression of magic. Basically there was already Earth Magic, Weather/Pegasi Magic, Energy/Unicorn Magic, and the Alteration/Warped Magic that Discord introduced as Starswirl (he didn't ascend because he wasn't really a pony) and Cadance effectively developed true Love Magic.
Cadance's domains really haven't been delved into too deeply in the show, but essentially she deals with positive emotions, but more importantly with forming connections between ponies, not in a forcible "you two; kiss!" type of manner, but by opening up their ability to understand the intentions of each other and consider the other person's perspective on whatever a given issue is. She could also influence emotional memory, not as mind control, but that normally if a person is feeling miserable and they think about something, they tend to think about the miserable aspects of that subject first and have a much harder time thinking of the not miserable things, and tend to make themselves even more miserable. She would be able to let a person remember the positive memories as well so at the very least they have a balanced perspective on a subject.

Twilight is of course the most controversial. While I believe she already has access to certain parts of her domains, she likely wont be aware of them herself for some time to come. As I mentioned before, I believe that Twilight didn't ascend simply because of a new spell, but because the magic she used was an entirely new TYPE of magic, in this case harmony magic.
This bit of headcanon fits particularly well when you consider my other bits of headcanon, namely Starswirl only being a disguise that Discord used. Since regular ponies could use the Elements of Harmony to resist Discord, "Starswirl" came up with an "unfinished" spell that actually was finished and had been intended to throw the Elements of Harmony into chaos. With six ponies, each time the spell was cast, it could mix things up in nearly endless combinations. However once Celestia and Luna split the six elements between just the two of them (as alicorns, they have three aspects, earth, pegasi, and unicorn, so that's one element per each aspect) that meant that the spell could only switch them once, and switching it again would put them back to normal. That wasn't a true counterspell though. When Twilight "finished" Starswirl's spell, she created a magic that directly countered Discord's warped/chaos magic and was able to bring things back to normal.
I see her as acting as a similar yin/yang type of compliment to Cadance as Luna does to Celestia, however instead of a passive/active power contrast, it is more a heart/mind contrast. Effectively Twilight would be the Princess of Harmony, and where Cadance would be able to make Ponies WANT to get along and work together, Twilight would be able to actually make it POSSIBLE for ponies to get along and work together. In a situation where two starving ponies are fighting over the last morsel of food, Cadance would be able to get those ponies to WANT to share, but Twilight would be able to come up with a way to actually make that last morsel work as a proper meal that can keep them both from starving once it is shared.