206 - Outmatched and Overpowered
Lex could only stare dumbly at the sight of the black, wriggling thing protruding from his chest.
Time seemed to come to a stop as he struggled to put a coherent thought together, trying to comprehend what he was seeing. This…couldn’t be right. He had banished that creature. He’d sent it screaming into a dimensional rift. It shouldn’t be back here. None of this was right. The wound didn’t even hurt. It had to be some sort of illusion, or maybe he was having another nightm-
The tongue suddenly retracted, and Lex immediately collapsed to the ground. All of a sudden he was aware of a terrible pressure in his chest, like when he’d held his breath for too long. He tried to exhale, only to start coughing as something that tasted like blood began filling his mouth. Worse, no matter how much he coughed he couldn’t seem to get his lungs clear, only barely managing to take gasping breaths of air between bouts of choking. The sensation was unpleasant enough that it forced his thoughts back into focus, a sense of alarm filling him as he realized just how badly he’d been injured.
“Pathetic!” laughed the chorus of voices from behind him. “Was that really your big plan, Lex Legis? To throw me through a rift to the Astral Plane?” Another bout of mocking laughter resounded then, and the monster slid around so it was in front of him. Although its skull-like faces didn’t have enough flesh to form recognizable expressions, he could hear the smiles in its voices. “I’m from the Outer Planes! I can cross dimensional boundaries as easily as you’d cross a street! How do you think I came to this world in the first place?!” It paused then, as though waiting for an answer, and when none came it shifted its bulk, curling its trio of heads further over its fanged maw and bringing them closer to Lex’s prone form. “You disappoint me, Lex Legis. I’ve refrained from killing you immediately, giving you a golden opportunity to cast another one of your feeble spells on me, and you can’t even be bothered?” Its middle head opened, slowly extending its tongue down toward where a large pool of blood was collecting under him. “What’s wrong? Cat got your lung?”
Lex couldn’t respond, not when it was a struggle just to breathe. Instead, he did the only thing he could. An aura sprung into being around Lex’s horn as his eyes turned green-and-purple, calling on his dark magic. If he could just change into a shadow…!
The thing’s dispelling magic crashed over him, scattering his dark magic like leaves in a hurricane. A chorus of laughter immediately followed it. “That’s the spirit!” cooed the female-voiced head.
“Keep struggling!” snickered its male counterpart.
“Let me see that dauntless spirit that Nosey admired so much!” sneered the central head, its androgynous voice filled with malicious glee. “Show me another part of you that I can break!”
“yOUr DesPAiR wIlL Be YOuR pENanCe tO Me fOr ThE InDIgnItIEs yOu’VE mAdE mE sUfFeR!” screeched the fanged maw that was the creature’s other end. “oNLy AfTeR yOU’vE GivEN uP CoMPleTeLy WiLl i SEnD yOu tO YoUr GoD!”
Lex grit his teeth, glaring defiantly up at the thing. “Sh-shut…up…!” he somehow managed to rasp, his voice little more than a hoarse croak. “I…will…kill…you…!” The words were torture to utter, each syllable being accompanied by another blood-spattered cough, but he forced them out anyway. Although his reserve of dark magi was running low, he called on it again. I can withstand its dispelling magic! he screamed at himself silently. I know I can! After all, he had overcome the thing before, when he had forced it out of Nosey. Its magic might be stronger than his own, but not so strong that it couldn’t be overcome! If he could just change back into a shadow, back into a form that wasn’t crippled by his injuries, then he could keep fighting!
But the instant his dark magic manifested, the creature dispelled it.
The same thing happened the next time he tried it.
And the next.
And the next.
“How much longer can you keep struggling?” mused the left head.
“I know you can’t use that magic indefinitely.” The middle head’s voice was one of complete confidence. “Nosey told me that you’d expended it all before you faced that imbecilic kraken. That’s why you stayed corporeal during that encounter.”
Unsurprisingly, the right head continued the one-sided conversation. “I, however, can negate your magic endlessly. That’s how I was able to shut down that little trinket of yours back at the train station, you know.” The tip of a tongue darted out to flick the circlet half-hidden under his mane, though Lex refused to flinch at the contact. “It was pathetically obvious that you’d use it as soon as you saw Nosey, so I made sure to dispel its functionality right before I revealed myself. You thought it was showing you that Nosey was clear, but really it wasn’t functioning at all, and you never realized it.”
Although he knew that the thing had tricked him, hearing how it had done it made Lex grit his teeth. No wonder he hadn’t realized what had happened! Unlike freestanding spells, magic items that were affected by dispelling magic weren’t completely unraveled. Rather, they were simply knocked out of commission for a few seconds before their design – being a self-sustaining quantity of magic that was permanently bound into a material form – kicked back in. So his circlet had been inoperative when he’d used it on Nosey back in the train station, only to reactivate itself a few moments later…all without him noticing. That last part gave Lex a microsecond’s pause. Even if he hadn’t realized that his circlet had been deactivated, he should still have sensed the thing using its dispelling magic in the first place. So how…?
As though reading his mind, the thing continued speaking. “a pItY yOU dIDn’T rEaLIzE wHAt i’D DOnE. bUt tHEn, HOw cOuLD yOU? i WaS wATcHiNg YoU fRoM tHE oTHeR sIDe oF aN iLLuSIoN i’D cONjuReD.”
Lex tried to curse at that, but all that came out was a choking sound. He hadn’t known that this thing could create illusions too, but now that he did it all made sense.
Although he needed his circlet to be able to see into the magical spectrum – allowing him to see the approximate power and general nature of extant spells, as well as those that had recently expired – Lex had a limited ability to intuit, without external assistance, when someone in the immediate vicinity was casting a spell. But that sense was just that: a sense, and a dull one at that. The same way he couldn’t see something behind an intervening object, or hear something that was muffled, he couldn’t sense someone’s manipulating ambient energy in the local environment if he couldn’t detect the individual in question.
When he’d entered the train station with Sonata and Scrubby to examine the scene of Block Party’s death, Nosey had been out of sight, holed up in the restroom. Her emergence had caught them all by surprise, as she’d just appeared without any sound of the door opening or closing. That was it, he realized. The door itself was the illusion.
It was the only possible explanation. The real door had been propped open, and this thing, already possessing Nosey’s body, had created the illusion of a closed door in its place. Since an illusion’s caster could see through it without issue – hence why that aboleth had been able to attack them so precisely through the illusory wall it had created – she had been able to watch them all without them seeing her in return. In that position, where she had line of sight to him but he had none to her, it would have been easy for her to wait for a moment when his back was turned, dispel his circlet’s functionality, and then slip through the illusory door with none of them being the wiser for it. Then he’d tried to detect magic around her, just like she’d suspected, and found nothing, not knowing the real cause.
The thing’s strategy had been absolutely perfect.
Snarling at the knowledge of how completely he’d been outsmarted, Lex tried to turn into shadow again, heedless of how little dark magic he had left…and again, the creature tore the dark magic apart effortlessly. “You had no idea at all, did you?” The smirk in the creature’s voices, once again speaking in chorus, was audible. “For all your vaunted intellect, you’re just another minor mortal with delusions of grandeur.” Lex’s only response was a hate-filled glare, causing the thing to laugh again. “Don’t feel too upset,” it taunted, “at least you were slightly more difficult to manipulate than those other ponies back at the camp. Even I was surprised at how easily those rumors I started about you took hold. No matter how many wounds your doctors treated, or how much food you gave them, all I had to do was whisper a few words about how unsociable your demeanor was or how intimidating your magic looked, and the majority of them were ready to believe the worst about you.” One of the thing’s tongues darted out to lap at the blood pooling under Lex, licking it up before retracting back into the thing’s mouth. “It’s a shame I won’t get to see them start to riot when you can’t keep feeding them. I’d have loved to watch them turn on their would-be savior.”
Incensed, Lex was about to try and use what little dark magic he still had – just barely enough to change into shadow one more time – when the sight of something behind the monster caught his eye. It was Nosey! Even as he watched, she lifted her head slowly, eyes fluttering open before they widened in alarm as she saw what was happening. Get out of here! Lex urged her silently. He knew it was pointless, knew that even if she could hear him she had no hope of escaping on her own, but they flitted across his mind anyway. Leave while it’s focused on me!
“That’s why I let you live, you know. It would have been easy to simply kill you in your sleep, but you were much more useful to me this way. You gave those pathetic little ponies just enough reassurances that they actually started to hope again. And when you’re dead, and I tell them that you abandoned them, they’ll believe me thanks to all of the lies I fed them about you. Their hope will plummet, and they’ll fall into depravity far faster than they would have if you’d just let me keep running the place as Block Party.”
The thing’s tongues reached out then, curling around Lex’s neck once again and lifting him into the air. “And since you aren’t trying to use that ‘dark magic’ of yours anymore, it seems that our time together is at an end. So before I rip you into pieces, allow me to say: thank you, Lex Legis. Thank you for helping me achieve my goal. And now, you di-”
“NO!”
Nosey screamed the word as she flung herself at the creature, lowering her head as though intent on goring it. “Let him go!” she roared as she charged. “Let him g-”
“Didn’t I tell you to shut up?” sighed the creature’s rightmost head, unwinding its tongue from around Lex’s neck and almost casually sending it flying toward Nosey. The blow struck her across the face and sent her sprawling, rolling across the ground in a heap before coming to a halt and lying still.
The sight made Lex’s blood run cold, but as much as it pained him he knew what he had to do next. Calling on what little was left of his dark magic, he tried once again to change into his incorporeal form, hoping that Nosey had distracted the monster. It won’t kill her that easily, he tried to reassure himself. It still wants to use her as a disguise, and so far it’s only used living ponies for that. He just hoped he was right; although there was nothing else he could do now, it still felt like he was abandoning Nosey to this thing…if this even worked.
But a second later he felt the monster gather magical energy for its dispelling spell.
“I expected this!” it shouted, its voices triumphant as the spell hit Lex’s dark magic again, and Lex felt his heart sink at the exclamation. But this time, the thing’s magic didn’t scatter his own. For an instant there was an overwhelming sensation, but it felt just a little lighter than usual, as though the thing hadn’t been able to put all of its concentration behind it. Nosey! Lex knew it was her, that although she had only distracted it a little, that small amount had been just enough to keep the thing from focusing the whole of its might on him. It was just enough to encourage him to push back against it with everything he had...
An instant later, Lex turned into shadow and dropped into the ground. The pain and fatigue fell away instantly as he did, leaving him clear-headed and able to concentrate once again. More than that, he could speak again, which meant using his remaining spells…and he had every intention of using them.
Nosey had bought him a chance to keep fighting; it would not go to waste.
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Ok, good start. Now if Lex can just hide, heal and Get a greater invisibility memorized (this guy can't see invisible) then spam a bunch of electricity spells that don't have a point of origin, so he can't guess what 20 foot burst Lex is in, Lex might actually have a chance.
8733640
And add in a few fus-ro-dah while your add it 😒
At least, currently, it dont know Necromancy as well?
Rules of Dispel Magic keep changing with each edition?
8733640 Not a bad strategy, but it's questionable if Lex knows that particular spell...and even if he did, he needs Severance to pepare new spells, remember? That, or some sort of major magical battery. Moreover, he can't simply prepare spells in a short amount of time the way wizards can; he'd need to spend at least an hour (possibly more) to prepare new spells.
These two restrictions (needing a powerful battery, and long spell-prep time) were written into Lex's character to buy down the cost of his buying such an expensive spell progression. That said, the latter had a bit of thematic resonance with older editions of D&D. The idea of "preparing all of your spells in an hour" was just one of MANY ways that Third Edition powered up spellcasters (via removing a lot of the weaknesses they'd had up until then); it used to take a LOT longer. Being a fan of the classics, I felt it was appropriate to reintroduce one of them when looking for ways to compensate for Lex's degree of power.
8733820 The rules of dispel magic really do keep changing with each edition, but if what you're referring to here is Nosey disrupting that thing's last greater dispel magic enough for Lex to resist it, well...that was a bit of chicanery on my part. Basically, it was my in-story justification for it rolling a "2" on its dispel check. That's slightly disingenuous on my part, but it's kind of hard to come up with an in-character justification for the large role (pun intended) that sheer randomization (i.e. the die-rolling mechanic) plays in these things, especially since most people think of magic as being either an absolute or something that can be enforced or resisted via sheer physical effort/force of will. So yeah, that was me being liberal with the flavor text.
Let's see.. its biggest vulnerability is nonmagical lightning, so he needs to rally all the pegasi and have them build a bunch of thunderclouds...
Eh. It'd probably get reflex saves and take no damage.
8734521 You know, the idea of a scene where Lex provides a distraction just long enough for some other ponies to arrange thunderclouds, and then start jumping up and down on them to blanket an area with lightning, is one that I've had in my head since before I started writing this fic.
But given that Vanhoover is currently lacking in rain clouds, that's probably not going to happen here.
it looks as if Lex has one shot he best not miss.
8735152 Hooves crossed.
...er, wait, that expression doesn't work.
Guess that's where some of the rumors came from. Though the Nightmare Moon and Sombra lovechild was hilarious.
It's fun reading how the belier fooled Lex so completely and how the number of inconsistent details here and there led back to the belier's machinations. The belier truly deserves to gloat with so much power at its command but Nosey's brief intervention(hopefully not ill-fated) shows that it isn't all powerful, even if it is a rather small margin.
Still, she bought Lex some time and room to breathe(metaphorically speaking) and come up with a plan to defeat this abomination...or at least rescue Nosey and retreat. Though if Lex does go with the latter and somehow succeeds, it would still leave the belier out there, ready to possess some hapless pony and undermine his efforts from the shadows. (Or maybe possess Nosey again just as she wakes up and pins the blame on Lex.)
However confronting the belier in open combat is seemingly futile in terms of magic vs magic and Lex can't use his strength enhancement spell for a more physical assault since it'd be dispelled...well, that and the gaping hole in his chest would cripple him the moment he drops his shadow form.
8734166
They have a city the size of Manhatten, plus a whole bunch of other cities, and a technology base to back it up. Their population is probably lower than North America's but it has to be in the millions.
Yes, he does do that, which is pretty distinctive from the XP model, where people only learn from XP, not engorge themselves on the soulstuff... except for one exception. Did you ever fight Vlaakith the litch queen, ruler of all Githyanki? In Dungeon Magazine #100 you get a chance to. My party fought her on their last adventure before going epic, and when we killed her, we swiped her Crown of Corruption (page 134). It had a unique feature called "Ritual of Death's Ichor" that let you turn any corpse you kill into raw XP Ectoplasm, based on the number of HD. (After that adventure our wizard insisted we let him make almost all the kills so the XP Ectoplasm could power his crafting). I suppose if Tirek and an ability like that it could fit of the XP model, especially since it fits the idea that the Mane 6 have significant class levels at this point.
They go into a lot more backstory for the Goblin Hero Gods, especially Hadregash, in the backpages of the Iron Fang Invasion AP, just like they go into a lot more detail on Nocticula in Wrath of the Righteous, but it looks like they're not posting too many details on the wiki, so I'll let them go. As a general rule though, in a fantasy setting "creation myths" are our best bet to understand the gods, and anyone else not given a stat block. It's like Sarenrae being Asmodeous's niece, it's in the lore but not in a table anywhere.
I admit the logic of XP has always been the single biggest flaw in Dungeons and Dragons. Many a time I've been in parties where our characters would leave the dungeon because we accomplished our mission, and then we'd go hit a bunch of rooms we missed that we believed had no treasure in them, just to get the XP. Why did our characters want to murder some underground ooze in a deep dark hole and risk getting hurt? I never had a straight answer.
If you want to see Tirek using XP as a method, see above comment on the Ritual of Death's Ichor.
That's my exact point at the beginning! I've always felt Tirek's process would be incredibly inefficient and have like a 1,0000:1 or more power stolen-power gained model.
Totally agree with you on this, Leandor's Rule would mean you would need 1,024 Cantrips to power a 9th level spell. So if the average unicorn has at least an at will mage hand, and let's say the average Pegasi has at least an at will feather fall, and Tirek has absorbed the power of a million ponies, how many 9th level spells can he cast at will?
Hold on though. Thinking about this. Everyone has always assumed that Tirek stole the magic of almost everyone in Equestria, say 90% of the population. But I just read through the transcript and I can't find any claim where he actually says something like that. I think given the efficient means we see Discord teleport Tirek around and Tirek immediately absorb magic, it's pretty probably he absorbed the magic from more than just the actual ponies we saw. But if it takes Tirek a minute to absorb the powers of a few dozen ponies, the actual time lapse between when Discord and Tirek team up and Twilight fights Tirek doesn't feel like more than 3 days tops... I could see him only getting to like 10,000 ponies. Certainly when the Rainbow McGuffin goes off, they only visit the exact same places Tirek visited, where ponies seem to be sitting around waiting. This deserves more thought.
That's exactly my point! I'm not saying that Starlight is actually stronger than Twilight, or even knows more advanced spells than Twilight. I'm saying Starlight has practiced combat and has skills and experience in using her magic in direct combat, wheras Twilight has very little of that. If 6 months before the S5 Finale Shining Armor or Luna had spent an hour a day with Twilight doing the same kind of drills we see Twilight and Starlight do in S6, Twilight would have crushed Starlight in 30 seconds. One of the reasons I liked it so much is because unlike the S4 Finale, where the being with the highest power level wins like Dragonball Z, we get to see a weaker mage beat a stronger one because tactics and skill can sometimes beat superior magical might (as I'm sure Lex is hoping!)
I think you've nailed the difference. I play in two home groups. One is a bunch of highly experienced players, the GM makes us only use Pathfinder Society approved content. The other the GM will let us use any 1st party content, but its a party of 3 and he doesn't adjust the encounters so I'm free to build as brutally strong a character I can make within the rules. I like spending my time researching a really powerful, unique build and knowing I can play it at the table because there are a simple set of rules saying so.
With Eclipse, I know I'd build an OP monster, and a lot of other players I know would too, and then the GM would feel compelled to argue about it, etc. I imagine more mature players than us probably can handle the system just fine. I imagine Eclipse builds like you do for your website are even harder, because without multiple sets of eyes and testing in a campaign, it can be even harder to tell if a character is fitting the right power level within their point total.
Ah, my mistake, I thought Lex only needed Severance for divine magic, not his original arcane magic. I was definitely suggesting he go hide for 8 hours, rest, re-slot his spell selection and then go find the monster though.
8735667
Yeah, I was particularly pleased with that one. In fact, I almost wish there was some way to run with it, since it honestly struck me as kinda cool.
That said, these last few chapters have been enjoyable to write about, since we're pulling the curtain back on a lot of what's been going on ever since Lex and co. got to the camp. Although there's no way to outline this directly in the story, it's worth noting that this creature actually has an Intelligence score that surpasses Lex's own (not even taking its ioun stone into account), which helps to explain why it's had Lex behind the proverbial eight ball all this time. While Lex has faced enemies more powerful than him before, this is the first time we've seen him be so completely outmatched while simultaneously being so completely alone in his fight.
Given that he doesn't seem inclined to retreat, Lex is going to have to find a way to bridge the significant gap in power between himself and his enemy...but how?
8736057
Well, be careful with regard to assuming that cosmetic parallels between our world and Equestria necessarily presume that more significant parallels exist. That ignores numerous differences that exist, with factors including cosmology, biology, the existence of magic, differing government structures, greater social prosperity, etc. Even the issue of technology is a dicey one, as the ponies don't have things like the telephone, despite that having been put into public use well before the 1950's, which is where Manehattan seems to be (and that puts it ahead of places like Appleloosa). (Thoth wrote a great article about the size of fantasy cities, with a long section talking about cities in Equestria, over here.)
Would you mind going back and deleting that link? The material in question is pirated content, and I'd rather not have a link to it here.
That said, I have the various "Incursion" materials (the name of the campaign that was featured in Dragon, Dungeon, and Polyhedron, wherein the githyanki invaded). Heck, I even bought the Tu'narath City Guide from Paizo's website. While I only vaguely remember the specifics that you mentioned, it goes back to how 3.5 treated XP as being somewhat akin to Highlander's "the Quickening" in terms of what it did (hence using it as spell components and requisite magic item creation costs).
In terms of Tirek, comparing him to that is going further than I think is necessary (though it certainly could work if you wanted to go that route). If you assign him an ability to drop an area-effect that makes ponies unable to use their magic, and have him gain XP for "defeating" them immediately (which is in turn immediately applied to levels), then it's not really an issue of mechanics anymore so much as it is flavor text. The entire idea of "draining" power can easily be put down as two different effects, with the cause-and-effect relationship left to description rather than being written into the rules.
I'll need to look those up later (I have all of the Paizo APs), but I'm leery of assigning too much credence to stories that are presented as in-game myths regarding the gods' nature and actions. The very fact that it's presented as being in-game creates an element of doubt regarding the reliability of the tale, since the narrator is no longer an omniscient presenter but rather a character from within the game universe who might not know the whole story, have an agenda, etc. (That said, I still don't recall the bit about Nocticula, but D&D has had ill-defined references to certain planar creatures "consuming" each other's essences after defeating them for a long time.)
To be fair, D&D wasn't always that way. It used to be that, while you could get some XP for killing monsters, you would also get XP on a 1:1 basis for the treasure you discovered. So if you found 500 gold coins in a dank tomb somewhere, that was 500 XP. The kicker, of course, is that you only gained this XP for treasure that you actually had to overcome some sort of obstacles to find; if you found a gold coin under your sofa cushions, you earned no XP for it. That rule, which lasted through AD&D 1E as I recall, helped to tone down on "murderhobo"-style characters and campaigns, because you weren't losing out if you didn't fight a monster; the point wasn't to kill things, it was to get rich, which is how the old pulps portrayed their characters.
Personally, I liked a variant rule of that I saw several years ago (I can't remember if it was in one of the Conan RPGs or not), wherein you only gained XP - on a 1:1 basis - on treasure you spent, and the expenditure had to be on frivolous activities that gained you no mechanical benefit whatsoever. So if you spent 15 gp to buy a new longsword, you didn't gain any XP. If you spent 10 gp getting drunk and 25 gp on a prostitute, however, they you gained 35 XP. It was a way to keep characters acting like inveterate rogues and always questing for more treasure. I quite liked it.
The difference here is that I'm suggesting that such "inefficiency" is inherent to the issue of consolidating disparate magical sources like that, rather than being something inherent to Tirek's method per se. Diminishing rates of return, loss of power during transfer, etc. are all basic applications of entropy in action.
Actually, it would take 512 cantrips to make a 9th-level spell, but you're pretty much right. The thing to remember, here, is that (overlooking the population question) Tirek was - in all likelihood - throwing around spells far above 9th-level in that fight (plus - if we go with this interpretation - some of it was going to dropping high-level, long-lasting spells that enhanced his other stats, hence why his body kept growing). That isn't just a question of damage, but also of range, quickened, etc. It's no coincidence that Thoth (in the Alicorn Magic Template I posted previously) calculated that Twilight (after her power-up from the other princesses) was dropping 16 or so levels of metamagic onto her 4th- or 5th-level spells. The thing to remember is that this doesn't make either of them a "god" per se; they were just characters who had both managed to push themselves - in one particular area (magic use) - far beyond their default states. That you can have characters do such things without requiring the rest of their stats to be proportional is one of the good things about abandoning class-levels and other game restrictions that rigidly enforce "balance."
Overall population is another issue, and one where the fandom's speculations (particularly with regard to where Tirek visited) tends to run wild. What I find tends to be overlooked is that if we see Tirek's physical growth after each absorption, and what we see is always the same from one scene to the next, then - if he always grows after each consumption - he therefore must not be draining any ponies off-screen. That's rather troublesome for the folks who think that he was absorbing ponies' magic by the millions, however, and so tends to get ignored. Ironically, the "diminishing results" argument actually reconciles that particular problem, since it would explain that he could drain other ponies and simply not gain any notable benefit from it. That, and I think that three days is a generous period of time between when Tirek came to Princess Celestia's attention and when he fought Twilight.
There's really nothing to suggest that Starlight has any sort of combat practice or experience, however. The closest the show ever says in this regard is that, when Twilight prevents her from blasting several members of her old village in The Cutie Map - Part 2, Starlight says she "studied that [attack] spell for years." But that's not really indicative of anything, as Starlight is later shown (such as in Every Little Thing She Does) to be something of a prodigy with a talent for magic, rather than a combat-focused pony. She is aggressive, and somewhat combative, but she's never shown to have any sort of special combat training. (For that matter, neither does anypony else that we've seen. It's highly questionable if even the royal guards know much about actually fighting.)
A lot of people enjoy engaging in what Thoth called "RPG solitaire": making various builds and stat blocks without any intent of putting them into play (mostly for showing them off online, typically). In that regard, balance isn't really an issue, as such characters are think-pieces or simply fun personal projects that don't have to worry about the meta-consequences of introducing them into a campaign. That's pronounced with regard to Eclipse, because it disregards the absolutely necessary process of figuring out what rules will be in play to begin with. The issue with Pathfinder, at least for me, is that a lot of people assume that the game rules are a holistic monolith that come "pre-approved" with regard to that process, and worse, think that's how all RPGs (or at least all compatible RPGs) should be.
Well, like I said, when I'm making an Eclipse character for my blog, I don't have to worry about things like that, because there hasn't been a process of collaborating with the GM and other players to figure out what sort of campaign we're going to play, and what rules to use (and whether or not they need to be tweaked) to represent how things work. If you look on Thoth's blog, he has pages for how certain things work in certain campaigns. Eclipse essentially functions as a meta-RPG, a set of ur-tools that you use to define the specific game rules of your own campaign world. You're not really meant to use all of them without any oversight or restriction, which is why I can design characters for my blog without worrying about whether or not they'll fit in a given campaign. (By the by, Equestria has these too, as subtly indicated in this story. It's why Lex hasn't just taken Dominion and declared himself the new ruler of his territory.)
In hindsight, I can see how it would be confusing that he'd need a divine artifact to refuel his arcane spells, but that is how his arcane magic works. But given his enemy's own prodigious intellect, I doubt it would let him recover so easily.
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I read his article, and I gotta say, not impressed. Maybe the idea that ponies were these massively magical beings that didn't have trade routes or factories made sense in S1, when they still had an 1890s vibe to the whole place. But after you've seen the skyscrapers and suspension bridges of Manehatten (and telephones, Manehatten has them), it really falls apart. We can see now Ponyville isn't a "typical" town, it's a tourist-trap catering to wealthy Canterlotians, so of course it has overpriced stores and a much higher standard of living than the average small town. We've seen migrant workers like Hayseed Turnip Truck, sleazy small tenements like Moon Dancer lives in, and that's in Canterlot, the "Rivendell" of Equestria. Trains are just trade routes on rails, and there's no evidence of anypony crafting manufactured goods entirely out of magic, see Rarity as an example of the limits of that.
That said, I actually agree with the numbers he floated out there, of 1 pony, with their magic and cutie mark combined being equal to 10 humans, so Equestria having on average 1/10th the density of the United States make sense to me. It also fits with what he said of Canterlot having about 50,000 people, since the capital of the United States has 6-700,000, though others are right that Canterlot being on the side of a mountain is a big impediment to population growth. That's why I've seen other worldbuilders estimate that Equestria's population is 30 million, 1/10th the United States. As one of the least densely populated nations the US has vast empty stretches of land with only a few hermits living in them, just as Equestria does. Monsters living in those sections doesn't provide evidence of affecting population much.
Sorry, deleted the link. Yeah, if XP is like the quickening, then Tirek's absorption of power makes sense.
That's the issue, we see glowy stuff come out of these guys and flow into Tirek's mouth. That's not remotely how XP works, and mechanically the normal XP system doesn't fit that. Perhaps the way 3.5 Barghests operated, where they absorbed power from their enemies but needed each enemy to have more power than the last?
I understand that, but I think you need to go with the best source you have available, unless it's contradicted by a better source, and then only in the areas contradicted.
I love this. It gives meaning to that old phrase "I'm going to spend half the money on h@@kers and bl@w, and just waste the other half."
Oh totally. Tirek had to absorb many thousands or even millions of ponies, Twilight only had to absorb 3. And usually in magic something is more powerful when it is given freely than taken, so there's probably much more efficient transfer. Plus both donor and donee have the same racial abilities, so more power can be directly applied. The issue with saying that this is about a simple cost of power from many different sources is that Tirek also absorbs magic from 1 being who is definitely more powerful than any one alicorn, which is why I am more likely to assume his method in particular is highly inefficient.
That's a good point, I hadn't considered the heightened spell levels. And I agree that Tirek's phyiscal enhancements could be modelled after a series of continuous magical effects he buffed himself on at different times.
That's totally true. I was using god just in the sense that they could have a CR in the high 20s to mid 30s, not that they actually meet the criteria for deities. It's like that old line from the Discworld "the difference between demons and gods is the same as the difference between terrorists and freedom fighters."
Yeah, it's weird how I'm just now realizing everyone discussing Tirek's power levels always has assumed in the past that he stole magic from almost every single pony in Equestria.
But based on what you're saying he doesn't always grow after each consumption. He needs a lot of magic to physically grow, either because he's directly fueling the magic into his body, or because he's converting the magic of 512 ponies into a permanent Giant Form 2 or something. We have a multi-day time lapse on the ponies side, so we know we're not seeing 99% of what Tirek is doing. The question is, is he sitting around chilling, or absorbing ponies, and we only see the scenes where he physically grows?
It's night when Celestia is asleep and has a vision, than day when the Mane 6 talk with Discord and he brags about how Celestia has given him a mission, then night when he confronts Tirek, then day in a bunch of scenes, then night when Twilight tries to sleep after getting her power, then day when Tirek calls her out. Might be another day when Cadance came down to Canterlot and the Wonderbolts mobilized.
Her beating an alicorn princess is a pretty strong suggestion on its own. That said, I'd say the fact that she studied this one attack spell for years means she was pretty focused on combat, she is shown as prodigiously talented in magic, but that's not the same as saying she's studied all aspects of magic for years, more that she's a savant. If she was that skilled at all magic, Sunburst would not have been needed in the S6 Opener.
That's how I prefer my RPGs. Pathfinder has 3 tiers: PFS legal content only, all 1st party content, and all 3rd party compatible combat. I like to know if I find a wicked feat combo I can level up my character and show up at the table without checking with the GM first.
It feels a bit like the difference between make-your-own burger and ordering a specific combo at a fancy burger place.
Was he using his brother's horn before he got Severance? I'm kind of surprised he makes himself so vulnerable to the Nightmare like this.
8737255 Okay, there's a lot to unpack in your first paragraph, so I'm going to go a bit deeper than usual with the multiple quoting.
I really don't believe that it does. If you look at the show unto itself, judging it solely by what we're shown and not what we think must be there (largely due to "fill in the gaps" presumptions), then everything in that article makes sense. The fact that the ponies have a lot of the same materials that we do doesn't necessarily mean that they have the same infrastructure that we do. We really don't see much in the way of factories or large-scale trading, after all.
As amusing as that is to consider (and it is), I don't think that's necessarily supported by anything we see in the show. To be fair, we do see Canterlot ponies turning up in Ponyville (and vice versa) enough that it's not anything rare, but there's nothing that cultivates the image of "tourist trap," or that other towns are less financially successful than it. Appleloosa seems to be, but it's a relatively new town. Dodge Junction doesn't seem as well off, but like Appleloosa it's located in a desert, and seems to exist as a satellite town around Cherry Hill Ranch...which is also the closest we see to an industrial factory (and it's not nearly of the same scope).
This is where I think there's a fundamental break between what we see and what it's presumed to mean. Hayseed Turnip Truck isn't representative of any sort of class of ponies; he lives like he does because that's his destiny. Even overlooking his very name, his cutie mark (a trio of turnips) supports the idea that this is what he's supposed to do. Rather than being indicative of any segment of the population living as "migrant workers," Hayseed Turnip Truck is, well, always going to be some hayseed who pretty much just fell off a turnip truck. Some ponies are just itinerant (e.g. Cheese Sandwich), which doesn't mean that there are large numbers of ponies who go around working terrible jobs to make ends meet.
According to their Wikipedia entry, a "tenement" is "a multi-occupancy building of any sort. However in the United States it has come to mean a run-down apartment building, a slum." By contrast, here's what Moon Dancer's home looks like:
vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/4/4e/Twilight%2C_Spike%2C_and_old_friends_arriving_at_Moon_Dancer%27s_home_S5E12.png/revision/latest?cb=20150706170511
The place is quite clearly small, and certainly run-down, but it's just as clearly a single-family dwelling. Given that it has a fairly substantial front yard, the place is quite clearly no simple shack. Rather, it seems like Moon Dancer is treating her living space the same way she's treated her personal appearance: ignoring it altogether, and so letting it fall into ruin. The place is quite clearly smaller than the surrounding buildings, but given the large yard it's almost certainly simply not scaled up to contemporary dwellings. In other words, it's a statement about its occupant, rather than about conditions in Canterlot.
I can't recall a single time we've seen trains in the series that weren't shipping passengers rather than goods or sundries. Even when Applejack was bringing a tree to Appleloosa in Over a Barrel, it was brought in a passenger car rather than any sort of shipping car. There was a coal car in MMMystery on the Friendship Express, but that's for keeping the train running, and it's the closest we've come. The idea of the trains transporting goods rather than individuals isn't something that the show itself seems to support.
I think you've misread the article, where that's concerned. It says, "Factories? Not only are ponies incredibly productive, but what little we have on their devices suggests that most of them are creations of unicorn magic." That isn't meant to suggest that the crafted goods are brought into being entirely through magic (which I think is what you're saying?). Leaving aside that the article says "most of them" rather than "all of them," the very next sentence is, "Presumably, somewhere in Ponyville, you can find a little shop run by the unicorn “Frigid Air” and his or her partner “Beautiful Finish” who build wooden boxes, screens, and fans and enchant them to keep things cool." And again, that's entirely in line with what we've seen from the series. Simple construction can obviously be done by hoof, but there's almost nothing to suggest that anything else is scaled up beyond that. After all, Rarity was planning on opening a second shop in Canterlot where she would make dresses all by herself for her clientele. While Sassy mentioned a production line, Rarity immediately shot that idea down, showcasing what I suspect is the standard line of thinking among ponies...after all, her shop ultimately turned out to be successful without her going that route.
The reduced population makes sense to me too, though it's important to remember that those numbers are part-and-parcel of the whole issue of the differences between pony society and that of humans. Canterlot was, in his estimation, a city of 25,000, though I suppose transient ponies could drive that number up. Manehattan, as what's probably the largest pony city, is the one that he tagged as probably having 50,000 or more, which is also eminently believable. Likewise, those numbers likewise suggest a reduced level of civic infrastructure beyond what can be done by an individual or a small team; 50,000 really isn't that much in terms of overall population that it requires massive public works just to keep up with basic needs, particularly when the entire population doesn't need to be clothed and the weather is entirely under local control.
Thanks for removing that.
With regard to Tirek, it's important to remember that what we're seeing doesn't make a distinction between what would be, at the game level, mechanics and flavor text. That's why, if you deal a hit with a longsword that reduces your enemy's hit points enough to kill them, and the GM describes the killing blow by saying that you lopped his head off, you don't need to say "but my sword doesn't have the vorpal property!" And yet, if we were to see that scene presented from an in-game standpoint, you can bet that a lot of people would think that it had to in order for that to happen.
I'm not saying don't go with it, I'm saying that there's a built-in caveat that it might not be correct, leaving a plausible avenue for doubt. It's why the story about how Asmodeus came to rule Hell in Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells is pretty clearly not what actually happened (that, and I've always preferred the much more epic version in the 2E Guide to Hell anyway).
I think you're thinking of the now-famous "ale and whores" quote, but yeah. I keep trying to push for this rule with my group, and for some reason they never seem to go for it. Maybe next time...
Okay, see, these are more presumptions that don't really have a basis in what we're shown. The idea of "magic is more powerful when given freely" doesn't have any particular examples in d20 or MLP that I'm aware of, nor does race seem to be a factor. Given what we're shown, the issue of "efficiency" simply doesn't seem to play a role at all, beyond what would be true for virtually any and all transfers. If we presume that this is an issue of XP gained for defeating other characters, Discord is worth more simply because he's a much more powerful being and so has a much higher CR. (By contrast, what Twilight was doing wasn't an issue of XP at all.)
To make it clear, I'm not advocating that the idea of "Tirek gaining XP" necessarily is what happened; I'm just pointing out that, from a mechanical standpoint, it fits with what we see entirely. That's because, in terms of d20 mechanics, it's far easier to suggest that two separate things are happening simultaneously (i.e. the pony is hit with something that debuffs them, while Tirek gains something that empowers him) and make the causal link an issue of flavor text than it is to try and make the causal issue present at the mechanical level. The d20 rules aren't slanted towards the idea of permanent losses in power, or (for that matter) the idea of near-unlimited power gains. That's why all of the builds that have those are exploits that tend to be relegated to the mix-max subcommunity rather than more mainstream games.
For more of those, I recommend taking a look at the spell templates in The Practical Enchanter. It's a great way to know what level spell it would be if you wanted, say, a spell that dropped a +8 enhancement bonus for 10 minutes/level to all of your ability scores.
Ah, good point then. But yeah, Pathfinder has been slightly inconsistent with its presumption that "CR 21-25 is quasi-deity, CR 26-30 is demigod." That's quite clearly meant to be a guideline rather than a hard-and-fast rules, since it isn't actually printed in any of the various rulebooks that I'm aware of (most likely because there are quite a few high-CR monsters that don't really fit that guideline anyway).
"Fanon creep," as I call it, can be insidious, because it plays on our existing biases about how things should/do work. Our brains fill in gaps for us without us ever realizing it, or we brazenly interpret things because we can't imagine them being any other way, and next thing you know we're not actually talking about the series anymore, but some personal variant thereof. It's why I hate the term "head-canon," for how oxymoronic it is.
For a good example about this, have you heard the one about all the pegasi who "must" have died during Tirek's rampage? After all, he "must" have gone to Cloudsdale, and if he absorbed magic from the pegasi there, they wouldn't have been able to walk on clouds, so quite obviously most of the city's population plummeted to their deaths.
My point was that we can characterize the issue of what Tirek is doing different ways and find reasons for different assumptions to be plausible, perhaps equally so. Whether you go with the XP theory or the unique draining ability theory or something else, you can come up with different mechanics that - based only on what we see - are a match for what happens. Trying to interpret things based around "efficiency" or "presumable population" are inherently fallacious, because they're presuming knowledge that we don't actually know to be true. The best we can do is try to A) come up with a model that matches the source material unto itself, rather than what we think it means, and B) make as few assumptions as we reasonably can in the process (i.e. obey Occam's razor).
It's iffy whether or not the initial meeting between Discord and Tirek was at night or not. We never actually see the sky in that scene that I recall. It's certainly dark, but Canterlot might simply have been scheduled to be severely overcast that day. Likewise, after Twilight receives the other alicorns' power, she has trouble raising the sun and moon on her own, making the day/night passage rather awkward to judge time by. Likewise, Cadance would have gone to Canterlot with Celestia and Luna, since Celestia was in the Crystal Empire when she had her initial vision.
But again, in terms of simple combat prowess she didn't beat Twilight. She fought her to a standstill, which just happened to serve her overall strategic goal for that initial confrontation. Saying that necessarily suggests that she has advanced combat training is what I'm talking about with presumptions. Starlight is very clearly skilled at virtually all magic that she puts her mind to, hence why she can rewrite Star-Swirl's time travel spell, or whip up a mass mind-control spell in less than a minute. The reason she needed Sunburst's help in The Crystalling was because he had greater magical knowledge than her. She might have a high caster level and great ranks in Spellcraft, but she's apparently been skimping on Knowledge (arcana), where Sunburst hasn't. Hence why Twilight was worried about the two of them teaming up in Celestial Advice.
I can understand the appeal of that; up until a few years ago, I used to think in the same way. But I eventually grew disillusioned with the ever-escalating process of mix-and-match abilities operating under what increasingly struck me as arbitrary distinctions. It was enough to make optimization lose a lot of its allure for me, with regard to actually playing the game rather than just building characters (it didn't help that, the one time I sat down with a hyper-optimized character, built only with first-party materials, the rest of the table grew fed up with me in very short order). For me, finding a product that allowed more flexibility than literally everything published to date while at the same time requiring far less materials was a godsend, and I've never looked back.
That's...not too bad of an analogy. Certainly I can't think of one that's any better right off the cuff. After all, the first step of "make-your-own-burger" is deciding that you want a burger in the first place, and what will be on it, all before you start making it. You don't have those choices (well, to the same degree, at least) at a burger place.
His brother?
Most of Lex's magic was explained back in chapter 25. Basically, he invented a more powerful system of magic when he was a colt, but it has a flaw in that it requires more power than he can personally gather. Hence why he needs a major source of magic to act as a battery. He doesn't like that he has to rely on something external, but that's the reality he has to work with.
We do see hydroelectric dams, heavy construction sites with massive construction vehicles, cherry factories, as you pointed out, and massive numbers of train cars, some of which might be freight and some of which must be passengers.
It really is. They actually have a festival called "Small Town Chique," where Rarity tries to convince a prestigious travel writer to write a nice profile about Ponyville in his magazine. How is that not about attracting tourists? And we see Canterlot ponies visiting there all the time, including eating at their fancy restaurants. That's very distinct from the typical pony town. In the United States, the suburbs outside the capital are some of the wealthiest areas in the country, even though they are fairly small and don't have a lot of industry themselves.
If you want a better example of a small town, think Hayseed Swamps or the settlements of the Hooffields and the McColts. The McColts subsist entirely on food hurled at them from the Hooffields, in a classic example of rural poverty and food insecurity.
Like I said, ponies combination of magic and cutie marks makes them more efficient. I bet if you looked at a rural cherry canning factory, it wouldn't be more than ten times this size. Still a solid example of a production line process for something as simple as food processing.
He's what we actually see through, just like we see Cheese Sandwich, or Trouble Shoes. Based on the limited visual evidence we have, itinerant workers appear to be a thing. That example for his cutie mark seems like a pretty big assumption.
vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/e/e4/Manehattan_S6E3.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20160403170213 Ah, like the 21 story buildings in this picture. Or the big compounds the Hooffields and McColts live in.
It really isn't. Nothing we've seen in the show fits this kind of example, whereas we actually do see automated production lines suitable for earth pony workers. There's no real evidence to support this kind of crafting process, as opposed to a factory in Manehatten building refrigerators, loading them on the rail cars we see and shipping them out to Ponyville. (If they can ship a tree, which Applejack apparently insists get its own passenger car because she views it like a child, then they can ship a refrigerator in those cars too.)
We've seen them use elaborate machinery in the construction of new buildings, including things like wrecking ball machines, even though presumably magic could knock buildings down if ponies had this much crafting magic (as Rainbow Dash does to AJ's old barn).
Rarity makes bespoke clothing for celebrities and ultra-high end couture, ones she even calls her Princess Line. She's exactly as mechanized as a Savile Row Tailor. She rejects Sassy's advice on what is apparently normally done, a production line, for her unique blend of "Time, Love, Couture."
It's completely unbelievable. Look at that picture above, a slice of the city with buildings dozens of stories tall. This is the city so large the Crystal Map breaks it up into neighborhoods. That picture is from season 6, so Thoth might just not have updated his data, but honestly Rarity Takes Manehatten invalidated that kind of assumption. The NYC metro is considered to have 20 million people, so I'd wager Manehatten has 2 million, in accordence with pony nature (which as a herd animal should actually be more inclined to bunch up into cities than humans).
Part of why we know those numbers are so wrong. We see with our bare eyes skyscrapers, suspension bridges, large barges, heavy construction equipment to build large buildings right in little Ponyville. The fact of all that heavy infrastructure suggests they have a high enough population to justify regular use of all this capital equipment.
I'd say that's the best example we have of what actually happened, at least in that addition. Also, I agree that Azzy the serpent with scales as large as worlds is pretty awesome, but c'mon, "Read the Fine Print" ? Classic!
It's why I built one of my characters after Bender from Futurama.
Ok, I think I see your point. But then why was he still grinding background ponies towards the end? Why wasn't he looking for a greater challenge to fill out his meal ticket?
True. And then there's the Great Old Ones, which I think are supposed to be at the same level of a Demon Lord.
Don't get me started! It's like that idea that there are tons of useless nobles with actual titles petitioning Celestia in court all day every day.
I'll accept a version of that where Discord actually caught those Pegasi and lowered them to the ground with his magic, and that's party of why he was forgiven, in a "I could see this happening off-screen" sort of way, but you're totally right there's no evidence of that. Heck, the fact that Discord is invited to the next GGG a few months after Tirek's reign doesn't really fit with the idea that he helped murder a ton of Pegasi, does it?
I'd agree with this, though I think we have to include the behavior of characters in such an equation, to try and understand their motivations.
That's a really big stretch. Unless you're saying Canterlot has streets that are underground, (which would certainly magnify their population size), that seems far too dark for even the cloudiest day in the most shaded alley.
Twilight receives their power during the daytime, then later it is nightime, then Twilight says "the sun should be up by now." So at least 1 day passed between when Twilight got her power and she fought Tirek.
That's a good point, makes sense.
Still disagree on that, but even if she fought Twilight to a standstill, and
, the exact same thing could be said about Twilight while she was a unicorn. Starlight has done some incredible feats of magical knowledge, on par with Twilight's hacking of the mirror portal. But at the end of the day Twilight has that massive meta-magic upgrade from being an alicorn, plus the ability to hover without expending magic like Starlight does. If Twilight doesn't quickly crush Starlight, that suggests Starlight has more class levels to balance out Twilight's magic-boosting template. And a good in-game way to describe more class levels? Advanced combat training.
That makes a lot of sense. Myself, I keep finding a new archetype that fits on a class I haven't played before, and I want to optimize and play that bad boy. And now I'm mixing in the occasional Starfinder to keep shaking things up...
Yup. Places will usually have a couple of pre-made combos if you don't want to make those choices, but repeat customers eventually get tired of that and start customizing their own burgers. Heck, you could call Pathfinder's monthly splat books the equivalent of the "special of the day."
Sorry buddy, I have a terrible memory when I don't look things up, and I believe we started learning about Lex in 2015. He's not using the horn of his half-brother of King Sombra? What magical object was he using to power his thought-forms pre-Severance? I think this was explained in the story 3 years ago, but I can't remember.
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Let's break each of those down in order:
With regards to the dam that we see in The Mysterious Mare Do Well, there's really nothing to say that its purpose is to generate hydroelectric power (and indeed, that explanation seems odd since there's little evidence of electrical power being used in Ponyville). If we look at the picture of it...
vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/0/0c/Hoofer_Dam_S2E08.png/revision/latest?cb=20120914204814
...then it seems that it's labeled as such because of what look like antennae on the station at the base of the dam. But that's an iffy proposition at best, since there's no real indication of what function they serve. Given the aforementioned lack of electricity (inasmuch as the show bothers to remain self-consistent about such things), it seems far more likely that the dam is serving another purpose, such as irrigation (which would make sense considering that there's at least one major outlying farm in the form of Sweet Apple Acres).
Heavy construction sites aren't really an issue with regards to what we were discussing - which was infrastructure and trade routes - though I suppose you could consider them one of the former. That said, I didn't say they had none of those things; I'm not surprised that the ponies use things like steel beams and concrete to build buildings. But there's, once again, nothing to suggest that this is part of any sort of major workforce that employs a large number of workers who don't have cutie marks in construction. Rather, what we see are a small number of ponies engaging in work that apparently matches their personal inclinations, and doesn't really require much in the way of outside assistance. That's sort of the point I was making: "infrastructure" is an issue of "finding ponies who happen to have the relevant cutie mark" rather than "a large-scale workforce that, regardless of their personal interests, performs tasks necessary to keep society functioning."
Cherry Jubilee's cherry factory, as already mentioned, is a small operation that apparently consists of having one pony run on the
hamsterwheel to keep the very short conveyor belt moving, and even that's only so the cherries can be separated. As we see, it's a job that the Mane Six can do on their own, which makes sense since it's quite clearly the cherry-equivalent to Sweet Apple Acres, which is also a family-run farm. It's hardly the epitome of a factory that requires a large number of workers.As for the train, well, there's no "might" about it. Notwithstanding the engine, coal car, and caboose, I believe that literally ALL of the train cars we've ever seen are passenger cars. There's no freight shipping that has ever been shown.
There's a difference between "attracting tourists" and a "tourist trap," which is what you mentioned earlier. I have no doubt that Ponyville wants tourism, since that's going to be a boost to the local economy, but it doesn't appear to have any particular industry - cottage or otherwise - set up around that. Even after Twilight becomes a princess, ponies only seem to treat her as a spectacle when it's convenient for the plot, such as in Twilight Time (when the CMC are getting personal lessons from her), Fame and Misfortune (when her books brings her and her friends into the public eye), or Once Upon a Zeppelin (due to Iron Will's commercialism). Those short-lived aberrations aside, there's really no evidence of any sort of tourism industry in Ponyville (or much of anywhere else, for that matter).
That we see some instances of ponies from Canterlot visiting Ponyville is also not indicative of it being a "tourist trap" designed to separate the Canterlot ponies from their money. Most of the Canterlot ponies that we see there are simply there for social reasons, such as Minuette going to Ponyville all the time to visit Lyra (Amending Fences) or Fleur and Fancy Pants being there to (apparently) visit Filthy and Spoiled Rich (Crusaders of the Lost Mark). And that makes sense; "tourist traps" don't really work when the "tourists" are from the next town over.
The Hooffields and McColts aren't examples of small towns at all; they're two isolated enclaves that only house members of their extended families. That's not an issue of "rural poverty and food insecurity," so much as it is a pair of clans who have completely withdrawn from society and - in what was pretty clearly a euphemism for inbreeding - overspecialized their family occupations to the point where they weren't able to function on their own. Even then, there was no actual "poverty or food insecurity" going on. The two families had inadvertently set up a self-sustaining dynamic, where the McColts received food from the Hooffields and likewise sent them building materials in return, which ended up making both families live sustainable lives despite neither being part of any wider community.
As for "Hayseed Swamps," I'm not sure where that is, as I couldn't find any reference to such a place. I think you're referring to the town Applejack was delivering pies to (and which Apple Bloom tried to do on her own) in Somepony to Watch Over Me. If so, that's a particularly bad example of rural pony communities, because we're flat-out told that it's an isolated community (emphasis mine):
So that particular town isn't really useful as a point of comparison to Equestria in general.
That efficiency (along with several other factors, such as weather control, no need for clothes, etc.) means that general infrastructure can, for most areas, be effectively nonexistent and still allow for a functioning society. It's fairly self-evident throughout the show that ponies do what they love, as evidenced by their cutie marks, rather than worrying about money. Likewise, the ponies that are capable of doing their jobs seem to be able to keep their society running smoothly, with no shortages of food, shelter, or other basic necessities...or even luxuries, for that matter. Cherry Jubilee's "factory" served to do nothing more than sort the red cherries from the yellow ones, and was barely big enough for a half-dozen ponies. If she has a family the size of Applejack's, then that would be more than enough to handle it.
Trouble Shoes isn't an example of this, as he's effectively become a fugitive living on the lam when we meet him. As for Cheese Sandwich, he's explicitly following his "cheesy sense," going to where a party will be. That leaves only Hayseed Turnip Truck as the sole example of a pony who seems to be itinerant for work-related purposes, and even then it's not really much of an assumption that he's following his destiny, since his turnip cutie mark seems to be related to that. Even if that's not the case, he's still just one pony, and not a stand-in for an entire class of workers.
Well, no, actually; I presume you were using "tenement" to mean "slum," since you mentioned the word as a direct reference to Moon Dancer's home. The skyscrapers in that shot of Manehattan aren't tenements (and, in fact, don't seem likely to be residences at all), and that's certainly not how I'd characterize the compounds that the Hooffields and McColts live on, since those are basically large single-family dwelling units, rather than being multi-occupancy buildings. Of course, as mentioned, those two families aren't a good reference for wider Equestria anyway.
Cherry Jubilee's factory isn't automated; Applejack has to run on the wheel in order to move the conveyor belt, and as mentioned that's just so that a small number of ponies can separate the cherries by color.
Except we never see rail cars that ship freight, and there's never been a single instance of using passenger cars to ship bulk goods beyond the isolated instance of Applejack moving her apple tree, which everypony else explicitly said was weird of her, something they wouldn't have done if that was at all normal. Likewise, there's no real evidence of large-scale manufacturing plants or processes; the closest we ever see is the weather production center in Cloudsdale, and there's nothing to compare that to since it makes weather, making it a singularly poor example with regards to extrapolation (not to mention that it's one town that's apparently making the weather for all of Equestria, suggesting again that issues of scale are extremely small compared to our world).
With regards to Thoth's reasoning, it's an extrapolation, but one that much better fits with what we see than the idea that there are large-scale production lines somewhere. Given that virtually everything else is handled by singular ponies or small groups working together with minimal equipment, it's far more likely that's how it goes for manufacturing as well.
I'm not sure what you think that proves. My guess is that you're suggesting that this necessarily indicates a number of related industries that likewise require human manufacturing techniques and processes in order to exist, but quite frankly this is an extrapolation that isn't supported by what we see. Yes, we see some construction equipment, but there's nothing to showcase that those are created by large-scale industrial manufacturing plants.
No, Rarity makes clothes for everypony, celebrity or no. She called one her "Princess Line" because it was inspired by the stained glass windows in Canterlot Castle that showcased the princesses, not because it was marketed specifically at the princesses. She's not mechanized at all, and is able to be successful because of that. Remember, Sassy's advice is apparently typical for her, but it's also apparently a good way to go out of business, as Sassy herself inadvertently admits:
And why she later admits:
So if anything, that suggests that the production line method of doing things isn't standard, if for no other reason than, as Sassy alludes, it predicts failure in the market.
The vast majority of the buildings in that shot don't have a dozen floors, let alone "dozens." That said, those are almost certainly all office buildings, rather than residential ones. While one might suggest that this necessarily means that there must be millions of ponies living in the city, the fact that we can see a train on the left side of the frame heading inward could point to a large commuter population (and, according to the maps of Equestria that we've seen, it's near the transcontinental railroad to Griffonstone and the eastern continent); but even that aside, I don't see enough buildings in that shot to necessarily indicate that you need to have a population anywhere near the size of what you're talking about. There are about twenty buildings in that shot, and most of them aren't that tall. If we presume that there are 50,000 ponies in Manehattan, that's 2,500 per building on average (where they'd work, and live elsewhere), and those would obviously be increased or decreased proportional to each building's relative size. So overall, I don't think it's as open-and-shut as you're making it out to be.
We see those things, but you're once again making presumptions about what they must mean. There's no evidence of any sort of infrastructure - let alone "heavy" infrastructure - dedicated to creating the things you've outlined. We don't see "regular" use of any equipment; rather, we see comparatively rare instances of construction going on, but other than that there isn't very much to say that there's a significant population dedicated to performing such jobs out of financial necessity, rather than personal enjoyment. It would be just as plausible - possibly even more plausible - to suggest that there's a small handful of ponies who simply go around Equestria asking various towns if they need things built, and then simply build them there and move on.
Given that the story is prefaced by saying that it's a tale that devils tell - and lying is part-and-parcel of what devils do - it's fairly clear that the story isn't trustworthy. That's without getting into the fact that contract law doesn't work like that (and about a dozen other issues with how that story is presented).
No doubt that's what I should do next time around.
In point of fact, he was; he was gathering power so that he could confront the alicorns, whom he seemed reluctant to face before getting some major buffing accomplished first. He didn't even try to drain Discord until he was already extremely powerful.
And quite a few other things, like kaiju. Overall, what CR seems to best represent is...well, overall personal power, which sort of makes the whole thing tautological.
You know, I once went looking for actual instances of Canterlot ponies having any sort of aristocracy in the show itself, and found absolutely nothing. Notwithstanding ponies with royal titles, and foreign ponies (e.g. the Duke and Duchess of Maretonia), none of the ponies who live in Canterlot seem to have any sort of feudal nobility to them at all.
This is nitpicking, but you have to wonder if that was just a few months later...timelines are one of the absolute worst aspects of the show to try and keep straight. Remember, time in Equestria passes on a 1:1 scale with the human world that we see in the Equestria Girls productions (we know this, because Luna tells Twilight in Equestria that she has three days to get her crown back in the first film, which is how long she has in the human world as well). But this means that, based on the timeline clues given in the second and third EQG films (i.e. Twilight moving into her new castle in Rainbow Rocks, and mentioning being trapped in a time-loop at the end of Friendship Games), when the girls mention at the beginning of Legend of Everfree the events of the first three movies took place during the same school year...now map that back to Equestria. It tends to clash with most fan-made timelines that I've seen.
Eh, that's iffy. Given that you're never going to find consensus on that, issues of "motivations" tends to become used for "well obviously this is why they did it" and choosing an arbitrary explanation. It's pretty much guaranteed to rely on assumptions, which is what you don't want to do.
I don't know, I've seen plenty of severely overcast days that were extremely dark, to the point of having street lamps light up. I'm not saying that must necessarily be the case, but given that we never actually see the sky in that particular scene, it's not impossible.
Yeah, but that means that Twilight would have had to lower the sun and raise the moon after she received the others' power. Given how well she was controlling the magic at that point, I'm somewhat skeptical of her ability to have kept things running. Certainly, some time did pass, and it could very well have been a day, but at this point it's all a guess.
Yeah, it's one of those details that tends to get overlooked.
Twilight does need to expend magic to fly, she's just expending pegasus magic; we know that pegasi need to use magic to fly, after all. That said, it's important to remember that Twilight wasn't using her alicorn magic (remember, it had been only one season prior that she said she was just barely learning how to use it), and was basically fighting Starlight unicorn-to-unicorn (her flying notwithstanding). Twilight was essentially handicapping herself, and fighting below her level of ability. Starlight was her equal at unicorn spellcasting - hence why they did indeed fight each other to a draw - but making that equal class levels is more of a limit with regard to the d20 System than anything. Hence why I don't use class levels to begin with. Even then, the analogy doesn't hold up since Twilight hasn't had "advanced combat training" and was able to fight Starlight to a draw.
That's a school of thought that's built around starting with the mechanics and then fleshing out the character from there, rather than vice versa. That's a perfectly legitimate way to approach character design, certainly, but although I did that for a while I've grown somewhat tired of it. These days, I prefer to start with an idea for the character first, and then figure out how to make the mechanics faithfully represent them.
I agree that you could call them that. To be fair, I still buy a lot of Pathfinder/D&D/d20 materials, but that's largely to mine for ideas and particular mechanics rather than character-building stuff per se. That and I remain an inveterate collector, though I find that I'm branching out into other games more now than I ever have before (that and older edition materials; I really love those).
You know, you could just go back and re-read the chapter in question.
Lex invented his own form of magic when he was a colt (well, he started designing it then, it took years to finish), deciding that normal unicorn magic was too limited. He eventually came up with the "Vancian" magic that's very similar to what D&D-style wizards use (there are some minor differences, but overall it's like that), only to discover a major flaw: the energy required to utilize his thought-form spellcasting was more than he could naturally gather. Without a major magical battery or a location that was saturated with magic, he could only prepare spells on the solstices or equinoxes, when ambient magic flooded for unknown reasons (likely something to do with natural cycles). Needless to say, that was unacceptable, and he was still refining his formula when he went to the Crystal Empire (wanting to study the Crystal Heart), having the bad luck to be there when King Sombra attacked.
Later on, when King Sombra's curse that kept the Crystal Empire in stasis for a thousand years was undone, Lex found King Sombra's disembodied horn as he left, and took it. He later used it to replace his own horn when he was drained of his magic by Tirek. However, although he can use the horn's dark magic, it's not enough on its own to power his main spellcasting. He needs Severance to do that at will (or, as mentioned, another battery or to wait for the next solstice/equinox).
This is the good stuff.
9217562 Thanks! I do tend to enjoy writing action sequences.