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Pinkie's Brew, full effects...

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Post  Xel Unknown Wed Oct 03, 2012 10:28 am

Hi, there was some talk about the talent known as Pinkie's Brew... Personally I only thought of it as allowing one to use Unicorn talents and just have a good RP flavor for how you pull off such talents. But I'm now aware there are different views that it can (or should) do more then just that.... So that's why I made this topic, just to find out from the source what the official stance was, Can Pinkie's Brew do anything just by itself? Or does it need a Unicorn talent with it to make it worthwhile?
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Post  Ramsus Wed Oct 03, 2012 4:50 pm

Xel and I have been talking and we've come up with...well something that fixes what is seen as several really nasty balance issues caused by Pinkie's Brew as is, under the assumption that all it's supposed to do is give full access to Unicorn Utilities.

Note that I'm sure the following stuff can be phrased nicer. Just that the difference between flavor and mechanics in this case has to be clear.

Replace Pinkie's Brew's text with the following:
Flavor: Watch as you work your gypsy magic! You’ve learned the craft of brewing potions to mimic magical spells.
Mechanics: Gain one Unicorn Utility Talent. Pinkie's Brew may be taken twice.

Add the following Everypony Talents:

Meta-Mechanical Prowess
Flavor: You too can access the powers of metaness with this handy, dandy, build it yourself, Wall Breaker 4000!
Mechanics: Gain one Earth Pony Utility Talent. Meta-Mechanical Prowess may be taken twice.

Aerial Ace
Flavor: Are you going to let little things like gravity stop you from being awesome!? No, I thought not.
Mechanics: Gain one Pegasus Utility Talent. Aerial Ace may be taken twice.


In case people care, the balance issues these correct that Pinkie's Brew caused were:
1) Vague wording causes GM's and Players to be confused on what the Utility actually does.
2) Unfair to Unicorns without matching sets for the others.
3) Unfair to Changelings as it basically stripped them of the uniqueness of one of their racial features.
4) As the racial barrier is already an arbitrary establishment of certain people's views on limiting flavor to the ways they think should work or the way they like, which are unarguably subjective views, Pinkie's Brew not giving anything by itself causes everyone else to be punished for disagreeing with those views. For the system to be balanced the barrier must either exist and not be circumvented at the cost of an arbitrary punishment or should simply not exist at all. As we're too far into things to remove the racial barrier, I content myself with at least try to prevent people for being punished for wanting to make a character whose concept was different from the creators of the racial divide or those who chose which talents went where.
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Post  elfowlgirl Wed Oct 03, 2012 4:56 pm

Does the talent you take due to the effects of Pinkie's Brew (etc) count towards your five starting talents?
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Post  LoganAura Wed Oct 03, 2012 4:58 pm

......
*In awe*
I so freaking want these talents to be canon, and since they're essentially a slightly edited already implimented talent they'll probably be in.
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Post  Brony 7 of 9 Wed Oct 03, 2012 5:02 pm

elfowlgirl wrote:Does the talent you take due to the effects of Pinkie's Brew (etc) count towards your five starting talents?
For balance I think it naturally should. Otherwise it's a roundabout way of being a less-effective Changeling. Besides, if you can only take it twice, you're using four of your eventual eight utility talents to get what the race itself can do in two.
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Post  Ramsus Wed Oct 03, 2012 5:02 pm

elfowlgirl wrote:Does the talent you take due to the effects of Pinkie's Brew (etc) count towards your five starting talents?
No but, Pinkie's Brew does.

Edit: The point being that you don't actually lose Utility talents overall.

I don't know that there's anything wrong with being "a less effective Changeling" in this manner. And of course your GM is always within rights to say you can't take it (or can't take it twice) at character creation if they think it's an issue.
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Post  A1C Bronymous Wed Oct 03, 2012 6:24 pm

The issues I see with this are as follows:

The race barrier exists due to the ability of 2 of the races to do things the others can't. Physiologically speaking, there's no reason for Earth Ponies to have exclusive talents other than it wouldn't be fair for them. So the MMP one, while in reality shouldn't be necessary, does make sense.

The Aerial Ace one however, is less so. Most of the pegasus talents fall back on one of the three unique abilities afforded by their racial traits- flight, cloudwalking, weathercrafting. Unicorns do have a way of emulating 2 of those 3 abilities, but EPs do not, so the only ones who benefit from Aerial Ace are Unicorns who have the correct supplementary talents. INSTEAD, EPs would then have to make do with Pinkie's Brew if they needed to make themselves fly or walk on clouds, and then apply Aerial Ace, which is two wholly unnecessary talents taking up slots.

I do agree that Pinkie's brew needs to be reviewed and reworded and given more clearly defined parameters of use- time required, usage count, materials, etc. That said, it could also be EXPANDED to include the effects of possible EP and Pegasus Talents, ensuring that a Unicorn could use it if they wanted to level the playing field.

edit: But really, if they have IW they can probably mimic most of the effects of those other talents anyway.
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Post  Ramsus Wed Oct 03, 2012 6:53 pm

What you just proposed was "let's tear down the race barrier". You can't expand Pinkie's Brew to include all three races and claim the race barrier still exists. If you want that you might as well just do away with the barrier entirely. Also, doing that completely screws over Changelings.

There are Pegasus talents that non-flying non-pegasi could take. There might not be all that many of them right now but, that could easily change as time goes on.

Also, Bronymous, I think you are the only person who thinks Pinkie's Brew is actually about making potions. It's much more likely that it's flavor text as an excuse for why that character can now use magic. Thus why it doesn't have any mechanics attached.
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Post  A1C Bronymous Wed Oct 03, 2012 7:03 pm

Ramsus wrote:What you just proposed was "let's tear down the race barrier". You can't expand Pinkie's Brew to include all three races and claim the race barrier still exists. If you want that you might as well just do away with the barrier entirely. Also, doing that completely screws over Changelings.
I was just suggesting an equivalency, so that all three races could use it for certain effects. I'll admit that I'm not thinking about Changelings, just the main 3.

Also, Bronymous, I think you are the only person who thinks Pinkie's Brew is actually about making potions. It's much more likely that it's flavor text as an excuse for why that character can now use magic. Thus why it doesn't have any mechanics attached.

That's true, I guess, but it does clearly say they can only take Unicorn Talents. Assuming we exclude Ponykinesis because that has a racial prereq, any talent besides IW would still, in my mind, require a check to pull off, and any spell that would require a check because of IW would then need two- whetehr it's potions or a special item or a birth defect, the mechanics need to be clarified.
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Post  SilentBelle Wed Oct 03, 2012 7:06 pm

I use a completely different homebrew of Pinkies Brew, I think I posted about it a while back. It's pretty much It's Witchcraft using either heal, arcana, or mechanics, whichever's highest, except that you need time to prepare as well as having a few other factors. And in general it seems to be fair, but I haven't used it that much.

This version seems kind of neat, but breaching the gaps that make races different from each other isn't really a talent I would take myself.
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Post  Ramsus Wed Oct 03, 2012 7:08 pm

That's....just It's Witchcraft done all over again. Doesn't really make a lot of sense. Either you're spending a Utility to actually have another Utility...or not. A check added just makes things needlessly complicated. Especially since plenty of Utilities already involve their own checks.

Edit: Hmmm, so there is someone out there who uses Pinkie's Brew that way.

Well, a simpler solution would be to rename my version of Pinkie's Brew to something else, say Amateur Arcanist and change Pinkie's Brew to work basically the way SilentBelle just mentioned but, doesn't give characters access to pick Utilities from the Unicorn (or anyone else's) list.

Edit 2: Ok, that actually isn't simpler. It is better though. And offers player's more choices and not being stuck with currently confusing GM interpretation vs Player interpretation problems.

Not that it's hard either as SilentBelle just outlined the other version and mine is already finished.


Last edited by Ramsus on Wed Oct 03, 2012 7:27 pm; edited 2 times in total
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Post  SilentBelle Wed Oct 03, 2012 7:18 pm

Ramsus wrote:That's....just It's Witchcraft done all over again. Doesn't really make a lot of sense. Either you're spending a Utility to actually have another Utility...or not. A check added just makes things needlessly complicated. Especially since plenty of Utilities already involve their own checks.

Not quite, it's kind of like a tactical 'It's Witchcraft', I made it so that people who like to plan ahead for their adventure can make a potion or two that they think will really help them out as well as something for the player to do when they have some downtime. Essentially they tell their DM, I want to make a potion that does: (whatever you want it to do). The DM then determine the DC and rolls for the outcome (preferably out of sight). The player knows if they succeeded or if they botched something, but not by how much. It's fairly straight forward and it's worked well so far for our campaign Smile

Edit: edit ninja Razz
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Post  Ramsus Wed Oct 03, 2012 7:27 pm

New proposed revision

Pinkie's Brew
Watch as you work your gypsy magic! You’ve learned the craft of brewing potions to mimic magical spells. You can use the Arcana, Heal, or Mechanics skills to perform magic or fiddle with magical effects, such as attempting to dispel an enchantment or attempting to open a closed magical portal. You can use this talent to fiddle with magical effects in just about any way you can imagine, however – just like trying to physically force an object or deftly manipulate its mechanics gets harder the more drastically you want to change things; so does using a pony’s skill to manipulate magical effects. How drastic a change the pony wants to make affects the difficulty of the DC. Potions take some time to make and may have other factors that effect any aspect of their effects or the difficulty to craft them.

Amateur Arcanist
Flavor: You have a rare spark of magical talent or spent time training to learn a spell.
Mechanics: Gain one Unicorn Utility Talent. Amateur Arcanist may be taken twice. You cannot take It's Witchcraft in this way.

Meta-Mechanical Prowess
Flavor: You too can access the powers of metaness with this handy, dandy, build it yourself, Wall Breaker 4000!
Mechanics: Gain one Earth Pony Utility Talent. Meta-Mechanical Prowess may be taken twice.

Head in the Clouds
Flavor: Your constant daydreaming and cloud-gazing has somehow lead to a practical application. Who knew?
Mechanics: Gain one Pegasus Utility Talent. Head in the Clouds may be taken twice.


There, that should make things more clear and clean but not remove any non-changeling super nerfing options while not denying people access to one way of doing it or the other. Amateur Arcanist not being able to grant It's Witchcraft was basically a step to make sure Unicorns still have "their special thing". Still, I could probably be convinced that isn't necessary.

Edit: Aerial Ace could probably use a different name and flavor as those were all just intended to be placeholders as I know other people are better at making Utilities sound nice. It would probably be awkward if we left it called Aerial Ace and that flavor when, as far as I'm aware, non-pegasi ponies still can't use it to take very many flight related talents.


Last edited by Ramsus on Wed Oct 03, 2012 10:45 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Post  Cardbo Wed Oct 03, 2012 9:02 pm

Ramsus wrote:

Edit: Aerial Ace could probably use a different name and flavor as those were all just intended to be placeholders as I know other people are better at making Utilities sound nice. It would probably be awkward if we left it called Aerial Ace and that flavor when, as far as I'm aware, non-pegasi ponies still can't use it to take very many flight related talents.

I propose

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Post  Ramsus Wed Oct 03, 2012 9:53 pm

That still implies flight though?
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Post  Cardbo Wed Oct 03, 2012 9:55 pm

Ramsus wrote:That still implies flight though?

I'd think so. If not, how about.

Do It Yourself Flight
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Post  Ramsus Wed Oct 03, 2012 9:57 pm

You're just teasing me now aren't you? We need a name for Pegasus stuff that is more related to the non-flight stuff.

How about.... Head in the Clouds ?
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Post  Xel Unknown Thu Oct 04, 2012 2:40 pm

(EDIT: This post was made just to better try and explain my views on jumping the racial barriers, nothing more, nothing less... Sounded too much like I was being forced or something the first way I phrased it, I hate when I mess up like that. Well that just comes with having a derpy brain.)

Yeah, it'd be better if it only worked like letting gain one extra talent from a race your not apart of, like how the Baby Dragon's can gain one Unicorn talent. After all as is, Pinkie's Brew would be totally dumb to give to a Baby Dragon. But the stuff you've made to help give options for all three it was retooled to just let you take one more talent from a different race that'd be cool. And I'd even suggest adding to that with one that allows flight to non-flying and after "finally" reading the retooled Pinkie's Brew, I personally really like it and would put your version over the one we've got if I can. :3
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Post  Ramsus Thu Oct 04, 2012 3:11 pm

Well, Unicorns have a proposed and an already official flight Utility, so you could just have your Earth Pony or whatever take Amateur Arcanist and then you could fly... It's a weird workaround but, the only one I see right now. Unless we want to make Utilities that just give you another race's racial feature. I'm not just how much Stairc would like that idea though.
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Post  Xel Unknown Thu Oct 04, 2012 3:30 pm

Yeah... I do agree, that'd not be a good idea... Just wish we could think up a way for flight to also have some type of talent... Mmm... Maybe have it come with a -5 /extra/ debuff to rolls making while flying that makes it that at best you get just a +0 to rolls if you had the "add flight" talent and all three flying upgrade talents? On second thought, maybe just keeping it with like a pure -20 debuff while flying to some type of "flight talent" and no opening for upgrades would be smarter... Cause flying should be really hard for non-fliers, so trying to multi-task would be a bit of an issue.

Edit: Ramsus is right, this is a really dumb idea.


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Post  Ramsus Thu Oct 04, 2012 3:39 pm

Somehow I don't think Stairc is going to approve any method of non-flying races getting flight as good as/one step less good than Pegasus flight. Nor do I see the point. If you're willing to spend 3 or 4 talents on flight, you should just be playing a race with flight (or asking your GM if you can treat your Earth Pony as a Pegasus in all mechanical ways or such).
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Post  Stairc -Dan Felder Thu Oct 04, 2012 4:00 pm

Xel Unknown wrote:Yeah... I do agree, that'd not be a good idea... Just wish we could think up a way for flight to also have some type of talent... Mmm... Maybe have it come with a -5 /extra/ debuff to rolls making while flying that makes it that at best you get just a +0 to rolls if you had the "add flight" talent and all three flying upgrade talents? On second thought, maybe just keeping it with like a pure -20 debuff while flying to some type of "flight talent" and no opening for upgrades would be smarter... Cause flying should be really hard for non-fliers, so trying to multi-task would be a bit of an issue.

Edit: Ramsus is right, this is a really dumb idea.

Actually, I'd like it if non-flying races could use flying by spending utility talents. It's a very popular feature in the Living Legends version of the system.
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Post  Stairc -Dan Felder Thu Oct 04, 2012 4:05 pm

Ramsus wrote:As we're too far into things to remove the racial barrier...

Actually, I'm considering removing the barrier entirely.

What do people think about that? What actual reasons would there be to keep such a punishing flavor-driven restriction in a game that encourages the reflavoring of powers?
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Post  Ramsus Thu Oct 04, 2012 4:12 pm

Yes, yes, please yes!

We might as well keep the categories just for thematic reasons and ease of finding stuff.

I'd like to hear more on what you'd intend for non-flying races gaining flight. Spending 4 or more utilities just to fly decently would be pretty saddening I'd think.

Also, um...so what about our revision to Pinkie's Brew? (Most of the credit really goes to SilentBelle for that. I'd still like to see it be official as I'm sure some people would still like it.)
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Post  Stairc -Dan Felder Thu Oct 04, 2012 4:20 pm

Ramsus wrote:Yes, yes, please yes!

We might as well keep the categories just for thematic reasons and ease of finding stuff.

I'd like to hear more on what you'd intend for non-flying races gaining flight. Spending 4 or more utilities just to fly decently would be pretty saddening I'd think.

Also, um...so what about our revision to Pinkie's Brew? (Most of the credit really goes to SilentBelle for that. I'd still like to see it be official as I'm sure some people would still like it.)

I'll definitely take a look at it in a second. In the mean time, why don't you check out the Living Legends Player's Handbook and look at the utility section - checking out what a no-racial-restriction utility talent system would look like. Including the flight-for-everyone utility talent option.
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