New Build-Your-Own-Race Expansion is live!

And my stance is that this system is and has always been to me: flavor first, mechanics second... So while I might not 100% agree with some of the mechanical choices as long as it keeps to the "Flavor First" idea, I'm fine and will deal with it.

I'm a pegasus!

No, I can't fly, the wings are... vestigial or something.
Nah, I skipped "weather training day" in school.
Really? A cutie-mark was important?

I instead took Bonus Utility, Bonus Utility, and Bonus Utility, to get telekinesis, improved TK, and energy shield.


...Am I really playing a pegasus anymore, or a blank-flank unicorn?

In terms of "flavour", in one of the builds I made, I viewed Crystal Ponies as hyper-specialists. Min stat 3, max stat 12. That's 2 build points. In my world's canon, Crystal Ponies are very adept at certain things, but fall apart on others, necessitating teamwork (another racial trait). It makes a fluid race concept that makes sense across the whole thing when taken as a race.

It's also not optimal. You could give up the min and max stat traits for weak flight, a much better choice in most opinions. But then you're not really a crystal pony anymore. You're a hardier pack-bird type race with cutie-marks.

Just in advance, so you don't pull a "how many have YOU designed" thing on me (very rude, by the by), I have designed monsters, for-pay, for real games, that make real money. But I'm not going to pull rank on your little side-hobby, Ramsus. Instead, I will speak to it from a more end-user perspective:

In fanfiction, you can write about basically whatever you want. So clearly, there's going to be billions of EXCELLENT stories out there! ...There isn't? Using prompts and contests, for a very good reason, get better fanfic than letting people freestyle. It provides a restriction to operate in, which stimulates creativity. NaNoWriMo gets more writers making 50k words than they would any other month of the year.

Races work the same way: You're stimulating creativity by making people consider how they should go about things, and make the best they can, without jumping down their throats: You're not restricting utilities anymore, after all. Go wild there to make your character within the race different: Fluttershy is good with animals, but she's still got Weather Crafting, Flight, and a Cutie Mark. The rest are utilities. Rainbow dash is really good at flying, but she's still got Weather Crafting, Flight, and a Cutie Mark. Roid Rage is a monster that can probably tear through walls and looks more powerful on the ground than in the air... You guessed it: Weather Crafting, Flight, and a Cutie Mark. It defines "Pegasus", and all three have vastly different flavours, through utilities, but all work within the restriction of "pegasus" just fine to make unique flavours. I don't think I need to rhyme off how Lyra, Twilight, Trixie, Rarity, Snips, and Shining Armour all have a cutie mark, ponykinesis, and diverse training in the form of a bonus utility that suits their character (for musical talent, teleportation, illusion magic, Art of the dress, sharpen, and energy shield)...

Put differently, a pony who has flight by race means they were born with it. It implies something VERY different than one that gets it through utility talent use. And you already succumbed to the main argument: The DM gave you permission after you asked. That's the main thought. Maybe the DM doesn't mind having a psionic, non-flying, barrier-maiden pegasus, but that is the DM's prerogative. Rule Zero. That's all I intended, and all I asked, and surprisingly immediately, all I got too.

Long time lurker, first time poster(in this thread at least.)

I have to admit, I agree with Raven. If you have a racial ability, it's something you are born with.
If you are a catpony? night vision
Oh you were made? You have Mechanical(or whatever. You know what I mean.)
Your a seapony? You can breath underwater.

Can say a earth pony enhance themselves to become night-seeing mechanical water-breathers? Probably, but they have to go out of there way to do this, it's not something they were born with. Do I like the new changes? Eh, could be a lot of fun. Playing in the Pony Team Bravo campaign at the moment, so I probs won't get to test it for a while.

To sum it all up, you want to make your Pegasus be a magical energy shielding badarse? Cool. Take some utilities and suffer the fact you might actually have to clear the clouds once in a while.

Xand, I'm sorry about coming across as condescending but spending an hour to pick apart my post is really rude.


This can easily be fixed by putting a note on the top saying, *The DM has final say as to whether or not you can use the racials if you choose to remain a canon race, but with edited Racials. Some people prefer to stick to the Show's canon.* or something.

LoganAura wrote:Xand, I'm sorry about coming across as condescending...

Okay. Apology accepted in that respect...

LoganAura wrote:...but spending an hour to pick apart my post is really rude.

^Though this right here is just plain silly.

First off Logan, I like to take my time when I make a post. You can ask anyone in my RP groups. It takes me forever to update a thread, and that's because I like to think things through carefully and weigh each word so I can be sure I'm picking the right one. I'm an English professor in RL, so I take my writing and typing very seriously.

Secondly, don't flatter yourself. I didn't spend an hour picking apart your post. If I'd just been trying to pick apart your post, I could have done it in half the time. I spent roughly 20-30 minutes commenting on your post. The rest of that time was spent editing my post in an attempt to make it as polite as possible while still getting my point across. I know how easy it is for people to take your your words the wrong way over the net, and I didn't want to start a flame war or something.

Now, that typed, if, in the future, you'd prefer my posts raw and unedited... then I can not be held responsible for what will happen...

So, back to editing those posts (;

Finally, how does spending an hour to comment on a post make me rude at all in the first place? If I hadn't mentioned how much time I put in, you wouldn't have known - and the only reason I did mention how much time I put in was because someone else had posted a bunch of my thoughts before me. I didn't want to edit my post any more, sense I'd spent so much time into it already.

In sum: The time spent on my post was not an attempt to hurt you in any way Logan, and I'm honestly sorry if you took it that way.

LoganAura wrote:This can easily be fixed by putting a note on the top saying, *The DM has final say as to whether or not you can use the racials if you choose to remain a canon race, but with edited Racials. Some people prefer to stick to the Show's canon.* or something.

We could do that, or just make this a GM supplement and make that clear from the get-go. GMs could always still allow players to use the supplement if they really wanted, but I think it should be the GM's call, not the players. That way players know going into a campaign that if the GM's allowing for altered races, they're playing a special campaign (like Xel's Joke Race Campaign). I'm against racial alteration - but I think that if we have it, then racial alteration should be the exception, not the status quo.

Like I've said before, I'm interested in maintaining racial flavor, and the last thing I want is for min-maxing munchkins whining to the GM - "But the book says I can do it this way!"

-And you know at least some rules lawyers will try to do this if they expect to be able to alter their races going into every campaign. Again, that's why I think (and I'm not forcing my opinions on anyone) this should be a GM supplement, so that players know ahead of time not to expect racial engineering when they enter the average campaign.

Stop picking apart my posts Xand! Seriously.
Add that your whole post was condescending--BOTH of them, and I'm currently regretting ever trying to explain it to people.

Still, I'm going to keep arguing that building characters in this system works best when you think up the character then pick and choose the mechanics the best fit the character. But that's just me. And I just can't understand the other viewpoint on this issue that cares so much about mechanics making the flavor for a character. It sounds dumb to build with that in mind.

To me I say the Racials are more Pre-Campaign flavor then anything else. Most of the time it fits best thinking of the whole thing is more of "what you were born with" but really, if somebody can think up a good pre-campaign justfiacion for something they should be allowed to. What if somebody wants to build an pegasus that had ended up somehow LOOSING THEIR WINGS... That'd totally mean they couldn't fly right? I mean have we seen any wingless pegasus flight? Don't think we have...

Raven, I'm glad you're not being totally rude and pulling rank on me. *rolls eyes* If so I'd have to point out that just because you're paid to do something doesn't mean you did a good job, certainly doesn't mean you did the best job possible for anyone to do, or that you're better at it than everyone else in the world who didn't get paid to do it.

It doesn't matter if we call it a GM supplement or Apple Pie or Meany Faces Tell You When You're Allowed to Have Fun or whatever. Everyone here is still going to look at it (in fact we all already have). If people want to use the stuff, they'll request their GMs to let them either way. The only difference we're going to make now is how encouraged people feel to customize their race to suit their character vs feeling like certain people tricked their GM into telling them that they can't do things with their characters that there's no reason to prevent them from doing aside from your feelings on the issue. Those of us who view customization as a good thing are never going to agree with you guys that want to tell everyone else how they're allowed to play.

Additionally, there's no way you can justify a mechanical backing for your position because it was already made with the intent that people might try and abuse combinations and were priced accordingly. You're just trying to force people to play the game the way you want to play it, instead of making your own rules for your own games (which you'll already do anyway, some of you just because someone made you mad and not for an actually good reason).

You can justify it however you want but, at the end of the day you're just telling people that they should only have fun the way you want them to.

Edit: Xand, if you're seriously saying you spend time to make that post less rude then.... maybe you needed to spend about three times as long. Because it was pretty dang rude. You might want to consider, I dunno, apologizing to Logan since there was no call for that.

Yeah, I can understand why people don't like it, but hey, if you don't like the options this update gives you that just means you aren't going to use it yourself. There isn't any reason that just cause you don't like the idea of people using this for things other then making new races that it means this SHOULDN'T be allowed to do so.

Honestly I wish we had this a hell lot earlier, cause it would've added to my Unicorn with a Broken Horn that I wanted so very much to have the broken-hornness be something mechanics wise, but I couldn't find anything to figure that out. Tried to build a utility but that didn't end up right. But now the answer is clear, it'd be just removing said Unicorn's Ponykinisis from him and boom I've got something nicely flavored and different just like what I wanted when I was building him. But couldn't cause the idea of messing with the racials wasn't around yet.

Ok, I think that There's something interesting we all forgot.
This race creator is an expansion. if a DM says "Only use the ones that are already made", that's fine. Just like not using the Combat talent one.

Guys, I think you're getting a little too worked up about this. There's nothing to be gained by throwing insults around or getting upset, and it's all just a bit childish. Everyone has their own opinion, and even if we don't agree, we can still maintain a calm and mature attitude about it.

Xand, I don't think you're doing this intentionally, but you're coming across a bit abrasive. Sometimes, even if you're right, it's better to swallow your pride and respond with humility.

I think we'll find we actually all want the same thing, but we're just approaching it from different angles.

Xel, I would argue that pre-campaign flavor is what the utility talents chosen at creation are for. They allow you to specialize your character beyond what their race initially defines them as. The typical pegasus can fly, craft weather, and has a cutie mark, hence why those make sense as racial abilities. How they specialize is determined by their choice in utility talents.

So what if you want to play a blank flank? A flightless pegasus? A magicless unicorn? I think all we really need to do is state that the official race templates are the default, and while you'll generally stick to the default, a player can certainly ask their GM to approve an altered template. This is a happy medium, because we still give the player the option to use Genetic Engineering, but at the same time make it clear that the GM's word is law. This avoids the issue that, as Xand put it, "But the book says I can!" because "the book" specifically makes it GM conditional, but without outright banning it.

And then you ninja'd my post.

That broken horned unicorn is the sort of thing I'm talking about. Basically, you're looking at the default racial template and saying, "Due to circumstances, my character, who is a unicorn, is unable to use this particular unicorn racial ability, so I'm going to swap it with something else to compensate." As long as the GM is okay with that, that's fine. What doesn't make sense to me is someone building a race template from scratch, without taking any abilities a certain race normally has, and then calling themselves that race. Maybe you have a good reason to play a pegasus that can't fly, craft weather, or doesn't have a cutie mark, but you shouldn't just slap a bunch of racial traits together and then arbitrarily call it a flightless, markless, weathercraftless pegasus. Basically, for every ability that you lose, you should have a good reason why, and for every ability that you take instead to compensate for the lost ability, you should also have a good reason for. The system shouldn't be treated as an arbitrary point buy for racials, but rather a tool for building new races and for tweaking existing ones to fit special circumstances.

Also, am I the only one who thinks that Spellchild makes more sense for a unicorn than a bonus utility (since they usually get one spell related to their cutie mark), and that bonus utilities sound more suited to earth ponies? In fact, I might give earth ponies One Of [earth pony magic related talent], Stubbornness or Epic Pwny, and a bonus utility talent.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree, and just remind you all that what you all seem to want is that GMs shouldn't allow this because you don't like the idea of people using it for twicking their own races for whatever reason. Cause that's what I keep hearing you all wanting. You want GMs to not be able to allow their players to play and have fun. Sure any such twicking HAS GOT to have some strong in-character backing, but that's just it. I wanted to build an Unicorn with a Broken Horn, and I wanted that broken horn to be more then just RPing flavor, I wanted some level of mechanics to relfex that cause that'd make more fun. But this character was build a long time before this was out.

And still please could you all explain how you aren't wanting to limit me to not allowing my Broken Horn Unicorn has to have PK or else I can't call it a Unicorn? That's all I keep hearing from you all that seem to be aganist this expandion. You don't want the Players to make what they want, and even if they got good in-character reasoning for the edits you can't call yourself the normal canon race.

Sure, I get that you don't like how it feels to you, but that's fine, just means you aren't going to use it. But then why are you all dead set on trying to make sure people that would WANT to use it not be allowed to or at the very least, suggested to not do such things?

EDIT: I'm sorry if this post comes across as being hostile, I didn't intend it as such, just my passion for this issue ended up making me word it as such. And I'm too much of a derp to know how to fix the problem that tone.

Greywanderer, now that I can completely agree on. I might lean on the side of thinking it's more fun if GMs are prone to saying "yeah go ahead, I'll tell you if I approve of what choices you're picking". But no, I didn't ever want people to be saying "The book says I can, so you must!" (Admittedly I would make slightly different arguments or "why not?") The way I view what Xand and other people (and I thought you but, I guess not) are saying is that people shouldn't be of the opinion that it's encourage to ask to customize their racial traits and stay the same race in flavor and should be limited only to making new races.

Edit: I missed the part at the bottom.

I personally think we should encourage point buying for traits as, a lot of the choices made for the default versions are just someone's personal opinion. There's no reason to view them as word of god. The defaults should be treated as examples, not the only way it can work.
Edit 2: That said, I can understand if a GM wants to stick with the defaults or wants people to not completely drop all of the default stuff as long as they keep something of that race's default traits. But, that should be the GMs choice for that game, when that comes up. Not ours right now. We should just be treating this as a tool, not advice on how people should play/run games.

Hmmmm, Unicorn with Spellchild:
Cutie Mark (2), PK (1), Spellchild (4), Magical Attunement/We’re Just Good At This Stuff/Specialist/Cultural Knowledge (1).

Yeah, that'd work pretty nicely. In fact, it'd make a pretty nice default.

Earth Pony with Naturally Skilled v1:
Cutie Mark (2), Naturally Skilled (2), Epic Pwny (3), We’re Just Good At This Stuff/Cultural Knowledge (1)

Earth Pony with Naturally Skilled v2:
Cutie Mark (2), Naturally Skilled (2), Friend in Deed (3), We’re Just Good At This Stuff/Cultural Knowledge (1)

Oh, and here's what I want my Earth Pony Whisper (whose CM is about helping others) to look like:
Curie Mark (2), Friend in Deed (3), Attack The Day! (2), Cultural Knowledge (1)

And here's what I think the "default" Earth Pony should look like:
Cutie Mark (2), Friend in Deed (3), Epic Pwny (3)

Just realized something in regards to

We’re Just Good At This Stuff(1)
Choose a skill. Characters of your race gain training in that skill.

classic D&D race attribute but then there is this stance

Dan Felder

7:29 PM Jul 13


Each Race is designed to be unique and interesting in its own way, without restricting character concepts any more than we need to. We really don't want to tell people, "you can't have a tough unicorn" or, "you can't have an egg-head pegasus".

With that in mind, we made a conscious choice to avoid what most RPG systems do and not give skill or atribute bonuses to the races. It'd be so easy to give earth ponies +2 to endurance and give unicorns +2 to history - but then the best historian build has to be a unicorn. A dedicated pegasus could never outstrip a truly dedicated unicorn build in history.

Player characters are exceptional almost by definition - and characters that break the stereotypes are usually a lot more interesting than ones that embrace them. With that in mind, we decided to avoid such classic bonuses and instead give every race cool traits that everypony can enjoy.

That's more or less a way to factor in the "third training" thing that non-pony races had before this latest update. That's it... Nothing more.

If that were it the trait would be something along the lines of members of your race receive training in three skills

As it stands if I say made an Oni with this and used We’re Just Good At This Stuff to give it extra training in endurence then someone else who wanted to use the same template would have to take a training in endurence. In addition the wording does not say that the training from the skill is an extra it can be read as forcing all members of that race to take a training in that skill.

Side note Why did hippogriffs get this skill?

Tyger, don't know if you meant to be saying this or not but, that quote is a pretty good reason to not limit people to the default racial traits. As it says, PCs are exceptional, not the norm.

Edit: I read that trait as all members of that race just get an extra skill, not a specific one.

Choose a skill. Characters of your race gain training in that skill.

Did you not read the second sentence.
Edit as the talent stands it is one of the classical bonuses that this system is trying to move away from.

Then it needs to be re-worded. Good catch.

And one easy way to reword a good deal is to make a line that says you can't take the racial traits more then once, unless it otherwise says so or something... And also I'd suggest adding that "We're good at Stuff" can't be taken along with a cutie mark. To replikate the whole Cutie-Mark or three trained skills thing we had before.

Xel Unknown wrote:And one easy way to reword a good deal is to make a line that says you can't take the racial traits more then once, unless it otherwise says so or something... And also I'd suggest adding that "We're good at Stuff" can't be taken along with a cutie mark. To replikate the whole Cutie-Mark or three trained skills thing we had before.

and so the hippogriff gets hit with a nerfbat once again

Well assuming that the we get the game expanded to a full 8 point system I'm sure that we'll find a way to fix the Hippogriff to be like it was.

Unless I have missed something Dan does not look like he is budging from 6 points

Really cause my understanding was he liked the idea of having the system be a 6+CM system or having it be like pure 8 points.

it seems to me that no one knows what Dan is ever going to do