Friendship is Dragons
Updates Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays
Page 166 - Wrath of God
Author Notes:
On Saturday, a bunch of bronies got together for a quick Pathfinder encounter using blind-bag figurines as miniatures. I jumped in for another player and briefly took control of their Ranger, represented by the (non-glittery) Twilight Sparkle toy.
And on Sunday, I got to play a very, very rules-light homebrew d6 system that was custom-tailored for roleplaying canon characters quickly. Out of the Mane Six, I chose to play as Applejack. The system was perfect for a fast and loose game between strangers in a limited time (being at a con and all), so I had a lot of fun.
Overall, I'd say Everfree NW's gaming room was a complete success.
Dragon gets turn, DM rolls dice, Players take damage. Its a pretty simple process really. ^_^
All we have to go on is the word of ponies who tried to steal from him, assaulted him, and woke him up from a really great nap.
I'm just saying I'd probably take their word with a grain of salt. They seem like a suspicious bunch. What kind of respectable ponies go around skulking and plotting right outside a dude's house when all he's trying to do is take a freaking nap?
Man these ponies are jerks!
-I'd subscribe (;
Sadly, I cannot take any more projects at the moment, as I have no less than five stories to finish, and one of them is on a hard deadline. It's gonna be close.
FS: But what happened to your plan, Twilight?
TS: Well, the whole time we had a penalty on our rolls because SOMEPONY decided to provoke the dragon instead of clearing the smoke like she was supposed to.
RD: Look, we were going to fight it anyway. I managed to get TWO attacks off before it fought back.
FS: But did Rarity get a sneak attack in?
PP: I did my best to distract him. I danced the Chicken Dance while squeaking the rubber chicken at the parts where you normally clap. But the dragon refused to take his eyes off Rarity.
AJ: Probably because she tried to steal his treasure right in front of him.
FS: She did what? Oh, my. Well, what about the Hunter's Quarry.
RY: She did manage to get a few hits, I must confess.
AJ: But in the end, bad dice rolls and the fact that we were in WAY over our head have pretty much incapacitated us. Looks like it's up to you, Fluttershy.
FS:...*whimper*
Can't wait for the awesome on Tuesday.
Or a 1 on Diplomacy.
Take a porno mag. glue or tape your character sheet, inventory, campaign notes, backstory, and whatever else to the inside. Flip through it while at the gaming table. Act distracted, but listen intently and plan. Watch everyone else be totally off their game while you totally rock.
I should probably be ashamed of this concept. I should be, but I'm not.
Gaming rooms are my reason for going to a con of any kind - whether it be small and local or large and in charge (like Gencon). I mentioned this before, but without a gaming room, I I'd have no idea how to spend my time!
Glad to hear you got your game on at Everfree, Newbie!
"I don't know about her current level, but it's pretty clear she and her sister were both Kramden tier opponents back when Luna was originally imprisoned."
Eh? I Googled "Kramden tier" -- with the quotation marks -- and got zero results. (Yeah, I know if you have to explain it, it's not really a joke, but. . . .)
I'm not familiar with 4th edition so I wouldn't know, but I'm sure someone here could estimate that.
* the collapsing cliff (level 2 terrain hazard, if the minimum result necessary to succeed on an ability check is an indicator),
* an injured level 2 solo (normally worth 625 xp, but that might have been adjusted for the injury)
* the Forest of Fear (terrain hazard or trap of undetermined level)
* a river serpent (Grendel to Rarity's Beowulf?) of undetermined level, and
* three minions (since one was hit by a result of 16 on the attack, they'd likely be worth only 25 xp each, though brutes could have been worth as much as 43 each).
While I'm estimating the level of two of these encounters, I can't be certain that the hazards or river serpent are each treated as one monster or as full encounter. The latter seems most likely. Four level 2 encounters would give the group 2500 xp, so let's assume that between the minion encounter and the injured status of the manticore that it worths out to 2400 xp, or 400 each. That might not be at all accurate, but since it would leave each of them less than halfway to reaching level 2, we can see there's a lot left to cover.
Unfortunately, the rest still doesn't all come from Nightmare Moon. We also have to account for quest awards, both major and minor. Leaving minor quests out of the picture for now, we've got at least two major quests. The one appropriate to party level was finding the Elements of Harmony - let's say that's level 2 as well for another 125 xp each -- just above the halfway mark now to that first new level. The other, however, is for beating Nightmare Moom, discovering the truth within, reuniting the sisters, and perhaps freeing Princess Celestia from captivity. Those are connected enough that they might all belong to the same major quest, or they might be one major and a couple of minors, or perhaps they were all meant to be independent major quests. In any case, they're for achieving goals that were meant to be well beyond party level, likely equal to Nightmare Moon's own. Making another assumption for the sake of convenience, let's just put this down as one major quest achieved and also assume that Nightmare Moon was a solo monster, rather than elite. That way, each player would earn xp equal to an encounter of her level when they defeated her.
So, after a lot of guesswork... that's a lot of text. I'll do the rest in a second, much shorter entry, coming soon.
Each character needs 7,500 xp to reach level 6. If we work from my assumption, each player has already earned 520 xp from what was intended to be the entirety of their first quest, with 6980 to go. Using the major quest and solo status to keep earnings equal to Nightmare Moon's level, she'd have to be at least level 25 to cover the remainder... with an extra 20 xp on top for each player.
Though this was based on too many assumptions, it's fairly safe to say that Nightmare Moon is level 25, give or take a level, so long as she's treated as a solo monster. If she's elite, she'd have to be at least level 28, probably 29. If neither solo nor elite, she'd have to be at least level 31, which seems rather excessive for a standard monster while also a bit too mundane for the campaign's intended BBEG.
Regardless, Twilight should consider herself insanely lucky to have taken only 19 hp from a single attack. It's also easier to understand why the DM decided it was fair to put this group up against a level 11 dragon.
For anyone that's interested, here's the very, very rules-light homebrew d6 system that I invented for this game.
I hope you'll run a My Little Pony RPG session at the game room next time.
You can add me to the list of people working on homebrew FATE-based pony systems, too. I'm borging in some of the more interesting bits from the Unknown Ponies variant as well, tentatively.
That said, the people I pitched the idea to ranked "pony campaign" dead last out of the options I gave them (standard fantasy, anime mecha, and ponies). Perhaps at the con in January (there are a few more fans there).
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11eIMLP-xwc1ddaCcqgR-CrxP3lZyGguYPH6a4KjVIJs/edit
The only ones that might be missing is the very ending (comic 156) and when bandits tried to take over the town (comic 165)
Anyway, here's a more up to date google doc
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R41jqMwJKChpQtdmWjzgViUoSV3-i5WgPQQ45Ou5Lww/edit
Uhg. I think we've all played with one of these kinds of people.
"Look, just because it's a huge semireptilian creature the size of half a dozen elder dragons raging out of control and destroying everything it sees, living or otherwise, there's no reason to suspect it's the Tarrasque."
We all know at least one of these people. Fortunately, I only do that when it's funny!
Because subverting it is just as fun ^^
"What do you mean the psycho clown wizard at the beck and call of the Emperor isn't the Dragon?"
Never heard of "Lobo" before that fight. :3
(Apologies if I've misquoted that. It's been maybe twenty years since I last read that issue.)