Friendship is Dragons

darkwulf23 1st Oct 2012, 6:06 AM edit delete reply

Third to last pannel with Dash holding a book: I'm sure any DM would feel a sense of dread when any player has that exact reaction when looking at feats.

Innisa 1st Oct 2012, 10:34 AM edit delete reply

When going through the feats for my Airbending character in my Avatar campaign, I noticed a lovely combination that allows me to basically go monk. I started to cackle loudly. I never saw my DM more terrified. Yet to use it in combat against multiple enemies.

Pope Seb 11th May 2014, 4:06 PM edit delete reply

Avatar? I know this is two years late but is that homebrew? Is it posted on the Internet? I always thought that show would make a good PnP game.

Melisandre 1st Oct 2012, 12:47 PM edit delete reply

That's what my players look like whenever they make characters for Exalted. I love this system, but I hate it so.

Upsidedown Pony 2nd Oct 2012, 3:47 PM edit delete reply

You'd like me then. I can't get into the mind set of Exalted play. so I can almost never make a broken character by design. Except you'd hate me because you'd have to plan pointless encounters just for me that everyone else would walk over.

Aeroz 7th May 2013, 2:23 AM edit delete reply

Actually for exalted I statted a Party Cannon, and a NA artifact version called the Celestial Party Battery. They should be on the white-wolf forum somewhere if anyone is curious

Digo 1st Oct 2012, 6:07 AM edit delete reply

Bwahaha, Mass Charm Person.
LOVE IT!!

Hmmm, coming up with feats? Can't think of one right now, but having recentpy played GURPS, Pinkie Pie seems to have a version of the "Gizmo" advantage--
Once a session can pull out one small object on their person that is useful for the situation at hand.

Raxon 1st Oct 2012, 7:07 AM edit delete reply

Ah, MCP. Potentially, my favorite spell. Excellent for performing impromptu musicals. And one of the easiest spells to use for intimidation. Right behind the ranger spell that lets you wield a pit viper like a sword.

Eyepoppee 1st Oct 2012, 7:37 AM edit delete reply

I swear to Celestia I will love and tolerate the muffins out of a sack of puppies if there's actually no ranger spell that lets said ranger wield a pit viper as a sword.

Digo 1st Oct 2012, 7:51 AM edit delete reply

There's always homebrew if not...

Raxon 1st Oct 2012, 9:17 AM edit delete reply

Well, technically, there is. In 3.5. I don't know about 4E. And it just said a small viper, so that's a maximum of about four or five feet, and it never said it couldn't be a pit viper, specifically.

Seriously, though. Rangers can teleport through a forest using trees. Wielding a snake is what you call shenanigans on? Just imagine all those flynning scenes from Zorro. Now imagine them with the characters wielding snakes. A dude falling out of the trees and stabbing your CO through the head with a venomous reptile will make you think twice about attacking.

sunbeam 1st Oct 2012, 9:27 AM edit delete reply

please give me the name of this spell.

Raxon 1st Oct 2012, 9:43 AM edit delete reply

Hmmm... That's odd. Going through my PDF player's handbook, but I can't seem to find it. Maybe it was a homebrew spell I found somewhere. I seem to recall that it had a weaksauce weakness, something along the lines of the viper only having 10HP, and then the viper is dead. It was actually a pretty weak spell, but it had many potential uses.

When I read it, I thought that the only practical use was casting it and flinging the vipers at the enemy, then dismissing the spell, and then repeating this until the area was out of pit vipers.

sunbeam 1st Oct 2012, 10:15 AM edit delete reply

From what you remember, could you get around that hp weakness by using it on your animal companion?
Ooh...what's the errata on sharing spells between familiar and master? could you make yourself a weapon as long as you wield your viper? because that would be flipping sweet.

Digo 1st Oct 2012, 10:31 AM edit delete reply

Flesh-to-Stone the viper and viola! You too can take spells for granite.

Zuche 1st Oct 2012, 12:30 PM edit delete reply

Aw, Digo, that wasn't gneiss.

Digo 1st Oct 2012, 1:52 PM edit delete reply

Yeah, you're right. My jokes lack Sedimental tact.

Malroth 1st Oct 2012, 7:04 PM edit delete reply

I think the spell Was "Snakebite"

Katarani 1st Oct 2012, 10:45 AM edit delete reply

Maybe it was a variation on Sticks to Snakes? Or an errata in the 3.5 text of such?

Nikki D 2nd Oct 2012, 10:43 AM edit delete reply

I mention "Two Weapon Fighting" to my DM and he twitches. Last time I built a TWF rogue for a longer campaign I made the wizard cry pretty much. (8 attacks per round at essentially no penalty with +10d6 sneak damage, elemental damage, elemental burst, crit range of 14-20, land speed of 60ft, AC in the 70's, Damage Reduction, Elemental Resistance and Spell Resistance. Yes we were playing D&D 3.5, no I wasn't trying to cheese it up.) He just knows he won't like what comes after that.

He also doesn't like Searing Metamagic after I killed a Fire Elemental with a Searing Fireball.

Disloyal Subject 29th Dec 2015, 10:23 PM edit delete reply

AC in the 70s!?! Do I even want to know how you managed that?

darkwulf23 1st Oct 2012, 6:17 AM edit delete reply

How about a feat inspired by Tenacious D's Wonderboy. That's right, the power, to move you.

darkwulf23 1st Oct 2012, 6:40 AM edit delete reply

It's either that or the power to kill a Yak from 200 yards away

WITH MIND BULLETS

Digo 1st Oct 2012, 6:55 AM edit delete reply

Well, Pinkie's singing from "Over a Barrel" did cause INT damage. ~_^

Crimson Doom 1st Oct 2012, 7:16 AM edit delete reply

No, no, see, she was secretly aiming for them to fight so that she could swipe a magic item in the chaos, so it was a taunt spell that she told everypony else was a calm-down spell.

Digo 1st Oct 2012, 7:52 AM edit delete reply

Hmm, there is the Bardic "Suggestion" ability to incite a riot.

Katarani 1st Oct 2012, 10:47 AM edit delete reply

...Sometimes, you roll a 1 on your skill check.

When the DM has houseruled that skill checks can critical fail, you seem to roll natural 1s on your skill checks a lot more often.

ShadowDragon8685 1st Oct 2012, 5:23 PM edit delete reply

That's easy in Shadowrun. Magician is only a 15-point quality, and Mystic Adept is only 10 points. Manabolt is pretty much the quintessential "Kill with mind bullets" spell, and the drain code isn't too terrible, especially if you pimped out your drain stats or are doing some focus cheese, and few Yaks will have the fortitude to resist a magician going all-out on him.

Oh wait... You didn't mean "Yak" as in "Slang for a single member of the Yakuza?"

darkwulf23 1st Oct 2012, 7:23 PM edit delete reply

Nope, I meant the bovine variety. And when I say kill a yak, I mean only kill a yak. Make it useless to kill anything else. If nothing else it would be a very interesting in-universe party conversation.

For example: The rogue spots a yak 200 yards away and mind bullets him.

Rogue: No need to send the ranger out, I got dinner for the next several night.

Fighter:....Did you just kill that Yak with your mind?

Rogue: Sure did, you want to help me skin and clean it?

Fighter: Seriously? How long have you had that power?

Rogue: All my life.

Fighter: And you couldn't have used it earlier when we were almost killed by that beholder.

Rogue: Well, you see, the problem is, it only kills a Yak. It might be able to stun a water buffalo but that's about it.

Fighter: Well that's a sucky power

Rogue: Fine then, if you feel that way you can kill your own Yak for the next several dinners

Lyntermas 1st Oct 2012, 7:48 PM edit delete reply

DM: A black dragon appears on the other side of the valley. He says, "Puny fleshlings! Prepare to meet your doom!"
Wizard: I cast Baleful Polymorph at him. *roll* Nat 20!
DM: ...You know what, fine. But know that he's still got access to his spells, and none of you have any long-range weapons to use against him until he decides to change back.
Wizard: That's okay. I turn him into a yak.
DM: *sigh* The great and powerful dragon turns into a yak. It bleats in anger at you. There, does that make you happy?
Rogue: Mind Bullet.
DM: What are you...wait. NO! Dang it, no! Uh, the yak reels a bit, but still manages to...
Rogue: Nope. This ability insta-kills all yaks, no save. You allowed it five times before now.
DM: ...The yak's head explodes.
Fighter:...Did you just one-shot a dragon?
Rouge: How's that for a sucky power?

kriss1989 2nd Oct 2012, 4:19 AM edit delete reply

Lyntermas are you a god?

Zuche 1st Oct 2012, 6:45 AM edit delete reply

Best... feat selection... ever!

Lovely comic too. It's always nice to have the players take over the role of the falling rocks just before everyone dies.

I'd like to suggest an alternate dialogue arrangement for the fourth panel -- not an improvement, nor even a change of joke. Imagine that after Pinkie says, "Three little words," she follows it up with, "and say them with me now," ending with the rest delivered in chorus.

...Hey, if it's good enough for Darkseid, it's good enough for Pinkie Pie.

(Until I fixed a typo just now, I didn't notice how Pinkie Pie is just the first letter and the last away from Oinkie Pig. That one song makes a lot more sense to me now, to say nothing of her hammy tendencies.)

AkumaTh 1st Oct 2012, 7:09 AM edit delete reply

A barbarian with a nuke. That is a scary combination. Especially if said barbarian is the source of said nuke.

DracoS 1st Oct 2012, 11:21 AM edit delete reply

It's like "Cave Dwellers" but without the humorous MST3K commentary!

Bronymous 1st Oct 2012, 1:29 PM edit delete reply

And now there needs to be a feat that gives the player MST3K commentary on everything they or the party does.

darkwulf23 1st Oct 2012, 9:36 PM edit delete reply

There all ready is a feat for that. It's called "The players wont shut up about all the cliches".

Digo 2nd Oct 2012, 5:18 AM edit delete reply

Its that kind of table talk that led me to create my Dracadia campaign-- the gods are all advanced hypercomputers in orbit around the planet, playing the biggest chess game ever. ^_^

Other cliche breakers:
1) The metallic dragons are advanced machines and the chromatic dragons aren't all evil, they just want to eliminate the unnatural machine dragons before the metallics take over.

2) Warforged are created by sealing a person's soul into an armored machine body (Like Al in FMA). The process of doing this was lost in a recent war so no one knew that the warforged were actually fallen soldiers from that war. The experience is traumatic so even the warforged themselves forgot this detail.

Indalecio 1st Oct 2012, 8:14 PM edit delete reply

So basically Rainbow Dash is Raven from Snowcrash?

Zuche 1st Oct 2012, 7:29 AM edit delete reply

By the time of "Feeling Pinkie Keen", Twilight must have picked up Swift Recovery and the required training in the Endurance skill, which might require another feat.

Say, does a unicorn's horn serve as an implement? If so, is Horn Expertise a separate implement feat, or does the horn stand-in for another implement the way a blademaster's sword does for a wand?

Derpmind 1st Oct 2012, 9:07 AM edit delete reply

Fluttershy should get Summon Bigger Fish.

Cain 1st Oct 2012, 9:51 AM edit delete reply

Summon bigger fish, ah good times.

The Batman 1st Oct 2012, 1:07 PM edit delete reply

References are fun.

sunbeam 1st Oct 2012, 9:30 AM edit delete reply

I think the rainbow nuke would be OP in combat...if used by somepony like Rainbow Dash. Think about it...It's one of those moves that would probably kill the whole party as well as the enemy. Like surrounding someone with delayed blast fireballs or bringing an axe down on a milk bottle of dragon water in the middle of the fight. So any player with a wit of sanity wouldn't use it unless their party was gone, dead, or recklessly stupid. People like RD (and probably Raxon) have no such reservations, and would nuke everything.
and it would be glorious.

Destrustor 1st Oct 2012, 1:38 PM edit delete reply

I had a character whose sole motivation in life was "blowing up stuff", whether that meant friends or foes didn't matter. And it was indeed glorious to be a greater threat to the party than most enemies.

Duder-Skanks 1st Oct 2012, 2:39 PM edit delete reply

Were they named Mad Stan?

RainbowSparkle 1st Oct 2012, 9:49 AM edit delete reply

Out of curiosity, what programs do you use to make this? I've contemplated the idea of trying to make a guest comic, but I don't think that'll work all that well with Inkscape or Paint.net

Lyntermas 1st Oct 2012, 1:49 PM edit delete reply

Comic Life. Really easy, just get jpegs of the picture you want as panels, then just click and drag. I used it to make this comic, and it's very easy to make corrections.

Stairc 1st Oct 2012, 10:08 AM edit delete reply

Lyntermas, you are amazing. =)

Also, we've been brewing up a *huge* amount of stuff for Pony Tales. There's now a tabletop version of the game, a core-fantasy version of the rules for those wanting to run more traditional roleplaying experiences, magic items in active development (the beta for the tabletop version up as of this Saturday and the online voice-chat version should be ready for playtesting come tonight or tomorrow night).

Also, we've got a nice big utility talent expansion for even more character-building options. Enjoy!

The Talent Show

sunbeam 1st Oct 2012, 10:18 AM edit delete reply

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vweP9pTN9VA
My honest reaction.

Stairc 1st Oct 2012, 12:05 PM edit delete reply

Daww! Thanks sunbeam. We're having a ton of fun doing the development on the Pony Tales forum. =)

Jason Shadow 1st Oct 2012, 7:01 PM edit delete reply

Huzzah! Ooh, I'm going to have a field day updating my Plethora...

Apples 1st Oct 2012, 12:53 PM edit delete reply

Bwa ha ha! You FOOL stairC! Invisible changelings shall destroy you while you work?Ahahahahaha. Hah heh heh. Heh. Sorry about that

Lyntermas 1st Oct 2012, 2:09 PM edit delete reply

Glad you're all enjoying the comic, guys. It was pretty fun to make. And now for the ultimate in meta...

Alt-script time for my own guest comic!
RD: Grr...I need something that will let me bring in the power. Let's see..."Brace for Impact". A pegasus is able to fly straight down into the ground and create a shockwave that impacts his enemies. The pegasus is not harmed by the impact. The damage of this attack is _d6, with _ being the maximum speed that the pegasi can reach divided by 10. An average pegasus can reach 20 mph, so the attack would do 2d6 damage.

Well, that might be good as an area-of-effect attack. Maybe I could fudge some higher numbers since my cutie mark is speed...Wait. I remember seeing something. *flips through book* "Sonic Rainboom". Creates a spectacular explosion of color by breaking the sonic barrier. Ponies who can perform this feat can reach and maintain a maximum speed of...100 mph.

*Third to last panel face*

Appkes 1st Oct 2012, 3:21 PM edit delete reply

100? Hah, the Barabarian wouldn't sell out for 10d6! You've got your scores wrong!

It's obviously 770 MpH, for a Opti-tron damage of 77d6 in a radius of 77 metres

ShadowDragon8685 1st Oct 2012, 5:31 PM edit delete reply

And thus was born the Sonic Rainnuke. And lo, the fans looked upon it, and saw that it was good.

And lo, Applejack looked upon it, and saw that she had a creaky old barn that needed to be demolished, and asked if her good buddy RD would give her a hoof.

And lo, Twilight Sparkle looked upon it, and realized too late she really should have brought protective headgear and taken cover.

Masterofgames 2nd Oct 2012, 1:03 AM edit delete reply

Actually, the math has been done. The mach cone in the show, and the rate of speed increase have been used, by ACTUAL PHYSICS of all things, to determine that a Sonic Rainboom results in the pony performing it traveling at a sustained speed of mach 10. That's 7,680 miles per hour!

redwings1340 1st Oct 2012, 6:02 PM edit delete reply

hahaha, you're awesome Lyntermas. I'm going to enjoy these next couple weeks when this comic updates every day :).

Guest 1st Oct 2012, 6:25 PM edit delete reply

Funny thing about that was that feat was in the Savage Worlds of MLP mod that someone made. I ran a session and when a player took and used that he killed everyone.
It needed a bit of balancing

JediChipmunk 1st Oct 2012, 7:46 PM edit delete reply

Rainbow Nuke? I always thought it was called a Sonic Rainbomb...

Disloyal Subject 30th Mar 2014, 3:14 PM edit delete reply

Mushroom cloud. Of course, both are fan nicknames, and non-canon, and they both convey the point.

BowToTheBard 1st Oct 2012, 10:32 PM edit delete reply

Shouldn't it be "Mass Charm Pony?"

Sp'N'Zor 1st Oct 2012, 11:20 PM edit delete reply

Only if it doesn't work on non-pony races.

kriss1989 2nd Oct 2012, 4:13 AM edit delete reply

Ah, AJ is thinking 3.5 barbarians who were just rage fighters. In 4th, they're magic and can do some crazy shit. My guess, she just learned about the 5d12+Str+Enhancement Rage Strike she could perform at level 5. That thing almost oneshotted a dragon 3 levels higher than the party. Barbarians can deal stupidly high damage.

steeeeve 3rd Aug 2014, 11:18 AM edit delete reply

a lot of the aerial tricks Dash has shown/talked about could easily be converted into combat skills.

Friendship is Dragons

Page 181 - Feats of Radicalness

Author Notes:

64 Comments: