RP Char. Development (Help plz?)

[CobaltCharmer]

Hey! Uhm... I'm trying to better my characters on here, and I was wondering if anyone could give me some suggestions on a couple of my characters.

I have a couple I think need a bit of peer review; Cobalt Charmer and Brave Charger

Cobalt Charmer: A young stallion who all he wants to do is travel Equestria, meet new people, find new things, etc. A pretty adventurous pony, all in all. He's also the one to ask questions to just about anything he doesn't already know.

Him being a unicorn, I'm trying to figure out a way to balance his magic although I'm not sure how to do that. it's always been an area i could never truly figure out. I find he, himself as a character is okay, although I haven't used him much.

Brave Charger: A Stallion who has lived through as many years, more or less, as Cobalt, but however he is somewhat strange. His way of speaking is normal-ish, but if he flubs up, he'll say things like Thy; Thee; Thine; etc. He looks as if he's went to a battle field multiple times, old and hardened, yet no war has raged in equestria for years and years.

Now his fighting style ((As i've said before, I'm not entirely sure about fighting styles if I were to go into a sort of fight RP of some sort)) is a little more humanoid than most. He'll find a wall and push himself up onto two legs and wield a 2-Handed sword. A fighting style I'd like to say would be lost in time and secrecy.

If anyone has any suggestions on how to make them better, I'll periodically change this post, according to how well I like a certain idea.

[Ashton]

Him being a unicorn, I'm trying to figure out a way to balance his magic although I'm not sure how to do that. it's always been an area i could never truly figure out. I find he, himself as a character is okay, although I haven't used him much.

The best way to do this is to define what his magic is capable of, then put some limiters on it such as with telekenesis "cant lift more than a full-sized pony" or a flare spell 'cant make a fireball larger than his head' etc. (granted there are circumstances where you might need to break these limiters in an adventure RP --- especially along-running one, and you can always add in limit breakers as needed)

[DerpRavener]

Are these abbreviated descriptions of the characters, or is this all you have for them right now?

Reading these my first question is: what is each of these character's special talent?

My rule of thumb for unicorn magic is to come up with a short spell list. Something like 7-8, with only 1-3 of those being really big/powerful spells (actual numbers will heavily depend on the character really). Unicorns with a special talent relating to magic directly might have more, but it needs to be a precise relationship to make sense, and it seems tricky to make it balanced and interesting. Even if I were to make a combat mage, I would probably still give them only 2-3 large spells (and they'd have a special talent for tactics, or martial arts or something).

Spells should all either be either related to the character's special purpose, or should be all of the following: useful, simple and easy to learn, and conventionally weak. A light spell could be a good example of the second type.

About the fighting style: my approach would be to focus more on the significance of the fighting style to the character more than the specifics of the style itself. I'll admit I haven't spent that much time here, so I'm not yet familiar with how things work, but combat in an RP environment like this tends not to pay attention to specifics like whether a character is in a fighting stance A as opposed to a fighting stance B. Instead, things like how he learned it, why he practices it and how characters might react to him because of it are much more important for a story line standpoint.

As an aside, that fighting style doesn't sound practical to me. Having one's mobility limited like that probably outweighs the benefits of it. My approach would instead be something like a fighting style with a number of stances or moves that involve standing up on two hooves, and then having early stages of the training focus on building the practitioner's balance so that they can perform the more advanced techniques later. It might be hard to get all that across in a given RP, but truth be told that may not be that important: that it is a distinctive fighting style may be all that's necessary in many cases.

[moonshineTheleocat]

Well for the Unicorn, You can like tehy said have 7-8 spells that directly relate to their talent. THere are also Orisons (the stuff every pony and their mothers can do in the show. light weight telekinesis, ect.) that they could probably have.

The earth pony though, I am not sure about. Maybe martial arts, but a two handed sword in hooves may not be the best start. Trust me... I held a two handed sword, and you really need thumbs and a strong grip to swing it.