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Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns and the nature of magic.


flutterscotch

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I'm going to start this off by saying I am not sure how plausible this is, or how much work it would be for the staff to implement if they so choose.

Inspired by another discussion about the nature of Twilight's special talent, that seems to at least involve the potential to learn ANY spell, no matter what kind of magic, no matter the difficulty level simply by studying it. She's not just a powerful unicorn already, but she also has that untapped potential to learn and master every spell in every book throughout the land. She's just not there yet. Based on the way she holds Starswirl the Bearded in near reverence and the sheer amount of time she spends with her books, she will always have room for improvement, and there will almost always be some obscure she doesn't figure out until nearer to the end of her life. That is what keeps her from being a Canon Sue. Sure, she's a functioning adult and is no longer has to attend class with Celestia, but that's probably because she's at a point where she has absolute mastery of the control of her use magic (where she's not accidentally turning anypony into a cactus anymore) , but Twilight will never NOT be a student of magic. Even when she's the one writing the books and there's a wing in the Royal Canterlot Library named after her and aspiring unicorns are dressing up as her for Nightmare night, she will STILL be studying. She's mortal. There just simply is not enough time for her to possibly master every single spell that's ever been created in all of Equestrian history.

But what about those spellbooks? Surely any unicorn can just march right into the library and read up and try to learn spells. In particular, the spell that Twilight uses to give Rarity wings, while exceedingly difficult for her, was found in a book in a library of a town built by earth ponies. Not even the royal Library in Canterlot. And Twilight was under a time crunch to make it in time to support Dash, failure wasn't an option so they had to take the easiest path. Not to mention that she had never seen the spell before performing it successfully to begin with. With practice and training that difficult spell would probably become easier and easier for her to perform. But the spell exists, therefore SOME unicorn has been able to do it before.

This brings me to the actual point and suggestion of this rambling. The unicorns we have as OCs, and even cast members have a special talent and their magic is tied to it. But what if they, unlike a unicorn like Rarity, attended school and studied in an attempt to learn additional spells (For example, if a unicorn's power was helping plants grow, he or she could learn a spell what could do it faster, or even manipulate its structure to make a bush grow naturally into topiaries (Unlike Rarity's spell, which I'm not even sure what that did during winter wrap up).

)? While there's no way it would come as easily to them as it does to Twilight, and there's no way they could even remotely master magic if it wasn't specifically aligned with the nature of their special talent, what if they COULD upgrade their power a little bit.

Right now, Twilight could just instantly and completely overpower any OC that is on the forum with any type of magic period. While I agree that she is the best, and most magical, I would also like to think that if she locked horns with a well-trained pony whose special talent was, say, levitation, if they ONLY used those types of powers it's be more of a well-matched fight. I'm not suggesting that the ponies should or would fight, I am just using it as the easiest way to demonstrate the balance of power.

But these powers would have to be earned through special RP in Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, and a set list of augments would need to be drafted. You get so many points through some sort of board-wide event, your unicorn gets some additional spell that makes them a tiny bit more powerful. Up to a point of like, say, 4 points. 4 levels of additional augmentation, until they've the power to at least put up a good fight if they were in a magic battle with Twilight herself (only using their type of special magic) and are considered "graduates". The augmentation could even be pre-built into the application in that the unicorn starts out fairly weak with run-of the mill powers, but has four levels of power-upgrade suggestions, as long as they are reasonable and make sense to the character.

That way people who want a really powerful character have to earn it, and prove that they can RP responsibly before they are handed powers that can be abused, and there's a means by which for Unicorns to learn additional spells to keep them from being one-note in that aspect.

Because, after all, they are there and easily available for anypony to study, whether they're strictly in school for magic or not. There has to be a reason for that, Twi can't be the only pony who can improve with time, and the study of magic can't be that much of a trade secret if directions are just everywhere. Ponies in general might prefer sitting around and hanging out with their friends (even the mane six, and extraordinary group, prefer to do this when they don't need to save the day) instead of studying as a rule, but that doesn't mean that there aren't other diligent unicorns out there looking to get better at magic.

Again, not sure how plausible this would be for the staff to implement since it would be more work for them, if they even wanted to, but I thought I'd bring it up in case it even changes the way magic is viewed slightly in applications. If a unicorn can improve over time on this board itself, maybe people won't be arguing so much about the crazy sue-ish magic they try to apply to their character from the get-go.

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Wow! Great analysis. The way I see Twilight as is a pony of all trades. Magic, being her Element, allows her to easily study and cast spells. She improves by using the spells over and over (practice makes perfect).

In terms of unicorns going to Princess Celestia's School to learn how to learn new spells and improve on their main ability (the one they have their cutie mark for), I can mention my unicorn OC.

Her name is Fire Heart, and she's a filly that just received her mark. She has recently enrolled in Celestia's School (think around the age Twilight entered). Her skill is fire magic. When I created her, I made it so she wasn't too over powered and this gives her room to grow in her magic. That's why I have her as a student, to have her learn. Also, to reduce the overpowered part, I made a flaw to her magic: it's tied to her emotions so when she's scared or angry, she becomes a Human Torch.

So I agree that ponies can grow in their magic, especially fillies or colts. It makes the evolution of the character more realistic. As for a system where a skill is augmented, I think that would be cool. The problem is that with so many different unicorn magic out there, it's hard to create a system for that. D&D, for example, has a set spell list and set spell levels. For it to work, a system like that would have to come into play. This means assigning spells to a level, determining the number of levels, determining what level a pony is at, and seeing how one can reach another level of magic. Not impossible, but still tricky.

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Wow! Great analysis. The way I see Twilight as is a pony of all trades. Magic, being her Element, allows her to easily study and cast spells. She improves by using the spells over and over (practice makes perfect).

In terms of unicorns going to Princess Celestia's School to learn how to learn new spells and improve on their main ability (the one they have their cutie mark for), I can mention my unicorn OC.

Her name is Fire Heart, and she's a filly that just received her mark. She has recently enrolled in Celestia's School (think around the age Twilight entered). Her skill is fire magic. When I created her, I made it so she wasn't too over powered and this gives her room to grow in her magic. That's why I have her as a student, to have her learn. Also, to reduce the overpowered part, I made a flaw to her magic: it's tied to her emotions so when she's scared or angry, she becomes a Human Torch.

So I agree that ponies can grow in their magic, especially fillies or colts. It makes the evolution of the character more realistic. As for a system where a skill is augmented, I think that would be cool. The problem is that with so many different unicorn magic out there, it's hard to create a system for that. D&D, for example, has a set spell list and set spell levels. For it to work, a system like that would have to come into play. This means assigning spells to a level, determining the number of levels, determining what level a pony is at, and seeing how one can reach another level of magic. Not impossible, but still tricky.

Hmmm... I would have called her Seraphim, but thats just me.

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The only problem with the system is how do we handle a unicorn who has, as D&D puts it, advanced into epic levels (post level 20 characters in D&D), rare as they most certainly will be, if Staff even allows it. We will need a Subset of rules for advancement in training to cover such an event and to accommodate the Crossovers too.

Still we have at least 2 examples of unicorns that are in the epic stage of magical knowledge and power, Twilight Sparkle and Starswirl the Bearded. How do we fully prepare this system for other unicorns who wish to reach epic levels? I would say that although Twilight is an exception due to her age but most unicorns will only reach that scope of power near the end of their lives, becoming the wise, old masters of their profession, after devoting their entire life to that pursuit.

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The only problem with the system is how do we handle a unicorn who has, as D&D puts it, advanced into epic levels (post level 20 characters in D&D), rare as they most certainly will be, if Staff even allows it. We will need a Subset of rules for advancement in training to cover such an event and to accommodate the Crossovers too.

Still we have at least 2 examples of unicorns that are in the epic stage of magical knowledge and power, Twilight Sparkle and Starswirl the Bearded. How do we fully prepare this system for other unicorns who wish to reach epic levels? I would say that although Twilight is an exception due to her age but most unicorns will only reach that scope of power near the end of their lives, becoming the wise, old masters of their profession, after devoting their entire life to that pursuit.

Simply, we don't. We don't need to do it for crossovers, because almost all apps pass crossovers so you can put your own rules on a per-character basis anyway and if they don't, that's what free-for-all is for. Since the point of World of Equestria RPing on this forum tends to be slice-of-life vs. long-spanning D&D style adventure, epic-powered unicorns are simply unnecessary. After all, even with our heroes, some of the greatest heroes in of all Equestria, unless they are actively thrown into adventure they tend to spend most of their time hanging out, goofing off and baking. Being characters not defined by their powers.

This is why I suggested a max of 4 steps of power upgrade, which means you get an additional spell related to your special talent, or an expansion of the one spell you do really well, and not much else, definitely nothing completely unrelated to your special talent. After all, in canon so far, Shining Armor only has ONE really REALLY powerful spell. And he's in charge of guarding Canterlot. Rarity has a few spells, but I like to think of her as an ordinary, every day sort of unicorn. Unschooled. She has telekinesis, she has her special power, and then she can change dead branches into topiaries, which i really think was just a re-arranging of leaves via telekinesis, but make of it what you will. Presumably Shining Armor went to school, and is clearly more powerful than Rarity when she's not in possession of her Element of Harmony. Since Shining Armor DOES hold such a high rank, you'd assume that he also holds a decent amount of power, more than the average unicorn, but probably less than the average scholar who specifically studies magic who also might specialize in barrier spells.

You definitely have to keep in mind that Twilight's special talent IS magic. She can learn anything. Other magic scholars might be able to study the spells, but unless it aligns with their talent, all the studying in the world might not get them anything at all. If we used all this as a basis, put Rarity in the 25th percentile, Shining Armor in the 75th, and Twilight in the 99th, all unicorns would definitely start out more around Rarity (except foals, colts and fillies, who would obviously not be as powerful as her) and then just pass Shining Armor with their 4th level.

As for Starswirl the Bearded, we actually don't know the extent of his power compared to Twilight. After all, she has the most raw magical ability of any unicorn that Celestia has ever met. And if Luna is any indication, the princesses have met Starswirl. Which would make her at some point in her life (maybe not now, maybe next year, maybe towards the end of her life), definitely more powerful than him. But given all we hear about him, especially if they are still teaching his stuff a minimum of 1000 years later (if Luna met him it had to be 1000+ years), it's likely that his special talent was also magic. Nopony whose special talent wasn't specifically magic would ever be able to attain these levels in even a lifetime of study, and as of now we know of a maximum of 2.

So how this would work, let's say your character can teleport or "blink", but in your application assessment the helpstaff has seemed that maybe it needs to be toned back a bit so that they can only teleport themselves a range of 15 feet or so. So you go to the school. You can increase his/her range. You can add caveats that he/she can now teleport others or much larger distances. You can improve skills with already-shown spells on the show (if it makes sense in the context of your character), for example teleporting something by focusing on it instead of your character physically having to be involved by holding the object. That kind of thing. So even after a lifetime of studying as a rather ancient unicorn, this particular character would, say, be able to teleport an entire swarm of parasprites, without touching or affecting anything else, and make them go to the ends of Equestria. But this action would probably weaken the character to the point of death. On the flip side, this would also make for hilariously tragic RPing if you have a character who has something suggestive of flames in their cutie mark, and works beyond hard to manipulate fire, but they're totally misreading their special talent their entire lives.

So, your character starts out being able to teleport themselves, and only themselves, 15 feet, within a line of sight.

  • Level 1, this power gets augmented to your character can transport 2 additional ponies, or some other set weight, a little further within that line of sight. Rarity's somewhere in here.
  • Level 2, your character can either increase that weight that they can transport, increase he distance, or make it place they are transporting to just be somewhere they are familiar with and not necessarily within the line of sight. Maybe all three.
  • Level 3 would be additional incremental augments to form a step midway between level 2 and 4. I'd propose putting Shining Armor's power level here.
  • Level 4 would make it do that the character is able to teleport multiple things at once just as long as they could see them. For example, say a school is on fire within the RP and the students are trapped, as long as they can see the 10 or so schoolponies trapped inside, be able to lock on to them, and safely teleport them outside all at once. Within the context of Mane RP, this is pretty powerful, and very useful. But from a first application standpoint it might be too overpowered so this system would enable unicorns to attain these kinds of powers. Clearly, Twilight is already here, and probably was quite some time ago.

The aforementioned ability with the parasprites would be well beyond level 4 and just unnecessary to the RP canon as it is. Overkill. Nobody wants to RP with the character who can solve all the problems automatically with their magic. Even Twilight doesn't do that all the time.

This is why I suggest, if this could possibly be pulled off, pre-adding the steps to your application, so that it can be reviewed for being overkill, and so that there doesn't need to be a giant list of spells floating around that has to be maintained by the helpstaff. What a person who would want to do this would do is just read accepted apps tagged with an appropriate tag to get ideas for how they want their character to grow. After all, this would be something earned, not just freely given, so a little research would go a long way.

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For example, say a school is on fire within the RP and the students are trapped, as long as they can see the 10 or so schoolponies trapped inside, be able to lock on to them, and safely teleport them outside all at once.

I have a sudden desire to app a teleporting pony named "Scotty"

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Flutterscotch, all indications say that star swirl existed before the princesses. Long before in fact. Remember, they were not present in hearths warming eve. That predated Celestia and Luna, and star swirl had possibly already passed since he was spoken of in the past tense.

We can't make any indications of how powerful he was. It could have been that he was inventive and he was able to use his magic more efficiently as the creator of the spells.

However, I support Jack of all trades Master of none theory.

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Flutterscotch, all indications say that star swirl existed before the princesses. Long before in fact. Remember, they were not present in hearths warming eve. That predated Celestia and Luna, and star swirl had possibly already passed since he was spoken of in the past tense.

We can't make any indications of how powerful he was. It could have been that he was inventive and he was able to use his magic more efficiently as the creator of the spells.

However, I support Jack of all trades Master of none theory.

I actually forgot about that episode entirely. Lol. Either way, he's an exception and not the rule.

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Flutterscotch, all indications say that star swirl existed before the princesses. Long before in fact. Remember, they were not present in hearths warming eve. That predated Celestia and Luna, and star swirl had possibly already passed since he was spoken of in the past tense.

Wait, they talked about Starswirl in Hearth's Warming Eve?

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Yes Tales, Twilight, or the character she was portraying in the play, mentioned how she knew about the Windigoes through Starswirl the Bearded.

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Twilight's character in that said that Starswirl was her mentor.

Now, this all depends on whether we take the Hearth's Warming story as history or mythology too. Luna implied that she knew Starswirl because she commented on the bells on Twilight's costume. "You even got the bells right." I'm more inclined to think that the Hearth's Warming story was just that, a story. Like doing a play of "A Christmas Carol."

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Twilight's character in that said that Starswirl was her mentor.

Now, this all depends on whether we take the Hearth's Warming story as history or mythology too. Luna implied that she knew Starswirl because she commented on the bells on Twilight's costume. "You even got the bells right." I'm more inclined to think that the Hearth's Warming story was just that, a story. Like doing a play of "A Christmas Carol."

All that implies is that she saw a depiction of star swirl. Just like twilight did. In fact, that would be more likely the case, because that means there is a standard image that could be deemed right. Knowing what someone looks like does not indicate knowing. I wish it did though, that would be awesome.

And if you wish to make an argument of she knows it's correct. Then tell me if you've never looked at con pictures and said to yourself "wow, they even got [insert feature here] right" (or commented on any costume in the same manner).

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  • 5 weeks later...

It could be Luna knew what Starswirl looked like because she was closer to his time and was therefore the most popular figure in history at the time she was taught.

Jump ahead over a thousand years when Luna was freed from being Nightmare Moon, and she finds the average pony says "Starswirl who?" There has to have been a number of historial figures added to the history books every generation to study -for a thousand years. (thats gonna be a lot for joe pony to remember)

It must be a relief to Luna to have met a unicorn who did not have that response and in fact dressed up as him.

I can just wonder what Luna was taught about the events behind Hearth's warming Eve. Now that would be fun to ask Luna about. :)

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  • 2 weeks later...
That way people who want a really powerful character have to earn it, and prove that they can RP responsibly before they are handed powers that can be abused, and there's a means by which for Unicorns to learn additional spells to keep them from being one-note in that aspect.

Because, after all, they are there and easily available for anypony to study, whether they're strictly in school for magic or not. There has to be a reason for that, Twi can't be the only pony who can improve with time, and the study of magic can't be that much of a trade secret if directions are just everywhere. Ponies in general might prefer sitting around and hanging out with their friends (even the mane six, and extraordinary group, prefer to do this when they don't need to save the day) instead of studying as a rule, but that doesn't mean that there aren't other diligent unicorns out there looking to get better at magic.

^ I couldn't agree more.

I was actually somewhat scared for that my OC might be rejected because of her powers.

She is an engineer and her cutie mark is two gears, but her special talent is methodology (IE her talent is problem solving with, and the anaylsis of, specific components such as phases, tasks, methods, techniques and tools).

She earned her three powers, through diligent use of her abilities, practice and study. As a filly she use to assembly watches with telekinesis, and how to mold/repair pieces with heat magics. Her teleportation is just another side effect of her diligence, she wants to perfectly combine technology and magic one day so she strives to do her best.

So I completely agree that characters should be allowed to advance their skills.

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The title sounds alot like "Xavier's school for gifted youngsters", from X-men.

Just sayin'. :geek:

So would Celestia be Professor X?

Really I do see the school as like Xavier's school, containing the best unicorn students with exceptional magical talents. This begs the question: is there a school for gifted pegesus or earth ponies?

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The title sounds alot like "Xavier's school for gifted youngsters", from X-men.

Just sayin'. :geek:

I guarantee you that the writers of the show/Lauren Faust TOTALLY had that in mind when they coined it...and had Twilight Sparkle freak out magically in homage to Jean Grey. GUARANTEE.

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I guarantee you that the writers of the show/Lauren Faust TOTALLY had that in mind when they coined it...and had Twilight Sparkle freak out magically in homage to Jean Grey. GUARANTEE.

Oh my god, your right, Twilight sparkle turns all fiery when she freaks out, and so does Jean Grey.

That's so weird.

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So would Celestia be Professor X?

Really I do see the school as like Xavier's school, containing the best unicorn students with exceptional magical talents. This begs the question: is there a school for gifted pegesus or earth ponies?

For pegasi its totally possible, but for earth ponies we havent seen anything in their innate magic that would call for specialized schooling.

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I always considered Twilight to be an upper tier all round character; if she were an MMO character and there were like 10 branches of magic, she'd score at least an 8.5/10 in proficieciency in all of them.

In comparison to an OC, Twilight will exhibit more versatility and breadth but not necessarily the power level and specialization of said OC. Say in the field of fire magic (manipulation and control of fire), an OC that is very close to being 'overpowered' could score a 9.0-9.5 with the advantage being that said OC is more at ease with and/or has a slightly higher level of control over fire than Twilight (aka a slightly different difficulty/power curve) but will score a near 0 in all other categories of magic.

Therefore said OC will only have a base level of magic (telekinesis) but will be highly skilled in fire magic. If it was up to me that OC will not branch out to other branches of magic (say she learns to manipulate water as well as fire), even during the course of RPing. that unicorn can reach the peak in fire magic but I think its up to the RPer to control her so she doesn't start godmodding (in a nutshell: you can have it but you shouldn't use it)

The title sounds alot like "Xavier's school for gifted youngsters", from X-men.

Just sayin'. :geek:

I think of it more as the Baxter Building from Ultimate Fantastic Four; the government gathering all the brightest minds in 1 area (I wonder what insidious stuff they are planning ;))

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I think of it more as the Baxter Building from Ultimate Fantastic Four; the government gathering all the brightest minds in 1 area (I wonder what insidious stuff they are planning ;-))

So...they're going to come up with awesome technology that could cure most of the worlds' problems and just play superhero with it? *glares at Reed Richards*

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I think of it more as the Baxter Building from Ultimate Fantastic Four; the government gathering all the brightest minds in 1 area (I wonder what insidious stuff they are planning ;-))

The Government gathering all of the brightest minds in one area?

Sounds more like Black Mesa :)

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