Drive-Thru RPG Link.

Originally known as Ponies for Pathfinder, Ponyfinder is a short 30 page (40 if you count all the works cited in the OGL) booklet which takes elements and tropes from My Little Pony and translates them into Pathfinder material.  Enough of the names have been changed for characters to avoid lawsuit, but most MLP fans would be able to tell what they're talking about.


The author mentions that game balances was of primary importance for designing the Pony race.  He didn't want to make them so underpowered that they wouldn't be used in most games, nor too overpowered that it's all anyone bothers playing as.  Unfortunately he failed in that regard: the game balance is all over the place in terms of races, feats, and spells, with a slight nudge towards overpoweredness.

The first section details the breeds of ponies and their society.  Basically, ponies are Lawful Good Fey who in ancient times oversaw nature and fought against the forces of Chaos; today they delegated much of those tasks to others, but they still have a proud history and legacy of heroes.  Each pony develops a Brand of Destiny on their right flank upon maturity, which takes the form of something related to their passion, drive, or devotion.

Ponies have all the limitations of horses anatomy-wise, but they gain a lot to make up for it, such as a bonus to saving throws against spells, a bonus feat, can't be affected by humanoid-only spells.  The basic breed is the Earth Pony, no horns or wings but very hardy and in tune with the earth.  The player of a pony can trade one of the Earth Pony's racial traits to play as another breed, which includes the Pegasus (who can fly but aren't as tough), unicorns (whose horns grant them limited spells per day), gem ponies (skin can deflect rays and resistance against despair effects), chaos hunters (descendants of heroes who fought against the forces of Chaos), sea ponies (limited swimming ability), and doppelgangers (limited shapechange).

The Pegasus is potentially the strongest option due to the mobility of flight, and the unicorn gets access to feats to enhance their horn magic.  The other breeds get relatively shafted, especially the Sea Pony (who doesn't have a swim speed at all!), and the chaos hunter (whose abilities might be useful in a demon-hunting campaign, but not much else).

Next section covers Feats for ponies.  Most of them involve enhancing the racial traits of pony breeds, and quite a few are flavorful (Day Wing and Night Wing transform a pegasus' wings into butterfly/batwings and some supernatural abilities from a ritual to the goddesses of day/night).  The unicorns and pegasi feats are the most versatile and powerful overall: Cloud Kicker can dispel cloud and fog-related effects, while Weather Pony can move them around (mobile Cloudkill for the win!), while the Horn Magic line of feats can bonuses to the Save DC of spells, eliminate need for somatic components, and using Mage Hand as a permanent "hand" and substitute Intelligence for Strength for manipulating objects and fighting.  Others are quite weak, such as Pious Brand (your Brand of Destiny's your holy symbol), and the Sea Pony's Smooth rise (you can rise from a prone position faster on a higher Acrobatics check).

Next section covers class options, mostly geared towards spellcasters like the Mystic Prancer (you're a bard, except you're skilled in making friends!), and the Pony Scholar (can choose to avoid sacrificing spells per day in exchange for fatigue 1-3 times per day).  The Pony Equipment section is mostly mundane objects shaped towards equine use (mouth kit are thieves' tools meant to be manipulated via a pony's teeth), horseshoes with the same effects of spiked gauntlet, and matching sets of crowns which grant minor bonuses to allies wearing them (Elements of Destiny).  Spells follow a similar pony pattern, such as Human Way (turn hooves into hands), Rainbow Wings (increases speed and maneuverability of creatures with wings), and Pony Way (hands ball and curl up into uselessness for a number of minutes per caster level).  Overall nothing special.

The section on Pony Deities is one of the stronger segments in the book, and all are based off of existing characters from the franchise.  Overall the flavor text is pretty good for them, such as Blaze the evil goddess of the Sun whose followers give no mercy, the Moon Princess whose followers protect others from the creatures of the night and are inclined towards monster-hunting, and Princess Luminace the deity of knowledge who grants divine insight via clever placing of maps, scrolls, and tomes containing valuable information.  Unfortunately a lot of the Cleric domains are not present in the Pathfinder Core Rulebook, and gives no advice on which books they're located in.  I can see a lot of unnecessary book-flipping arising from this.

Final section gives advice for ponies as companions, mounts, and familiars.  The book recommends against the first two, as ponies are sentient and disliked being treated as beasts of burden.  For familiars it mentions that ponies love magic and often "apprentice" themselves as familiars to learn magic.

As familiar options ponies are really powerful.  Not only do they gain effective wizard levels for 2 the master has in arcane spellcasting classes, the unicorn familiar's ability grants an effective +2 bonus on caster level checks if they concentrate and "fuel" the master's spell.  This can be done only twice per day, but this (along with actual spellcasting) makes ponies the best choices bar none for familiars.



Final Thoughts

This product is all over the place.  The balance is wonky, from " lame and underpowered" to "why wouldn't you take this?!"  Several options are clearly better than others, and some equipment and spells are purely supplemental.

I'd recommend this book only to bronies in search of a comprehensive overview of rules for playing ponies in the vein of their favorite TV series.  Others will get very limited use out of this book.

Good day,

David here, writer of the book above. I appreciate your review and feedback and was wondering if you're available to go over some of the weaknesses you found in the book. We're hard at work on an expanded version of the book and appreciate all the input we can get, so if you have the time, let's touch bases.

Thanks,
David
Silver Games LLC

Alright, here are some of the more unbalanced options:

The Pegasus gets a Fly Speed, albeit clumsy.  But this can be enchanced via feats and spells.  The Sea Pony has to take a feat to get a Swim Speed at all, which is useful in less situations than full-on flight.  I'd recommend granting them 40 foot Swim Speed as default and remove the +4 on Swim checks (they get a free +8).

A bonus feat is a very powerful option.

I'd recommend asking around on Min-Max Boards for game balance.  The folks there are very knowledgeable when it comes to the mechanics of 3rd Edition and Pathfinder.  It's also one of the forums I hang out at a lot.

For Horn Magic feats I assume that you mean for it to apply to the Unicorn's Mage Hand spell-like ability, and not Mage Hand cantrips from classes like the Wizard?  Is this the case?

For the Day Wing feat hovering in place is a DC 15.  At high enough maneuverability and modifier this check can be made almost all the time (where you only fail on a Natural 1).  Night Wing's 60 feet of darkvision, by contrast, is more useful throughout the levels.

Pious Brand is underpowered because in most games access to a holy symbol is a non-issue for a Cleric.  Given that the amount of feats per level is limited, I'd recommend granting some additional ability with a tangible benefit.


For Favored Class Options, the Bard and Sorcerer options are immediately useful when taken (1 additional round of music, or one spell known), while the others come in increments over the course of levels.  The Barbarian and Monk are some of the slowest, and +5 to movement over 5 levels isn't that impressive when you have things like Expeditious Retreat and Haste.

Thanks for taking the time to break it down. Some of these we've addressed in the upcoming book, but others are very worth taking a closer look at.

Sea Horses: I agree. Let's not mince words, swimming is a lesser option in most settings and games. I've elevated it to swim 40ft out of the box. The feat now gives water breathing and Cold Resist 5 instead.

Horn Magic: Horn magic was completely redone for simplicity and balance. Horn magic, as in the power to do useful little things, became Unseen Servant 2/day instead of Mage Hand 3/day. The ability to wield weapons/shields is separate, and is treated just like a human holding things, just with your mind. You still need feats for that chicanery, but less(one per mental hand, basically). No more modifying basic spells in strange ways.

Day Wing: You have a point, let's have a look. To go with the avatar of day theme, Fire Resist 5 and +2 vs light effects in addition to the hover ability. Did you know hover, by itself, is a monster feat? Though they do get to kick up debris if they are large sized or higher.

Pious Brand: Some GMs go for symbol sundering, many play it nice. Still, I have since discovered that this ability is available as a trait, and if it's a trait, it's probably not worth a whole feat, so in addition: When casting spells with an alignment that your deity also possesses, your caster level increases by 1.

I'm ambivalent on favored class options. I will admit that they were all stolen, I mean borrowed!, from existing favored class options from existing races. Some are awesome, some are not, and I've yet to run into a race that was equally as awesome in their FCBs across all the classes. When all else fails, take the +1 to HP or Skill.

I appreciate the time you've taken to share your concerns with the book.

Have a great day,
David
Silver Games LLC