SwordofAeons

1S 4W from the upper right. There's a screenshot in the hack thread.

-.-

Oh, she's on the list because Sain demanded it. She just comes so late though :/ Also, Kent looks wtfterriblebad. HORSEBIRD is my favorite class. Y u h8 HORSEBIRD Klok?

Matthew + Lowen? I imagine that's doable.

I'm feeling Isadora because I like magic, and Farina because DRAGOON. Edit: Sain really likes my team atm <.<

Nintales. *poke* Nintales. *bop* Nintales. *poke*

I vote Marcus just stays free cuz it'd be too messy to change now.

A level 9 mercenary as a Jeigan? We could allow Nintales to repick and then iron out any resulting wrinkles... Opinions? yespzl

It's nothing a little sobbing quietly in the corner won't fix! Looking around more, dun think there was any reason to make Marcus free. Oh well, Marcus + dress = fun! Geitz seems to be impossible for anyone but littlebunny to actually acquire; even then, they'd have to also draft Lyn or grind her up to 10 in Ch. 16.

0.0 What have I gotten myself into?...

I think I'll grab Rebecca for a little more early-game and Sain for juicy T3 magics. Everyone else is grabbing Lord-weapons though...

Curious choice... WHAT ARE YOU PLANNING!?!?

HMMMMMMMMMMM....

I seem to recall Bartre not being comically terrible for a while, so you nerfed him. "Making my run possible" is more of a priority than "less painful" at this point ^.^ Hope it goes well! Sorry you were late to the fun :<

Typically, you just ensure that they don't see combat. Dunno if that's possible in CHAOS; if it turns out to be impossible, we'll just ad-lib it.

Naw, Bartre'd be better. He can steal stuff!

I think you'd be at a bit of an advantage here if you did :-p Ummmmmmmm... Serra? Did I just firstpick Serra? Wat. Edit: littlebunny gets next pick.

Just saying you want to participate is enough. Here's an explanation of how drafts work overall [Link]. Use the NUPS program to apply the hack to a fresh FE7 ROM, though we can't help you in acquiring one of those.

So, I might have just started a draft for this. I'm expecting great suffering.

Drafting: 1. This draft is for 4 players. 2. Hector, Marcus, Bartre, Merlinus, Ninian/Nils, and Athos are free for all to use. 3. This game will be played on the only mode, Hector Hard Rules: 1. Undrafted units may recruit characters, rescue undrafted units and NPCs, trade, visit Shops and Armories, and dig up items in the desert. 2. Undrafted units may not do anything not listed above, including but not limited to meatshielding, building Supports, opening Doors or Chests, talking to Fargus in Chapter 17x, or Seizing Castles in Chapter 25. 3. Gaiden chapters are all optional and don't count for turns up to 20 turns taken each. 4. Other units may do as they please without penalty. 5. Defend chapters count the last played Player Phase for turns if the timer is waited out. 6. Savestate abuse is encouraged. 7. Mine glitching is encouraged. 8. RNG abuse is allowed if needed but discouraged. Penalties: 1. Undrafted units have a 4 turn penalty, per unit per chapter. I fully expect I'll have to take this penalty at some point; go nuts. Exceptions: 1. Matthew is free for Chapter 11. 2. Meatshielding is allowed for Chapter 13x. 3. Lyn, Kent, Sain and Wil are free for Chapter 16. Teams: SwordofAeons - Serra, Rebecca, Sain, Isadora, Farina, Nino, Florina, Dart, Jaffar littlebunny - Eliwood, Fiora, Wil, Priscilla, Lyn, Guy, Karla, Legault, Geitz Rapier - Lowen, Lucius, Raven, Pent, Matthew, Louise, Karel, Heath, Hawkeye Nintales - Oswin, Dorcas, Rath, Leila, Erk, Kent, Canas, Harken, Wallace So I've been following the development of Chaos Mode since Phobia's initial LP, and it looks like a ton of fun. Reading LPs gives a sense of what the new characters can do, but I don't think there's any way to internalize BOWSWORDS other than to actually play. I've no idea if the game is even completable in a draft format, but drafts are more fun so let's do it anyway! The hack: [Link] -use the optional savegame; I'm told the Mario Kart items are VERY helpful Notes: Assassins can steal, but don't have desert-find. Base-level Bartre can be used to get Karla. There's a critical item to find in the desert. Magic users have a T3 promotion. Leila breaks her recruitment chapter; reset the game to fix. [spoiler=Units with classes and Klok's rating] Vaida - Bishop - Excellent light user. Low CON but good third tier access. Renault - Druid - Slightly better than vanilla. He's the last chance for a Dark Wizard. [spoiler=Picked units for reference] Jaffar - General - Usable general, but mainly useful for his CON rating. Dart - Monk - Has significant potential, but lackluster upon recruitment Heath - Cleric - Excellent all the way to the endgame. Best when given a stimulant. Karla - Warrior - Insane CON. Best bow user. Can also wield Armads/Wolf Beil. Karel - Paladin - Fairly usable paladin and has great RES. Comes with an Iron Rune! Harken - Sage - Fairly usable sage, and he comes with a fortify + fimbulvetr! Canas - Thief - Probably the closest thing to a perfect assassin that you'll ever get. Kent - HORSEBIRD - Overall, probably the worst playable flier character. Matthew - Cavalier - Speedy cavalier, but lackluster strength may break him in the long run. Serra - Lyn Lord - Possibly the best sword user in the game. Use all the way to the end. Oswin - Mercenary - Incredible earlygame unit. He is lackluster after midgame though. Eliwood - Mage - Incredible end-game unit. He suffers in early and midgame though. Lowen - Wyvern Knight - Great flier, with good STR/DEF. However, he has sacred weapon weakness. Rebecca - Brigand - Likely the best endgame axe unit, but shitastic res may hamper her. Dorcas - Cavalier - The best paladin candidate in the game. Awesome growths but shitty res. Guy - Knight - Excellent early and midgame unit. Can be useful up to endgame as well. Erk - Fighter - Solid early and midgame unit. Risky endgame if promoted early. Priscilla - Cavalier - Growths are 50% in all stats. Easily RNG-screwed or blessed. Florina - Nomad - Good bow user and only nomad, but horrible CON rating hampers her. Lyn - Corsair - Excellent endgame, and +4 luck on recruitment. Complements Rebecca well. Sain - Shaman - Bad bases, but great potential. Makes the best Dark Wizard, easily. Wil - Soldier - Has a custom promotion class. Insane unit once trained up. Use him! Raven - Mage - Excellent mage, possesses roughly the same potential as Eliwood does. Lucius - Eliwood Lord - Stellar unit, but made of paper. Give dragonshields where possible. Leila - Shaman - ??? Fiora - Myrmidon - Second best sword user in the game. Can use the Katti weapons. Isadora - Mage - Literally the best magic user in the game, barring none. Rath - Hector Lord - Excellent unit, but may not max STR and DEF. Lacks RES too Farina - Dragoon - Less CON than will, but for the price, a fairly good stat tradeoff. Pent - Swordmaster - Good sword user. Can wield the Rapier and Durandel weapons. Louise - Berzerker - Good berzerker, but like her husband, not suited to the endgame. Nino - Wyvern Lord - Totally insane growths. Best flier, slowed only by sacred weapon weakness. Legault - HORSEBIRD - Good upon recruitment, but growths are sorta 'meh'. Wallace - Valkyrie - Significantly better than Marcus. Definitely worth using.

I'm still following the forum, but lately XCOM: Long War and a shiny new copy of Awakening have been devouring my free time. I've got a couple of ideas I'd like to try hosting at some point, and could probably be strongarmed into participating in one sooner. It's not like there's been new hosts who failed to find enough players; I'm not too concerned.

So many levelups of your dreams!

I'm curious where everyone thinks the challenge in a draft should lie, as that could give some direction. In order for a competitive rule to have value, it needs to make the competition more 'interesting,' usually talked about in terms of number and complexity of decisions to be made correctly in order to win. Where do you think this depth is to be found, and what's getting in the way? I believe the ideal is to construct a team that performs evenly well through the Early, Middle, and Late Game within the restrictions of a draft. My observation is that the naive approach (ie. just the drafting rules alone) puts emphasis on the Early Game, as most of the community rules seem to lessen this impact. It seems intuitive that a poorly performing Early Game would cause more damage than a poorly performing Mid Game, and it seems quite difficult to have a poorly performing End Game regardless of the team. Does smoothing out Early Game variance result in a more interesting challenge? On the other hand, perhaps the Early Game is the most interesting portion of the competition and it should be emphasized (within reason). For those who find the fun in trying to make unconventional units fill conventional roles, I'd say that occurs most strongly in the Early Game. I don't really have the experience to comment on the relative merits of these smaller tweaks like double Franz/Vanessa, but I did have two wild and crazy ideas: How about a draft structure that can accommodate differing team sizes? If Seth or Franz or whoever can Fight Like Ten Men, why do they only count as one pick? I haven't followed any of the auction drafts, so I don't know if they do this already. The way I'm picturing it, everyone gets something like 10 times the number of picks in points to purchase their team. Then, before the draft, each participant rates each unit in points by how much they think the unit is worth. Each unit is then assigned the average cost from each player, the order is randomized, and the draft proceeds as normal, with the caveat that you can no longer pick once you've run out of points. Alternatively, how about a draft structure that cares about individual chapters rather than just overall? Say a poor team can do Chapter X in 15 turns and Chapter Y in 2 turns, while a good team can get through in 10 and 1, respectively. Why does Chapter X have such a disproportionate impact on the draft's success? Say you instead received points for your relative turn counts in each chapter, and then compare those scores at the end? "I'm pretty sure I can win Chapters X, Y, and Z; I've got a good shot at Chapters Q, R, and S; and I'm at least competitive everywhere except Chapters I, J, and K, so I'll want to wring out all the value I can from those." There would need to be turn count par times for each chapter, though, to prevent things like boss/arena abuse. Anyway, thoughts?

So base Seth at chapter 9 would be about 10 levels under a free Seth. That's a much bigger gap than I was expecting!

Ch. 12: 12/113 Finally grinded out the last bit of this chapter. Could've cleared in ten except for that one idiot spider (He actually decided to go NORTH once >.<). Could've cleared in 11 if Gerik had managed to land one hit in three on said spider. Oh well, more exp for Artur and Natasha (Barrier broke on the last turn). Saleh was a jerk who I had to bend over backwards to prevent getting attacked. Character Lvl HP St Sk Sp Lu Df Rs Eirika 20 28 13 20 20 16 10 5 Artur 18|6 37 23 21 17 7 6 23 B Staves (~1 Mend from A) Natasha 8 22 9 8 11 11 3 9 A Staves Ephraim 10 29 10 13 12 10 11 4 Kyle 17|4 41 15 17 18 10 18 2 Innes x|3 32 16 14 17 15 11 9 Gerik 12|3 39 17 16 15 8 15 7 Tethys o(≧∇≦o) Marisa 10 28 11 15 16 9 5 4 Ch. 13: 2/115 Is it possible to 1-turn this one without a flier? I couldn't find a way to push Kyle through. Took a while to find a way for Tethys to survive turn 1, she kept getting hit by everything. Eventually had to sacrifice some xp on Gerik to wall off the pass. Marisa stood on the fort to gain xp, but stopped killing things after her shamshir finally broke. Kyle 3HKO'd Aias with the armorslayer. Character Lvl HP St Sk Sp Lu Df Rs Eirika 20 28 13 20 20 16 10 5 Artur 18|6 37 23 21 17 7 6 23 A Staves Natasha 8 22 9 8 11 11 3 9 A Staves Ephraim 10 29 10 13 12 10 11 4 Kyle 17|5 42 16 18 18 10 18 2 Innes x|3 32 16 14 17 15 11 9 Gerik 12|3 39 17 16 15 8 15 7 Tethys (✿◡‿◡) Marisa 11 29 11 16 17 10 5 4 Ch. 14: 10/125 Could've 8-turned this if I could have accessed the supply to grab a chest key while carrying Eirika and had realized that Eirika couldn't take-drop Tethys, but I just wanted to end it. Got to deploy L'Arachel to recruit Rennac; if he doesn't want to fight so bad why does he stand in the chokepoints >.> Marisa's actually starting to pull her weight, I'm impressed! Character Lvl HP St Sk Sp Lu Df Rs Eirika 20 28 13 20 20 16 10 5 Artur 18|7 38 24 21 17 7 6 24 A Staves Natasha 9 23 10 8 11 11 3 10 A Staves Ephraim 10 29 10 13 12 10 11 4 Kyle 17|7 44 18 18 18 10 19 3 Innes x|4 32 17 15 18 15 11 9 Gerik 12|3 39 17 16 15 8 15 7 Tethys (づ￣ ³￣)づ Marisa 14 30 13 19 18 12 7 5