Nihilon

This is fantastic and I approve of it.

You can stand on the escape point? Isn't it on the other side of impassable terrain?

First off, I apologize for not setting up the Discord server and finalizing the rules as I promised to do a few days ago... some things have been happening in my personal life that prevented me from dedicating enough time to this. I'll catch up on the discussions currently going on and adjust the rules accordingly, and I'll hopefully get to setting up the server soon.

@Ceniza, regarding your concerns about the rules, that's what rule #0 is for. I was also planning on removing rule #2 (no more than 2 classes from S-tier) and just instituting a Smogon-like system. And of course, I don't claim that these rules are anything resembling final and universally applicable. They'll undergo further revisions as we go along - the current incarnation is based on what experience the participants have, both first-hand and second-hand. As we go on to have actual battles under the ruleset and we find out what works and what doesn't, we'll adjust the rules as required.

Derp. I have been using Caeldori as a Swordmaster for so long, I completely forgot it was her secondary class... Anyway, it does look like with the given constellation, you won't be able to get Swordmaster or Master Ninja for Kana. You shouldn't worry too much about Arthur giving lower growths than Azama - a few Eternal Seals later, you'll have capped stats anyway. And I dare say that Fighter is going to be a whole lot more useful to Shigure than Monk.

Can't Kana get Swordmaster from Caeldori? And personally, I'm a dodge/crit fanboy, so someone with lots of SKL and SPD would be my personal pick. Someone like... KAZE. But if you don't care for min-maxing, Arthur is indeed a pretty good pick, at least in my opinion. Doesn't hurt Kana's or Shigure's DEF too badly, and gives plenty of SKL and SPD with reasonable STR.

Bump. As there haven't been many objections, I'll be finalizing the ruleset this weekend and set up a Discord server when I get the opportunity. We should do a test run or such once I've done so - to see if everything works fine and our ruleset has some sense. This'll be the beta test before release, so to speak. I invite as many people as possible to participate at that point - I'll edit the first post with the relevant information once I've set everything up. Let's have some PvP fun!

Why we are not using limited mode: Because in limited mode, you need to rely on the RNG for good level-ups. As you said, it IS possible to just reset every time you get a bad level... but that is a) much more time-consuming than Eternal Seals and b) always favours the people who put that one extra reset in for the chance to maybe get 6 points instead of 5. This is just going to bog people down with resetting their levels over and over and we do not want that - people should be able to get to battling sometime rather than worrying about whether they could get that one extra stat point. Battling the RNG is not fun. Thus, Eternal Seals. Additionally, limited mode greatly encourages the use of Aptitude on everyone for the leveling process, greatly favouring people who have either hacked the skill in or obtained them from castles somehow. While we do allow Aptitude in our ruleset, it's for the simply practical reason that it's nearly impossible to check whether someone has been using it. And in limited mode, everyone who has used Aptitude will always have a huge advantage over someone who hasn't. Not using limited mode greatly diminishes this normally unfair advantage. And having all-capped stats does not "sterilize gameplay", it provides a level playing field for everyone, which is exactly what we want. In a competition, player skill should decide, not simply who has the bigger numbers. You can use limited mode if you and your opponent both agree to it, but we're not going to have a ruleset for it, partly because limited mode already has its own ruleset. But our rules are intended to lay out the groundwork for people who don't want to battle the RNG for good level-ups.

There goes that. Anyway, I'll update the tier list later, thanks for the input. Though I'd appreciate input on the rules, too!

I think we shouldn't change the rule solely for that. It's not like it'd make Odin the only unit with a useless personal skill... Isn't that right, Dwyer? I'd like to wait for more responses from people on the boots and staves matter, but for now, I'm tending towards boots being banned and full use of staves. As for the Galeforce/Spendthrift thing, should we just disallow combining Galeforce with any of Spendthrift, Life and Death or Aggressor entirely?

I have updated the first post with a new ruleset based on Chromagna's post (which was awesome, by the way). I would like everyone to go back and read it and give feedback, especially on rules 0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 9 and 11. I believe that once we finish up these last open questions, we will have our first usable ruleset.

Nice to see that other people are doing this stuff, too. Regarding rules 1), 2), 15) and 17), it would be easier to just say "Only one of Galeforce, Replicate, Warp and Nohrian Trust per team, and no more than one of them per unit", though disallowing the combination of Galeforce with Spendthrift and Life and Death seems sensible. Also, disallowing Statues entirely seems like a nice idea, though it might be difficult to check. I'm currently at work, so I'll say more stuff and edit the first post later. Banning guest units entirely seems like the way to go unless both players agree otherwise. The rules should be more than a framework than anything else, unless we ACTUALLY do tournament stuff - which should come after we have a stable community of sorts. Also thanks for the tier list input, I'll edit it later today. EDIT: I'm also considering allowing Aptitude on units that can't normally have it as the sole hacked skill. It doesn't actually give a combat advantage, and all it actually does is maybe save you some money from Eternal Seals. Plus, it's really difficult to check if someone has been using Aptitude to boost their stat gains or not.

I always like giving Awakening to my +SPD Swordmaster Femui. Awakening + Vantage really messes people up. As for Lodestar, I really like it on Xander (the class does wonders to fix his SPD issues), but it might be good on Manui as well. Generally, actually, it's pretty much a very slightly slower, very slightly bulkier Swordmaster. Also, you can get unlimited Aether Scrolls from the Vanguard Dawn DLC, so unless you're doing a no-DLC run, you don't need to worry about who you put it on. Awakening is the juicy part there.

Well, the rules are really more like guidelines than actual rules. A gentlemen's agreement, so to say. I'm going to assume that most of the time, people are going to agree on relaxing one or two rules for a given match - so you'll maybe get to use your prisoner units in about half of all matches, maybe? I daresay that we've attracted a reasonable amount of interest with this thread alone - a dozen people, maybe? That's not too bad, really. As word spreads, we'll likely get more people, too, so there isn't really a need to worry about that.

Which is why I wrote the "1 skill per team" part down as a consideration. But yes, there should probably be restrictions on some skills at least, like Galeforce and Replicate, only allowing 1 of them or banning them outright. Could everyone make a list of skills that should be restricted/banned, along with a short reasoning? Off the top of my head, I'd say Galeforce, Replicate and Warp - Galeforce for its "kill half a team with one unit" properties, Replicate for being so strong as to be basically mandatory, and Warp rewarding whoever has the flier with the highest MOV range. All logbook units (that's all units with the shield icon), including prisoners can use the logbook exploit to boost their stat caps - since it's often really difficult to tell whether a unit's stat caps have been boosted in this manner, it's far less of a headache to just ban them outright. EDIT: Slightly edited the first post with more details on the point of skill restrictions. Also, could I get some more feedback on my idea of a "tier list restriction", only allowing players to use one or two units from the "S-tier"? I personally think it's a good idea to prevent people from just using multiple god-tier units even with the "only one of each class" restriction (like, say, a team consisting of a Master Ninja, a Swordmaster, a Witch, a Dancer and a Falcon Knight).