Shadow Mir

I would say it's less that and more that his weapon prevents him from performing a critical hit at all.

Also, the Runesword will always use magic to attack, even at 1 range. What's more, it cannot crit, period. He has 9 con, right? A Body Ring bumps that up to 11. Luna weighs 12. The Fire Dragon has 15 speed (at least, unless you're playing HHM), so that allows him to double it.

Well, that's what Athos is for. He has enough HP to take a hit from the dragon, and can hit it back with Luna (or Forblaze or Aureola).

RE: the bosses: Uhai can't counter direct attacks. Worst comes to worst, you can just surround him with 3 or 4 units and he'll be unable to do anything, freeing you to kill everything else. Of course, you're gonna want to allow him to leave his room before doing so. Kenneth won't move unless someone gets in his range. Also, Athos wrecks him with Luna. You can set up someone with Barrier or Pure Water beforehand, thus cutting his threat level by a lot. That being said, the Bolting Sage in that room is who you should be most worried about. Brendan is easily foiled by a sword user, but if he hits, it'll hurt like hell as he has 52 attack (and the Silver Bow warrior nearby might finish off whoever he attacked if he hit). You're best off allowing him to leave his room before engaging him. Darin gets wrecked hard by Hector or any good mage. Like Athos. Jerme is a joke, as he only has 22 attack with his Runesword. Ursula is fairly speedy despite being weighed down, and unlike Jerme, she actually hurts, so mind who you allow to battle her. Lloyd is deadly up close, but can't do jack if attacked from range. You'll probably want to have Athos Luna him twice, as he can be aggravating to deal with (especially as he has an A support with Linus that makes them harder to kill if they're within three spaces of each other, which they are to start). Linus has a Brave Sword (allows consecutive attacks), so keep fragile and/or slow units away from him. You can also just put one of the two to sleep if you got the Sleep staff, then allow the other to leave the room, and the other's support range. Nergal is best dealt with using Aureola or Luna. Note that you'll want to have units near the top end ready to act before you kill the last enemy, as once Nergal's room is opened, there's a Druid with a Berserk staff that you're really gonna want to squish before he can get the chance to use it. The final boss does fixed, defense ignoring damage (37). Because of this, you'll want to set a unit who can significantly damage it, is fast enough to not get doubled, AND has 38 HP at least WITHOUT ATTACKING (at least unless you have Physic); note that this is likely to be one of the lords or Athos, as they all get weapons effective against it. Of course, Luna works here too.

Yes, because starting from branch of fate keeps everything the same as it was when last you played through the portion before chapter 5. Again, if you want different resources, you'll want to start a new game from the beginning.

Did you start from branch of fate? Because the resources are randomized whenever you start from the very beginning of the game.

The thing is, I wouldn't know if having him there made a difference or not when enemies oft have low enough CEv that my units have listed crit on them without the need for weapons with boosted crit, short of using weapons that just cannot crit period. And frankly, he's so much of a liability that I wouldn't consider a tiny boost to crit chance anywhere near enough to make up for it, let alone worth it. The few exceptions to this are the beast units that appear in all of one chapter, and Spear Masters, which aren't the most common of enemy classes. Also, I'd say brave weapons are at their worst in this game. Iron level might with much less accuracy at that point? Forget it. I agree with you that it's ultimately a judgment call for the OP to make, but I'd still say that the utility it has is about as useful as tits on a bull. In my humble opinion, you need a really major advantage to make up for it when you have a downside as odious as being vulnerable to critical hits - and Arthur fails that miserably. If I really wanted to gamble, I'd rather play something like a poker game. Sure - if you ignore the fact that any situation with a Berserker is a very volatile one with extremely high risk and very little reward, that is. Which is to say, their crit evade penalty is an automatic dealbreaker. Any advantages they might have offered are not worth something that odious, especially when I can get those advantages from other units and classes that don't have that crippling a downside attached to them. With her accuracy being suspect, that brings all that into question, as it doesn't matter how hard you hit if you... well, don't hit instead. And that's likely to get really old really quickly. Not to mention that this is at a point where my units are likely starting to establish themselves and nearing promotion. At that point, I'd have to jump through a lot of mental hoops to justify kicking someone else out for Charlotte's sake. Which begs the question, who would YOU be okay with benching to use Charlotte...? Because at that point, I would find fielding her over anyone I'm using at that point to only make my team worse, both in the short run and in the long run. In the context of chapter 14, sure, she threatens sky knights, but so do archers, except they don't risk taking a massive hit in the event they don't connect. And thinking that high HP makes up for having the defensive ability of wet toilet paper is nothing short of laughable. In my book, a glass cannon has two things - strong offense, but bad defense. That certainly describes Charlotte to a T, no? That's a bold-faced lie. I just hate axe infantry, because many of them are mediocre at best to outright bad at worst. If I really did hate axes anywhere near as much as you think I do, I wouldn't give the green light to Camilla so readily, now would I??

Was War Master your final plan for him, or...?

Is Felix going CAPTAIN FALCON, again? That's dependent on the character, actually. Also of note, some characters actually don't gain any levels at all post-timeskip.

Spoken like you didn't even so much as bother to read - or even put an iota of thought into - everything after what you quoted. Otherwise, you'd know why Arthur's personal doesn't affect enemy units that much. Ergo, -15 crit evade for enemy units is a lot better in theory than in actual practice. Just to prove my point, here are Cev scores for enemies in chapter 26 on hard mode: Even so, the risk of using Arthur far outweighs the reward, especially in an ironman run. Fantastic growths only really help you if you can actually leverage them (and if you don't start in a massive hole, which Charlotte does). And her initial unreliability is a huge turnoff, as it means she needs some serious luck if she's to even have a ghost of a chance to catch up. And the fact that her window of opportunity to catch up is rather narrow only makes things worse. As things are, I cannot see Charlotte being useful without either using Boo Camp, which benefits everyone else, or making everyone else worse because I have to spoonfeed her as many kills as possible to get her caught up. And I'm not sure the payoff outweighs the cost. Because of all these, and the fact that fighters are at their nadir in Fates, I find it hard to justify her presence or Arthur's on a team as anything other than a pair-up bot. "Unique", huh? Well... Frankly, I'd rather recommend someone who can actually do the things I expect them to do without much investment needed than a high-investment unit who is likely to be inferior at what he does relative to someone else who doesn't need as much investment. I wouldn't mind so much if he was good-ish, but as is, it feels like a half-hearted and half-assed attempt to redeem a lame unit. He's got great speed, but that's pretty much it, and high speed alone does not mean much when you suck pretty much everywhere else, which makes you a liability. Well, unfortunately, most of those are assuming you use Niles for the long term - and in my book, he has trouble justifying his presence in the SHORT term. Besides that, I'd consider the fact that they don't get supports to be a major disadvantage that makes them a hard sell. Especially Gazak and Kumagera, who have the misfortune of being in bad classes.

Fair, but I'm thinking more in the context of what happens in the prologue - It was supposed to be an assassination attempt, but the one who almost gets killed is the one who ordered the hit. That's a serious fundamental failure, on par with the trick play the Colts tried - and failed - to pull against the Patriots This is the kind of crap I'd sooner expect from a rookie assassin than someone who's trying to rule Fodlan, tbh...

I dunno about that; from what I oft see stated when the topic of recruitment is brought up, earlier recruitment is generally better. Also,. since we got past that point, I must say, for someone who really wanted the other two house leaders out of their way, Edelgard really didn't think her plan through, considering what happens in the prologue... This is foreshadowed not too long before that, to be fair, as some NPCs mention that a lot of merchants and other visitors have been showing up lately.

I would say Syrene's not terrible, per se, but considering that a lot of the last recruits in FE games tend to be rather powerful at the least (Galzus, Athos, the laguz royals, etc.), it stands to reason that she'd stand out as being lackluster in comparison. RE: Effective damage, as was said earlier, it's only double might in Path of Radiance (all versions) and Blazing Blade (American version only). Indeed. Although frankly, with Aura being much heavier than Ivaldi (15 weight vs 10), I'd say the extra damage wouldn't be worth it if it stopped you from doubling.

Already? Because to be quite honest with you, I have a hard time seeing Dimitri get to level 30 before finishing part 1 without deliberate favoritism...

Wait a minute... just what are your levels at this point?