Swordmasters.

[Inui]

You can give him a single luck boosting item and raise him with a Priest/Pegasus Band (nobody really wants those ones but he does, so whatever) and then he doesn't really care about criticals.

Actually, he survives them anyways. He can eat an Elthunder critical and then another hit before being at low enough HP to die, IIRC.

[Interceptor]

You missed my point.

Oh no, I understood your point perfectly, I was just lampooning it.

Stefan joins at 20/8 with very poweful stats for when he joins. Did he consume anything at all to reach that? No. He consumed no EXP or gold or anything. That was my point. Choosing to field Stefan lets your other units inflate their own levels because of Stefan not needing much EXP. If you decide earlier that you will field Stefan later, you have to build less units, which means giving more EXP to units you are using.

Yes, the only problem with this is that you just ignored that the game doesn't start on Chapter 16. In order to have an efficient playthrough of PoR where you use Stefan, you have to get to Ch.16 first, which necessarily means using a load of units that are not Stefan. In order words, you basically already have an army that can stomp the game by the time that Stefan shows up. Replacing an existing unit is only good if Stefan is good himself, and it's already been pointed out that he can't even cleanly beat Zihark and Mia, who are thoroughly average units.

Even if resources are plentiful, not needing them is a benefit, because it allows everyone else to use more.

You need to look up "diminishing marginal returns" and make sure that you understand what it means in terms of PoR. Spoilers: there's enough BEXP for almost everyone to be Jesus, and Jesus + 1 doesn't enable much in the way of added efficiency.

This is true. However, Stefan only needs that forge to OHKO a Mage or something. He can use cheaper weapons on other things and thus consume less resources.

Sorry, forging a weapon is a sunk cost. You lose the opportunity to forge another one for that chapter, and you lose the money you spent to make it. You can't reclaim those things by using it less often, the only benefit here is delaying a replacement (if one would even be necessary in the first place).

Edited February 9, 2010 by Interceptor

[Mekkah]

Just posting to co-sign Int's posts.

I wish vykan was here :(

[Paperblade]

I assumed it did since she liked to hit many times in a row before getting attacked back...even without Meteor activating.

It doesn't, at least not in vanilla FE4. I think some patches "fix" it.

I've been playing that hard mode patch for a while, so a lot of the time, four hits isn't enough, especially with a sword. The Power Ring makes her able to kill Generals/Wyverns/bosses without ever going off the Hero Sword, leaving every other sword for everyone else.

The entire fracking point of the Hero Sword is that you one round most crap with it (plus she has Astra) and leave the Power Ring to chumps with the weaker swords (Silver/Defense/Barrier/Prayer) so that they can kill shit while using a weaker weapon or having high durability.

I suppose there's lolambush, but honestly, your cast is full of so many one rounding gods (especially if you aren't blowing resources for making one unit loloverkill) that Lakche is unlikely to get that low (especially since she's not taking player phase counters if Ambush is to be worthwhile) and if they have 2 range it's totally pointless.

Sure, it's cool and shit, but there's no reason to make stupid combos on an annoyingly hyped character to make SMs seem broken when cousin Shanan exists with lolmung.

[RidellCrimea]

I love Zihark so much, but as a girl I'll vote for...

MIA

[Anacybele]

Zihark is the best for me, followed by Lucia. I never do recruit Stefan (because I can never find the right spot in the desert chapter). Mia is just too damned weak. I can hardly kill anything with her. Zihark, on the other hand, comes with a sweet Killing Edge and actually kills stuff, even without critical hits.

[Yangchen]

I never use Lucia or Stefan, because I don't like late-joiners, and I've used Mia once, but she kept dying, so I replaced her with Zihark and he became one of my best units ^_^