What Happened to My Pallys?

[Adam Smasher]

So hey, new to the boards. I bought Radiant Dawn a year ago maybe and I finally have the time to get through it. Life happens :(

So I'm towards the end of Part 4, looking to get my first completion on normal mode. I can't help but wonder what they did to the pallys. I've played every American released FE up to Radiant Dawn, and it seems the pallys are getting less and less useful.

In FE7, the pallys owned the battlefield. On promotion you have 8 move and the whole triangle, which I used to swear by. I'd always take the axe from that waste of space Dorcas and give it to Marcus, and then watch him crush all the lance knights who tried to pwn Merlinus. Of course the real heroes were Sain, Kent, and Lowen. After recruiting Isadora (and giving her a body ring so she could train with axes; I know, favoritism, but she's a hottie) I would do one chapter with my all pally dream team. Best thing about them was their crit animation--it gave me goose bumps every time.

In Sacred Stones, they took away their triangle, but I got around this with lancereavers. On the upside, however, you could promote to great knights, which had 6 move and the full triangle. Anyway, FE8 was so easy because you just do tower runs and arena whore until everyone is leet hax. I promoted Gilliam to Great Knight for the lulz, so he could be on the FE8 pally dream team. Needed lots of speed wings though. For the first floor of the lagdou ruins, I always deploy the pally dream team v 8.0: Frans, Gilliam, Forde, Kyle, Amelia, Duessel, Seth and Orson. Screwy thing is, I rarely had them support each other. Instead, as a reward for being awesome, I'd have them support pegasi so they could bed them in the epilogue.

Then PoR comes along. Instead of starting out as cavaliers, you get lance knights, axe knights, etc. Basically a generic single weapon character with canto. Plus you go from a crit animation which sounds like an explosion to one which sounds like a bunch of aluminum tubes getting knocked over. Anyway, when your units are properly trained, you don't need a lot of strategy in PoR because you can just barrel through the levels. If I'm up for it, I'll field a pally dream team, but I probably will more likely need space to cap out better characters for a transfer file.

And then, in Radiant Dawn they become a joke. Same stuff as PoR, with an improved Sol. However their str, skill, and def lags behind the rest of the army. In PoR, Makalov wasn't much, but at least he would reliably get strong enough to use the Steel Blade. Now, anyone can use it but no pallys have the skill to hit with it! (And Makalov sucks.) Plus their move gets reduced by 2 when you're indoors, which goes to show that the pallys are a lot more polite in this game. Outdoors, there's thickets all over the place slowing you down. So you're slow indoors, and slow outdoors. Why bother?

So we go from a staple of the series to benchwarmers. Has anyone else noticed this?

[Dr. Tarrasque]

It is generally agreed that Paladins and Sages got nerfed in RD so you`re not alone there.

[Hero]

Good observation, but I don't think it's a linear development.

Granted, in FE6 paladins were even better than in FE7 excluding Marcus and Zealot, at least relative to other characters, but in FE5 only one of the four paladins was really worth attention. In FE4 paladins were nothing special at all, though in FE3 they were about as good as in FE7. I don't think the clunky paladins are a sign of things to come in FE10, in fact in Shadow Dragon the paladins were some of the best characters. It might be that FE12's paladins will be the most useful yet.

[shroudening]

Well Radiant Dawn is different than the GBA games in many ways, so I'm not really surprised. I think the introduction of Laguz characters affected the paladins...

The movement penalties are kind of like how you dismount characters whenever inside (in FE3). The thickets are definitely not as bad as the sand levels in the GBA games. And even the sand level in Radiant Dawn never uses horses unless you bring one with Micaiah's group...

I see a decrease in the availability of horse riders. For instance, you only get 1 Knight in part 1, and she is not worth training. The next time you get to use a horse is with the royal knights, and they aren't available for most of the game. Oscar and Titania are both all around good units in this game though, although Geoffrey and Kieran make decent knights too if you can level them up.

[Allan's Aokage]

Well Radiant Dawn is different than the GBA games in many ways, so I'm not really surprised. I think the introduction of Laguz characters affected the paladins...

I was with you until the comma. Laguz don't affect the Paladins at all; Gold/Silver Knights just have bad caps, like Archsages.

[Adam Smasher]

Well, the fact that there are so many laguz taking up space means that there's less space for pallys. Srsly, I'd like to see Seth go through and make a technicolor dream pimp coat out of Mordy and Lethe.

[Deliriyum]

Well, the fact that there are so many laguz taking up space means that there's less space for pallys. Srsly, I'd like to see Seth go through and make a technicolor dream pimp coat out of Mordy and Lethe.

Every Laguz in Tellius would like to have a word with you. Or Seth.

[Fayt Zelpher]

Messed up on this post and accidentally double posted instead of edited. Sorry about that...

Edited January 1, 2010 by Randomly Predictable?

[Fayt Zelpher]

With the fact that really only Mordy, Skrimir, Janaff, and maybe Ulki or Ranulf (plus a heron) are worth using outside of royals, I am having to disagree - they don't take up too much space. Of course, paladins got the shaft, especially with regards to Spd. When the only Paladins that can hit the all important 34 Spd are Fiona and Astrid (and we all know how horrid they are), that's not a good sign. I'd prefer to take Jill or a seraph knight (or Elincia) if I needed a mounted unit. So, yes, paladins have no room on a team, but you should blame the flyers, not the laguz.

Edited January 1, 2010 by Randomly Predictable?

[Sho Minamimoto]

Paladins have speed caps that are close to archsage speed caps, so yeah, the only thing they are going to double are the Generals of Part 4. Plus, their critical animation in Radiant Dawn is just...so zetta horrible.

[Bryan]

Paladins have speed caps that are close to archsage speed caps, so yeah, the only thing they are going to double are the Generals of Part 4. Plus, their critical animation in Radiant Dawn is just...so zetta horrible.

It makes me sad. I can do without paladins normally, but I cannot do without sages.

It sucks that they both got nerfed so badly. I wish I could up their caps and stuff to make them better. :/

[Deliriyum]

Paladins have speed caps that are close to archsage speed caps, so yeah, the only thing they are going to double are the Generals of Part 4. Plus, their critical animation in Radiant Dawn is just...so zetta horrible.

It makes me sad. I can do without paladins normally, but I cannot do without sages.

It sucks that they both got nerfed so badly. I wish I could up their caps and stuff to make them better. :/

Meh. They're good enough for me. High speed caps would be nice though.

[Ryu Okunato]

The big problem with paladins is that they don't have any major stats (by major stats I mean like swordmaster's=speed and warrior=strength) and are balenced in pretty much every stat. That is pretty cool when it comes to enemies that have low numbers in some stats but it always leads paladins to usually being at least 1 hp away from killing enemies so after a while it just becomes a nuisance. That's why units like Titania, Oscar and Geoffrey are awesome at first but shouldn't be counted on overtime.

[Narga_Rocks]

How is Titania 1hp away from killing enemies? With her str and axes (so steel poleaxes and forges) her worry is being 1spd short. She will generally 2HKO non-generals so there isn't a problem there. Oscar could be 1hp off, though typically when he doubles he's more like 5 to 10 hp off.

The rest aren't really worth bothering with. Maybe Makalov(T) if you can get him str and spd and def in PoR. He's probably worth raising in RD if you can get him a transfer, otherwise not so much.

[Bryan]

Paladins have speed caps that are close to archsage speed caps, so yeah, the only thing they are going to double are the Generals of Part 4. Plus, their critical animation in Radiant Dawn is just...so zetta horrible.

It makes me sad. I can do without paladins normally, but I cannot do without sages.

It sucks that they both got nerfed so badly. I wish I could up their caps and stuff to make them better. :/

Meh. They're good enough for me. High speed caps would be nice though.

They nerfed Sages so much. 15 uses on their SS weapons while Meele gets 50? Nothanks. :(

Not that it matters once you get them blessed...