How did you make a wimp into a powerhouse?

[Princeofstar]

One of my favorite goals in an FE game is to raise some characters who don't do very well and raise them to become as powerful as they can.

My favorite wimpy duo that I made powerful (On Radiant Dawn NM) are Sanaki and Micaiah. Anyone who has played Radiant Dawn is likely frustrated that these two mages are forced for the endgame, and I thought if I had to use them, might as well put them to work. My Micaiah really grew on Chapter 1-6-2. I always saw the potential of those horses for Thanibombing, and tried out a risky and absurd idea. Miccy had resolve, biorhythm at max, hid in one of the thickets above the bridge next to the left, and Sothe was 3 spaces away. Even with all these precautions, the horses were at about 30% or so displayed hit. It was a big risk, but Miccy ended up destroying about 10-12 horses on this map, and gained 4-5 levels. Miccy did well for the rest of part 1 and was at level 20, mostly from CEXP and the RNG blessed me with speed and def.

Around the beginning of part 4 she was Level 6 light sage (but blessed with WTF capped 15 def and 21 speed??? I would have rather won the lottery) and had to play some catch up again. Same strategy as 1-6-2 for 4-P. Thicket, Sothe, and Paragon instead of Resolve with about the same 30% or so displayed hit at 2RKO. Miccy gains 10 or 11 levels and the rest is BEXP'd to cap everything at tier 2 and ended up using my lifetime allocation of luck because my Chrom and Avatar love getting 1 stat and empty level ups.

Sanaki starts terribly, so I feed her a speed wing and an energy drop. She also got the blossom skill and 99 BEXP, which apparently raises her total growth rates to about 585%. She ends up playing carefully on the bottom right side with her loyal pegasi nearby should she need help. and she gets blessed with 2 perfect level ups and a third level up that procced all but def/skl.

Sanaki got Resolve and Arms Scroll on light magic for the desert and solo'd the middle, burning through most of Arcthunder and Nosferatu and destroying all those 1-2 attackers that used to give my Haar and Skrimir a hard time when the bishop forced naptime. She cleared the middle in a few LONG enemy phases before the black knight even made it and laughed off the sleep staffs. Nosferatu, and resolve/flare procs were my savior here, as well as her rising avoid. I notice that Lekain the douche is still at the bottom and send Sanaki to attack him praying for Flare since crt was 0. I killed him with a critical Cymbeline anyway thanks to resolve, gaining 80 exp to reach level 13 and further went into luck debt with Anna. Sanaki went on to have 34 AS with Rexflame and did very well in Endgame. At the same time Resolve! 20/20 Miccy got to Stefan on his own, and got the laguz gem after Sanaki cleaned up the boss area.

Miccy Sue capped everything at 20/20/18, starting from leveling up from those Generals in 4-E-1 with paragon and getting a few all-important speed level-ups. Miccy Sue also showed me my first ever empty level up in RD when she was done capping everything.

Both Sanaki and Miccy pulled of plenty off ORKOs in the tower

Also on the same play through I was so sick of Boyd, who I loved using in POR, being slower than a two-legged dog so he got an HP/str/skl/spd transfer, his first 2 level ups were rigged to give speed AND he got the speedwing that Haar brought over. Basically Boyd got a +6 to base speed in 2 levels up to 24 speed, only 3 from his tier 2 cap. This just made him absurdly broken and he hit like the Black Knight and dodged like Mia. I was just happy that he doubled instead of getting doubled.

How did you make a powerhouse out of a wimp, and how did it work out?

Edited September 11, 2013 by Princeofstar

[Nobody]

I love doing that to Nino. She's also surprisingly easy to raise for a est. Just feed her some kills, put her to kill some of the umpromoted units and she gets some levels easily.

Edited September 11, 2013 by Nobody

[Icon of Sin]

There's a fun challenge to be had on any such characters in any game. Saying they're better than established characters that take less effort is a different cup of tea but...

I guess I like using Donnel a fair amount in FE13. Mostly because his lines are pretty funny and it's nice to have a kickass redneck character.

[Quintessence]

Paragon+Provoke+Resolve+Wrath!Kurth

He capped sp and doubled Ashera with with NAZIr

edit: oh and Fiona, but that's because bexp

Edited September 11, 2013 by Quintessence

[Edith]

Arena abused Radd until he reached lvl 10, gave him a master seal, arena abused him up a couple more levels, and then sat back and watched him DOMINATE

[Thor Odinson]

I don't usually considering I like going fast and I prefer the personalities of the experienced veterans

But once in a while there's one that I end up liking as a character

This character happened to be Astrid (FE9)

Bexp dump and some kill feeding and paragon did the rest for me

There was also that time where I did a FE7 HHM amazon run and someone requested that I have Karla kill Nergal so I let her at 32x.

[shadowofchaos]

Dance for 180+ turns.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Bd2PzFRmdE

[Princeofstar]

There's a fun challenge to be had on any such characters in any game. Saying they're better than established characters that take less effort is a different cup of tea but...

I guess I like using Donnel a fair amount in FE13. Mostly because his lines are pretty funny and it's nice to have a kickass redneck character.

No, I don't think they are better than easier characters. I just like using them for the coolness factor. Personally for me, I prefer swordmaster criticals and Spellcasting to Paladins attacking. Jeigans aren't my cup of tea I guess, they are a must for the hardest modes, but I find playing Normal with lower-tier characters more fun since you can use anyone you want compared to blazing through the hardest mode with prepromotes since your playstyle options are more limited. Different people like different things, some people like using Fredrick in The Computer is a Cheating Bastard- The Game, but I prefer the more reasonable challenge of no Frederick Hard mode since I can use whoever I like. I enjoy the experience of watching my weaklings grow up and hold their own and start ORKOing.

Edited September 11, 2013 by Princeofstar

[Ein]

Too many runts in FE10. Gotta make them gain all of the strongth.

[General Banzai]

Sety + Odo + Hezul + Leg Ring

80 HP, all capped stats Marty

HULK SMASH

[Mighty Kamina]

I'm a lot more lenient on base stats for units you get in the early game as long as they have decent growths, and don't have abyssmal bases (lol Donnel).

I personally enjoy making weaker units into powerhouses which is part of the reason I find brining a few dawn brigade units to then endgame in RD (Edward, Nolan, and maybe Aran) more satisfying than using their GM counterparts. (I still use Boyd though)

Edited September 11, 2013 by Kamina

[Irysa]

I saved every energy drop in the game for sanaki and rigged her level ups for str and speed so she'd manage to wield rexflame without getting weighed down (which lets her double spirits and shit with rexflame or double with siege tomes with nasir)

Miccy just gets bexp so she can physic staff for a good amount, that's all that's needed of her really. Sanaki can't use staves :(

Edited September 11, 2013 by Irysa

[Jedi]

Arena grinded Wendy for a tad and boosted her axes up to S on my FE6 Cart. Armads Wendy was born.

In general I do like boosting up the weaker units, but I usually use whomever I like character/personality wise and sometimes they cross that line so ALL'S FAIR

[Loki Laufeyson]

Oh gods, my recipe for God Soren. (FE10) Im not about to let my favorite character of that saga to warm the bench. Fuck that noise!

FE9 transfers (very old file that has Soren capped everything except luck, and good weapon ranks).

Tormod comes to party, i remove Celerity. Put it on Ilyana, stuff her inventory with an Archthunder, and she goes to hang out with the GMs. Soren and Ike support. (yay Earth affinity dodge!) Soren's transfers allow for some shit to already be capped upon appearing. Feed him some kills in 3-P. Give him some BEXP until speed procs. Have him hang out by Ike (for the supportings) in 3-1 as he spams shit which hes doubling by now. By the time 3-2 happens, he's midlevel but still not exactly ready for promotion. Ilyana arrives with Celerity. I pop that shit on Soren and leak some BEXP his way, because by now, stats are really starting to cap. By 3-5, Soren is at B support with Ike and now promoted. Hes destroying everything. I slap Discipline on him for a little while so he can staffbot better. Later, i remove Discipline and put Daunt on him when it arrives. Soren has very very rarely been dethroned from the Number 1 spot in the Top Five. (plus buying some siege tomes for even more fun! Bye bye, Micaiah on 3-7!!)

With Fiona, i have Nailah Glare the priests in 1-E and have Fiona have a go at them for a good number of turns. Rafiel helps out in this situation. Then i stick Paragon on her (part 3) after Jill is done with it. But usually Fiona gets a Secret Book in part 1 cuz her skill is balls. If her strength isnt going up much, maybe a Drop.

With Nino, if im arsed to train her, i park an unarmed Jaffar in front of the path that the pirates that spawn in the water temple level, tend to go to. Or a bow user. And have Nino take potshots of those guys while she levels. Peeps like Lyn or Rath are keeping the Pegknight/Falcon Knights off of her while she roasts some pirates. She then tags along during CoD and pot shots more guys and usually promotes by that time.

Donnel gets EXPonential Growth'd or plays the buddy system with someone.

Astrid (FE9) is super fun because it doesnt seem to take that much. Thanks, Paragon.

[bookofholsety]

i compulsively insist on using Tiltyu no matter what, even though attemping to grind her is mostly a hindrance. i can normally get her vaguely started as soon as she's recruited with Wrath-crits against pirates lured into attacking her, then patching her up with Claude's Fortify (a waste i know but i usually slap it on someone else anyway so i may as well make it cheapter to pawn off). chapter 4 makes it fairly easy for her to play catchup since the sheer volume of forests on the first leg, at least for me, slows down the all-important knights to make her use more plausible (Sylvia helps). between these and arena clears, i can normally at the very least get her promoted by chapter 5's end

oddly she's the only one i bother with as far as FE4 is concerned; i outright refuse to touch Corpul with the sole exception of MAYBE a single Valkyrie use if he's Claude's son this time around and i'm lazy (that's right, IS, give us a level-1, staff-locked, 5-move well past the halfway point)

my armorknight bias usually also makes me try to invest exp and resources in them to an unhealthy extent; i recall recently trying to do this to Bors in a betatest patch run of FE6, though i don't think that panned out in the end

[Peppy]

Using Ilyana in FE10 Hard mode. I forge some max mt and hit thunder tomes for her, I feed her some kills until around Lv. 16 or 17 in Part I and then let her get to work with the Wyverns in Ch. 3-2 and she'll be good to go (Good BEXP use is nice to use to make the lower stats go up).

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

I never do this, but I enjoyed using High Base Low Growth unit and turn them into monsters

No image for the moment >_>

[Breezy Kanzaki]

I like using Elice in FE11 because why not?

Master Seal and some Spirit Drops or whatever increases Magic.

Park her behind my units that are weakening the dragons.

Kill Stealing.

[RJWalker]

Training Ross to become unstoppable juggernaut. So satisfying.

[MacLovin]

trainihg a high growth monster with good bases into a rapist is so satisfying.

Like Seth, Miledy, Ares, and HM!Raven.

1-2 range helps too!

[BrightBow]

In my PoR playthroughs, Mist is pretty much guaranteed to gain lots of Bexp early one, to take full advantage of the fact that staff exp stays constant regardless of level.

Once promoted, she can count on gaining a steady supply of forged Steel swords.

Ineffective as heck but it's kinda fun smashing sages to bits while laughing at their futile counter attacks.

[MRDRHAWK]

Arena abuse for healers.

That is all. I would never use a healer if they weren't a Sage or Druid if not for Arenas.

[shadykid]

feed Laura some kills for the lols

why not, as long as it's normal mode

[Dragrath]

in FE 9 Mist can be turned into a god of death thanks to the sonic sword(that I made sure was untouched durability wise...) which she was able to reach thanks to an arms scroll she was able to rise not only to be my primary healer(suplied by staves looted by Volke) but to serve as a potent offensive force with several capped stats including magic... she is great on the bonus maps too he he he and it didn't end well for the black knights renforcments...

[Kon]

Shameless favoritism.