So what's the best way to re-class?

[Lyka]

So i'm not a veteran of Fire Emblem, I've only played Awakening and now I'm playing Fates, starting with the Birthright path.

So I've been thinking on how exactly I should reclass my avatar, and most likely other units, but i'm not sure about how to go about doing it. In Awakening I didn't actually know about reclassing and stuff for the skills till like midway through.

The path I went for with most characters in Awakening was to:

level them up to their max level in base class --> upgrade to an advanced class and max level them --> reclass to another class for skills --> then back to their original advanced class since I like keeping them at what they're supposed to be

But it seems like in Fates there are some limitations which would not allow me to do this, so for example, if I'm currently a lvl 16 Nohr Prince, and my 'talent' is Samurai, how exactly should I go about doing things if I want my avatar to have Astra/Swordfaire and/or Lethality

I've been thinking a lot about like who I should marry (I'm having trouble choosing between Hana and Kagero, though Felicia or Azura seem pretty good too...) and what skills I want for all the 2nd gen characters and such...

So if you think you can help me out in choosing who I should marry and which would have the most benefits (with stats and skills) and explain if the reclassing thing better for my it would be very much appreciated!

(Thanks for reading and sorry if you feel as if this was too long and/or went off topic, I ended up just putting all my questions onto this post)

[NekoKnight]

Your level doesn't reset when you change classes so if you want to get the class skills, you need to give yourself enough levels to do it (or purchase the skills via My Castle). For example, if you want Lethality/Swordfaire/Astra, you could make Samurai your talent and marry Kagerou (or make Ninja your talent and marry Hana). Let's say you change classes at level 16 from Nohr Prince to Ninja. You get Locktouch at level 17, Poison Strike at level 18 and then you wait until your level 20 before you promote to Master Ninja. At level 5 you will get Lethality and you can change class to Swordmaster. You get Duelist Blow at level 6, Vantage at level 7, Astra at level 8 and Swordfaire at level 15.

Who you marry is up to you and you shouldn't worry too much about stats or inheritance on your first play through.

Edited June 26, 2016 by NekoKnight

[Dragonslayer9x]

You have a few options for gaining skills. First off you can visit other peoples castles to gain skills for your characters (you can buy them after capturing their castles). Second you can gain skills the normal way too, but Fates will give you skills you missed from previous levels as you gain new levels. For example if you promote to Hosidan Noble with your main character and level up to level 5 Noble you will gain Dragon Ward. You can then reclass to say Swordmaster and when you hit level 6 Swordmaster you will get Duelist blow, Level 7 will get you Vantage and Level 8 will get you Astra (because these are earlier skills you missed) and you will get swordfaire at level 15. You can use the system to poach skills as you level up and the avatar can use friendship seals to reclass into any other main class of a character he has a A rank support with (because he/she doesn't have A+ ranks, he/she gets a broken feature I guess. Go avatar characters!)

Also please note that if you marry a first gen female character that isn't: Reina, Anna or Scarlet, you will be missing out on one of the children units because there isn't enough good men to go around.

[paladin21]

Your level doesn't reset when you change classes so if you want to get the class skills, you need to give yourself enough levels to do it (or purchase the skills via My Castle). For example, if you want Lethality/Swordfaire/Astra, you could make Samurai your talent and marry Kagerou (or make Ninja your talent and marry Hana). Let's say you change classes at level 16 from Nohr Prince to Ninja. You get Locktouch at level 17, Poison Strike at level 18 and then you wait until your level 20 before you promote to Master Ninja. At level 5 you will get Lethality and you can change class to Swordmaster. You get Duelist Blow at level 6, Vantage at level 7, Astra at level 8 and Swordfaire at level 15.

Who you marry is up to you and you shouldn't worry too much about stats or inheritance on your first play through.

Actually, for those two classes you don't need to marry anyone, since you can get them in BR by buddying Kaze/Saizo/Kagero (Ninja) and Ryoma/Hinata/Hana (Samurai), depending on your avatar gender, it would be any of the first two or the third. The only Hoshidan class that would require you to marry a character to get it in BR is Oni Savage, which can only be passed by marrying Rinkah. We could say that for the avatar the main class-changing seal is the Friendship Seal, since it allows him to get almost any class in the game.

And for the way of leveling up, there are plenty of threads out there focused on min-maxing, so you could check them for ideas or post your final build for people to help you. Just remember that level-up gains are just as important as skills, so if you want a skill from a magical class for a physical character, you may want to spend as few levels as possible in the alternate class (like Effie getting Renewal/Countermagic).

[Lyka]

Thanks for all the info :)

but in my case, as far as promoting/re-classing goes, so for my avatar I should go from

Nohr-Prince --> Promote to Hoshidan Noble --> at level 15 reclass to swordmaster?

and buy Lethality from the skill shop if possible?

Also what I did with Awakening, after I acquired the unites desired skills after reclassing, I then reclassed them back to their original advanced class, Is that acceptable to do in Fates?

So the main reason I would want to reclass back to Hoshidan Noble in my case, would be for the sake of going along with the story, because that's kinda what the character should be (ya know with the dragonstone too, it makes sense right?) just as the avatar in awakening would be a Grandmaster and Chrom would be a Great Lord

[NekoKnight]

Do you want the skills earlier or later in your play through? After changing classes, it will take 1 level up per skill you want to acquire so if you don't buy skills, you'll need to spend 3 levels as a Master Ninja and 4 levels as a Sword Master. Without buying skills, the smoothest way to do this would be:

Hoshidan Noble until level 8 > change to Master Ninja until level 11 > change to Sword Master until level 15 > change back to Hoshidan Noble.

The alternative, faster way would be Hoshidan Noble until level 2 > change to Master Ninja until level 5 > change to Sword Master until level 8 > buy Swordfaire and reclass back to Hoshidan Noble

[Lyka]

Alright things make sense now after doing a bunch of research throughout the internet. When I 1st looked at the subject of how your level doesn't reset, I was afraid of not being able to learn all the possible skills from a class, but then after further Google Searches, I found out that the Eternal Seal will solve that problem.

But thanks for the informative responses! Now I'll have to have fun with Fire Emblem Fates for the next year or two since I plan on doing all 3 paths on Hard Mode, seriously though, Awakening took me half a year and I was playing on Normal Mode XD

I don't see myself doing Classic Mode though because that seems too hardcore for me.

Thanks again good sirs! (or ma'am(s))