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Average Everything


SullyMcGully
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Hey,

I'm building some fangame stuff mainly just for fun and I would like to get some answers on what exactly an ordinary FE7-style stat layout looks like. So basically I want to know:

Average base stats at level 1

Average growths

Average promotion gains

Average stats at level 20/20

Average stat caps

And lastly, how much give-or-take I have on these to avoid making a character who is OP or just plain sucks.

I know I can figure this out on my own and I have mostly, but I wanted to double-check here. I'm creating some new classes, and I don't want them to not fit in. Thanks for the help!

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In my honest opinion, all of those things are useless metrics on their own to determine a quality unit. A character being OP or useless depends entirely on many things, such as;

- Starting stats relative to their current chapter

- How well they start and sustainability throughout the game

- Opportunity cost

- Weapon access (this include base weapon level and weapon variety)

If you look across a lot of character ratings then you'll see a lot of characters ranked low for a variety of reasons, but they all come down to one thing; they are entirely outclassed, useless in their join chapter and every chapter thereafter, and their results are marginally better than that of other people.

If you look at top tiers, it has everything to do with staff utility, mobility + high stats, lacking opportunity costs in the resources they need (with some exceptions), and their join situation.

FE7 Marcus was the best character in the game because he was incredible at base and never tapered off considerably compared to every other unit in the game. FE8 Seth was the same idea. FE9 Titania is the same. Ironically, FE6 combatted the "Jagen archetype unit being OP the whole game" thing that its successors did by making Marcus very good then tapering off gradually as other units began to overtake him.

Balancing Fire Emblem is very delicate and doesn't boil down to raw stats, in other words. Sain sure as hell beats Marcus in averages, as does someone like Nino, but the question is a) is Sain really that far ahead of Marcus relative to enemies? If they're both ORKOing everything and have access to the same weaponry, then Marcus required less effort and he's around longer so he's a better character. He's also superior for longer (unless you have Sainadin, in which case they're comparable forever then Sain has a marginal advantage). Is Nino worth using over just about anyone? Answer is no; in order for her growths to kick in she has to be fed a lot of kills in a short time, she comes very late and very much inferior, and her use throughout her part of the game is extremely marginal.

These are extreme examples, but I'm sure many others are willing to chime in about the really bad balance that a lot of Fire Emblem games have contained. Basically, I won't really do any extra work here, simply because I'm not sure where your mentality lies behind what constitutes an OP and a poor unit.

Edited by Lord Raven
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I think I've got a bit of formula going. The most ordinary characters in this game (Serra, Bartre, etc.) have their stats at level twenty average at about 19, while the worst and best units average at about 2-3 under and 2-3 over consecutively. Level 1 base stats will amount to about 35 if you halve the HP. Growths are about 40-45 percent except for defense (which is 35 for melee units and 20 for mages), resistance (which is 15 for melee and 40 for mages) and HP (which is generally around 70 percent). That would make Eliwood one of the most ordinary units in the game.

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I'll type more when I'm not on mobile, but make your Est worth it. Give them substantially better growths, so they actually pull ahead, rather than barely better.

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In order to do that you have to make everyone much weaker and make enemies stronger while making her strong at base, without needing her to beat the game all the same.

I think the Est archetype should be done away with, personally. Or you could make them like Rishel in TRS and make everyone kind of mediocre but give him +1 move, high base magic, and a 1-3 range tome with a high stat boost.

It's not that I don't want OP characters. I just want to know what an ordinary character would look like so I can base my conception of OP or wimpy off of it.

FE6 Lot, OJ, Lugh, Ray, Sue, Noah, and there's a few others that are strictly mediocre. Edited by Lord Raven
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In order to do that you have to make everyone much weaker and make enemies stronger while making her strong at base, without needing her to beat the game all the same.

I think the Est archetype should be done away with, personally. Or you could make them like Rishel in TRS and make everyone kind of mediocre but give him +1 move, high base magic, and a 1-3 range tome with a high stat boost.

FE6 Lot, OJ, Lugh, Ray, Sue, Noah, and there's a few others that are strictly mediocre.

Given the stat caps, even the best of units aren't going to be game breaking by themselves in FE7esque games. Comparing Nino Sage Lv6 to Pent Sage Lv6, on average, she's equal or worse to him on everything except Speed, Luck, and Resistance. Speed is the only advantage that really makes a difference there. I feel that giving her a 10% growth increase across the board would hardly be game breaking, especially considering her low HP and Def growths make her a bit of a glass cannon. And I'm of the mindset that if you put in the effort to raise an Est up, you should be rewarded with a good unit. Making the end game slightly easier in exchange for training the Est would be a fair trade off, and if one good (not ridiculously OP) unit can break the game, it is poorly balanced.

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Rishel isn't a game breaking unit; just a unit with a good niche that is perfectly usable.

Nino isn't very usable even with +20% across the board in growths, and she doesnt make the game any easier. The only way to do so is to make enemies really strong compared to your units to make her averages superior to everyone else's by a fair margin.

It's safe to say that she wouldn't be useful unless most of your PCs were mediocre.

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Nino isn't very usable even with +20% across the board in growths, and she doesnt make the game any easier. The only way to do so is to make enemies really strong compared to your units to make her averages superior to everyone else's by a fair margin.

It's safe to say that she wouldn't be useful unless most of your PCs were mediocre.

Nino as is doesn't make the game easier, but in a hypothetical Est that started surpassing the old units around or shortly after promotion, it would give you a powerhouse to take into the final chapters. I usually have at least one or two units that gets RNG screwed that I wouldn't mind replacing. I had a recent FE7 playthrough where my Erk, Serra, Lucius, and Canas all got RNG screwed, and I had invested too much into them to bench them, with few good alternatives.

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Nino as is doesn't make the game easier, but in a hypothetical Est that started surpassing the old units around or shortly after promotion, it would give you a powerhouse to take into the final chapters. I usually have at least one or two units that gets RNG screwed that I wouldn't mind replacing. I had a recent FE7 playthrough where my Erk, Serra, Lucius, and Canas all got RNG screwed, and I had invested too much into them to bench them, with few good alternatives.

But let's say that statistically she beats everyone by a good margin but still has the same end result as said units (can survive a ton of attacks, can ORKO everything), then she's still not worth it. This basically means you have to weaken other PCs or buff enemies.
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From a game balance point of view the whole Est archetype that Nino falls into just doesn't work out. In order to compensate for the combination of late joining time + poor base stats the growth rates would have to be unreasonably high, which kind of contradicts the whole concept of growing into a powerful unit eventually. That type of unit is something for players who just have a thing for that archetype. At the end of the day though, making an Est character as good as a Jagen character, if possible at all, requires an amount of effort that's likely not worth it.

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But let's say that statistically she beats everyone by a good margin but still has the same end result as said units (can survive a ton of attacks, can ORKO everything), then she's still not worth it. This basically means you have to weaken other PCs or buff enemies.

I wouldn't mind have buffed enemies on higher difficulties to make Ests worth it. Still doable with the other units, but making it easier if you've trained the Est(s) up.

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I wouldn't mind have buffed enemies on higher difficulties to make Ests worth it. Still doable with the other units, but making it easier if you've trained the Est(s) up.

The issue I have with that, is that it hits a point where if they are worth it, it means that your other units aren't worth it. So you'll just end up dropping your older units after you reach the new one. I was always under the impression that Ests were supposed to make you feel good, not necessarily be effective.

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The issue I have with that, is that it hits a point where if they are worth it, it means that your other units aren't worth it. So you'll just end up dropping your older units after you reach the new one. I was always under the impression that Ests were supposed to make you feel good, not necessarily be effective.

That sort of is the case in FE6 hard mode. The characters that join later on with hard mode boni (Miledy, Percival, Zeiss) end up outclassing the early game units (Thany, Tate, Alan, Lance, etc.), though those units are still useful.

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That sort of is the case in FE6 hard mode. The characters that join later on with hard mode boni (Miledy, Percival, Zeiss) end up outclassing the early game units (Thany, Tate, Alan, Lance, etc.), though those units are still useful.

That's not the same thing though. The red units that you recruit in FE6 are just plain better. They have like 1-2 less stats in terms of join time, and are several levels lower. Ests aren't just lower in level, they have bad to so-so bases and good growths. FE6 HM units don't have better growths. Just ridiculous bases. Like Percival for instance? Alan and Lance don't have anything on him. If Percival didn't level ever again, he'd still be a great unit. That's hardly an Est at that point.

Edited by Augestein
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That's not the same thing though. The red units that you recruit in FE6 are just plain better. They have like 1-2 less stats in terms of join time, and are several levels lower. Ests aren't just lower in level, they have bad to so-so bases and good growths. FE6 HM units don't have better growths. Just ridiculous bases. Like Percival for instance? Alan and Lance don't have anything on him. If Percival didn't level ever again, he'd still be a great unit. That's hardly an Est at that point.

I wasn't talking about Ests in particular. I was just giving an example of a game in which your prediction of early characters getting overshadowed by late game units holds true in some cases. I agree with your points on Ests, if you make them too powerful then they end up overshadowing the units you got so far. But that is exactly what I felt when I first saw Miledy and Percival on FE6 hard mode. It even let to the strange phenomenon that in FE6, the endgame felt harder on normal mode than on hard mode, because you got so many good units basically for free.

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I wasn't talking about Ests in particular. I was just giving an example of a game in which your prediction of early characters getting overshadowed by late game units holds true in some cases. I agree with your points on Ests, if you make them too powerful then they end up overshadowing the units you got so far. But that is exactly what I felt when I first saw Miledy and Percival on FE6 hard mode. It even let to the strange phenomenon that in FE6, the endgame felt harder on normal mode than on hard mode, because you got so many good units basically for free.

AH. I see what you're saying now, yeah, and I definitely agree with that. You end up dropping your original team for the stat walls.

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