Looking for ways to improve my system

[Agent]

So, I got my fancy forum game set up that is built like an old Fire Emblem game. It's mostly similar to games in Elibe and Magvel. I'm looking to improve the design of it and make sure that it has well-balanced features. We're playing on Casual Mode, by the way.

Now, in short, the mechanics of it are like the standard, but with several differences.
The damage, hit, and crit formulas are the same.
Movement stats and costs are multiplied by 4. Your standard class would have 20 Move, and plains would take 4 Move to traverse. Nothing to it.
Classes are different. Every class can only wield a single weapon type, and most promoted classes are capable of equipping a second weapon type. They also have the skill system from the DS titles. The Staff class is capable of both healing and combat.
Promotion is done with an item at Level 10, and gives the usual stat boosts and maybe a new weapon, as well as an extra skill. Also, the main classes(Merc, Archer, Warrior, Cavalier, Mage, Dark Mage, and Thief) have three different choices when it comes to promotion. They all have different weapons, skills, and movement.
Weapons are mostly the same, but there's a few different ones. Swords, "Spears", Axes, and Bows haven't changed, but Staves and Magic are different. Oh, and there's Daggers. Staves are like in Heroes; they can heal or be used for a weak but accurate attack at a Range of 2. Magic weapons are called Gemstones, and they only have a Range of 2. Daggers have low might, but all of them have a critical bonus and a special effect. They can also be thrown, but this cuts their Might in half. Tomes exist, but are functionally the same as gemstones.
Weapon Rank Bonuses are also a thing. Starting from Rank C, ranks will increase the statistics of an equipped weapon. Swords get Mt, Axes get Hit, and everything else gets a little bit of both. There's also the +5 Crit at S-Rank.
Stats are the same, don't worry about that.
Supports are the same; they're affinity based. They also give +2.5% Crit and Crit Evade per rank.

By the way, here's a picture of one of my maps.

Spoiler

Those were the mechanics for gameplay, now I'll go into what I do in Character Creation and Options.
First, everyone gets a Personal Skill. These give characters a bit more uniqueness. A list of Personal Skills is nearby if anyone can't make one up.
They are also able to change their bases and growths slightly, to give them a role. There's a limit on how much can be changed, so we don't get crazy stats. At the end of Character Creation, all players are given +5 HP and +3 Luck to help them survive.
When it comes to deployment for a battle, usually only 6 people are able to join at one time, due to me not wanting to manage so many players at once. By the way, there's a capacity of 9 Players and 2 NPCs.
Gameplay Options are preference-based things that affect the gameplay. I ask them to players while they're getting ready. The options include:
1. When rolling d100s, should Lower or Higher rolls be better?
2. Should there be a penalty for being defeated in battle?
3. Would you like a Lord(me) to join you?
4. Should potions heal more, or last longer?
5. Would you like the HP cap to be increased from 60 to 80?
6. Should all Promotion items be replaced with Master Seals?

Gaiden Chapters, or Paralogues exist. There is no hidden condition needed to unlock them; they're just automatically presented to the players. Should the option for a Lord to join the party be picked, they will never be present during a Gaiden Chapter, as they aren't related to the main story at all.
There's no Rescue option. There just isn't.

Now aside from you all giving possible feedback to my system, there's a couple of questions I would like answered:
1) Magic has 2 Range, but my brother says it should be 1-2. I believe that it should be locked to 2 because of how hard it hits but now i'm unsure... what should I do?
2) How do I come up with the passive abilities for S-Rank weapons? They've got like, +5 in a stat, but i'm not sure what to give each weapon.
3) The main lord has 9 Con and wields a "Heavy Rapier", which functions like a standard Rapier. The Might of it is currently 8. Is that alright?

Edited May 8, 2019 by Agent

[AnonymousSpeed]

Firstly, I want to say that this looks pretty neat. All the little icons and stuff are neat, it's presented well. I like some of the goofier items. Overall fun to look sy.

6 hours ago, Agent said:

When it comes to deployment for a battle, usually only 6 people are able to join at one time, due to me not wanting to manage so many players at once. By the way, there's a capacity of 9 Players and 2 NPCs.

 

One one hand, I don't think it's a good idea to have more players than deployment slots, because then you're making it so all your players can't participate.

On the other hand, this could address the issue of not every player being able to participate at all times, though I still don't know about always having such a restriction.

 

6 hours ago, Agent said:

There's no Rescue option. There just isn't.

How can you even say this it like the GBA games if it doesn't have rescue chains?

 

6 hours ago, Agent said:

Now aside from you all giving possible feedback to my system, there's a couple of questions I would like answered:
1) Magic has 2 Range, but my brother says it should be 1-2. I believe that it should be locked to 2 because of how hard it hits but now i'm unsure... what should I do?
2) How do I come up with the passive abilities for S-Rank weapons? They've got like, +5 in a stat, but i'm not sure what to give each weapon.
3) The main lord has 9 Con and wields a "Heavy Rapier", which functions like a standard Rapier. The Might of it is currently 8. Is that alright?

1) It could work either way, but magic doesn't look significantly stronger than it was in the games, based solely on these sheets.

2) Presuming this is meant for one campaign, you could always adjust the effects of S-rank weapons to be most beneficial to the player party. Even if there's already some plot around them, changing the Binding Blade from +5 Def/Res to +5 Luck wouldn't do much other than simply make the weapon worse.

3) Eirika's rapier had 7 might and she was still garbage, so if you're asking if it's balanced, it's probably not broken.

***

Some of the re-name-things are kinda weird and I don't personally recommend them, because it could be kinda confuse people. Like, it's kinda weird that "Mages" aren't mages, they're priests / clerics, and that threw me off when I first looked at it. Then there's stuff like having Long Swords instead of Killing Edges and using Knight Crests on mercenaries instead of cavaliers, changes which I don't really get.

I also question the balance of Paladin's armorslayer skill, that seems pretty janked.

[Agent]

1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

On the other hand, this could address the issue of not every player being able to participate at all times, though I still don't know about always having such a restriction.

That was the point, but on some occasions, I do allow the entire party to participate in a battle.

1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

How can you even say this it like the GBA games if it doesn't have rescue chains?

You got me there. I was opposed to it initially partially because of laziness, but now I guess I gotta listen to the professionals. I'll just figure out what to draw for rescues...

1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Some of the re-name-things are kinda weird and I don't personally recommend them, because it could be kinda confuse people. Like, it's kinda weird that "Mages" aren't mages, they're priests / clerics, and that threw me off when I first looked at it. Then there's stuff like having Long Swords instead of Killing Edges and using Knight Crests on mercenaries instead of cavaliers, changes which I don't really get.

I also question the balance of Paladin's armorslayer skill, that seems pretty janked.

Don't worry, I came up with a logical reason for why Mages are named the way they are... It's because people don't like Dark Mages and have to give them a different name because they're r-

I didn't want the Longblade to be an exact Killing Edge but I don't think I did a very good job at that. And as for the Knight Crest... It was just a leftover from the old version. Promotions were very different in the old version.

Also in the old version, the Paladin's Armorslayer was even more broken. Guess I'll have to nerf it a little more. And all the other armor piercing skills.

[AnonymousSpeed]

30 minutes ago, Agent said:

That was the point, but on some occasions, I do allow the entire party to participate in a battle.

 

Very nice.

30 minutes ago, Agent said:

You got me there. I was opposed to it initially partially because of laziness, but now I guess I gotta listen to the professionals. I'll just figure out what to draw for rescues...

You don't have to implement rescue, I just thought it was kind of funny. Rescue chains are one of those GBA features which I'm personally fond of, but most people ignore them anyway.

30 minutes ago, Agent said:

Also in the old version, the Paladin's Armorslayer was even more broken. Guess I'll have to nerf it a little more. And all the other armor piercing skills.

I'm not as sure if Moonbow is so objectionable- and to be fair, I think it's a very interesting way to go about defense/resistance ignoring skills, but 11 is too low a threshold.

[Agent]

My brother wants me to add Rescue as well.

[AnonymousSpeed]

4 hours ago, Agent said:

My brother wants me to add Rescue as well.

While I appreciate rescue, don't add it just to add it. If your maps are built around not rescue chaining people, then it's fine to not do that. That being said, you do have Con, so you're at least 50% of the way to implementing it. If you do put rescue in though, I'd implore you to fix female mounted aid, which is hilarious on account of being really dumb.

I'd also like to add that, when I saw 11 is too low of a threshold for Armorslayer, that's specifically in reference to defense. Very few enemies (going by the regular games, at least, I don't know your philosophy on enemy design) break 11 resistance, yet alone 14, so I wouldn't actually make it too much higher than that for Moonbow, if higher at all.

[Agent]

Maybe I'll make my maps a little bigger to accommodate Rescue. I know how dumb female mounted aid is. Gotta add some equality in here.

I use Google Sheets to calculate enemy stats. It uses their bases, adds the growths as decimals, and rounds them off. As for the promoted classes, they copy the stats of their unpromoted variants and continue from there. The number in the Level indicators change the stats for unpromoted or promoted units.

At 20/20, most classes don't get very many defense points over 11. Save for the Warrior, Cavalier, and Knight promotions. So... May just leave it alone or barely do anything.

[AnonymousSpeed]

I'd focus more on where units are supposed to be on what turn and how rescue affects the speed of getting them there.

Yeah, the skill should preferably be useful. A few points of damage can be very nice, but no bonus damage is not.