I created a "custom" class tree

[AnonymousSpeed]

Long ago in a distant page, there was a thread which challenged users to create one OC a day for 30 days. No one saw it through to the end, but it provided the spark of inspiration for this "custom" class tree.

I put the word "custom" in quotation marks because it's not terribly original. Most of it is standard fair for the series at this point. Despite that and my being unsatisfied with certain parts of it, I think there are enough cool or novel ideas to share here.

Cool Bits:

The most interesting addition is probably the Tauromachist class. This class would innately have the "Capture" skill, which is otherwise quite rare and limited to specific characters.

Assassin as a promotion for both Thief and Archer is a simplification I'm fond of as well.

Horse Archers are basically Snipers, but on a horse.

Dragoons are something of a warrior replacement, since Fighters now promote to Berserker or Hero. They would have the Air Superiority skill, fitting their use of bows.
I feel like giving bows to wyverns instead of pegasi (as with the Kinshi Knight) was a pretty good idea for a few reasons. First, it lets all the promotions for pegasi have a magical slant, which I think suits them much better than such a thing suits wyverns. Secondly, it provides a slower and powerful bow using class to contrast with speedy foot archers.

Assuming magic swords were fairly common, they would be naturally suited for both Valkyries and Falcon Knights.

Problems:

The exact same Knight / Cavalier lines we've seen since Sacred Stones. I don't even like this promotion tree, it feels like its classes struggle to distinguish themselves but don't really succeed. That said, I made no changes.

Mage can promote to a unit with tomes and staves...or tomes and staves and a horse.

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I'll probably throw together some less pondered (and thus more interesting) class trees later and post them here as well.

[Von Ithipathachai]

Personally I'd prefer Horse Archers/Bow Knights to not just be Snipers on horses.  I notice there are no Lance specialist classes in your tree.  This could be a good opportunity to include Soldiers as basic Lance-wielding infantry, which would promote into either Sentinels (Lances) or Bow Knights (Lances + Bows).

If Armored Knights still have their normal net disadvantage compared to Cavaliers, maybe they could be given Lances and Axes like in Three Houses.

Would Sages and Strategists have some differences in Weapon Rank gains on promotion?

[Light Strategist]

I'm gonna have to look at this properly when I get onto my laptop in a while. There's a few ideas I'd like to throw around myself now.

[Flere210]

Not a fan of certain classes sharing the exact same weapon types, and i feel horse archers should not be an archer promotion. In the class tree i am designing right now i made an "heavy cavalry" and a "light cavalry" tree whit the latter having two bow knight promotions based on either the nomad or 3h bow knight.

[AnonymousSpeed]

On 10/17/2019 at 10:17 PM, Von Ithipathachai said:

Personally I'd prefer Horse Archers/Bow Knights to not just be Snipers on horses.

15 hours ago, Flere210 said:

Not a fan of certain classes sharing the exact same weapon types, and i feel horse archers should not be an archer promotion.

My line of thinking for the Horse Archer was pretty simple. Snipers aren't very well liked. They aren't very good. Horses are good, though. So giving Snipers a horse makes them a little better.

I find having nomads and archers separate isn't entirely necessary, and as such felt quite alright "combining" them in this way.

On 10/17/2019 at 10:17 PM, Von Ithipathachai said:

I notice there are no Lance specialist classes in your tree.

Would Sages and Strategists have some differences in Weapon Rank gains on promotion?

There isn't a mono-weapon lance specializing promoted class, but there's already an abundance of lance-wielding classes. They're still the most prolific weapon, so adding more just to have an obvious choice to give Lancefaire too seemed a bit odd. The tree I've been juggling in my head most recently replaces Knights with Soldiers, though.

Probably. Most classes give you a C in your new weapon type, but Strategists might only give you a D. Still not sure that constitutes good balance.

[AnonymousSpeed]

On 10/19/2019 at 1:06 AM, AnonymousSpeed said:

The tree I've been juggling in my head most recently replaces Knights with Soldiers, though.

Here's that tree, by the way.

It assumes a reclassing mechanic is in place, but thieves would not be able to reclass.

It draws inspiration from a couple sources.
The "converging" promotion tree is borrowed from the "FE8 Vision Quest" hack. I haven't played it, but the idea fascinated me.
The skill system is somewhat inspired by the skill choices of user "Agent" for his roleplaying system.
Pretty sure one of the FE8 skills patches by Circles gives Certain Blow to archers and Fiery Blood to fighters. I thought those were pretty good fits.

Level 15 promoted skills aren't a feature because they seem like the sort of thing that would come into play so late as to be barely worth anything, so I just kept it simple with a single skill for each promoted class.

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Skills without descriptions can be assumed to function in their typical manner.

Cavaliers, Paladins, and Hunters have Super Canto.
Wyvern Riders and Wyvern Knights have regular canto.

While Lethality may appear very powerful, it's limited by the otherwise complete inability of assassins to participate in combat. They're still just promoted thieves and still mostly for utility, so the unit they assassinate will probably be their only kill that turn. I consider it another form of utility rather than a direct combat upgrade, and I actually quite like this concept.

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There were a couple other skills I considered instead of these.
I thought of giving Heavy Blade to fighters (bonus damage if your attack is higher than the enemy's)
Sage skill candidate includes some form of Shadowgift or Warding Blow.
Priests could have gotten Miracle or a passive Rally Luck for their level 1 skill, or even a form of Paragon that only applied to staves. All that last one would do is make it so promoted mages get less experience from staves than promoted priests, so I figured a better idea would simply be to double staff experience from the outset.