Should Byleth have been more customizable? [Gameplay]

[Alistair]

I like the idea of making spells tied to the Sothis questionnaire at the beginning, since it clearly exists for gameplay considerations, i.e. gender-restricted classes and when you get the birthday item in White Clouds. I also like the idea of making combat arts tied to corresponding proficiencies. 

[starburst]

I have my reservations about this.

On the one hand, I am not fond of every unit being able to wield any weapon and have basically the same hit rate against any enemy. It takes away their “unit personality.” And in a game with low difficulty and favoured classes, being able to customise the avatar would simply result in yet another way to cheese it.

On the other hand, I liked being able to set the growths and classes of the avatar in other games, to suit my game style or to fulfil roles of units which I would not be using in the current campaign to vary the party composition.

[paladin21]

I think that Byleth's customization should have been more focused on personality and background. That way, story conversations could have been made fully voiced with established answers based on Byleth's personality. For example, when walking around the monastery, Byleth was asked by two different characters (Mercedes and Gloucester boy) of the were in the cathedral to pray during the same day. You get bonus support points with each character of you answer opposite things. If you had to set Byleth as either more religious or more pragmatic, answers would be giving automatically, scenes would be more fluid, and you wouldn't get the feeling that there's a perfect answer to each question.

Doing that could also potentially limit your S-endings, since some characters would be incompatible with certain traits, like if you're passionate about emblems, you'd get on with Lindhart and Monocle, but there would be a rough relationship with Sylvain.