How would you like form changers to be implemented?

[mangasdeouf]

Hi there,

The question has been asked a few years ago, but I want to throw it in once more, to see if things have changed. How would you like form-changers to return in a new entry or a fan project/hack/mod?

Laguz: they have a transformation gauge, in PoR they could only transform by filling the gauge in human form, but they had Taguel-like bonus stats when they were transformed with good base stats compared with Beorcs and better caps although they lacked late game weapon might scaling; in RD they had better gauge management, transformation on demand once the gauge was filled, they could hit back when in human form and gain massive exp, but their human form was very vulnerable, rendering them unusable when untransformed in higher difficulties. In both games, their Con was too high most of the time to be rescued (even in human form they were excessively heavy) but skills like Smite made units like Mordecai somewhat useful anyway (and smite + massive Con was really practical). They had normal moement while in human form and cavalier movement while in beast form, without the cavalry terrain penalties.

Manakete (old school): 1 range locked, vulnerable to arrows, their dragonstones made them sturdy and strong enough to get exp without help in their joining chapter (at least Myrrh) at base while being massively underlevelled. Their growth rates made them top combat units in 10 level ups (rivaling with Seth and Duessel for Myrrh's case). But they had only 50 uses of the only weapon they could ever use without cheating. They could fly.

Manakete (Awakening): 1-2 range, slow and awful start (needing to pair up with Gregor just not to get ORKOd in her joining chapter, Nowi starts like a snail, not even flyer mobility like Myrrh had going for her), but dragonstones are busted and 1-2 with massive stat bonuses is overkill and they were like the middle-ground between Deghinsea and king Kurthnaga gameplay-wise, without the tide skill though, meaning that Awakening Manaketes were only very selfish units without anything useful for the team except stats. They used breath to hit but their main stat was strength o_o just like old school Manaketes (but these were old times, we can understand some lack of logic in GBA games, while in the 3DS they could have used their experience and logic to be more careful with that, specially when Tellius games had physical AND magical dragons).

Manakete (Fates): 1 range locked again, this time dragonstone is way shittier than it has ever been. You can't double (okay, manaketes were never known for their speed) BUT THEY CAN BE DOUBLED with a stupid speed debuff, rendering dragonstone tanking more risky, they use physical horn impalement in their animation although it scales with magic (please IS stop the crap, fire isn't physical and horn attack isn't magical! Even 1996 Pokémon games knew that, although they had ghost hitting physical for 3 gens while dark hit special for 2 gens...), they hit hard but struggle to OHKO , which leads to asking why on earth did they make the main lord weak to dragon-killing weapons whatever his/her class is while dragonstone isn't even half decent before you finally get the upgraded version, dragonstone+, which comes by late game when you don't use dragonstone anymore anyway, since you can rather use tomes or shuriken for 1-2 range, ability to double and to proc skills and horse spirit is better than the basic dragonstone in every way that is not raw damage (although the fact you can double with it means it can deal more damage on ennemies with middling res at best). Dragonstone + is obtainable through battle or visit points...yes...when you've been visiting 3k castles and battling them, good luck see you in 5 years no-life.

Taguel: 1 range locked, specializing in the same areas than swordmasters, only 50 uses before chapter 10 boss is defeated. Straight up garbage class with a garbage weapon until around chapter 20. Meanwhile Manaketes can buy as much dragonstone + as you have the gold for from einherjar Tiki and gain insane stats from it.

Ninetailed fox: Taguel with unlimited uses, actual res stat, the first one you get has good level and bases, but t1 foot unit movement is really garbage for a unit with a beast weakness he carries in whatever class he goes. Good against mages, decent against cavalry, good avoid compared with 90% of the Fates cast (even in t1 he has good avoid,being a good dodge tank is better than not being one), gives speed on pair up (useful reclassed for orochi backpack, at least). Comes with beastbane. Their beaststone is garbage for him though, doesn't do anything for his res, kills his mediocre def and buffs his overkill speed and average skill. Beastrune is better in every way. Good t2 skills at least, for what it's worth considering he won't learn lv 35 skill before endgame.

Bulk-thing that could have been a wolf: if only beaststone didn't lower def, it would be very good. The first unit in this class you can play chooses between doubling but loosing bulk to do so and not doubling but tanking more (around 5 more def and 3 res) and dealing more raw damage. Nice tank bonus stats in t2 but not as good as swordmaster...sorry, ninetailed fox bonus to avoid and crit. Middle-ground between warrior and berserker with only 1 range weapons.

What do you think was the best implementation between these and how could we make a better one? transformation gauge or stone? unbreakable stone or limited uses? stat balance or only stat bonuses (Awakening and old school vs Fates)? weakness to arrow or not? flight or not? 1 range or 1-2?

For Manaketes I think flight gives them a niche while arrow weakness keeps them in check, they don't need to double but they can use some raw damage. Range or not I don't know. Don't need to be a 1 kid army.

For beasts/birds etc. I liked the tactical aspect of RD gauge management, choice between wild heart or full transformation, but I think PoR did the stats a little better because they weren't useles when in human form (meatbag is still useful). I liked different skills too. A middle ground between PoR and RD would be my best way to enjoy them (with mobility, since it's what kills any interest from Fates metamorphs, being footlocked without any bonus movement outside certains areas).

[whase]

Dragon/beast stone or natural transformation depends on lore, but for the most part I do enjoy natural better. Makes it feel more like the species has a special power over them just using magic items.

As for stats, I've been struggling with this a lot for my D&D FE hybrid game. I ended up giving Laguz a second health bar, kind of like monsters in three houses, but more like shapeshifting druids in D&D. When shapeshifted they use a different health bar (which can't be healed by regular means but instead recharges each day), which means if their transformed health bar is 0, they can no longer shift/return to their unshifted form. 
They also get an additional list of skills they can learn, which give them stat boosts while transformed. They do however only get 3 skill slots opposed to the 5 for a regular human. Beside the 3 skill slots they have a laguz race skill, giving them additional stats while transformed depending on race. (I'm still playtesting though.)

Edit: oh also

1 hour ago, mangasdeouf said:

fire isn't physical

If you get burned in the real world, would you say you just got magical damage?

Edited February 27, 2020 by whase

[mangasdeouf]

4 hours ago, whase said:

Dragon/beast stone or natural transformation depends on lore, but for the most part I do enjoy natural better. Makes it feel more like the species has a special power over them just using magic items.

As for stats, I've been struggling with this a lot for my D&D FE hybrid game. I ended up giving Laguz a second health bar, kind of like monsters in three houses, but more like shapeshifting druids in D&D. When shapeshifted they use a different health bar (which can't be healed by regular means but instead recharges each day), which means if their transformed health bar is 0, they can no longer shift/return to their unshifted form. 
They also get an additional list of skills they can learn, which give them stat boosts while transformed. They do however only get 3 skill slots opposed to the 5 for a regular human. Beside the 3 skill slots they have a laguz race skill, giving them additional stats while transformed depending on race. (I'm still playtesting though.)

Edit: oh also

If you get burned in the real world, would you say you just got magical damage?

1. I totally agree with you on this one, stones feel like they're not even form changers in nature, like it's only a magical object giving them power so could as well give it to anyone and have an army of beasts and dragons.

2. Seems interesting, I'd like to play it if you can make a working version and put the patch or whatever it runs with online. A bit like a primal transforation, an ultimate ability you can use only for a limited number of fights/turns per map or until your HP goes down to 0 (although I think it's hard to manage since you can't have tiger-like units then, with defense breaking the ceiling, or ravens with so much dodge they never get hit). Very good alternative to the laguz concept, but hard to put in practice (at least in a game like FE).

3.If I get burnt, I know no one burnt me by hitting me physically, they used an element to hurt me. So it's like Pokémon, a special attack. In FE words, a magical attack since it doesn't make contact nor does it use steel, flesh or bones to deal damage. It's like acid, you can't raise fire, ice, acid, poison damage by body building, you can only raise them by increasing your knowledge and ability in a specific area, like learning better poisons, understanding how to strengthen fire (how to make blue flames instead of orange ones, since blue flames result from a complete combustion, while orange are the result of an incomplete burning), all that can't be reinforced by building muscle.

[eclipse]

Since the bulk of this seems to be focusing on transformations in the main FE games, I'm gonna throw this in General FE.

The most offensive thing about this is that you've completely left out Best Manakete System.  Namely, the ones that get vastly different bonuses based on the stone they use.  Need to make a mage cry?  Magestone, and laugh as their attacks literally bounce off of you.  Just short of the doubling threshold?  Wyvernstone.  Another dragon getting on your case?  Divinestone.  They're sold in a secret shop that requires Warp to get to, and there's only one of them (except Divinestone - not sold in a shop, but there's two of them).

[mangasdeouf]

36 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Since the bulk of this seems to be focusing on transformations in the main FE games, I'm gonna throw this in General FE.

The most offensive thing about this is that you've completely left out Best Manakete System.  Namely, the ones that get vastly different bonuses based on the stone they use.  Need to make a mage cry?  Magestone, and laugh as their attacks literally bounce off of you.  Just short of the doubling threshold?  Wyvernstone.  Another dragon getting on your case?  Divinestone.  They're sold in a secret shop that requires Warp to get to, and there's only one of them (except Divinestone - not sold in a shop, but there's two of them).

I put that into the fan project section because this discussion could lead to a hack/mod where I would implement the ideas collected the best I can. I rarely create a topic without anything in mind. But if it's better fit for General FE, so be it.

Not intentional about special stones, I just never played the game they're in far enough to even see a manakete, not even speaking of seeing several dragonstones, and if it's in FE6 or 7, I simply thought these were ennemy only with 1 playable dragonstone like in FE8 where you see Demonlumen, another demon lord stone, the dragon zombie breath and Myrrh can only use her dragonstone.

[eclipse]

Just now, mangasdeouf said:

Not intentional about special stones, I just never played the game they're in far enough to even see a manakete, not even speaking of seeing several dragonstones, and if it's in FE6 or 7, I simply thought these were ennemy only with 1 playable dragonstone like in FE8 where you see Demonlumen, another demon lord stone, the dragon zombie breath and Myrrh can only use her dragonstone.

If your goal is hacking, then it will help if you have a general knowledge of the entire FE series.  Even if New Mystery never made it to the US, it had a lot of interesting ideas, not to mention the best implementation of Lunatic IMO.

[Fabulously Olivier]

Like Tellius, but with greatly improved performance, no royals with perma-shift, and some benefits to fighting untransformed.

[mangasdeouf]

22 minutes ago, eclipse said:

If your goal is hacking, then it will help if you have a general knowledge of the entire FE series.  Even if New Mystery never made it to the US, it had a lot of interesting ideas, not to mention the best implementation of Lunatic IMO.

Thanks for the information and the tip.

 

15 minutes ago, Etheus said:

Like Tellius, but with greatly improved performance, no royals with perma-shift, and some benefits to fighting untransformed.

I had in my mind that they could be regular beorcs with the ability to become different units by changing forms (for example, Keaton would be a fighter with the ability to change form like in Tellius to his beast class, falcos could be mercenaries, tigers could be oni/knights, foxes could be mages and use magic like the kitsune are supposed to in Japanese mythology, crows could be thieves with outlaw stat spread, cats could be swordfighters, etc.) but in human form they'd have inferior stats compared with regular units, although fighting in human form would enable their transformation (like, 25% each time they enter in combat, gauge decreases by 25% each time you hit an ennemy when transformed, the same way Myrrh's stone doesn't loose durability when she doesn't attack/counterattack).

[Emperor Hardin]

@mangasdeouf

You left out SNES Era Manaketes. They transform into a dragon based class with 1-2 range breath after using their dragon stone item. The length of their transformation is based on luck, with the minimum length lasting five turns. The Manaketes Emiyu of TearRing Saga are similar, except they also use human classes regularly and their dragonstones rings have infinite durability.

There's also NES Era Manaketes who have infinite durability dragon stones, but otherwise work like the GBA Manaketes.

Anyhow I'd prefer old school Manaketes who transform into a dragon based class based on luck.

However I'd also like Dragonstones to work like legendary weapons in Genealogy of the Holy War and Three Houses in that instead of breaking, Dragonstones get exhausted and you pay to repair them.

That way, they wouldn't be too OP and it would be accurate to the lore as opposed to the silliness of buying a sealed dragon-form in a stone at a shop.

1 hour ago, eclipse said:

The most offensive thing about this is that you've completely left out Best Manakete System.  Namely, the ones that get vastly different bonuses based on the stone they use.  Need to make a mage cry?  Magestone, and laugh as their attacks literally bounce off of you.  Just short of the doubling threshold?  Wyvernstone.  Another dragon getting on your case?  Divinestone.  They're sold in a secret shop that requires Warp to get to, and there's only one of them (except Divinestone - not sold in a shop, but there's two of them).

Multiple Dragonstones too. 

Edited February 27, 2020 by Emperor Hardin

[mangasdeouf]

7 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

@mangasdeouf

You left out old school Manaketes. They transform into a dragon based class with 1-2 range breath after using their dragon stone item. The length of their transformation is based on luck, with the minimum length lasting five turns.

Anyhow I'd prefer old school Manaketes who transform into a dragon based class based on luck.

However I'd also like Dragonstones to work like legendary weapons in Genealogy of the Holy War and Three Houses in that instead of breaking, Dragonstones get exhausted and you pay to repair them.

That way, they wouldn't be too OP and it would be accurate to the lore as opposed to the silliness of buying a sealed dragon-form in a stone at a shop.

Multiple Dragonstones too. 

I think 5 turns transformation is really too much, if you can refill the gauge I find that it's more interesting to have a number of fights, otherwise you just throw your manakete into the ennemy army and they just slaughter everything without help needed. I like the idea of powerful transformations like they did in Tellius games but limited by the gauge so hey don't go in and destroy the whole map before going out. They can take a specific number of ennemies they can fight back on before going back to human form, so you have to play  carefully while still being able to enjoy the shapeshifter experience, in order to have to use your team with some tactics involved, otherwise if it's just a matter of money, you put all of it into repairing the stone and that's it (with Myrrh-style dragonstones, she could really solo the game without any form of tactics if youcould repair her D-stone, 50x easier than Seth since she would trade 2 move for flight, so she could rescue village easily and cross sea and mountains, on top of having better stats everywhere but in HP and taking 0 damage from 95% of the ennemies before capping any defensive stat).

When you say luck, do you mean the transformation happens randomly? Or just the number of turns depends on luck?

Paying to repair a shapeshifting stone doesn't seem more right story-wise than buying them, it means they're made with something humans can craft or alter (repairing is still an alteration of something since it changes it's state to a better one). It's the same putting power into a jewel and repair the jewel or sell new ones (either way to repair you need some materials with similar properties, might as well craft a new one if we're talking capitalism).

But I like the idea of repairing weapons more than constantly buying new ones, and it makes balancing weapons easier than what Fates had to do to avoid steel/silver/hero being abused. I think the FE 4 (the one with Sigurd?) with individual supply and weapon repair was interesting, although the trade system was too restricting (why couldn't 2 soldiers trade inside an army, be it during battle if there are no battle preps in gameplay or outside battle if there are battle preps?). I still think there should be slim/training weapons with unlimited uses but garbage damage in order to play the game differently, even if it's only for a trial playthrough with only training weapons allowed (saw a Fates challenge bronze/equivalent weapons only run suggestion somewhere). That's it for the little paragraph that was kind of unrelated to the topic, but related to your post somehow.

[Emperor Hardin]

5 minutes ago, mangasdeouf said:

I think 5 turns transformation is really too much, if you can refill the gauge I find that it's more interesting to have a number of fights, otherwise you just throw your manakete into the ennemy army and they just slaughter everything without help needed. I like the idea of powerful transformations like they did in Tellius games but limited by the gauge so hey don't go in and destroy the whole map before going out. They can take a specific number of ennemies they can fight back on before going back to human form, so you have to play  carefully while still being able to enjoy the shapeshifter experience, in order to have to use your team with some tactics involved, otherwise if it's just a matter of money, you put all of it into repairing the stone and that's it (with Myrrh-style dragonstones, she could really solo the game without any form of tactics if youcould repair her D-stone, 50x easier than Seth since she would trade 2 move for flight, so she could rescue village easily and cross sea and mountains, on top of having better stats everywhere but in HP and taking 0 damage from 95% of the ennemies before capping any defensive stat).

When you say luck, do you mean the transformation happens randomly? Or just the number of turns depends on luck?

The Manaketes in FE3 don't just slaughter everything, remember their Dragonstones can break in that game.

Repairing the Dragonstone would be expensive of course, just as repairing holy weapons in FE4 and FE16 is.

5 minutes ago, mangasdeouf said:

When you say luck, do you mean the transformation happens randomly? Or just the number of turns depends on luck?

The Luck stat determines the length of a Manakete's dragon transformation, the maximum amount of turns is 10.

5 minutes ago, mangasdeouf said:

Paying to repair a shapeshifting stone doesn't seem more right story-wise than buying them, it means they're made with something humans can craft or alter (repairing is still an alteration of something since it changes it's state to a better one). It's the same putting power into a jewel and repair the jewel or sell new ones (either way to repair you need some materials with similar properties, might as well craft a new one if we're talking capitalism).

Dragonstones are made by a dragon sealing their true form and essence into a otherwise ordinary stone.

Note the Dragon inside. Lorewise Dragonstones can not be made by humans and Manaketes only get their personal dragonstone.

Edited February 27, 2020 by Emperor Hardin

[mangasdeouf]

20 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

The Manaketes in FE3 don't just slaughter everything, remember their Dragonstones can break in that game.

Repairing the Dragonstone would be expensive of course, just as repairing holy weapons in FE4 and FE16 is.

The Luck stat determines the length of a Manakete's dragon transformation, the maximum amount of turns is 10.

Dragonstones are made by a dragon sealing their true form and essence into a otherwise ordinary stone.

Note the Dragon inside. Lorewise Dragonstones can not be made by humans and Manaketes only get their personal dragonstone.

Didn't play FE3, don't own a Switch so didn't play FE16 either (and I don't want to, since Hogwarts is no Fire Emblem in essence, I don't see the point in playing a Fire Emblem that doesn't advertise like a Fire Emblem). I don't know the references. Thank you for the piece of intel though.

[Emperor Hardin]

Just now, mangasdeouf said:

Didn't play FE3, don't own a Switch so didn't play FE16 either (and I don't want to, since Hogwarts is no Fire Emblem in essence, I don't see the point in playing a Fire Emblem that doesn't advertise like a Fire Emblem). I don't know the references. Thank you for the piece of intel though.

No problem, want a video or script link of the explanation on Dragonstones and Manaketes?

For Laguz, I think there should be some way to build up the meter when untransformed even if it reduces transformed stats. As you mentioned, given them more to do in human form would help, staves would be good for some of them too.

[Shadow Mir]

31 minutes ago, mangasdeouf said:

I think 5 turns transformation is really too much, if you can refill the gauge I find that it's more interesting to have a number of fights, otherwise you just throw your manakete into the ennemy army and they just slaughter everything without help needed. I like the idea of powerful transformations like they did in Tellius games but limited by the gauge so hey don't go in and destroy the whole map before going out. They can take a specific number of ennemies they can fight back on before going back to human form, so you have to play  carefully while still being able to enjoy the shapeshifter experience, in order to have to use your team with some tactics involved, otherwise if it's just a matter of money, you put all of it into repairing the stone and that's it (with Myrrh-style dragonstones, she could really solo the game without any form of tactics if youcould repair her D-stone, 50x easier than Seth since she would trade 2 move for flight, so she could rescue village easily and cross sea and mountains, on top of having better stats everywhere but in HP and taking 0 damage from 95% of the ennemies before capping any defensive stat).

Nor really since in FE3, breath has 20 weight (which is meant to balance out the fact that dragon breath ignores defence vs. human units, aka the majority of what you fight and use).

[mangasdeouf]

1 hour ago, Emperor Hardin said:

No problem, want a video or script link of the explanation on Dragonstones and Manaketes?

For Laguz, I think there should be some way to build up the meter when untransformed even if it reduces transformed stats. As you mentioned, given them more to do in human form would help, staves would be good for some of them too.

If you have one, it would be nice to learn some lore about this aspect of the game.

If you have any idea on how to put that in a GBA mod (using FEBuilder preferably), I'm all yours, I love shapeshifters and always found it sad not to be able to put Laguz-like ones in any of my mods.

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

Nor really since in FE3, breath has 20 weight (which is meant to balance out the fact that dragon breath ignores defence vs. human units, aka the majority of what you fight and use).

Intersting, I'd love Fates to do the same thing for Corrin, so that dragonstone could be more balanced (as in dealing equal damage to res and def tanks instead of OHKOing onis while 2HKOing ninjas, outlaws and other annoying ennemies you want dead ASAP because of debuffs/poison strike/fang like poison strike/thieves escaping before you can kill them because too many units stand in the way/reinforcement spam BS or simply you have to reach them with units who are weak against bows, tomes that are near the escape route or anything else on the way to the outlaws).

I like the dragonzombies (especially when they deal 29 damage ^^ so I can take 2 hits without dying), they(re tanky, dangerous and accurate and their great range forces you to play carefully when they're around.

[Emperor Hardin]

2 minutes ago, mangasdeouf said:

If you have one, it would be nice to learn some lore about this aspect of the game.

If you have any idea on how to put that in a GBA mod (using FEBuilder preferably), I'm all yours, I love shapeshifters and always found it sad not to be able to put Laguz-like ones in any of my mods.

Here you go.

[mangasdeouf]

30 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

Here you go.

Thank you, it's laughable to see how this game with 80s looks has more story depth than Fates (reckt!)

[Emperor Hardin]

1 minute ago, mangasdeouf said:

Thank you, it's laughable to see how this game with 80s looks has more story depth than Fates (reckt!)

And its funny how Awakening ignores every plot point of Archanea.

[Shrimpy]

I am gonna throw one out here that i have seen in some SRPG Studie games:

Transform depending on status/position.

Like, One transformation i saw is that the unit can transform only when there are no allied units nearby, otherwise they are stuck using normal weapons.

You can now extend this.

One who only transforms when an ally is nearby

One who only transforms when damaged

One who only transforms when adjacent

One who only transforms when status'd

One who transforms with a gauge

etc.

Could make for an interesting mechanic

[Alastor15243]

The main issue is that their inability to use conventional weapons shouldn't be a massive weakness like it is for so many of them. Generally the fatal flaw of shifters is that they don't have access to something, like forges or braves or 1-2 range, and that cripples their DPS.

Either they need to be more versatile (IE more things like the beastrune), or their lack of versatility has to come with the benefit of genuinely being really good at what they do.

[Emperor Hardin]

28 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

The main issue is that their inability to use conventional weapons shouldn't be a massive weakness like it is for so many of them. Generally the fatal flaw of shifters is that they don't have access to something, like forges or braves or 1-2 range, and that cripples their DPS.

Either they need to be more versatile (IE more things like the beastrune), or their lack of versatility has to come with the benefit of genuinely being really good at what they do.

Did you use Bantu or Tiki in FE3 by the way?

Bantu is really good in FE3.

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

Did you use Bantu or Tiki in FE3 by the way?

Bantu is really good in FE3.

I used Tiki, yes.

[mangasdeouf]

1 hour ago, Shrimperor said:

I am gonna throw one out here that i have seen in some SRPG Studie games:

Transform depending on status/position.

Like, One transformation i saw is that the unit can transform only when there are no allied units nearby, otherwise they are stuck using normal weapons.

You can now extend this.

One who only transforms when an ally is nearby

One who only transforms when damaged

One who only transforms when adjacent

One who only transforms when status'd

One who transforms with a gauge

etc.

Could make for an interesting mechanic

Quite extreme specialization but interesting. I'm not a hacker by the way, I couldn't code to save my life.

45 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

The main issue is that their inability to use conventional weapons shouldn't be a massive weakness like it is for so many of them. Generally the fatal flaw of shifters is that they don't have access to something, like forges or braves or 1-2 range, and that cripples their DPS.

Either they need to be more versatile (IE more things like the beastrune), or their lack of versatility has to come with the benefit of genuinely being really good at what they do.

Well, since tigers double nearly all the ennemies at base (well, Mordecai not that much since his base speed is atrocious) in RD, I think their DPS doesn't really suffer. They also ORKO nearly every non epic ennemy in the game as long as they double. S and S+ ranks on their strike level means they have legendary weapon might with infinite uses: 19 damage for tigers, it's more than Ike's legendary sword and Burger King's terrible obesity weapon if I remember correctly, while Also having a strength cap of 46 and def of 44, meaning...when they double, they deal around 10 more damage than the main story's protagonist and antagonist with their almighty weapons, ans they can do it as soon as you can reach S+ rank, which means you have to abuse a little in human form not to OHKO the boss on a throne/castle door/whatever giving them bonus terrain and hp regen. All that while taking single digit damage from late game bosses who hit on the physical side (before Deghinsea who is insane anyway but a dragon can only be stronger than a tiger).

PS: tocompare with the Oh so praised Keaton: Tigers don't need HP, they have more def than Rinkah and Benny put together, but tigers have HP, and not few at that, they have 50-65 HP if my memory is right, which only means they can tank up to 3-4 magic hits depending on attribute and spell power. They also have around 20 res cap and most of them hit the cap since it's half of that in human form and they're already more than halfway through when you get them.

So tigers have 1.5x more HP than Keaton, they have 2x more raw damage, they can OHKO some ennemies at base and ORKO most ennemies of part 2 (for Mordy), they have a skill allowing them to counter attack at range (I think it is the point of shout, isn't it?) and they have a weapon scaling naturally during the game without being forced to wait for a specific chapter and kill a specific ennemy to get them (beastrune you're damn annoying to not show up when we would like you to whatever the route, at least Keaton comes with it in CQ but he's followed by Kinshi he can't retaliate against and pegasi + other ennemies I don't remember).

Keaton has Beastbane while Tigers OHKO or ORKO most ennemies when they cap their str/spd with their S/S+ strike, mounted or not, Keaton can't take 2 magic hits without being at death's door if not already dead while Mordecai, of all tigers, can take 3-4 magic attacks, a little less for fire attacks since weapon might is high in RD from P2 onward.

Edited February 27, 2020 by mangasdeouf

[Shadow Mir]

47 minutes ago, mangasdeouf said:

Well, since tigers double nearly all the ennemies at base (well, Mordecai not that much since his base speed is atrocious) in RD, I think their DPS doesn't really suffer. They also ORKO nearly every non epic ennemy in the game as long as they double. S and S+ ranks on their strike level means they have legendary weapon might with infinite uses: 19 damage for tigers, it's more than Ike's legendary sword and Burger King's terrible obesity weapon if I remember correctly, while Also having a strength cap of 46 and def of 44, meaning...when they double, they deal around 10 more damage than the main story's protagonist and antagonist with their almighty weapons, ans they can do it as soon as you can reach S+ rank, which means you have to abuse a little in human form not to OHKO the boss on a throne/castle door/whatever giving them bonus terrain and hp regen. All that while taking single digit damage from late game bosses who hit on the physical side (before Deghinsea who is insane anyway but a dragon can only be stronger than a tiger).

PS: tocompare with the Oh so praised Keaton: Tigers don't need HP, they have more def than Rinkah and Benny put together, but tigers have HP, and not few at that, they have 50-65 HP if my memory is right, which only means they can tank up to 3-4 magic hits depending on attribute and spell power. They also have around 20 res cap and most of them hit the cap since it's half of that in human form and they're already more than halfway through when you get them.

So tigers have 1.5x more HP than Keaton, they have 2x more raw damage, they can OHKO some ennemies at base and ORKO most ennemies of part 2 (for Mordy), they have a skill allowing them to counter attack at range (I think it is the point of shout, isn't it?) and they have a weapon scaling naturally during the game without being forced to wait for a specific chapter and kill a specific ennemy to get them (beastrune you're damn annoying to not show up when we would like you to whatever the route, at least Keaton comes with it in CQ but he's followed by Kinshi he can't retaliate against and pegasi + other ennemies I don't remember).

Keaton has Beastbane while Tigers OHKO or ORKO most ennemies when they cap their str/spd with their S/S+ strike, mounted or not, Keaton can't take 2 magic hits without being at death's door if not already dead while Mordecai, of all tigers, can take 3-4 magic attacks, a little less for fire attacks since weapon might is high in RD from P2 onward.

Is your copy of Radiant Dawn the same one I've been playing? Because this completely ignores that tigers are not that fast (Muarim can double in part 1, but at that point he's blatantly OP against unpromoted enemies, and I should be raising the units that actually stick around to see use), as well as the usual laguz problems, like having their enemy phase compromised because they're range locked, among others. And you're ignoring the fact that laguz strike rank raises at a rate which "snail's pace" would be too kind in describing. How powerful tigers are at SS strike doesn't mean jack nor shit when realistically, they won't get there before the game is over. And all this is without even mentioning the fact that they have to worry about reverting into their weak and vulnerable human forms, at which point they're as fucked as a Shedinja coming into Stealth Rock or Spikes.

[NinjaMonkey]

2 hours ago, Emperor Hardin said:

And its funny how Awakening ignores every plot point of Archanea.

Why wouldn't it ignore everything that took place in FE1 and 3? After all, Awakening takes place 2000 years in Archanea's future, so it makes sense that nothing from that time is relevant anymore.