In all seriousness, what were the developers thinking with Path of Radiance's Knife Sages?

[Jotari]

33 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Having 1~2 range, in conjunction with the Firesweep effect (is this any different from Windsweep?), could be enough to make them good on Sages. And it's not like PoR has any especially strong knife-users (Volke, kinda). But the challenge is to make knives good, but not too good (i.e. how Shurikens were in Fates). Honestly, if they had a fully-developed Knife system, a la Radiant Dawn, including the ability to wield forged 1~2 weapons, that would probably be enough.

I don't think it would be. Yeah, knives are better in Radiant Dawn than they are in Path of Radiance, but still, if you had the option you would use swords on Volke or Sothe instead,because knives are still pretty weak. The only thing they have going for them is the 1-2 range, but that really just makes them worse archers since you're not going to be enemy phasing with a knife unit (well outside of early game Jeigan Sothe). And if we're thinking specifically of Knife Sages, the 1-2 range isn't exactly a niche for them as they can already do that with magic. Even with forging you're still just looking at a weak weapon that does not compliment their lower strength. If knives act like Radiant Dawn, I'd much rather have a sword or axe mage than a knife mage.

Edited August 6, 2021 by Jotari

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

4 hours ago, Jotari said:

I don't think it would be. Yeah, knives are better in Radiant Dawn than they are in Path of Radiance, but still, if you had the option you would use swords on Volke or Sothe instead,because knives are still pretty weak. The only thing they have going for them is the 1-2 range, but that really just makes them worse archers since you're not going to be enemy phasing with a knife unit (well outside of early game Jeigan Sothe). And if we're thinking specifically of Knife Sages, the 1-2 range isn't exactly a niche for them as they can already do that with magic. Even with forging you're still just looking at a weak weapon that does not compliment their lower strength. If knives act like Radiant Dawn, I'd much rather have a sword or axe mage than a knife mage.

You have a point - although, part of it is that the Tellius weapon system just favors Axes over everything else. Hm... what if PoR!Knives had higher Might stats, but ignored the user's Strength stat, a la RD!Crossbows? That way, even someone like Knife!Soren would be able to do decent physical damage. Not to mention, PoR!Sothe would be less held back by his meager starting Strength. Done in conjunction with 1~2 range, and/or the cancel effect, this could make knives... actually good.

[Jotari]

59 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

You have a point - although, part of it is that the Tellius weapon system just favors Axes over everything else. Hm... what if PoR!Knives had higher Might stats, but ignored the user's Strength stat, a la RD!Crossbows? That way, even someone like Knife!Soren would be able to do decent physical damage. Not to mention, PoR!Sothe would be less held back by his meager starting Strength. Done in conjunction with 1~2 range, and/or the cancel effect, this could make knives... actually good.

It'd depend on how strong you make them. I wouldn't say it was an experiment that worked particularly well in Radiant Dawn, as the set mt meant it didn't scale at all with level ups resulting in crossbows being rather decent mid game, and useless by endgame (and if I remember correctly, just non existent in early game where they would have been way too powerful). For knives it would be similarly hard to balance between pretty useful and pretty useless (I think one of the best ways to scale this would be to give them additional damage scaling with weapon rank). And just over all, conceptually, I'd like thieves combat potential to be based on utility and not killing potential. Hence my firesweep suggestion. In addition, if they were to experiment with high mt no str weapons again, I actually think it'd be best to stick to crossbows on that front, as it makes a lot more sense for them as weapons to not use a strength stat given it's just pressing a button. While slicing assassinations don't require much strength, stabbing things with knifes still would be determined very much by your strength. That being said if we're looking specifically at knife mages and not thieves, it would be a pretty fun and unique aspect of combat to give them. Then again, I feel that's also a trait we could assign to magic (like OG Shadow Dragon tomes). People do complain that magic isn't all that magical in this series, doing more or less the exact same jobs as weapons. Some tomes that don't take the users magic stat into account but have high mt in itself could be a cool feature to have.

Edited August 6, 2021 by Jotari

[GonzoMD1993]

I think it would have been an interesting choice if they made Silence staffs or Kishuna-style magic negating areas somewhat common, since there'd be an actual strategic advantage to picking knives over staves (i.e. your magic units would not be defenseless when locked out of magic), although I do think they'd also need to buff knives as well because they're still stupidly weak even on primary knife fighters (Sothe and Volke). Still seems kind of hard to pull off though, since making silencing effects too common would just make mages a bad class regardless of them having access to knives on promotion.

But the way they are on the actual game there is absolutely zero advantage to ever picking knives over staves, and the only purpose I can think of in giving prepromoted Sages knives is (like someone else already pointed out) to deliberately make them worse than the ones that you trained and promoted yourself. I doubt anyone in the design team ever looked at the game and honestly believed that giving the lowest might weapon type to a class with one of the lowest STR stats was an attractive option.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, GonzoMD1993 said:

I think it would have been an interesting choice if they made Silence staffs or Kishuna-style magic negating areas somewhat common, since there'd be an actual strategic advantage to picking knives over staves (i.e. your magic units would not be defenseless when locked out of magic), although I do think they'd also need to buff knives as well because they're still stupidly weak even on primary knife fighters (Sothe and Volke). Still seems kind of hard to pull off though, since making silencing effects too common would just make mages a bad class regardless of them having access to knives on promotion.

Even doing a Kishuna style thing just once would have some niche scenario to justify the choice.

[𝐅𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐥]

as a concept, it could have been fine depending on the situation, for example if there were groups of enemy bishops/mages with silence staffs debuffing from afar like in Genealogy.

in that case, knifes could have become a backup weapon based on their utility, but even then they should have probably worked around the basic stats of knifes, since the damage was awful even for thiefs compared to other sword users.

there were some swords, lances and axes with damage output based on MGC rather than STR, so they could have done the same for knifes too in order to make promotion choices a bit more relevant. giving them additional debuffs like poison, or other effects such as the HP leech of Nosferatu tomes, could have been a good option as well.

as things were in PoR, going for knifes upon promotion wasn't exactly an optimal choice, more like a handicap rather than anything actually useful, especially because they didn't have any kind of bonus against other creatures, unlike magic tomes with damage boost against laguz/dragon/flying units.

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, 𝐅𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐫 said:

as things were in PoR, going for knifes upon promotion wasn't exactly an optimal choice, more like a handicap rather than anything actually useful, especially because they didn't have any kind of bonus against other creatures, unlike magic tomes with damage boost against laguz/dragon/flying units.

The Stiletto is effective against armored units, but that's meaningless when they're going to do more damage with magic.