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Three Houses without Gender-locked Classes: An ACTUAL playthrough tbh lol // Gender-lock-free VW and AM complete! Up next: CF!


LJ_Reflet
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Hey guys, so I know that we all hate the gender-restrictions on the classes in Three Houses—or in Fire Emblem in general. So, I decided to hack my Switch so that I could play 3H with a mod that removes the gender-lock LOL.

Instead of creating my own mod, I used a mod I found on Gamebanana, since modding Three Houses requires knowledge in hex editing—which I knew nothing about before. The mod allowed unrestricted access to all classes in the game, including lord-exclusive classes and enemy/NPC-only classes.

I honestly didn’t want the access to the unique/special classes and wanted to keep the playthrough as close to vanilla as possible (as vanilla as a modded game could be lmfao). So, after annoying several Discord servers on how to hex edit, I was finally able to “clean up” the mod and only allow access to the main classes of the game.

We all know how several characters in Three Houses were done dirty by being restricted from certain classes, like War Master Hilda, Gremory Linhardt, and Pegasus Knight Sylvain. Well, I am here to tell you that I have the answers to all of your questions about these builds because I have actually had to opportunity to try them out LOL. (I'll also note that I used the same-sex marriage mod on top of the class mod)

And without further ado, and as a YouTuber would title their video for clickbait, I tried a gender-lock-free playthrough of Three Houses so you wouldn’t have to.

I forgot to take screenshots of their endgame stats (and I already overwrote the save file with cleared game data), but I will share screenshots of them in the class to show you guys how they look. I will also include the class paths and skill builds I used with these characters so that you may use them as a suggestion in the case you will want to try a mod like this.

Gender-lock-free playthroughs I have completed so far (I will update this as I complete more playthroughs)

  • Verdant Wind (Hard/Classic, no NG+)
  • Azure Moon (Hard/Classic, NG+)

UP NEXT: Crimson Flower!

~*~*~

The Verdant Wind builds:

  • Pegasus Knight-Falcon Knight MALE Byleth
Spoiler

FalconKnightMByleth.thumb.jpg.9952f33b3e80abf578cc84fcfdc4a0f3.jpg

 

I could have easily had the same experience with a Pegasus Knight Byleth by using female Byleth—who also can natively S-Support Claude. HOWEVER, I, being a gay man, //s i m p // for male Byleth and much prefer to play as him (But this doesn’t go without saying that I actually have done a playthrough with a Pegasus Knight F!Byleth for Crimson Flower in the past). That being said, male Byleth was originally locked out of the Pegasus Knight class line, and I was ecstatic that I could finally live my dreams of being gay-married to Claude while riding on a graceful ass fucking PEGASUS.

As expected, male Pegasus Byleth would perform exactly the same as female Byleth, but I’ll just talk about how the build works for them regardless. I want to note that the weapons I focused on were swords, lances, and bows. I really enjoy bow-Pegasi since bows and flying are great in 3H.

Pegasus Knight is a great class, and arguably one of the best in its tier. Unhindered movement, a top tier mastery skill, and great speed. Pegasus Knight Byleth performs amazingly once promoted and remains this way for a good amount of time. However, the class loses its potency around level 20 as it is missing out on a direct Advanced Class promotion.

At level 20, sword units get the extra 20% growth rate boost to speed from either Swordmaster or Assassin, Wyvern Riders get 7 movement, and some classes even begin to offer faire skills. On top of that, certain classes get innate crit and avoid bonuses. Pegasus Knight gets stuck with a mere +10% speed, +5% resistance, +10% charm, and 6 movement. A fill-in promotion for Advanced tier is difficult as well, since none of Pegasus Knight’s and Falcon Knight’s required weapon ranks exactly match any of those in the advanced tier classes. Side promotions for Byleth is really difficult as well without NG+ since Faculty Training is very limited.

I did notice that once my allies received their advanced promotion, Byleth did start to fall behind. His dodge wasn’t that great, strength was a little low, and even his speed—while good—wasn’t high enough to double certain enemies. At this point, Wyvern-Claude was stronger than Pegasus-Byleth—and both had Death Blow+Darting Blow.

However, things turned around once he received his promotion to Falcon Knight and it was a huge breath of fresh air. His strength finally started to pick up and he could finally reliably ORKO again. He wasn’t as much of a dodge tank and crit machine as Assassin-Byleth (which is a build I have done in the past), but he still did well and had the benefit of using Alert Stance. A Pegasus Knight Byleth, IMO, is a late game bloomer. It’s a little bit of a rollercoaster, as he does shine at level 10-20, falls off from 20-30, then picks up once again at 30 after Falcon Knight promotion.

The most fun thing about this build was that, since Leonie was already a Pegasus Knight and Claude had a side promotion to master Pegasus Knight, the three of us had Triangle Attack. Therefore, the three of us could Triangle Attack three times in a row—which was my favorite thing to do for those monsters with insane HP LOL. Triangle Attack is a meme of a combat art, but it’s extremely fun to spam and a great way to kill monsters LOL. What’s even better is that the game has unused voice clips for all units for Triangle Attack.

~*~*~

My build:

  • Class path: Commoner > Soldier+Myrmidon > Pegasus Knight > Brigand (side promotion) > Falcon Knight
    • I originally classed him as a Soldier for Beginner tier to build up on his lance rank, but I realized I wanted more speed than I did defense, so I switched to Myrmidon about halfway through LOL.
    • Fighter may be better option as Strength +2 will help a lot before Death Blow
    • If you want to reap the benefits of an Advanced tier class, Swordmaster and Assassin may be the easiest to achieve without sidetracking on faculty training too much
    • Alternatively, you can spend time in Enlightened One since it’s a free promotion
  • Abilities:
    • Darting Blow
    • Death Blow
    • Alert Stance+
    • Sword/Lance/Bow Prowess (I alternated between the 3)
    • Close Counter
  • TRIANGLE ATTACK EVERYTHING FUCKING TRUST ME ON THIS

 

  • Pegasus Knight Claude (Side-promotion only)
Spoiler

(No actual screenshot of him in the class since I didn't keep him in it that long but here's a pic of the squad's Triangle Attack tbh lmao)

TRIANGLEATTAAAAACK.thumb.jpg.6e914e5148f46ab077c5219fb48eb070.jpg

 

Despite having a bane in lances, I had Claude take a side promotion to Pegasus Knight to pick up Darting Blow. Out of the three lords, he arguably makes the best use for it since he already has the best speed between them, and he can doubly much more reliably than Dimitri or Edelgard.

It took a little bit of extra work since I already gave him another side promo to Brigand for Death Blow and his bane in lances made raising his rank a little slow, but nothing that statues and the sauna couldn’t fix. I didn’t level him up in either Brigand or Pegasus Knight, I just certified him, grinded class EXP by throwing him in a forest with enemies until he reached mastery, then immediately reclassed him back to Archer/Sniper. I did use him as a Pegasus Knight for Hanneman and Manuela’s paralogue, but he only gained about 1-2 levels there.

I don’t regret this at all LOL. Claude is already crazy good in the vanilla game, but Darting Blow seriously amplified his performance. You can say that the speed is overkill because he’s already quite fast, but I’d rather have him get the chance to double than not double at all or even resist doubling.

As I mentioned above, I ended up getting Triangle Attack with both Claude and M!Byleth, as well as Leonie (who I always make a Falcon Knight). Seriously, spamming Triangle Attack is my new favorite strategy for killing monsters with crazy defense. I honestly highly recommended this meme of a strategy LOL.

Fun tip: You don’t need to be in a “triangle” formation to use Triangle Attack on monsters—you just need to have 3 fliers adjacent to the monster.

10/10 would recommend pegging Claude

~*~*~

My build:

  • Class path: Noble > Fighter > Archer > Pegasus Knight+Brigand (side promotion) > Wyvern Rider > Wyvern Master > Barbarossa
  • Abilities:
    • Darting Blow
    • Death Blow
    • Bow Prowess
    • Alert Stance+
    • Close Counter
  • TRIANGLE ATTACK EVERYTHING FUCKING TRUST ME ON THIS IM NOT KIDDING YOU

 

  • War Master Hilda (+Grappler Hilda)
Spoiler

WarMasterHilda.thumb.jpg.abe47c657db817b9b537159df9c61c7e.jpg

 

If you thought Hilda would be broken as a War Master, you thought right. The strength and speed growths from War Master are the same as Wyvern Lord, but Hilda will have access to Quick Riposte and Fistfaire. Despite not having a boon in Brawling, she does it extremely well.

Instead of going Warrior, I decided to promote her into Grappler for the Advanced tier—just for the sake of finally having access to an originally male-locked class even though Hilda’s more axe-oriented. I used both gauntlets and axes pretty evenly with her just so that she had a cheaper option for brave effect weapons

Her high speed and high strength growths already set her up for a typical Berserker build, and it’s a shame she never had access to the class in the first place. Raphael is Golden Deer’s designated Brawler, but Hilda does the job way better than him. She had the highest physical damage output out of my whole team, and she always reached OHKO thresholds—not one round, but one HIT. Fierce-Iron Fist on her was completely overkill, but did I use it? Yes.

Even before Quick Riposte, she would frequently double, but she didn’t even need to as she could simply one-shot everything. Either way, she “not only killed, but murdered” (twitter reference lmao).

One thing I do want to say though is that in previous playthroughs, I always made her a Wyvern Lord and I did miss flying on her since this is my first time using her as an infantry unit. Being footlocked of course meant that she missed out on jumping forward into the frontlines, but regardless, she was still an amazing unit as a War Master.

~*~*~

My build:

  • Class path: Noble > Fighter > Brigand > Grappler > War Master
  • Abilities:
    • Death Blow
    • Axe Prowess
    • Gauntlet Prowess
    • Quick Riposte
    • Battalion Wrath

 

  • Dark Flier Lorenz
Spoiler

DarkFlierLorenz1.thumb.jpg.92bd39c97c76805c0ab4272f5bad3e7c.jpg

 

For every single playthrough I’ve ever done with the Golden Deer (before the mod), Lorenz has always been my worst unit. He was always too slow to double, and he lacked the raw power to one shot anything.

However, Lorenz finds his saving grace in Dark Flier (for a little while at least). Honestly, Dark Flier suits his character so much that he deserves to have a unique model for the class.

Dark Flier is one of the better magic classes in Three Houses but has lost its potency throughout the generations of FE (do you remember how fucking broken they were in Awakening omfg). Despite lacking the raw damage of Warlock and Dark Knight and the extra range of Valkyrie, Dark Flier at the least offers the best movement and speed out of the other magic classes. Regardless, it’s a great class for Lorenz and probably his best magical option since it significantly fixes his speed problem (when none of the other magic classes do) while still offering him Tomefaire and great movement. A flying Lorenz is extremely helpful in chapter 13 as well.

Once I promoted him at level 20, he was finally able to double and was very reliable at killing enemies for once. Hell, he even got MVP a few times soon after promotion. At one point (and this was very short-lived), he did outshine Lysithea who was JUST short of ORKO-ing by 1-3 damage and couldn't double due to her heavy spells and was hindered by her 4-move.

However, the biggest drawback to this class is that it’s the only magic class that does not offer a boost in magic growth. While Lorenz’s speed was decent enough to avoid getting doubled (in the early game at least), as the game progressed, he lost his potency once again and remained as mediocre as ever. Still, he did at least have his spotlight even if for only a little bit. I just also wanna say that at Endgame, he was my ONLY unit with NO stats above 30—and I fed him ALL of my magic boosters. And yes, he was the same level as everyone else at Endgame LOL.

As a Dark Flier, he’s still not an amazing unit by any means, but it’s a huge step up from his usual Mage-Dark Knight or Cavalier-Paladin paths. He’ll perform quite well upon promotion, but his low growths will inevitably catch up with him. Also, I found that his bulkiness was greatly reduced as a Dark Flier. Compared to the other mages, he has the best HP growth, but he was taking huge hits from enemies that hitting-and-running was the only thing he could do to survive when enemy phase came along.

Overall, Dark Flier is a fun alternative for Dark Knight for Lorenz since it doesn’t kill his already bad speed and offers better movement (and a better mastery skill I guess), but a promotion to Dark Knight is something that should be considered if you want to sacrifice speed and movement for better damage potential. I kept him as a Dark Flier until endgame, though.

If you’re taking him down this path, I highly recommend picking up Darting Blow since you’re already training him in flying anyways and he has a boon in lances. I did have him pick up the skill myself, but I did this rather late in the game.

I didn’t try this, but Valkyrie is also a great alternative and much easier for Lorenz to promote to since he has a boon in riding. It offers a slight 5% growth boost to magic as opposed to Dark Flier’s lack of one, and it serves as the perfect steppingstone to Dark Knight should you consider that path.

~*~*~

My build:

  • Class path: Noble > Monk > Mage > Dark Flier
    • Dark Knight is an optional promotion if desired
    • Poison Strike maybe worth picking up just to help increase damage output
    • A Pegasus Knight side promotion for Darting Blow is also recommended to help with his speed (but if you wanna meme around with Triangle Attack, it won’t work with magic)
    • I should have picked up Bowbreaker from Warlock, but I didn’t LOL. Imma be honest, I forgot LOL. Highly recommended if not necessary.
    • Gremory also sounds like a good option ?
  • Abilities:
    • Fiendish Blow
    • Reason Prowess
    • Alert Stance (couldn’t get Alert Stance+ in time)
    • Darting Blow
    • Dexterity +4

 

  • Falcon Knight Seteth
Spoiler

FalconKnightSeteth.thumb.jpg.7161074c4651b60139f8df57b6398873.jpg

 

I honestly can’t say much about Seteth since I pretty much benched him as soon as he joined, but I made him Byleth’s or Claude’s adjutant for pretty much every battle, so he was able to level up along the way. Once the deployment limit increased, I did use him – but this didn’t really happen until Shambhala and endgame LOL.

I was fortunately able to get his weapon ranks up in time to promote to Falcon Knight at level 30 (he was pretty close for everything except swords), but I didn’t go through the trouble of backtracking to master Pegasus Knight.

From the few times I’ve used him, he’s amazing as a Falcon Knight—better than as a Wyvern Lord. For one, he has a personal lance and despite not having any special combat art linked to it, he comes with a slightly higher rank in lances than he does axes so he can use higher ranked lances much more quickly. On top of that, he’s Verdant Wind’s only natural Swift Strikes user, so it’s best to take advantage of lances with him.

That being said, he really, really does benefit from the class because of Lancefaire. He was able to kill enemies who were faster and higher leveled than him in one shot (it’s +10 extra damage omf) with Swift Strikes. The extra speed from Falcon Knight is nothing to scoff at either. One of the main drawbacks of this class is that it doesn’t really compliment his great defense and can’t really fix his already bad res.

Once again, I can’t say much more about Falcon Knight Seteth as he was merely a chronic adjutant until the last 2 chapters, but he did well during the few times I had space to deploy him.

~*~*~

My build:

  • Class path: Wyvern Rider > Falcon Knight
    • Backtracking to Pegasus Knight is recommended for Darting Blow to optimize combat potential
  • Abilities:
    • Tbh, I forgot his ability build LOL but I think I did:
    • Lance Prowess
    • Authority Prowess
    • Alert Stance+
    • Swordbreaker
    • Battalion Wrath

 

  • Out of House Recruits:
Spoiler

I did recruit a few other units in this playthrough, but I usually prefer to use the house’s primary units over recruits for the sake of story. For those that are curious, I recruited Ashe, Linhardt, Petra, Shamir, Cyril, and Hanneman. Rarely did I ever deploy them, if at all. I only really recruited them for story-related reasons or paired endings.

The only gender-lock-free class I gave to my recruits was Falcon Knight Ashe. I used him pretty often in part 1 for filler combat, but he ultimately ended up as a chronic adjutant like Seteth. I recruited Linhardt for Leonie’s paralogue and Lysithea’s paired ending, but I didn’t use him enough to even reach level 30 in time to achieve Gremory.

I do have plans on using them in my next playthroughs with their main houses—Gremory Linhardt is gonna happen guys LOL. And I’ll have a more in-depth analysis of Falcon Knight Ashe following my next playthrough with Azure Moon.

 

  • I didn't do Dark Mage/Dark Bishop Lysithea, I'm so sorry guys LMAO
Spoiler

I'll be honest: I couldn't get the Dark Seals in time for when she was at the appropriate level for Dark Mage--and you need to promote to Dark Mage to access Dark Bishop.

Even when I was able to get Dark Seals, I had already promoted her to Bishop and wanted the extra Warp use. Dark Mage/Bishop does fall in comparison to Mage/Warlock anyway, but maybe for a future playthrough, I'll do it for the novelty HAHA.

~*~*~

EDIT: Just finished up my Azure Moon run, and now I'm starting my Crimson Flower Gender-Lock-Free run ! Hoping to make Hubert's dream of being a Pegasus Knight come true LOL

Edited by LJ_Tenma
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10 hours ago, LJ_Tenma said:

Hey guys, so I know that we all hate the gender-restrictions on the classes in Three Houses—or in Fire Emblem in general. So, I decided to hack my Switch so that I could play 3H with a mod that removes the gender-lock LOL.

Only tangentially related, but am I the only one who really doesn't mind gender restrictions on classes? In theory, I actually kinda like it as another way to meaningfully differentiate between units, although in practice the implementation is kinda bad so it doesn't really work all that well. But beyond that, it's just not something that's ever been a big deal to me. There are enough different class options that I never really feel the absence of the restricted ones. Sure, it would be nice to be able to make Hilda into a War Master (or whatever) but when I can also make her a Wyvern Lord, Falcon Knight, Great Knight, Dancer, Paladin, etc. then I'm not really sad about it. I can see why it does bother some people, mind. It's just not something I personally care about.

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46 minutes ago, lenticular said:

Only tangentially related, but am I the only one who really doesn't mind gender restrictions on classes? In theory, I actually kinda like it as another way to meaningfully differentiate between units, although in practice the implementation is kinda bad so it doesn't really work all that well. But beyond that, it's just not something that's ever been a big deal to me. There are enough different class options that I never really feel the absence of the restricted ones. Sure, it would be nice to be able to make Hilda into a War Master (or whatever) but when I can also make her a Wyvern Lord, Falcon Knight, Great Knight, Dancer, Paladin, etc. then I'm not really sad about it. I can see why it does bother some people, mind. It's just not something I personally care about.

I mean I can't speak for everybody, but gender-locked classes is honestly the game mechanic in FE that I hate the most lol

But I'm speaking from experience--as not many others can--and removing the gender-lock did not make any of the characters any more similar or different from one another. I had Raphael and Hilda as War Masters and in no way were they the same. In no way was my Dark Flier Lorenz the same as Constance. In no way was my Falcon Knight Seteth the same as Ingrid. Gender-locking classes only prevents certain units from reaching a higher potential and removing it helped them achieve it. If you can see the difference between a Gremory Annette and a Gremory Lysithea (both of which are possible in the vanilla game), then I don't really see why allowing Sylvain to become a Falcon Knight would make him any more similar to Ingrid.

Each character is already given a certain skill set, boons/banes, and stat growths that differentiates them from one another, and locking them out of certain classes does little to complement that. It only restricts the player from creativity and versatility in a so-called sandbox game--and all this for such arbitrary reason.

Without the gender-lock, I felt as if I had significantly more options on how to build my party and could even change things up even more with those options in later playthroughs.

You may not care about it much, but after playing through SoV, Awakening, and 3H, I got kind of sick of the restrictions. Honestly, you should try it out LOL.

Edited by LJ_Tenma
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In terms of meaningful differentiation between units, yeah, there isn't actually all that much in the game. But the comparison between Hilda and Raphael is a pretty good one. They're kinda similar units in a lot of ways, except that Hilda is pretty much just better. So why bother using Raphael at all? Well, maybe because you want a War Master or a Grappler. That's probably the biggest single thing that he has over Hilda, so having her be locked out of those classes helps to keep Raphael relevant.

Of course, you then get situations like Hapi and Linhardt, where they're very similar units except that Hapi is just a little bit better and she also has access to the relevant gender-locked class (in their case, Gremory). That sort of thing isn't doing anyone any favours. But in theory at least, if not in practice, I do think that gender locks could be used to help balance and differentiate units.

1 hour ago, LJ_Tenma said:

Honestly, you should try it out LOL.

I've looked into Switch homebrew stuff before, but decided that I don't want to take the risk of either bricking my Switch or getting it blocked by Nintendo. Especially since most of my games are bought from the eshop, so losing the Switch would mean losing them as well.

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3 hours ago, lenticular said:

In terms of meaningful differentiation between units, yeah, there isn't actually all that much in the game. But the comparison between Hilda and Raphael is a pretty good one. They're kinda similar units in a lot of ways, except that Hilda is pretty much just better. So why bother using Raphael at all? Well, maybe because you want a War Master or a Grappler. That's probably the biggest single thing that he has over Hilda, so having her be locked out of those classes helps to keep Raphael relevant.

Disregarding my own personal playthrough where I had both Hilda and Raphael as War Masters (as I mentioned in my original post, I just prefer to use each house's primary units), if Hilda performs better as a War Master, that would just give incentive to use Raphael in a different class as he now has more options. Even still, it's not a problem to have different units in the same class, as the Golden Deer has 3 potential archers in the same house. The same argument could be used for unisex classes--would Ignatz lose his place as a Bow Knight if Leonie exists? Even in a non-gender-locked environment, they still play completely different roles and have completely different skill sets.

Also, it's more than just having access to the class, it's about accessing skills as well. Darting Blow is an extremely useful skill, but only female units can access it (barring Jeritza who learns it as a budding talent) even though there are several male units that would highly appreciate it. Quick Riposte, despite being a very late game skill, is one of the best skills in the game--yet only male units can even achieve it.

3 hours ago, lenticular said:

Of course, you then get situations like Hapi and Linhardt, where they're very similar units except that Hapi is just a little bit better and she also has access to the relevant gender-locked class (in their case, Gremory). That sort of thing isn't doing anyone any favours. But in theory at least, if not in practice, I do think that gender locks could be used to help balance and differentiate units.

And this is exactly the reason why I hate gender-locked classes because of the fact it doesn't benefit certain units, if not everybody. If we look at Fates, it's the only game in the series that has no gender-locked classes (barring amiibo classes and some DLC as Dark Falcon and Dread Fighter were made unisex for the first time), and it still remained balanced. Nobody was overpowered or made irrelevant for having access to all classes, but you could still optimize your units by reclassing them to whatever you wanted. The only restrictions that were made was if a unit couldn't support another unit with a class that they didn't already have in their set (ie. Hayato cannot become a Paladin because he doesn't support any Cavaliers)*

*Honestly, this took effort to find, which means the amount of classes that are inaccessible to a certain character in Fates is very, very low.

Even if both Linhardt and Hapi were both Gremories, they'd still be very different units. Linhardt is heavily support-oriented and Hapi is more of a mixed support/offense mage (not to mention that Hapi learns Dark Magic while Linhardt learns Black Magic). Giving them both access to the same class doesn't invalidate either of their niches. And yet, Lysithea and Hapi are significantly more similar and can both become Gremories naturally.

It's hard to consider 3H's system to be balanced from a gender-perspective when magic classes are heavily skewed towards female units and Brawling--a brand new weapon type--is limited to only male units, making all male magic units inferior and female unable to enjoy a new weapon type first introduced in this game.

Edited by LJ_Tenma
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5 hours ago, lenticular said:

Only tangentially related, but am I the only one who really doesn't mind gender restrictions on classes? In theory, I actually kinda like it as another way to meaningfully differentiate between units, although in practice the implementation is kinda bad so it doesn't really work all that well.

I don't mind the idea of increasing character differentiation by having some classes unavailable to some characters (as long as it's cleary communicated, of course). For instance, what if Dedue couldn't become a flier because he's too big, or Hubert because he's afraid of heights? What if Linhardt absolutely refused to use fist weapons because he can't stand to get blood on his hands? What if Petra refused to train (Fodlan) faith because it goes against her religious beliefs? I'd be cool with things like that.

But 3H's class locks don't do that. They don't tell me more about the characters or feel like they arise organically; they just go along gender lines. This leads to some weird gender essentialism that I'm not a fan of. Why can't women be heroes or war masters, exactly? Why can't men be valkyries or gremories? To say nothing of the weird "men can't ride pegasi" thing which seems to trace back to misogynist views from unicorn mythology about female purity, and the sooner the series cans that forever the better IMO.

It also just completely cuts off some broad build possibilities. If you want to make a female martial artist in 3H, prior to the DLC, they're just going to be massively sub-optimal compared to males, and that sucks for someone who wants to build one.

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I'm impressed that the characters look reasonably natural post-hack.  My own personal presumption was that the reason that 3H gender-locked a bunch of classes was to avoid having to animate them again.  But...  everyone looks fine in those screenshots, so if the models were flexible enough to allow this, then question mark?!  Just let every character be every class.  (Especially the added DLC classes - Hubert & Lorenz really wouldn't mind Valkyrie / Mage Knight, and there's not even any "pegasi only let women ride them" concerns to worry about there!)

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8 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Why can't women be heroes or war masters, exactly? Why can't men be valkyries or gremories? To say nothing of the weird "men can't ride pegasi" thing which seems to trace back to misogynist views from unicorn mythology about female purity, and the sooner the series cans that forever the better IMO.

What's even worse is that they did remove this concept in Fates, only to bring it back from SoV onwards. SoV kind of gets a pass because it's a remake (still hate the idea of it tho), but Gaiden didn't even have female villagers in the first place (ie. Faye)--so they could have easily just increased the class options for everybody.

4 hours ago, SnowFire said:

I'm impressed that the characters look reasonably natural post-hack.  My own personal presumption was that the reason that 3H gender-locked a bunch of classes was to avoid having to animate them again.  But...  everyone looks fine in those screenshots, so if the models were flexible enough to allow this, then question mark?!  Just let every character be every class. 

Fun fact: male characters still blow kisses while mounted on Pegasi as a victory pose with bows LOL. 2000% not in character for Seteth, 3000% in character for Sylvain HAHA.

But also, I was actually expecting male characters to end up using female victory poses for each weapon while dismounted, but ... they retained their respective gender's animation. Which begs the question even more.

 

Edited by LJ_Tenma
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13 hours ago, LJ_Tenma said:

Disregarding my own personal playthrough where I had both Hilda and Raphael as War Masters (as I mentioned in my original post, I just prefer to use each house's primary units), if Hilda performs better as a War Master, that would just give incentive to use Raphael in a different class as he now has more options. Even still, it's not a problem to have different units in the same class, as the Golden Deer has 3 potential archers in the same house. The same argument could be used for unisex classes--would Ignatz lose his place as a Bow Knight if Leonie exists? Even in a non-gender-locked environment, they still play completely different roles and have completely different skill sets.

Honestly, the way that I like to play the game, yeah, I do find Ignatz a difficult unit to justify. I don't like having multiple people in the same class. I will rarely run more than one copy of a class in my end-game team, and I don't think I've ever run more than two copies of a class. Part of that is for practical concerns like making sure that I have units who can fill different combat roles and niches or making sure that I don't have too many bow users and not enough good bows, but a lot of it is also just personal preference. I run lots of different classes and builds because I enjoy running lots of different classes and builds. So when it comes to Ignatz, sure I can make him be a Sniper or a Bow Knight  but if I do that then he'll probably end up feeling like worse-Leonie or worse-Claude. Yeah, he has his rallies and his debuffs going on which differentiate him a little, but only a little. So I usually either turn him into a Dancer or drop him entirely.

13 hours ago, LJ_Tenma said:

Also, it's more than just having access to the class, it's about accessing skills as well. Darting Blow is an extremely useful skill, but only female units can access it (barring Jeritza who learns it as a budding talent) even though there are several male units that would highly appreciate it. Quick Riposte, despite being a very late game skill, is one of the best skills in the game--yet only male units can even achieve it.

Sure, I'm not disputing that unrestricted access to all classes would make a lot of characters stronger. I just don't necessarily want them to be stronger. There are a lot of characters who would appreciate access to Swift Strikes or Windsweep or Warp or Bolting or a Crest or a higher strength growth or any other number of things. I want for units to be different. That means that I want them to have their individual strengths but also their individual weaknesses. For example, Felix is an excellent unit. One of his weaknesses is that he isn't ever able to pick up Darting Blow. I have no problem with this.

14 hours ago, LJ_Tenma said:

And this is exactly the reason why I hate gender-locked classes because of the fact it doesn't benefit certain units, if not everybody. If we look at Fates, it's the only game in the series that has no gender-locked classes (barring amiibo classes and some DLC as Dark Falcon and Dread Fighter were made unisex for the first time), and it still remained balanced. Nobody was overpowered or made irrelevant for having access to all classes, but you could still optimize your units by reclassing them to whatever you wanted. The only restrictions that were made was if a unit couldn't support another unit with a class that they didn't already have in their set (ie. Hayato cannot become a Paladin because he doesn't support any Cavaliers)*

Personally, I didn't enjoy the class system in Fates at all. Primarily because it's so deeply tied into the game's support system and I didn't enjoy that at all. It's not an objectively bad system, I know that a lot of people liked it, but for me personally, I would rather go back to no reclassing at all than revisit the way it worked in Fates.

10 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

But 3H's class locks don't do that. They don't tell me more about the characters or feel like they arise organically; they just go along gender lines. This leads to some weird gender essentialism that I'm not a fan of. Why can't women be heroes or war masters, exactly? Why can't men be valkyries or gremories? To say nothing of the weird "men can't ride pegasi" thing which seems to trace back to misogynist views from unicorn mythology about female purity, and the sooner the series cans that forever the better IMO.

That's absolutely fair, and I can definitely understand that way of thinking. I guess that for me, though, I don't really expect my fantasy worlds to be flawless, and I see the gender essentialism as being a whole lot less disturbing than, for instance, war, authoritarianism and genocide. It's also not as if Fódlan is otherwise a progressive utopia but then there's this one weird bit of gender essentialism that's completely at odds with everything else in the lore and world-building. It's entirely believable that it would have weird traditions about how some classes would interact with gender roles (though I certainly wouldn't object if this were actually covered in the text rather than left to subtext).

Also, if I'm being honest, sometimes I just like playing at storybook princess. Of course, the actual real basis for the archetype and its stories is pretty garbage. I certainly wouldn't enjoy the reality of it. But there's nothing unique there. I can enjoy the fantasy of the archetype of a heroic master swordsman while also recognising that the reality that it's based on is also pretty terrible.

I've always had a soft spot for the Pegasus Knight line because it's kinf of the princess class, with characters like Caeda, Elincia (not technically a Pegasus Knight, but close enough) and Clair (not technically a princess, but close enough). It's also a class that has been portrayed as embodying traditionally feminine virtues like grace and elegance, but without ever being weak or helpless. And I low-key love that there's room for something like that to exist in the middle of this game series about war and battles.

Now, would it be possible to have a world where the class was still about the exact same virtues but wasn't gender restricted? Yes, absolutely. Would it be a potentially fascinating subplot to see a character like Felix or Dimitri have to step outside their comfort zone of performative masculinity in order to master a new fighting style? Oh hell yes. I would love that. However, would I trust Intelligent Systems and Nintendo to be able to tell this story in a way that was both compelling and culturally sensitive? No, not even a little bit.

If they actually do get rid of gender-locks again, then we'd probably end up back with something like Fates, where a pegasus is just another mount that people ride into battle and all of the history of the lore and uniqueness of the class would be lost. Which would make me a little bit sad.

11 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

It also just completely cuts off some broad build possibilities. If you want to make a female martial artist in 3H, prior to the DLC, they're just going to be massively sub-optimal compared to males, and that sucks for someone who wants to build one.

Yeah, I can't argue with that. That there were no brawling classes at all for women did annoy me a little. I'm glad they recified it in the DLC, but it should never have been a problem to begin with.

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3 hours ago, lenticular said:

Honestly, the way that I like to play the game, yeah, I do find Ignatz a difficult unit to justify. I don't like having multiple people in the same class. I will rarely run more than one copy of a class in my end-game team, and I don't think I've ever run more than two copies of a class. Part of that is for practical concerns like making sure that I have units who can fill different combat roles and niches or making sure that I don't have too many bow users and not enough good bows, but a lot of it is also just personal preference. I run lots of different classes and builds because I enjoy running lots of different classes and builds. So when it comes to Ignatz, sure I can make him be a Sniper or a Bow Knight  but if I do that then he'll probably end up feeling like worse-Leonie or worse-Claude. Yeah, he has his rallies and his debuffs going on which differentiate him a little, but only a little. So I usually either turn him into a Dancer or drop him entirely.

Since there's no rules on how one can play the game as it is a matter of personal style and preference, I can't really argue about whether or not you should use Ignatz alongside Leonie or Claude. However, in my personal playthroughs, I don't mind having multiple characters in the same class. I do enjoy having 2 healers at once or 3 bow-users, but I still find their differences despite being in the same classes or using the same weapons.

3 hours ago, lenticular said:

Sure, I'm not disputing that unrestricted access to all classes would make a lot of characters stronger. I just don't necessarily want them to be stronger. There are a lot of characters who would appreciate access to Swift Strikes or Windsweep or Warp or Bolting or a Crest or a higher strength growth or any other number of things. I want for units to be different. That means that I want them to have their individual strengths but also their individual weaknesses. For example, Felix is an excellent unit. One of his weaknesses is that he isn't ever able to pick up Darting Blow. I have no problem with this.

The difference between Darting Blow/Quick Riposte (and by extension, Lifetaker, Poison Strike, Uncanny Blow, etc.) and Swift Strikes/Windsweep/Warp/Bolting is that Darting Blow and Quick Riposte are class-locked. Swift Strikes/Windsweep/Warp/Bolting are all character-locked. Only a select few characters are given these in their kit, and there's no possible way for, say, Ashe or Bernadetta to obtain Point-Blank Volley or Flayn or (a playable) Manuela to learn Physic even though all of these characters would appreciate them. I don't mind this restriction because the basis of this restriction is not on gender, but on character, which is similar to the concept that Dark Holy Elf brought up. However, if we take something like Death Blow for example, it's a skill on the same level of usefulness as Darting Blow (and also in the same "Blow"-skill family) and absolutely everybody can achieve it because it's a class-skill. Why can't Darting Blow be the same?

Crests on the other hand are a on completely different ball park, as they start off as character-locked, but can be given to any unit the player desires in New Game+.

I'm not asking for units to be direct copies of each other just because they can access the same classes, I'm just asking for a restriction to be removed as it is based on arbitrary reason. To remove the gender-lock is not the same thing as making all units the same. Yes, they will all have access to the same classes, but they will still retain their differences given to them from their learned skills and abilities as well as their stat growths. I want units to be different as well, but simply removing the gender-lock doesn't also remove their differences.

Once again, I am speaking from experience from this playthrough--removing the gender-lock did not make any unit any more similar to each other, but rather helped optimize their performance.

3 hours ago, lenticular said:

Personally, I didn't enjoy the class system in Fates at all. Primarily because it's so deeply tied into the game's support system and I didn't enjoy that at all. It's not an objectively bad system, I know that a lot of people liked it, but for me personally, I would rather go back to no reclassing at all than revisit the way it worked in Fates.

Being your personal opinion on the system, again, I can't argue with you about that. However, my point still stands on the idea that removing the gender-lock does not create an imbalance in the class system or even between characters.

3 hours ago, lenticular said:

I've always had a soft spot for the Pegasus Knight line because it's kinf of the princess class, with characters like Caeda, Elincia (not technically a Pegasus Knight, but close enough) and Clair (not technically a princess, but close enough). It's also a class that has been portrayed as embodying traditionally feminine virtues like grace and elegance, but without ever being weak or helpless. And I low-key love that there's room for something like that to exist in the middle of this game series about war and battles

And see, this is where it makes me uncomfortable as it perpetuates the idea that men cannot exude femininity and women cannot embody masculinity. Then you have characters like Yuri and Catherine who break those gender norms, yet are restricted from certain classes due to their assigned gender.

This is kind of a personal point, but--I being a gay man myself would love to express my femininity through the characters I enjoy in this game, especially with my avatar character, yet I cannot (I can't even marry Claude in the vanilla game smh LOL).

However, this kind of argument may lead to a completely different conversation outside my original post regarding just the game

3 hours ago, lenticular said:

If they actually do get rid of gender-locks again, then we'd probably end up back with something like Fates, where a pegasus is just another mount that people ride into battle and all of the history of the lore and uniqueness of the class would be lost. Which would make me a little bit sad.

In Fates, if you noticed, with the exception of Subaki, the only characters with Sky Knight in their class set were the Hoshidan Royals--Shigure included (a royal through Azura). Selena, sure, but she was a "special" case due to being a returnee from Awakening. Pegasus/Sky Knights still at least retained their association with royalty and nobility in Fates--which is a concept that can definitely be carried over to future titles.

In 3H, it's hard to see any type of lore associated with Pegasi at all as they are never mentioned in any dialogue. Not even Ingrid--the game's only default Pegasus Knight--mentions them. Sumia, Cordelia, Hinoka, and Subaki all mention something about Pegasi in some of their dialogue in their respective games, even if very brief. For people who play 3H as their first Fire Emblem game before having played older titles (like myself), it is difficult to see any lore regarding Pegasi at all in 3H. To newcomers, it is just a mount.

My other problem with the fact that they brought back the gender-lock is that they put the gender-lock on classes that were unisex before. Flavia--a female character and one of my favorites--was recruited as a Hero in Awakening. However, in 3H, Hero is male-only. Tharja and Nyx were both female Dark Mages, but it's restricted to only male-units 3H. Gremory is 3H's rough equivalent of the Sage class from previous titles, being the only class that specializes in both Reason/Faith (aka Tomes/Staves), but it has become female only when characters like Ricken and Hayato (Onmyoji) had access to the class. There was no lore in any of this explained in 3H. I wouldn't be okay with the restriction even if they did explain it, but it adds very little flavor to the game and severely contradicts the "history" presented in the series.

Dark Mage being restricted to Hubert only--making it a unique class for him on the same level as Barbarossa for Claude and High Lord for Dimitri--is a restriction I can get by, because it's based on character. Unfortunately, this isn't the case.

3 hours ago, lenticular said:

Yeah, I can't argue with that. That there were no brawling classes at all for women did annoy me a little. I'm glad they recified it in the DLC, but it should never have been a problem to begin with.

... so you agree?

Edited by LJ_Tenma
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45 minutes ago, LJ_Tenma said:

The difference between Darting Blow/Quick Riposte and Windsweep/Warp/Bolting is that Darting Blow and Quick Riposte are class-locked. Windsweep/Warp/Bolting are all character-locked. Only a select few characters are given these in their kit, and there's no possible way for, say, Ashe to obtain Point-Blank Volley or a playable Manuela to learn Physic even though both these characters would appreciate them. I don't mind this restriction because the basis of this restriction is not on gender, but on character, which is similar to the concept that Dark Holy Elf brought up. However, if we take something like Hit +20 for example, it's a skill on the same level of usefulness as Darting Blow and absolutely everybody can achieve it because it's a class-skill. Why can't Darting Blow be the same when it's a class skill as well?

I guess that this just isn't a distinction that I personally care about. I consider "doesn't have access to War Master" an innate part of Hilda's kit and "doesn't have access to Gremory" an innate part of Hubert's, for instance. If it is a distinction that matters to you then it makes sense that we would end up with different preferences.

1 hour ago, LJ_Tenma said:

Once again, I am speaking from experience from this playthrough--removing the gender-lock did not make any unit any more similar to each other, but rather helped optimize their performance.

Sure, and I don't want to discount your personal experience, but we've already established that we have different play styles and preferences (eg, with our differing opinions on how Claude and Leonie's existence alters our experience of Ignatz) so I don't think it's reasonable to assume that my experience would be the same as yours here. Normally, this is the point where I'd go away and actually try it for myself, but as I've already mentioned, hacking my Switch isn't something I'm willing to risk.

1 hour ago, LJ_Tenma said:

And see, this is where it makes me uncomfortable as it perpetuates the idea that men cannot exude femininity and women cannot embody masculinity. Then you have characters like Yuri and Catherine who break those gender norms, yet are restricted from certain classes due to their assigned gender.

This is kind of a personal point, but--I being a gay man myself would love to express my femininity through the characters I enjoy in this game, especially with my avatar character, yet I cannot (I can't even marry Claude in the vanilla game smh LOL).

However, this kind of argument may lead to a completely different conversation outside my original post regarding just the game

Yeah, let's not get too deep into the weeds with something tht would belong in the Serious Discussion forum. I'll restrict myself to three very brief points here. 1. I entirely understand why your real life circumstances might lead to your opinions here. 2. I am happy for you that you managed to mod the game in such a way to let you play how you want to play it and remove the parts that annoyed and frustrated you. 3. My opinions are born out of my own personal real life experience with gender identity and expression. And I will leave it at that.

1 hour ago, LJ_Tenma said:

In 3H, it's hard to see any type of lore associated with Pegasi at all as they are never mentioned in any dialogue. Not even Ingrid--the game's only default Pegasus Knight--mentions them. Sumia, Cordelia, Hinoka, and Subaki all mention something about Pegasi in some of their dialogue, even if very brief. For people who have never played previous Fire Emblem titles and play 3H as their first FE game (like myself), it is difficult to see any lore regarding Pegasi at all in 3H. To newcomers, it is just a mount.

That's fair. It's hardly surprising that something would have a different emotional ressonance for someone new to the series compared to someone who's been playing for a long while (my first FE was Path of Radiance). Not that either response is "right" or "better", of course. Just that it's expected that they would be different.

1 hour ago, LJ_Tenma said:

... so you agree?

I agree in the one specific case of lack of access to brawling classes for female classes without DLC. For me, the distinction is that there were no options at all for female brawlers, whereas for all other cases, it's just a matter of optimisation. I'm absolutely fine with things as they are with the DLC whereby Catherine or female-Byleth can happily use War Cleric as their end-game class and be perfectly viable. They aren't as strong there as they would be if they had access to Grappler or War Master, but I'm fine with that. (And besides, they have the unique perk of access to Darting Blow for easier quadding, which other gauntlet users don't have.)

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12 hours ago, LJ_Tenma said:

Fun fact: male characters still blow kisses while mounted on Pegasi as a victory pose with bows LOL. 2000% not in character for Seteth, 3000% in character for Sylvain HAHA.

Shall I introduce you to Kamadeva?

Kamadeva1.jpg

Hinduism's coincidental equivalent of Eros/Cupid. Kama is also the Sanskrit word for "desire" in general.

 

21 hours ago, LJ_Tenma said:

(ie. Hayato cannot become a Paladin because he doesn't support any Cavaliers)*

There is always the sweet love of Female Corrin to pass it on. -If you're so willing to sacrifice such limited commodities as Corrin's gender and Talent option on Hayato.

 

21 hours ago, LJ_Tenma said:

*Honestly, this took effort to find, which means the amount of classes that are inaccessible to a certain character in Fates is very, very low.

On paper that is. In practice, for anyone not Corrin or a child, it's but 4 base classes they can get access to, 2 they're forced to have, 2 with some flexibility. 4 base classes and the resulting promoted classes upward of 8 of them ought to be enough for anybody on a single run, but is not exactly as flexible as 3H.

 

4 hours ago, LJ_Tenma said:

Dark Mage being restricted to Hubert only--making it a unique class for him on the same level as Barbarossa for Claude and High Lord for Dimitri--is a restriction I can get by, because it's based on character. Unfortunately, this isn't the case.

Doling out exclusive classes to non-main protagonist characters would be a neat idea. It's happened in FE before with Athos's Archsage class, Sanaki's Empress, and Naesala having Raven King over plain old "Raven".

For a system like 3H's I'd put some limits on how potent these classes can be for non-Lords. If we felt like giving, let's pick Dedue for the sake of it, an "Adamant Knight" class, it should be Fortress Knight+, not Fortress Knight Version 30000. A little stronger in some way, maybe an additional Ability or Combat Art, slightly higher bases but not make it so nobody can compete with Dedue as an armor unit, nor force Dedue to go Adamant because of how potent the class is. It's sprinkles atop ice cream, but that doesn't make it so superfluous that the idea is meaningless.

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34 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

For a system like 3H's I'd put some limits on how potent these classes can be for non-Lords. If we felt like giving, let's pick Dedue for the sake of it, an "Adamant Knight" class, it should be Fortress Knight+, not Fortress Knight Version 30000. A little stronger in some way, maybe an additional Ability or Combat Art, slightly higher bases but not make it so nobody can compete with Dedue as an armor unit, nor force Dedue to go Adamant because of how potent the class is. It's sprinkles atop ice cream, but that doesn't make it so superfluous that the idea is meaningless.

Given the astonishing underwhelmingness of the Lords' unique classes, I doubt that this would ever have been a problem.

5 hours ago, LJ_Tenma said:

My other problem with the fact that they brought back the gender-lock is that they put the gender-lock on classes that were unisex before. Flavia--a female character and one of my favorites--was recruited as a Hero in Awakening. However, in 3H, Hero is male-only. Tharja and Nyx were both female Dark Mages, but it's restricted to only male-units 3H. Gremory is 3H's rough equivalent of the Sage class from previous titles, being the only class that specializes in both Reason/Faith (aka Tomes/Staves), but it has become female only when characters like Ricken and Hayato (Onmyoji) had access to the class. There was no lore in any of this explained in 3H. I wouldn't be okay with the restriction even if they did explain it, but it adds very little flavor to the game and severely contradicts the "history" presented in the series.

Oops. I missed this paragraph in my first reply. Hero has been a male-only character for most of the history of Fire Emblem. For games without reclassing, that's just meant that all the characters who start at or promote into it have been male. But then in Shadow Dragon (DS) which did have reclassing, it was exclusively a male class. I've never played New Mystery, but I believe it was also male exclusive there. I wouldn't categorically swear this, but I believe that Awakening and Fates are the only FE games to have female Heroes.

I don't think that Gremory is really an analogous class to Sage. It isn't easy to draw direct comparisons between Three Houses magic classes and those from other games in the series, given how differently the magic system works in Three Houses. If we're looking for classes that can use both Reason and Faith magic then that's every magic class in the game. Giving a class staff access on promotion just wouldn't make any sense in Three Houses. Gremories are also equally proficient with all forms of magic which is rarely the case with Sages, who are usually stronger with black/anima magic, in some games because they have lower weapon rank caps for staves, and in some just because you've promoted from Mage and have been training your tome rank all game up to that point. If I had to pick a Three Houses class to be analagous to Sage, then I'd say Warlock. Both are end-game classes that are most proficient in black/anima magic but that are also able to competently wield staves/white magic.

I also don't agree that there was no lore behind the class in Three Houses. There isn't much lore, certainly, but there's a little. Though it is implied rather than stated outright so maybe I'm reading too much into things? However, Gremory is named for a demon who appears in the form of a beautiful woman and can answer questions about the past, present, and future. (I am very much not an expert on demonology; I just repeat what I have read on the Internet.) It is also the class used by Cornelia, an Agarthan who appears in the form of a beautiful woman and who doesn't necessarily know the future but is unusually knowledgable in a lot of areas. It is also one of the few classes in the game that has an affinity with dark magic (which is to say, Agarthan magic). I've always imagined Gremory as being, essentially immitating Cornelia's style of magic, so having it be gender-locked doesn't seem like a stretch to me.

As for Dark Mage... yeah, I've got nothing there. That one just seems like a weird choice to me too. I don't mind it, but I have no clue what their motivation was with that decision.

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14 minutes ago, lenticular said:

Hero has been a male-only character for most of the history of Fire Emblem.

The "Forrest" class of FE4 which is the not-Swordmaster seemingly Hero-esque class Myrms can promote to, was the promotion for Larcei's substitute. Machyua in FE5 promoted to Hero. Echidna was a Hero. Maris was a Mercenary in BS FE, but when 11/12 split Archanean Merc into Myrmidon and Mercenary, she got thrown into Myrm (though Awakening's Einherjar of her went Mercenary).

The class has been male-dominated. That is true.

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On 9/5/2021 at 8:12 PM, lenticular said:

I guess that this just isn't a distinction that I personally care about. I consider "doesn't have access to War Master" an innate part of Hilda's kit and "doesn't have access to Gremory" an innate part of Hubert's, for instance. If it is a distinction that matters to you then it makes sense that we would end up with different preferences.

Sure, and I don't want to discount your personal experience, but we've already established that we have different play styles and preferences (eg, with our differing opinions on how Claude and Leonie's existence alters our experience of Ignatz) so I don't think it's reasonable to assume that my experience would be the same as yours here.

Yeah, so it honestly really boils down to our personal preferences, and I'm sure that there are other people that would agree with either of our sides. It's just unfortunate that, for the ones that would prefer a gender-lock-free version like myself, we could only really have that option if we hack our Switch and that's something, as you mentioned, that just isn't an option for several people. Or, you know, pray for the next mainline game to not have the gender-lock 💀

On 9/5/2021 at 8:12 PM, lenticular said:

Normally, this is the point where I'd go away and actually try it for myself, but as I've already mentioned, hacking my Switch isn't something I'm willing to risk.

That's very fair, and I'll be honest, hacking my Switch was a decision that I pandered on for weeks before deciding to bite the bullet after enjoying the gay marriage mod on Awakening so much. Where I live, unpatched/hackable Switches are a lot less in demand so I ended up buying an inexpensive spare used one so I didn't have to hack my main Switch (which wasn't hackable in the first place)--and of course, buying a second Switch is also a decision that many others wouldn't want to make.

On 9/5/2021 at 8:12 PM, lenticular said:

Yeah, let's not get too deep into the weeds with something tht would belong in the Serious Discussion forum. I'll restrict myself to three very brief points here. 1. I entirely understand why your real life circumstances might lead to your opinions here. 2. I am happy for you that you managed to mod the game in such a way to let you play how you want to play it and remove the parts that annoyed and frustrated you. 3. My opinions are born out of my own personal real life experience with gender identity and expression. And I will leave it at that.

🥺🥺🥺🙏🙏🙏

On 9/6/2021 at 1:09 AM, lenticular said:

Oops. I missed this paragraph in my first reply. Hero has been a male-only character for most of the history of Fire Emblem. For games without reclassing, that's just meant that all the characters who start at or promote into it have been male. But then in Shadow Dragon (DS) which did have reclassing, it was exclusively a male class. I've never played New Mystery, but I believe it was also male exclusive there. I wouldn't categorically swear this, but I believe that Awakening and Fates are the only FE games to have female Heroes.

As others have mentioned above, there apparently were a mix of male and female Heroes throughout the series, and whether or not it was male-locked in certain games is debatable. But this just shows that there have been several inconsistencies in the way the lore is throughout the series, which could also just make for an excuse to bring back female Heroes and male Pegasus Knights since they have existed before.

On 9/6/2021 at 1:09 AM, lenticular said:

I don't think that Gremory is really an analogous class to Sage. It isn't easy to draw direct comparisons between Three Houses magic classes and those from other games in the series, given how differently the magic system works in Three Houses. If we're looking for classes that can use both Reason and Faith magic then that's every magic class in the game. Giving a class staff access on promotion just wouldn't make any sense in Three Houses. Gremories are also equally proficient with all forms of magic which is rarely the case with Sages, who are usually stronger with black/anima magic, in some games because they have lower weapon rank caps for staves, and in some just because you've promoted from Mage and have been training your tome rank all game up to that point. If I had to pick a Three Houses class to be analagous to Sage, then I'd say Warlock. Both are end-game classes that are most proficient in black/anima magic but that are also able to competently wield staves/white magic.

I also don't agree that there was no lore behind the class in Three Houses. There isn't much lore, certainly, but there's a little. Though it is implied rather than stated outright so maybe I'm reading too much into things? However, Gremory is named for a demon who appears in the form of a beautiful woman and can answer questions about the past, present, and future. (I am very much not an expert on demonology; I just repeat what I have read on the Internet.) It is also the class used by Cornelia, an Agarthan who appears in the form of a beautiful woman and who doesn't necessarily know the future but is unusually knowledgable in a lot of areas. It is also one of the few classes in the game that has an affinity with dark magic (which is to say, Agarthan magic). I've always imagined Gremory as being, essentially immitating Cornelia's style of magic, so having it be gender-locked doesn't seem like a stretch to me.

Yeah, it's hard to draw a connection between some of the classes in 3H to past classes as a few of the new classes are similar to older classes, but do not actually have the same name yet present similar functions. Like, War Master is pretty much a Berserker as both have high speed, HP, and strength on top of really high crit rates.

But the reason why I believe Gremory is more akin to Sage is because Gremory is the only magic class in the game that provides a bonus to both White and Black/Dark Magic (ie. Black/Dark Magic x2, White Magic x2) and Sage is the only infantry magic class that utilized both tomes and staves. Regardless, gender-locked infantry magic classes with similar functions to Gremory seemed to be absent in previous titles, so it's still questionable as to why they decided to lock the class. I'm not sure if SoV's Cleric/Saint and Sage/Priestess count because even Archer and Mercenary were gender-locked for some odd reason.

EDIT: I remembered Witch exists lol

When I first played 3H, I actually looked up the meaning of the word "Gremory" as well because, I had no idea what it was, and on top of that--I'll be 100% honest with you--I had no idea what the hell a "Myrmidon" was either before playing Fire Emblem ever LOOOL. Just by the name, I guess you can say it explains the reason why it is a female class because the term is for a demon that appears as a woman. But then, you have the unisex Warlock class when "Warlock" is a term that traditionally refers to a male-witch (manwich ???). And as you said, this is more implied than explicit and I'm sure there could be others that probably couldn't catch on to this. If Gremory was supposed to be a representation of Cornelia, it could have easily been her unique enemy-only class and a similar unisex class could have been made available to the player.

 

On 9/5/2021 at 11:11 PM, Interdimensional Observer said:

On paper that is. In practice, for anyone not Corrin or a child, it's but 4 base classes they can get access to, 2 they're forced to have, 2 with some flexibility. 4 base classes and the resulting promoted classes upward of 8 of them ought to be enough for anybody on a single run, but is not exactly as flexible as 3H.

See, I totally missed Corrin, meaning technically all characters can potentially access all classes through marrying Corrin LOL. In one single playthrough, however, they of course won't be able to collect every single class available, but at least the player has to option to reclass them into their own choosing only being restricted by the limits of the support system and not gender.

 

 

Also, update: Pegasus Knight Dimitri is killin' it LOL.

Edited by LJ_Tenma
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18 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

On paper that is. In practice, for anyone not Corrin or a child, it's but 4 base classes they can get access to, 2 they're forced to have, 2 with some flexibility. 4 base classes and the resulting promoted classes upward of 8 of them ought to be enough for anybody on a single run, but is not exactly as flexible as 3H.

Not that TH is particularly flexible - there are the weapon rank requirements and those plus the way you get skills in TH make for a grander opportunity cost than have an A/S-support + appropriate Seal. Granted, the 4 base classes are at least 8 different skills, and the promotions are possibly another 16 skills – not accounting for overlapping classes, because I don´t want to math it out. On top of the fact that getting skills in Fates is just staying for a certain number of lvl-ups in a class, especially with the promoted classes. Of course, then we´d also have to account for the DLC classes, some of which are genderlocked and possibly unique, but are otherwise FFA, not to mention that the DLC provides skillbooks and sunglasses for everybody. Then there´s the special ones like Felicia/Jacob who get good skills early. And if we take it up yet another notch, we venture into the world of child units with the wonderful ability to inherit a skill as well as a class and the ability to A/S-rank other kids – or Corrin – making for a total for 5/10 classes and double the number of skills.

Oh yeah, wasn´t inheriting genderlocked skills a big part of Awakenings kids’ discussion?

On 9/4/2021 at 6:08 PM, LJ_Tenma said:

And this is exactly the reason why I hate gender-locked classes because of the fact it doesn't benefit certain units, if not everybody. If we look at Fates, it's the only game in the series that has no gender-locked classes (barring amiibo classes and some DLC as Dark Falcon and Dread Fighter were made unisex for the first time), and it still remained balanced. Nobody was overpowered or made irrelevant for having access to all classes, but you could still optimize your units by reclassing them to whatever you wanted. The only restrictions that were made was if a unit couldn't support another unit with a class that they didn't already have in their set (ie. Hayato cannot become a Paladin because he doesn't support any Cavaliers)*

Hmm, Priestess and Great Master are genderlocked? Which is relevant for the weapons they get access to? You also can´t have a male maid or a female butler. Granted, they all have the same skillset.

On 9/5/2021 at 9:45 AM, lenticular said:

If they actually do get rid of gender-locks again, then we'd probably end up back with something like Fates, where a pegasus is just another mount that people ride into battle and all of the history of the lore and uniqueness of the class would be lost. Which would make me a little bit sad.

What is it then otherwise?

Not to mention that this argument would also extend to other genderlocked classes - which makes me think that the best candidates for Hero would be Catherine or even Judith. Who else if not them? 

 

 

I don´t think that TH does a very good job in terms of unit diversity anyway. You just don´t get that with a scrub squad defined by +/-10% growth and +/-3 in stats. There´s like 5 unit archetypes and some 4 build variants for them.

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On 9/6/2021 at 6:22 PM, Imuabicus said:

Hmm, Priestess and Great Master are genderlocked? Which is relevant for the weapons they get access to? You also can´t have a male maid or a female butler. Granted, they all have the same skillset.

It's hard to argue that Priestess and Great Master are technically gender-locked. I mean, yeah, they do have the very slight difference in their weapon usage and a slight difference in stat growths/caps, but they're essentially the same class or at least analogous to each other. Otherwise, they serve the same function and share the same skills.

The only difference between Butler and Maid is their name. They're literally exactly the same as far as I know.

The only truly gender-locked classes in Fates are the DLC Ballistician and Witch, and the amiibo classes. I honestly think the amiibo classes are gender-locked because, since they match the gender of the respective amiibo, they probably couldn't fit 2 different game models in one amiibo or something LOL. Amiibos are pretty difficult to obtain anyway, and Fire Emblem amiibos are notoriously expensive. Without the DLC, all the classes in the main game are pretty much for everybody and the restrictions aren't nearly as prominent as 3H.

On 9/6/2021 at 6:22 PM, Imuabicus said:

Not to mention that this argument would also extend to other genderlocked classes - which makes me think that the best candidates for Hero would be Catherine or even Judith. Who else if not them? 

Petra and Edelgard have the relevant boons for it. Of course they have better options, but that even goes for male units that have access to the class. Just having the option would be nice.

I do have plans on trying out a Hero Petra in a future playthrough with this mod.

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On 9/6/2021 at 5:22 AM, Imuabicus said:

Hmm, Priestess and Great Master are genderlocked? Which is relevant for the weapons they get access to? You also can´t have a male maid or a female butler. Granted, they all have the same skillset.

Worth noting that, while Maids and Butlers get the same skills, male Troubadors get Gentilhomme while female Troubadors get Demoiselle. Two skills that aren't identical, but instead mirrors of each other.

On 9/5/2021 at 12:09 PM, lenticular said:

Given the astonishing underwhelmingness of the Lords' unique classes, I doubt that this would ever have been a problem.

Barbarossa Claude: flies behind you Nothin' personnel, kid. crits you with Failnaught

On 9/5/2021 at 3:45 AM, lenticular said:

I've always had a soft spot for the Pegasus Knight line because it's kinf of the princess class, with characters like Caeda, Elincia (not technically a Pegasus Knight, but close enough) and Clair (not technically a princess, but close enough). It's also a class that has been portrayed as embodying traditionally feminine virtues like grace and elegance, but without ever being weak or helpless. And I low-key love that there's room for something like that to exist in the middle of this game series about war and battles.

I don't really see the "princess" connection as being there. Like, if we examine the princesses in the series, there's Caeda (Pegasus Knight), Elice (Cleric), Maria (Cleric), Minerva (Wyvern Rider), Celica (Priestess), Yumina (Cleric), Sheema (General), Ayra (Myrmidon), Raquesis (Princess), Altenna (Wyvern Rider), Linoan (Cleric), Miranda (Mage), Lilina (Mage), Guinevere (Sage), Lyndis (Sword Lord), Eirika (Sword Lord), L'Arachel (Troubador), Tana (Pegasus Knight), Elincia (Queen), Lissa (Cleric), Lucina (Sword Lord), Say'ri (Swordmaster), Azura (Songstress), Sakura (Shrine Maiden), Hinoka (Sky Knight), Elice (Troubador), Camilla (Wyvern Rider).

Looking at this list, the great majority of Princesses are infantry units, using either Swords, Staves, or Tomes. Who exactly counts as a Princess can be shaky, and I recognize that I may have missed a few. Regardless, Pegasus-riding Princesses aren't especially common - I would only count Caeda, Tana, Elincia, and Hinoka to this end. Rather, the more common trope for Pegasus Knights (seen in Palla, Catria, and Est; Erinys and Mahnya; Juno, Tate, and Shanna; Fiora, Farina, and Florina; and Vanessa and Syrene; is "knightly sisters". Take out the Ilian sets, and drag in Sumia, Cordelia, and Subaki, and now the trope is "knight devoted to their country". Usually, the one riding the Pegasus isn't royalty in her own right - rather, she serves the royalty.

That isn't to say that the gendered Pegasus Knight connection doesn't necessarily have a certain amount of lore value. If anything, I'd like to see future games play with it somewhat, rather than either treating it as an unspoken given or discarding it outright. Say, giving the nation where pegasi abound something of a "matriarchal" edge to it, since women control their Air Force. Or, giving a male character an optional Pegasus promotion, but only if certain conditions (i.e. saving the pegasus from poachers) are met.

On 9/5/2021 at 10:11 AM, Interdimensional Observer said:

Doling out exclusive classes to non-main protagonist characters would be a neat idea. It's happened in FE before with Athos's Archsage class, Sanaki's Empress, and Naesala having Raven King over plain old "Raven".

Over a year ago, I spearheaded a "what if each 3H character got their own personal Master class?" thread. It was a lot of fun, some great ideas were put out there.

On 9/3/2021 at 11:12 PM, LJ_Tenma said:

And without further ado, and as a YouTuber would title their video for clickbait, I tried a gender-lock-free playthrough of Three Houses so you wouldn’t have to.

Not all Heroes wear capes. Case in point, Harken.

Honestly, this playthrough sounds like a great time. It was very weird to see a "sandboxy" game like Three Houses, with more unit-building options than any game which came before it, actually regress on this one front. The notion of getting to go Grappler Catherine, or Gremory Hanneman, is certainly an inviting one.

On 9/3/2021 at 11:12 PM, LJ_Tenma said:

10/10 would recommend pegging Claude

C'mon now, at least invite a guy to tea first!

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Removing the gender-locks sounds amazing.

I don't mind barring certain units from certain classes for diversification purposes, but gender is not one of the metrics they should be using going forward.  Fates pre-DLC has the best re-class system I've seen in the FE series thus far (the DLC goes back to being somewhat regressive, with the excuse being your unit's gender needs to match the amiibo being scanned, but meh...).

 

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On 9/4/2021 at 9:36 AM, lenticular said:

Only tangentially related, but am I the only one who really doesn't mind gender restrictions on classes? In theory, I actually kinda like it as another way to meaningfully differentiate between units, although in practice the implementation is kinda bad so it doesn't really work all that well. But beyond that, it's just not something that's ever been a big deal to me. There are enough different class options that I never really feel the absence of the restricted ones. Sure, it would be nice to be able to make Hilda into a War Master (or whatever) but when I can also make her a Wyvern Lord, Falcon Knight, Great Knight, Dancer, Paladin, etc. then I'm not really sad about it. I can see why it does bother some people, mind. It's just not something I personally care about.

I really don't like being limited in gameplay for completely arbitrary reasons.

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All right, so I finally finished up my gender-lock-free Azure Moon run, and here's how it went!

WARNING: Half my team was male Pegasus Knights. can you blame me, i just think they're neat tbh no ragrets. And Ingrid was a Paladin, not a Pegasus Knight HAHA.

~*~*~

The Azure Moon builds:

  • Pegasus Knight/Dark Flier/Falcon Knight Sylvain
Spoiler

TimeSkipPegasusSylvain.thumb.jpg.c82b316c682ce7f87e5804edad3b90b3.jpg

(I managed to get his timeskip outfit to work with Pegasus Knight!)

DarkFlierSylvain1.thumb.jpg.9f2ba395e5bc93b0e253af6bef58e45e.jpg

I was honestly super excited try Pegasus Knight Sylvain, and I definitely wasn’t disappointed. In my previous playthroughs where I used Sylvain, I built him as a Paladin and as a Wyvern Lord—and while he does fine in either of these classes, Falcon Knight is what I found the be the most ideal.

While yes, Paladin has a lead in strength by 1 point compared to Falcon Knight in their stat modifiers, Sylvain highly appreciates the high speed that Falcon Knight offers. He already has a good speed stat, and Falcon Knight helps preserve that, where Paladin slightly nerfs it.

He wasn’t my de facto dodge tank—Ashe and Felix were able to take care of that—but he was definitely still a speedy powerhouse with the Lance of Ruin and Swift Strikes. To top it off, he finally had the benefit of Lancefaire with the speed, so that damage of his was  j u i c y. As a Paladin, his speed stat does suffer quite a bit.

Strangely, he has a near-identical speed stat with Ashe—having the same growth but only falling 1 point of speed behind at base. However, Ashe managed to maintain a significant advantage in speed compared to Sylvain. Regardless, he had enough speed to double on Player Phase and was very, very reliable at killing on the front lines.

What he had over Ashe and Felix was his defense. While not a reliable tank, he took hits much better than the former two. Due to the amount of male Falcon Knights I had in my party, I opted to make Ingrid a Paladin. She ended up losing rights as a dodge tank and became my actual tank instead—which she did very well, surprisingly LOL. She had the second highest defense in my team, only behind Dedue.

I opted to use Dark Flier as a stepping stone between Pegasus Knight and Falcon Knight because, why not? He already has a Budding Talent in Reason and training his Reason rank didn’t take him off track at all. The growths for Dark Flier and Pegasus Knight are near identical (only getting a +5% in Resistance), but he’ll get an extra point of speed and movement from the class modifiers. It’s not a huge benefit, but it’s something.

I only used Dark Flier as a stepping stone rather than using it as his endgame class, so he only really spent about <10 levels as a Dark Flier. I can’t really say if his performance as a Dark Flier is great or anything because I rarely used magic with him, but it was nice to have the option to use it. Besides, magic gave him a nice 1-2 range alternative aside from the 1-2 range lances (I did not get Gradivus sadly). I also appreciated having an extra magic user since the Blue Lions only really has Annette, even though his magic stat was subpar. It was, however, enough to deal with most of the Fortress Knights.

By the time Part 2 started, I switched him back to Pegasus Knight because I managed to get his timeskip outfit to work in the class LOL (as you can see above). So, YES HE IS A CANON PEGASUS KNIGHT IN MY EYES. I didn’t give him the option to use his timeskip outfit in Falcon Knight tho, because like I said in my original post, I wanted to keep it as close to vanilla as possible—and nobody has special battle models in any master classes.

Overall, the Pegasus Knight class line is a perfect fit for Sylvain. It helps preserve his otherwise good speed stat and grants him Lancefaire to use with his relic. Dare I say he’s a better Pegasus Knight than Ingrid? LOL.

~*~*~

My build:

  • Class path: Noble > Soldier > Pegasus Knight (+Brigand side promo) > Dark Flier > Falcon Knight
  • Abilities:
    • Death Blow
    • Darting Blow
    • Lance Prowess
    • Alert Stance+
    • Authority Prowess

 

  • Pegasus Knight/Falcon Knight Ashe (Bow-focused Pegasus)
Spoiler

PegasusKnightAshe1kisskissfallinlovelol.thumb.jpg.b3ba5d8f3f5e72abcfff704130a734c4.jpg

kiss kiss fall in love doo doo doo doo

Honestly, Ashe deserves to be a Pegasus Knight LOL. It just suits his character IMO.

The best way I could describe Pegasus/Falcon Knight Ashe is Leonie-Lite. They’re both bow-oriented characters that do well in flying classes, but he’ll just have slightly lower overall stats than her and lacks a good combat art, unlike Leonie who has Point-Blank Volley. Regardless, he still performed pretty well and was great at flying hit-and-run sniping tactics.

As I mentioned above, despite having a near identical speed stat with Sylvain (same growth, but Ashe has a 1-point lead in base speed over Sylvain), Ashe managed to be significantly faster and was either tied with Felix or just trailed behind him by 1-2 points. Both Ashe and Felix ended up being my fastest units and were my go-to dodge tanks. I did have to hold my breath a few times trying to get them to aggro enemies because, despite their great speed and avoid rate, they had terrible defense LOL. Literally, at one point Mercedes had higher defense than both of them—NOT KIDDING.

However, even though his defense was bad, he actually ended up with surprisingly great resistance. It's probably the one thing that set him apart from my other Falcon Knights in my AM run (and by extension, Leonie who I'm heavily comparing him to). I never actually bothered to take notice, but he actually has a pretty decent res stat for a physical unit, which Falcon Knight compliments well. His resistance is 6+35%, while his defense is 5+20%--which makes me wonder as to why Ashe was never a Pegasus Knight to begin with. In the end, Ashe was the only one who was able to reap the benefits of Falcon Knight's high resistance due to the fact that he actually had a workable base.

Unfortunately, however, Ashe is not as much of a crit machine as a Falcon Knight than he is as a Sniper/Bow Knight, but he’s definitely way faster and could double much more reliably. For advanced tier, I decided to use Assassin as a stepping stone so that he could maintain his speed and dexterity and thus maintain his crit rate. I always plugged a Crit Ring and Killer Bow+ on him, and his crit rate always managed to be in the 40-60 range. In my previous playthroughs where I had him as a Bow Knight, his crit rate always seemed to be about 60-80%.

Overall, Pegasus Knight is a very fitting class build for him and compliments his stats well, notably his speed and resistance. It works as a great alternative Lance/Bow build aside from his typical Bow Knight build. He’ll be a weaker Leonie, but at least he has the benefit of not being in the same party as her and thus not getting overshadowed by her. On top of that, he can capitalize on his fairly good speed stat and decent resistance and makes for a dodge tank comparable to the likes of Felix and can surprisingly tank magic well. Plus, a flying Locktouch is really useful LOL.

~*~*~

My build:

  • Class path: Commoner > Fighter > Pegasus Knight (+Brigand side promo)> Assassin > Falcon Knight
    • You can skip Assassin, I just wanted to build on his Speed and Dex
  • Abilities:
    • Death Blow
    • Darting Blow
    • Bow Prowess
    • Alert Stance+
    • Close Counter

 

  • Falcon Knight Felix (Sword-focused Pegasus)
Spoiler

sayhelloFalconFelix.thumb.jpg.2eaa137ce1218eb581b39b1533e93f34.jpg

the best part about this mod: I now have the option of having either Felix on a Pegasus or half-naked Grappler Felix

So for Felix, I built him the same way I normally build Petra: I usually take her down a sword path with Thief-Assassin, then end the game with her in Falcon Knight. I did the same for Felix in this run, except I made him a Mercenary (instead of Thief), then Assassin, and then finally Falcon Knight as his endgame class. However, I did do a side promotion in Pegasus Knight for Darting Blow, but never actually used him as a Pegasus Knight.

If Ashe is Leonie-Lite, then Felix is Petra-Deluxe LOL. Petra will always have the lead in speed, but Felix will never fall behind on strength unlike Petra, who is prone to being RNG-screwed in the strength department. On top of that, his crest gives him an extra boost in damage with a high proc rate—as well as allowing him to use relics without any damage penalties. He also has the benefit of having Combat Arts that are actually pretty good, where Petra’s Combat Arts seem to be lacking. Falcon Knight is a little more out of the way for Felix than it is for Petra, as Petra has boons in Swords and Flying where Felix only has the Sword boon. Regardless, Falcon Knight is a great class and probably the most ideal endgame class for sword units—Felix included.

Despite not being a Swordfaire class, it’s a step up from either Assassin or Swordmaster for endgame sword users. Assassin is a great class, Swordmaster is quite lacking--but Falcon Knight will give Felix better mobility than either of the former 2, and training his flying gives him Alert Stance+, which will make him nearly untouchable with his already high speed stat.

As mentioned above, he and Ashe were my two main dodge tanks, but they were always tied in defense—and not in a good way. Like I said, there was a point in time where Mercedes literally had higher defense than both Felix and Ashe. Low defense was quite expected for Ashe, but Felix needed higher survivability since he was more of a frontliner due to the fact that I had him focus on swords (I made Ashe focus on bows), so I had no choice but to feed him a few of the defense boosters I managed to receive (at no opportunity cost, however). At least with Ashe, he was able to tank magic, but Felix couldn't take a hit of any kind.

Lastly, from a lore perspective, I found the class to be very fitting for Felix because Fraldarius is apparently a Falcon Knight according to VW's final map. It's great to see him embrace his ancestry LOL.

Overall, he was one of my biggest powerhouses and speediest of speed demons from start to finish, and a sword-Falcon Knight is probably my favorite build for him now that I’ve had a taste of it. The best part? He still blows kisses as a victory pose with bows and it’s 100% out of character, but we love to see it LMAO.

~*~*~

My build:

  • Class path: Noble > Myrmidon > Mercenary (+Brigand/Pegasus Knight side promo) > Assassin > Falcon Knight
    • You can always just use Pegasus Knight as his main class rather than Mercenary, and skip Assassin for a full-Pegasus build
    • He's neutral in lances and flying, so build his ranks up as early as possible--I started from the beginning of the game.
  • Abilities:
    • Death Blow
    • Darting Blow
    • Sword Prowess
    • Alert Stance+
    • Sword Crit +10

 

  • Pegasus Knight/Falcon Knight Dimitri
Spoiler

PegasusDimitri2.thumb.jpg.b57333feb52267724c1ba91659695a4b.jpg

my favorite flavor of instant ramen noodle

I wasn’t kidding when I said I had half my team as Falcon Knights LMAO.

Just like Sylvain, the Pegasus Knight class line fits him like a lance in Edelgard’s chest glove. A lot of what I can say about Pegasus Knight Dimitri, I have already said with Sylvain.

So basically: preserves his great speed, Lancefaire with his relic, and great mobility.

What Dimitri has over Sylvain though is his insane avoid rate. Training him in Flying of course gives him Alert Stance+, and combined with his timeskip ability, he’s literally untouchable. Combine that with Battalion Wrath and Vantage, and that’s it—that’s the game for you, you guys can stop playing cause it’s broken now and Pegasus Dimitri is all you need. LOL.

Seriously, by the time I got him to Falcon Knight, he basically steamrolled the rest of the game—just as much as Robin could in Awakening LOL.

He does have a huge glaring drawback though—and that’s his inability to receive training in the first half of part 2. I was fortunate enough to bring his ranks up close enough to Falcon Knight’s requirements by part 2, but he was stuck at a 49% success rate. I didn’t bother to test my hand at the RNG until after he was able to receive training again because his unique classes are good enough, but at least his lack of flying gave others the chance to jump ahead on the frontlines LOL. I didn’t want to use Pegasus Knight either since the growths from his unique classes are roughly a little better. Plus, it was kinda weird to see someone so angry and so bloodthirsty on something so graceful LMAO.

I promoted him to Falcon Knight when he was able to receive training again and used it as his endgame class. Falcon Knight has the same strength growth as Great Lord, but Falcon Knight has a higher speed growth and modifier. Great Lord does have 1 point of strength more in its modifiers, but I prefer giving him the flight.

Overall, a perfect class fit for Dimitri and is arguably better than his unique classes. Hands-down, the best Pegasus Knight in the series, lmao whitewings who idk her

~*~*~

  • Class path: Noble > Soldier  > Pegasus Knight (+Brigand side promo) > High Lord > Great Lord > Falcon Knight
    • If possible, going straight to Falcon Knight after part 2 starts is a great alternative path if you prefer flying over his unique classes
  • Abilities:
    • Death Blow
    • Darting Blow
    • Lance Prowess
    • Battalion Wrath
    • Battalion Vantage

 

  • War Master Annette (M V P AF)
Spoiler

242347272_567656644476766_8501088149470548294_n.thumb.jpg.928d6a5e7279e77e1c8cb58cfca4abf0.jpg

I M  Y O U R   G I R L

This was honestly the most meme-y of builds I’ve tried so far with this mod. But surprisingly, War Master Annette is not as much of a meme build as Wyvern Lord Annette is, and is actually very, very viable for her. I’ll get into why LOL.

From the start, I was so excited to try this out for the meme, despite the fact that I didn’t enjoy her as a Wyvern Lord. For one, Bolt Axe+ and Crusher are her only options as a Wyvern Lord, and she will rarely double due to their high weight. Should she fail to miss or get stuck in the danger zone in enemy phase, she’s basically gone since her defensive stats in every category are terrible.

Now for War Master, most of her Wyvern-problems are fixed LOL.

To start, she has the option of going into War Cleric before War Master—which is what I opted to do. This means she can maintain a +5% growth in magic (not a lot but something) on top of retaining the option to use magic up until level 30 before promoting to War Master. As a Wyvern Rider, she gets locked to the Bolt Axe or Crusher as her only offensive options.

However, as an infantry unit, she also has access to Aura Knuckles as well. So as a War Cleric, she has much more offensive options than as a Wyvern Rider.

Upon promotion to War Master, she will lose access to using magic, but she will retain her access to Aura Knuckles—which are not available to her as a Wyvern Lord due to it being a mounted class. I mean, yes, you can dismount and use them, but she won’t have Canto to escape while dismounted.

“But Aura Knuckles and Crusher are 1-range, putting her at risk on the frontlines with her bad defensive stats” you say?

Well, as an infantry unit, she can actually use Guard Adjutants. And the Blue Lions gets one for free: Gilbert—with whom she has a support chain. At A-support, he can help reduce her damage received to up to 40% and is basically given invincibility if she could keep her HP above 1. As a Wyvern Lord, she can’t have this.

To make things better, training her in Brawling gives her Healing Focus, so her survivability issues as a magic-axe Wyvern are basically completely solved.

So, yes, this was a fucking amazing build for Annette and is completely and totally viable for her LOL. As a mage, she’s severely mediocre at best compared to the other houses’ designated mages; she has a pretty unimpressive spell list and low speed compared to the likes of Hubert and Lysithea. But with access to War Master, she finds her niche as a wild magic axe and gauntlet user that nobody else can do LOL.

Aura Knuckles+ has a mere might of 2, but targeting resistance makes for much higher damage output as low-res enemies are much more common than low-defense. And it’s also the only brave-effect magic weapon out there. Aura Knuckles, Bolt Axe+, and Crusher all have really low hit rates, but these are easily mitigated by +hit battalions and an Accuracy Ring. Macuil Evil Repelling Co. is one of the best battalions for her as it boosts both magic attack and hit. It is an A-rank battalion, but fortunately Annette has a boon in Authority so it isn’t difficult for her to reach the threshold.

Top all that with Battalion Wrath? lmao Edelgard has no business living if War Master Annette exists tbh

Overall, this was probably the most fun build I’ve tried so far with this gender-lock-free mod since it’s such a meme to do, but it works so well for Annette LOL. Highly, highly recommend this HAHA.

~*~*~

My build:

  • Class path: Noble > Monk > Mage > War Cleric > War Master
    • War Cleric is a good alternative endgame class for her, but if you want Axefaire for Bolt Axe+ and Crusher (+Fistfaire for Aura Knuckles), only War Master can offer that
  • Abilities:
    • Fiendish Blow
    • Brawl Avoid +20
    • Axe Prowess
    • Brawling Prowess
    • Battalion Wrath

 

  • Dark Flier M!Byleth (stepping stone)
Spoiler

DarkFlierMByleth.thumb.jpg.5db597a1f1db18720ad77a6320950872.jpg

step aside aversa

If you can’t already tell, Pegasus Knight is my favorite class LOL. I wanted to keep my Byleth as a Pegasus Knight for this playthrough too, but this time using Dark Flier as a stepping stone for Advanced Tier.

I’ll keep this brief, since I didn’t spend much time as a Dark Flier.

Again, a lot of what I can say about Dark Flier Byleth, I have already said with Sylvain. Having the option to use magic was nice, especially because Annette is the only designated offensive mage, but I used magic only when needed. His magic was strong enough to deal with a few select low-res enemies or to reach an enemy just out of range, but useful nonetheless. I trained him a little bit in Faith too, so having a frontline flying healer was also really nice. It’s kinda funny though, how Sylvain and Byleth both have better spell lists than Annette LOL.

The worst part about this build is training Byleth’s Reason rank. You only have Hanneman and Rhea to train Reason, and he doesn’t even have a boon in it so it’s such a slog trying to get it up. Fortunately, Hanneman and Rhea are of the few faculty members that offer training for every single chapter—unlike Seteth, Jeralt, or Manuela. And also, since this was NG+, I didn't really need to bother about raising Swords, Lances, or Flying since I was able to just buy the ranks with renown and could focus solely on raising Reason.

Fun class, but not necessarily an endgame class for Byleth unless you want to try your hand at a magic Byleth.

(Same build as VW, but just with Dark Flier included for level 20-30)

~*~*~

And that’s a wrap of my Gender-Lock-Free Azure Moon run! Up next: Gender-Lock-Free Crimson Flower!

Here’s a few of my planned builds:

  • Hero Edelgard
  • Pegasus Knight Ferdinand
  • Gremory Linhardt
  • Dark Flier Hubert (he can finally live his dreams omg)
Edited by LJ_Tenma
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Nice. Not shocked at all that Falcon Knight is both Sylvain's and Dimitri's best class. With Sylvain in particular, his 8+50% speed is on paper actually quite good (it's the same as Hilda's, and only 10% more growth = 0-4 more points than Ingrid), but it's difficult to utilize well. With Darting Blow and Pegasus I'm not surprised he's just a monster, being able to double many things AND still fall back on Swift Strikes against the few enemies who are too fast, and being much more efficient to train than Wyvern because you can just focus on lances.

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  • 1 year later...
On 9/3/2021 at 11:12 PM, LJ_Reflet said:

I honestly didn’t want the access to the unique/special classes and wanted to keep the playthrough as close to vanilla as possible (as vanilla as a modded game could be lmfao). So, after annoying several Discord servers on how to hex edit, I was finally able to “clean up” the mod and only allow access to the main classes of the game.

Hey I know it's been 2 years since this thread but would you still be able to explain how to remove the extra classes? I also want to play just with the main classes but I've poking around with the existing 3H editors and I don't know how to remove the extra classes

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