What would be Your Ideal Weapon Balance?

[DoomRPG]

I'm hoping to not just hear interesting ideas, but also spark some discussion on FE's weapon balance. Including things like weapon effectiveness or the weapon triangle.

Including on my own idea!

Especially since I'm kinda weird in that, I personally believe that carefully restricting options makes for a more strategic experience. (I add "carefully restricted options." I hated how FE11-12's idea of difficulty felt like it amounted to removing tools. Similar to early game Radiant Dawn's hard mode.)


Ahem. if I was put in charge of determining the weapon balance of the next FE. Here's what I would do/push for.
 

Spoiler

First things first. To sort the Weapon Triangle.
I would personally aim that the WT is A. Kept. B. Balanced around the early game. C. With skills and reavers included.
The idea here is that in the early game, where players are at their weakest both stat and inventory wise. The weapon triangle provides a basic but present force to consider. Especially since most weapons they have will be iron. It is the goal that by mid-late game the player will no longer need to be concerned with the weapon triangle for the most part, and can instead focus on deciding what happens to bring, in what quantities, and if they should bring certain combinations. Such as say a map with 2 range nomads and a bunch of armor knights. "I need to make sure to bring hammers and javelins to this particular map."
But of course, for players that enjoy the basic RPS of the weapon triangle. Skills like 3H breaker, and of course reaver weapons that multiply the triangle. Should be an option for players that want to make a swordmaster with 3 iron swords and 2 lancereavers have between +30 hit/+3 MT or +60 hit/ 6 MT Instead of a mundane +15 hit/ +1 MT
A chapter boss could have that exact thing be a gimmick. "All my skills are breaker and I carry a bunch of reavers."

Greater distinctions between the three main weapon types.
While simply increasing the discrepancy between the MT and hit of Axes and Swords is an option. Its one I feel its something of a band-aid fix. It works but, in an unsatisfying and lazy manner. In my opinion a better solution is a system of "monopolization" as well as a system of weapon sub-types.

First by monopolization. Let's start with critical weapons.
Remove killer axes and killer lances. and killing edges can either be stronger (40-50~ crit) or as I think would probably be better. By making them easier/cheaper to acquire. In other words, if you want to crit, you have to bring a sword. (or just have high skill or a Prf weapon. Or forge crit onto an axe or lance. All three seem like good options to me.) While chances are iron swords shouldn't have a super high innate crit. I think its reasonable to slap it onto steel and above rank weapons. Probably maxing at between 3-5 on Iron. But go up to around 10-15 steel and up. The core idea here is that swords have a sort of "High Roll" advantage over lances and axes that while never truly reliable. Can make a tricky situations much more feasible.

Lances, instead of having rare short spears, or spears, as limited use upgrades to javelins. Will have those as more expensive but reasonably acquired upgrades to Javelins. Giving lances the niche of being reliable responses to a plethora of melee/ranged enemies. Whilst axes could keep the humble hand axe. I think the short axe/tomahawk, if its not removed, be kept as Prf weapons. To create a scale where lances have the best 1-2 ranged, axes have an option, but swords have it as a distinct weakness.

While axes would have cheap, common, effective weapons. You forgot to buy a hammer? Maces work just fine. You forgot to buy a poleax? A halberd will get the job done no problem. Probably include stuff for fliers too. While all of these should keep to somewhat heavy and shaky hit chance. Having a plethora of effective weaponry, perhaps including both x2 and x3 (Like maces being x2 against armor, but hammers x3.) is why you'd want axe rank. I also think that similar to how axes get a ranged option. Sword units could still be allowed some effectiveness. Like wyrmslayers, or the iconic Rapier. While generic lances are lacking these options.

As an addition to these. I believe that personal or divine weapons can be freely exempt from this monopolization. Durandal would be a lot duller if only Armads was allowed to be effective. Ragnell is barely an upgrade without its 1-2 range. Of course the Gradivus can crit.

Now as for weapon sub-types. I think both lances and axes naturally lead into their monopolization.
The subtype of lances is spears. Spears are balanced and designed around being effective 1-2 range that allow lance users to fight on Enemy Phase superbly well.

The subtype of axes is all the "Smash!" weapons they get to turn enemy units into paste with one solid hit. Whether its a hammer or a mace or a club or what have you. Its more of a scattered collection, true, but the goal is the same. Any weapon that can turn one particular class into mush by the application of raw muscle.

Swords however. I feel that making their sub-type be killing edge into wo dao. While, acceptable. Doesn't actually solve a problem that my current suggestions have actually increased! Namely, almost every sword character is either unreliable. (reliant on crits) or would be happier with another weapon type.
My solution to this is blades.
For those that haven't played the GBA FE games. (Primarily seven but six to a lesser extent.) Blades were a fusion of axe and swords that were usually acceptable for one mercenary and nobody else and still worst than just use axes. The Tellius games also had blades but they were just upgraded swords.

Rather than having spear length like lances be the difference in quality
Or a bunch of scattered, specialized weapons.
Blades will follow the Iron -> Steel -> Killer -> Silver of normal swords.(and normal lances/axes/bows/gauntlets/what have you.)
Blades will be acquirable with the same ease as the weapons, with the exception of raw pricetag. And the reason for that price is that Blades will have the power of axes, the weight of lances, but retain the same high hit of swords. Albeit with a penalty in crit compared to their normal sword versions. (So Killer blade has some crit 10-20. While silver blade will have 5-10.)
Basically. A player can decide to use a blade instead of a normal sword. This basically gives them a weapon with a ton of power, high hit, and still rather low weight. But has a downside of coming at a premium cost, and should probably be rather fragile as well. Sword using characters can choose to have a "Master of all, but prohibitively expensive" weapon or a "Weak, but potential to crit" weapon. An option that lance and axe users don't have.

Now as for the magic weapon triangle.
 

Spoiler

I know its sacrilegious (heh) but staves and divine magic are getting rolled into one. Your clerics and bishops and monks are utility first and foremost. With maybe a few good offensive options that are limited to specific characters who have "I can use Abraxis and Seraphim" as their calling card.
That doesn't mean light magic can't have a niche. And similar to swords. That niche should be crit. Why? Because if you put your utility stavebots to take down full health bosses, your going to need a miracle like lucky crits to do it. Again, there should be some good offensive options. But more limited and in exchange, divine magic is to be full of utility like warp and rescue, and of course healing. Low level offensive divine magic should be reserved for weakened enemies.

As weird as it is since its the "Lance" of the magic triangle. (Whenever it isn't a self contained one that is.) I believe anima should be reliant on effectiveness to get big damage numbers. Use wind magic on pegasi, use thunder for dragons/wyverns. Use fire for cavalry. This also means most foot infantry, assuming bare minimum functioning resistance, are not terribly afraid of magic. But the classes weak to anima have to fear. a 4 mt fire is a different beast to a 12 mt fire. While a pegasi's high resistance might save it from getting clipped once. A wyvern rider getting melted by elthunder means you can't mindlessly send them to spear a group of magi to oblivion.

Whilst for dark magic. Power at a price should have always been the mechanic since FE4. Giving dark magic the unique mechanic of it alone being the health drain (as you see in Gaiden) in my opinion is not only super fitting. Gives you room for a lot of unique advantages. You could give Dark magic high hit+power, as well as things like extra range or debuffs, at the price of cutting into HP. In turn making dark mages extremely brittle. Or perhaps reliant on hitting Nosferatu to heal back up, which in turn has a shaky hit rate.

These alone do enough to differentiate the three main magics if you ask me. So sub-magics aren't really necessary.

Of course I know I did dip into "character balancing" a bit with talk of divine or personal (or both) weapons. But I believe there IS an overlap worth discussing to a smaller extent. (As long as you keep to 'A character's specific thing is having this specific weapon' personally one of my biggest gripes with 3H weapon balancing was that it was TOO inclusive. Making Thunderbrand Catherine's weapon and nobody else's allows you to make Thunderbrand more interesting and in turn make Catherine more interesting.)

Regardless. What is your ideal weapon balance system? Or maybe just the magic balance. Do you have anything to add to what me or others have thought up?

(Also if I misunderstood the rules of the general FE and this belongs elsewhere. My apologies.)


 

[X-Naut]

Gonna have to make this quick because it's my lunch break, but...

Spoiler

• Swords get Blades back as a sub-type, which have better might than even axes, higher hit than shorter swords, and can use axe Combat Arts. But they have the highest weight, cannot be used with shields and are locked to infantry classes. Mounted characters also take a 10 hit penalty when using swords at 1-range.
• Lances are split into Spears and Lances. Spears are your basic modern "lances" and are swords with a small might/hit trade and have the same mounted hit penalty. Some would be infantry locked. Lances have slightly lower might, hit and weight than axes, and incur a small unavoidable Speed penalty (like -3) separate from weight. But when wielded by mounted characters they gain 10 hit and add movement to damage when using Combat Arts.
  • Tech options would be split between them: Brave and throwers would go to Spears while Lances get the Ridersbane and Killer.
• Axes are largely the same, but cannot be used with shields aside from a few short axes. However, they also deal double damage to shields (more on them later). There wouldn't be many short axes beyond the throwers, but they'd have the mounted melee hit penalty too and can be used with shields.
• Bows have the might of spears and the hit of swords, or slightly better might. When fighting at over 2-range (i.e. Bowrange +1) the user loses 20% of their Atk, Hit, Crit and AS per space over normal max range. Longbows have natural (unpenalized) 3-range and have stats comparable to lances, including an innate Speed penalty (-3 or -5), and are locked to infantry. No bow can be used with shields.
  • Some bows would have a "limited range" clause that prevents them from having extended range. Short Bow is an obvious one but the Killer and Brave Bows might also be included.
• I don't care for daggers, gauntlets or whatever gimmick weapons but if they exist I'd lump them under one weapon type. They're both more associated with banditry than warfare and if you nerfed daggers' killing ability then gauntlets complement them well as a kill option.
• Magic is split into Faith and Reason, with Faith being Staffs/Light and Reason being Anima/Dark.
  • Fire is pretty much the same. Thunder is all-around better than Fire but lacks 1-range on most spells. Wind is weak but slightly more accurate than Fire and reduces physical damage taken by a small amount (prob 20%). I'm not a fan of universal effectiveness on magic, that's limited to their tech options.
  • Some other tomes would also lose their 1-2 range, such as Nosferatu becoming a 1-range only spell. Any 1-range spells would have the "limited range" clause I named for bows earlier in the event of Range+1 being a thing.
• Tomes/staffs and personal spell lists would co-exist, with the personal spells being weaker but enabling the tome/staff version to be used without restriction, provided the class grants spell list access. Tomes cannot be forged and cannot be used with shields.
• Shields can be equipped with certain weapons and have durability. Instead of increasing Defense they reduce damage by X%, typically 30% for most. They can only be equipped alongside certain weapons.

I could go on about other specifics and fill in gaps, but later.

Edited September 16, 2021 by X-Naut
Expanded a few things

[DomesticHausCat]

When it comes to the weapon triangle, I'm ok with not being in the game if characters can use all weapons like in Three Houses. If there was a weapon triangle in Three Houses, the player would have complete control over it 100% of the time. In every given situation unless all three weapon types are deployed in one zone of enemies the player will always be able to equip the weapon triangle favored weapon on all their allies at all times. So in a sense if it's always going to be an advantage, it's like a constant bonus that's always on. I think this was the reasoning as to why it was removed in Three Houses. 

If the weapon triangle is used, I would like these to be the bonuses: 15% bonus and penalty to hit respectively. With an addition of +2 to damage and -2 to damage as well (depending on who has the winning weapon.) 

The magic triangle system was best utilized in Radiant Dawn. And I was intrigued as to how they statted out Thunder magic in that game. It has a low hit rate and low damage rate, but it has a higher crit rate than wind or fire. Normally this would result in Thunder being the worst weapon type by far, but if you want to go fishing for a crit then it becomes the most ideal choice in that circumstance. Especially if a unit has high luck and skill/dexterity! 

In fact I'd rather the weapon types be differentiated like that than they currently are. The difference of sword, axe and lance being that swords hit more often than axes but axes are stronger. And lances being the middle ground between them. It works fine when the weapon triangle is involved. But in Three Houses this differentiation results in me not using lances at all and opting to use axes and swords only to roll with the extremes of both ends. You should still use a unit that's good with lances anyways to take advantage of the brave lances and the Holy lances the game makes available to you, but overall they come off as the worst of the triangle to me in Three Houses as their jack of all trades role.

It would be far more interesting to me if they balanced them more like the magic in Radiant Dawn. For example, what if they made the weight of axes really heavy but also beefed up the damage by a ton? Also allowing lances to attack units two squares away on player phase only kind of like in Dungeons and Dragons also would be quite interesting. 

Heck the way things are in Three Houses itself incentivises me to use bows and axes only. Get close counter and roll with a killer axe for the smash combat art to fish for crits. Plus roll with an iron bow, killer bow and mace/armor effective weapon and you're good to go. While I love playing this way to optimize the game, it's also rather samey when applied to all the characters. 

A game that ironically is very unbalanced is also one of my favorites when it comes to characters all feeling very different. Enter FE4 where swords are king and unmounted types suffer. But interestingly enough despite axes sucking, your axe units in FE4 get the tools they need to stand out. By giving them a brave axe and the bulk and strength to survive, they still have a use in your army among the sword cavs. The result in this is that enemy axe users are essentially goombas. Much like the soldiers in the gba games. But if an axe user does hit it does hurt quite a bit. 

I'm all for adding all weapon types the series has in the next game. Bring back crossbows and knives! I very much like the idea of knives being weak but also debuffing their victims. Also, bring back blades for swords and great lances and great axes. Those were really fun weapon types, but only really applicable in a game like Radiant Dawn where you have tons of inventory space. Heck, every game should have tons of inventory space. 5-6 slots is not enough! 

Magic was handled perfectly in Three Houses I'd argue. Love that dark magic is used for debuffing and it hits hard. And that white magic is used for healing but also has some attack variants.