Pick an FE without a lunatic+/L.Reverse/Maddening. Create one with as few changes as possible.

[DoomRPG]

Although I won't stop nor complain if any y'all suggest just giving 750% growths to the enemy. But I think that for stats. Each individual point should count as a separate change So 750% growths for the enemies actually counts as seven hundred and fifty changes. Less a hard rule and more trying to consider other ways to make the game harder in an unfair manner. Like altering triggers or strategically removing vital resources. Altering enemy weapon load outs, Removing canto rather than dropping cavalry stats to 0.

Anyhow as for what I'll suggest.

FE7 Killer mode. Unlocked after reaching max ranking in HHM. It is, unless stated otherwise. Completely identical to HHM.
Change 1: As per the name suggests. Killer weapons are ubiquitous. Every enemy will have them in place of iron/steel/thrown weapons.
Change 2-8: The weapon/tome shops in Ch.14 (3) 15x (2) and 16 (2) are removed.
Change 9-10. Paladins lose access to Lances (1) and Axes (2)

Notes: Change 9-10 was done mostly to nerf Marcus. But it hits the other cavaliers hard since promoting is in some ways, a downgrade.
2-8 Is just me being a dickish game dev.

So what other game can be ruined by a comedic amounts of untested artificial difficulty?
Note: There is no punishment if you create a romhack in order to playtest your or others' ideas. (And even if there was. Nobody is applicable for enforcement.)

[Shrimpica]

Conquest Kaizo

All reinforcements are now ambush spawns

All enemy unit with debuff weapons/skills have inevitable end

All enemy staffers have staff savant

All enemy Archers have close counter

Chapter 10 is now a 25 turn survive, with more crazy events happening after Turn 11 like Takumi destroying Obstacles and starting to move. Sakura comes with hell staffer reinforcementon Turn 12, Hinoka comes with Falcon reinforcements on Turn 16, Ryoma with his retainers and Swordmasters and Master Ninjas on Turn 22. All enemies on the Map give 1/2 exp due to number increase as to not mess with the lvl curve

All pots in pot chapter now affect your units negatively, while enemy units positively.

Fox hell has it's stupid illusion gimmick removed, but has now unlimited Kitsune Ambush spawns while still being a rout.

Removed player Dragon veins in Stairway, Hinoka chapters

Ryoma will one shot Corn after the turn count is over

Iago's has a Fireball he can use in his chapter

In Endgame you start with Zombie slime Garon behin your Army

Edited January 7, 2022 by Shrimpresident

[X-Naut]

Binding Blade Maddening mode

RNG is 1 RN above 50 hit and 2 RN below for the player, and the opposite for the enemy. No, not just hit RNG.

Crit rolls before hit and ignores the accuracy check, also uses FE5's hit/crit formulas (Crit = Skill, Dodge = Luck/2).

EXP gain is cut in half and you lose between 1-3 deployment slots on every map.

Double Hard Mode bonuses is no longer a glitch and the routine to scrub recruitable enemy bonuses now properly works.

Each map has a soft time limit in the form of new reinforcements whose spawn position is tied to Roy.

[lenticular]

I'm limiting myself to one change per game and seeing how badly I can ruin everything with that.

Path of Radiance: Ike never picks up Ragnell, but leaves it on the ground in the forest in Gallia. He now has no way to fight The Black Knight or Ashnard, and you have to kill Ashnard with Ena.

Shadows of Valentia: world map reinforcements spawn after literally every time you move or fight.

Conquest: enemy skills are not displayed in the UI. How could you possibly know that just by looking at them?

Three Houses: tea parties are mandatory for every birthday. Also, if you ever have a less than perfect tea time, Rhea eats you.

[DoomRPG]

10 hours ago, lenticular said:

I'm limiting myself to one change per game and seeing how badly I can ruin everything with that.

Path of Radiance: Ike never picks up Ragnell, but leaves it on the ground in the forest in Gallia. He now has no way to fight The Black Knight or Ashnard, and you have to kill Ashnard with Ena.

Shadows of Valentia: world map reinforcements spawn after literally every time you move or fight.

Conquest: enemy skills are not displayed in the UI. How could you possibly know that just by looking at them?

Three Houses: tea parties are mandatory for every birthday. Also, if you ever have a less than perfect tea time, Rhea eats you.

That conquest one is just cruel. I like it.

I feel like SoV one is a similar levels of petty dickishness but I haven't played the game (Yet) so I'll have to refrain from trying to ramble about what it do.

[ARMADS!!!]

Oh, Boy. This Will be fun! I have a few for FE6 and FE7. I might update if I come up with something else, have fun:

 

FE6:
- Only one pairing can gain support points per map (what? you thought that FE6 was already a bitch for only letting you accumulate 120 support points per chapter? Yeah, now is worse!)
- Every boss is a moving boss from Turn 1
- The first 5 turns of every map will always be fog of war.
  - All enemies get 20 extra crit. including bosses
  - On each gaiden chapter, the boss is wielding the Legendary weapon you'll get. It spends uses each time they use them and you wont get these uses back after getting the weapons.
The sword of seals spends 2 uses instead of 1 if you attack or counterattack at 2 range. and it can't heal or cure negative status anymore.
all 1-2 range weapons spend 2 uses to attack at 2 range
- Every weapon spends 3 uses for crit (the sword of seals and 1-2 range weapons spend 4 at two range), so rushing Rutger with 60% crit on an enemy group will likely burn whichever weapon he has equipped very quickly
- Arena doesnt give you the weapon for free, you gotta spend your own weapons.
- Healers can only use the Heal staff for a max of 10 times per map and any other staff can be used a max of 2 times each per map (provided that the staff has at least 2 uses left in the beggining of the map of course, otherwise is obviously less, the durability decreases normally in all staves none of them has the uses restored to 10 or 2 in each map, if you have less than this to spend it will stay like this, its not like FE3H spells that restore to full uses)
- You can only use dance/play for a max of 10 Times per map. OR the hability dance/play has a durability that is there all game (probably 30 or 40 uses), once its over your refresher becomes useless (like Fae is once her dragon stone breaks)
- Only Roy can kill bosses, otherwise theyre invincible
- If Merlinus dies he cant come back and you lose everything he had on him
- All your units will have the same HP they had by the end of the last chapter that they participated in, no auto healing between chapters. remember that you cant heal more than 10 Times per map with normal healing staves.
- You can only promote at level 20
- You can only promote one unit of each class, for the whole game. If the promoted character dies its your problem because there is only one promotion item of each. (pre promotes dont count)
- Each time an assassin procs letality, their own remaining HP is halved (not forever, they can still be healed, but remember that you can only heal 10 Times per chapter with normal healing staves)
- Generic dancer and assassin enemies
  - You cant buy more than 5 things per chapter. and cant sell more than 3
- You cant buy basic weaponry on the Battle Preoarations
- No secret shops
- Each unit can carry a max of 3 items/weapons instead of 5
  - You cant use any status staff on any boss.
  - In chapter 14 (Arcadia), you must also kill Randy, Maggie and Rose to complete the chapter. And to go the 14x Gaiden chapter, you must pick ar least 4 out of the 8 hidden Treasures (AND kill Randy, Maggie and Rose since this os now one of the requirements to normally clear the map, and of course under 25 turns with Sophia alive or no Gaiden chapter)
- To get the real/good ending, in addition to all of the contiditions that you already have, you have to recruit everyone (everyone that is possible to in one playthrough, of course) AND keep them ALL alive.
To clear chapters 10A and 11B you must clear them (whichever you got) with all members of Tate's and Klein's squads alive. If one of them die, its instant game Over.
- In both chapters 13 and 15, all of Perceval's men must be alive until they end, if any of them die its game Over (you can avoid doing this in chapter 15 if you manage to recruit Perceval on chapter 13)
- When any character that wields Magic or staves promotes you have to chose if the unit will wield either magic (the type of Magic depends on the class as before: dark for druids, light for bishops, anima for valkyries and sages) or staves. No promoted mages wielding both staves and magic, only one. So you Will always have to waste at least One deployment spot with a staffbot that cant fight 

 - No stat boosters or stuff like Delphi shield
 

FE7:
- Only one pairing can gain support points per map.
- Every boss is a moving boss from Turn 1 (including ursula, good luck)
- The first 5 turns of every map will always be fog of war
- All the enemies get 20 extra crit. including bosses
- Every 1-2 range weapon spend 2 uses at 2 range
- Every weapon spends 3 uses on each crit (1-2 range weapons spend 4 on 2 range crits) so you'll pray to not crit all the time
- Healers can only use the Heal staff for a max of 10 times per map and any other staff can be used a max of 2 times each (provided that the staff has at least 2 uses left in the beggining of the map of course, otherwise is obviously less, the durability decreases normally in all staves none of them has the uses reatored to 10 or 2 in each map, if you have less than this to spend it will stay like this, its not like FE3H spells)
- You can only use dance/play for a max of 10 Times per map. OR the hability dance/play has a durability that is there all game (probably 30 or 40 uses), once its over your refresher becomes useless. As a pitty mechanic, Ninian and Nils dont have to share the same durability for dancing/playing (i mean, FE6 is supposed to be harder than FE7 anyway right?)
- Whoever dies in Lyn mode stay dead
- If you dont do Merlinus Gaiden chapter you dont get Merlinus, ever.
- Merlinus uses a deployment slot
  - If Merlinus dies he cant come back and you lose everything that he had on him
- You only get 1 heaven Seal, so either Lyn or Eliwood/Hector (whoever is your non main lord) will remain unpromoted
- All your units will have the same HP they had in the end of the last chapter that they participated in, no auto healing between chapters. remember that you cant heal more than 10 Times per map with normal healing staves.
- If you manage to get Nils killed before the final chapter, you wont get the extra deployment spot that you get for getting him killed.
- Athos cant use dark Magic (yeah, no Athos with Luna)
- In the last chapter part 1, all the Morphs are released ar the same time.
- When any character that wields Magic or staves promotes you have to chose if the unit will wield either magic (the type of Magic depends on the class as before: dark for druids, light for bishops, anima for valkyries and sages) or staves. No promoted mages wielding both staves and magic, only one. So you Will always have to waste at least One deployment spot with a staffbot that cant fight
- You can only promote ar level 20
- You can only promote one unit of each class, for the whole game. If the promotes character dies its your problem because there is only one promotion item of each. (pre promotes dont count)
- Marcus dont gain Xp, he loses (is not TOO much per combat though). So the more you use him the worse he gets. He can even unpromote like this
  - Only the main lord can kill bosses, otherwise theyre invincible
- One of Vaida's recruitment conditions is too defeat her in chapter 24(E)/26(H)
- Each time an assassin procs letality, their own remaining HP is halved (not forever, they can still be healed, but remember that you can only heal 10 times per map with normal healing staves)
- Jerme (the assassin boss) doesnt have a magic sword in neither of the chapters he is in, so he can always proc letality on you (also remember that, like Every Enemy, he has +20% crit chance, plus he has a killind Edge) also remember that he is also a moving boss
- Generic dancer and assassin enemies
- You cant buy more than 5 things per map and cant sell more than 3 (including on the Battle Preparations chapter)
- No secret shops
- Each unit can carry a max of 3 items/weapons
- You dont get a second Rapier/WolfBeil
- You cant use any status staff on any boss, including on Nergal's Morphs
- You can only unlock a Gaiden chapter if you completed the previous one (except that you dont have to complete chapter 19xx on Eliwood's mode since it doesnt exist there, but you'll have to kill Kishuna at least once to play the future Gaiden chapters)
- On chapter 16x, you have to kill Fargus. so you might rather just not play the future Gaiden chapters since you probably wont be able to do this
- On chapter 26E/28H (Battle before dawn) you also have to kill Ursula before the end of the 15 turns.
- On the Gaiden chapter 26xE/28xH (night of farewells) you must kill Sonia with Nino otherwise game Over.
- On chapter 16E/17H you must keep all of Caelin's soldiers alive, if any of them die is game Over 

 - no stat boosters or stuff like Delphi shield

 

 

 for now thats it. 🙂

 

 

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

Genealogy of the Holy War: Unholy Mode

When you die in the Arena, you die in real life.

The Dance command only affects a single target.

Sigurd joins as an infantry "Junior Lord", rather than a promoted "Knight Lord".

You can't view enemy movement/attacking ranges.

You can't save between turns, only between chapters.

On 1/7/2022 at 9:49 AM, lenticular said:

Three Houses: tea parties are mandatory for every birthday. Also, if you ever have a less than perfect tea time, Rhea eats you.

I can imagine more than a few players messing up their tea times intentionally. 

[AnonymousSpeed]

7 hours ago, ARMADS!!! said:

- Every boss is a moving boss from Turn 1

I think this would actually make the game easier.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

On 1/7/2022 at 12:32 PM, Shrimpresident said:

All enemy unit with debuff weapons/skills have inevitable end

... and debuffs/poisonstrike/grizzlywounds aply in full, even if the enemy dies. That alone probably softlocks chapter 7.

For SD: Caedas spear loses it´s effective damage. No reclassing outside of classline. 

For Fates: Enemies will always benefit from Attack Stance, even if in Guard Stance or when the player unit is in Guard Stance. 

SOV: Witches AI gits gud. Alternatively, reinforcements may stack. 

For TH: All units max possible weapon rank is tied to prof rank and prof rank is tied to Byleths unit level (1->E, 5-> E+, 10->D, 15->D+, etc). Ofc, you still have to actually reach the prof lvl and neither weapon nor prof exp carry over. 

[ARMADS!!!]

5 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I think this would actually make the game easier.

 Well, right. In FE6 it actually would (danm you, broken trone bonuses!), but I still think that in FE7 it would be harder, actually only this wouldnt make that much difference by itself but with the other rule I added that makes the 5 first turns of every chapter be fog of war (I think I should have made it 10 instead of 5 though) it would be pretty bad...

 

 Anyway, 5 more that applies to most FEs I think:

 1) Your weapon rank bar only raises when you fight with a weapon of your current rank (yeah, raising staff rank to S will be a pain on the ass) and decreases each time you fight with a weapon of a rank that is 2 ranks or more below yours (so if you have A on swords, you can only raise it to S by using A rank swords, while using swords of rank C or lower decreases your rank bar and using B swords do nothing)

 2) you only get xp for Kills, never for fighting normally (except staff units cuz duuuh)

 3) reinforcements spawn in the beggining of the enemy phase and can attack right after spawning (like in FE6, Im not sure if there are many more FE that do this besides FE6, but this mechanic is pretty shitty)

 4) healing always takes HP from the healer (they will lose half of the amount of HP that is healed on the other unit).

 5) in games that let you reapair your weapons, each time a weapon is repaired it becomes a little worse (can become heavier, have less might or crit, etc,...)

 

[AnonymousSpeed]

23 minutes ago, ARMADS!!! said:

In FE6 it actually would (danm you, broken trone bonuses!)

Also because every map is seize, meaning you can just move around the primary obstacle now.

But yeah, it'd potentially make 7 harder? At least Battle Before Dawn would be...more...something, that's for sure.

[Dark Holy Elf]

It would certainly help the bosses in all those maps who just stand there immobile despite not even having a terrain to benefit from him (which disproportionately includes some pretty plot-important people, such as Ursula and Nergal).

[SnowFire]

It's all for fun, but I will say some of the ideas proposed, while funny, would be just frustrating if actually played.  ("You lose your convoy forever if Merlinus dies" really means "Merlinus dying is a reset", for example, and is Merlinus micromanagement actually that much fun?)  The designer of I Want To Be The Guy mentioned that merely killing the player isn't that hard - the hard part of Kaizo games is ensuring that the player has a path to succeed in a seemingly unfair situation.

Anyway, I'll tackle Echoes...  on the enemy side, it'd be pretty simple:

• Buff those enemy stats!  Whether it be by giving them phantom extra levels or just some sort of across-the-board +2 to stats deal.  (Yeah, I know the OP discouraged this, but...  it's necessary, Hard enemy stats just aren't high enough to stop things like Warping Alm next to the boss and one-round KO'ing him, and as long as that's viable it's hard to make other changes matter.)
• Modify some of the maps to include a few new enemies, say one new enemy per map:
  • Take some of the "special" monsters from dungeon crawling (you know, that have the giant symbol and special abilities and much higher level) and stick them in the normal, set piece battles when appropriate (i.e. when there's Duma Faithful / Dark Mage type foes afoot).
  • When monsters are not appropriate (just the Rigelian / Desaix's army), include some of the more rarely used enemy types.  I guess the lack of Pegasus Knights is intentional (other than Clair, they're an Archanean thing?) so you can keep them out I suppose, but the most glaring: maybe some "normal" enemy mages / sages / priestesses?  You fight some in the DLC of all things (e.g. Fernand's map) but they're basically nonexistent in the maingame.  Just use Mae's build - they can be frail but fast and equipped with weak-but-light tomes like Fire.
• Give most bosses in C3 & beyond Vengeful Cry ("unit can counterattack regardless of range") which normally only Jedah has.  Handing this out too casually to mooks will defeat the point of archers & stuff like the range-extending mage ring, but..  high range units will be just fine, trust me, especially as increased enemy stats make safe chipping more important.  And in the case of mages, can even just switch to a more useful ring.

Ideally the PC side doesn't change at all in these modes, because it's confusing and arguably dulls the identity of the game.  (I'm not a fan of things like varying Hard & Lunatic mode stat bonuses as an intentional mechanic in Awakening, for example.)  Nevertheless, there's a few tweaks that I think need to be made to preserve the integrity of such a game as a challenge mode:

• Nerf Conjure.  Sorry, it's gotta go.  So long as enemies can easily be tempted into chasing kills on an endless stream of level 1 phantoms, the game simply won't be challenging, especially on Celica's path since Genny gets hers very early.
  • While removing it entirely is the easiest, could also do something like "characters with Conjure get 3 uses of it per map, the end, that's it."  This would still be extremely good.
  • As an alternative option, could give enemy Dark Mages / Cantors some sort of Expel equivalent that rather than instantly killing Terrors, it instantly kills Illusions.  I don't think this is great either because these abilities would go back to being insanely busted after the enemy mages who can use this are dead, and merely tying up the actions of a mage is already solid, but it'd be something.
• Increase the level requirement to class change (say +4 to all existing level minimums?), but also reduce the XP penalty for being high level.  This might arguably be dulling Echoes' identity as a game where early-class changing is good, but part of why early class changing is good is because you simply don't need the perfectionist-style 'extra' levels from waiting on Hard.  Since we're buffing enemy stats, it's probably best to avoid a "feel bad" where a character that was repeatedly early-promoted finds out that their stats can't hack it in C4, and it's too late to go back and change it.
  • Relatedly, possibly lock some high-level class promotions by chapter - i.e. you can only hit the highest tier of classes in C4.  Might also encourage waiting it out in lesser classes longer, although Mae/Boey won't be happy about this.
  • Despite claiming that per-difficulty stat boosts weren't good above, if we're assuming the early-recruited characters end up with mildly higher stats all-around from getting more levels pre-promotion, some of the C4 latejoiners might need a stat boost to stay comparable.
• Dread Fighter->Villager loop is only allowed in the C6 postgame.  Cheeses the normal game too much.  (You can still use your DLC Villager's Forks if you are really set on clowning the main game.)

 

 

[AnonymousSpeed]

FE6: Remove Rutger

FE15: No grinding. No map reinforcements, not monsters in dungeons, nothing. You get experience in the main maps and nowhere else.

[lenticular]

9 hours ago, SnowFire said:

It's all for fun, but I will say some of the ideas proposed, while funny, would be just frustrating if actually played.  ("You lose your convoy forever if Merlinus dies" really means "Merlinus dying is a reset", for example, and is Merlinus micromanagement actually that much fun?)  The designer of I Want To Be The Guy mentioned that merely killing the player isn't that hard - the hard part of Kaizo games is ensuring that the player has a path to succeed in a seemingly unfair situation.

I can't speak for anyone else, but my suggestions were entirely meant to be absolutely dreadful to actually play. For me, the exercise was to completely ruin everything on purpose with only small changes. Designing actually good difficuly is way harder, as you say, and realistically it also requires repeated itterations of testing and redesign to get right.

9 hours ago, SnowFire said:

Nerf Conjure.  Sorry, it's gotta go.  So long as enemies can easily be tempted into chasing kills on an endless stream of level 1 phantoms, the game simply won't be challenging, especially on Celica's path since Genny gets hers very early.

• While removing it entirely is the easiest, could also do something like "characters with Conjure get 3 uses of it per map, the end, that's it."  This would still be extremely good.
• As an alternative option, could give enemy Dark Mages / Cantors some sort of Expel equivalent that rather than instantly killing Terrors, it instantly kills Illusions.  I don't think this is great either because these abilities would go back to being insanely busted after the enemy mages who can use this are dead, and merely tying up the actions of a mage is already solid, but it'd be something.

I wonder if it would be enough simply to change the enemy AI here. If the AI is coded to ignore Illusions and go after real units instead whenever it can, that alone would be a major nerf without ever actually touching player abilities.

[DoomRPG]

14 hours ago, SnowFire said:

• Buff those enemy stats!  Whether it be by giving them phantom extra levels or just some sort of across-the-board +2 to stats deal.  (Yeah, I know the OP discouraged this, but...  it's necessary, Hard enemy stats just aren't high enough to stop things like Warping Alm next to the boss and one-round KO'ing him, and as long as that's viable it's hard to make other changes matter.)

 

 

OP here. Just wanted to it to be made 100% clear that I'm not fundamentally opposed to basic stat increases. I just added the "as few changes as possible" and the stat thing as more of an incentive since I was fearing the thread devolving into "Let's just add a bajillion stats and nothing else."

And as for the rest of your post. I think it sounds pretty good, but also I'm so close yet so far to actually playing SoV. (I have it. But I'm beating the prior 3DS games first atm.) So sadly I can't quite envision your suggestions as well as I'd like.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

10 hours ago, lenticular said:

I can't speak for anyone else, but my suggestions were entirely meant to be absolutely dreadful to actually play. For me, the exercise was to completely ruin everything on purpose with only small changes. Designing actually good difficuly is way harder, as you say, and realistically it also requires repeated itterations of testing and redesign to get right.

Yeah, same. Most of my proposed changes:

On 1/8/2022 at 10:54 AM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Genealogy of the Holy War: Unholy Mode

When you die in the Arena, you die in real life.

The Dance command only affects a single target.

Sigurd joins as an infantry "Junior Lord", rather than a promoted "Knight Lord".

You can't view enemy movement/attacking ranges.

You can't save between turns, only between chapters.

Were more about annoying the player and creating tedium, rather than making more enjoyable difficulty. Like, who outside of the Radiant Dawn design team could think that removing the ability to see enemy ranges is good difficulty?

20 hours ago, SnowFire said:

Nerf Conjure.  Sorry, it's gotta go.  So long as enemies can easily be tempted into chasing kills on an endless stream of level 1 phantoms, the game simply won't be challenging, especially on Celica's path since Genny gets hers very early.

Easy change: Invoke now summons enemy units, rather than ally units. They only give 1 exp each per kill, too.

16 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

FE6: Remove Rutger

Fir: "My time has come."

16 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

FE15: No grinding. No map reinforcements, not monsters in dungeons, nothing. You get experience in the main maps and nowhere else.

Ooh, I actually kinda like this one. Although I'm assuming stuff like the Golden Apple and EXP fountains would still work?

[AnonymousSpeed]

1 minute ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Fir: "My time has come."

Reminding myself to use Fir in my next HM playthrough.

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

Ooh, I actually kinda like this one. Although I'm assuming stuff like the Golden Apple and EXP fountains would still work?

I imagine so. But yeah, I think it's a good idea. I'm not surprised the developers didn't think of it, but it's one of those things which seems obvious once you hear it out loud. What I'm not sure about is if you should be able to backtrack to previous shrines for promotion, making SoV play more strictly like a traditional FE game. Saving fountains is kind of like hoarding statboosters though, and I think that's alright. I'll also mention that monsters still appear in dungeons, they just don't respawn. Unless we remove them entirely, that works to. Too? Two.

Conjure might be more balanced if it didn't summon so many frickin' soldiers and if they were a little weaker. You can pretty much carpet bomb enemies with phantoms that can potentially survive multiple rounds of combat, and I'd prefer we try something in-between the current system and complete removal.

[Jotari]

Path of Radiance. Localize maniac mode. That's it, that's the one change.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

Seems no one has done Thracia 776. Here's how I would make a "Munstrous Mode" for the game:

The Capture command no longer exists.

That's it, that's the extent of the changes.

[henrymidfields]

FE6 Binding Blade - Hard Mode Remastered:

• Enemies will have good AI like Conquest do. Oh so you're thinking you can just park Milady/Perceval in the middle and provoke you enemies with them. Not gonna work, dunce! They'll go after your weaker units instead, unless if they have effective/killer weapons!
• Enemies will have more Ridersbanes, Killer Weapons, and especially Swordreavers and Swordslayers to prevent you from overly relying on Perceval, ALance, Dieck, and Rutger. Oh, and the Ridersbanes etc will also be supereffective against Nomads and Troubadours and their evolutions, so you'd better make sure Sue, Shin, and Clarine actually dodge.
• They will actually have Wyvernslayers as well to neutralize Milady and Zeiss. (The in-story reason is that the Bernese have a "kill-on-sight" policy for traitors and subversives, and are equipped with Wyvernslayers to address the potential threat.) Oddly enough, Hammers and Armorslayers would be non-existent on the Enemy's side.
• You cannot do a follow-up attack on Armor Knights and Generals. This is actually a double-edged sword, as it cuts both ways: Bors, Wendy, and Barth now has a chance to survive.
• As a partial compensation to the above, there will be extra reinforcements, but not as much as default Hard Mode.
• As another partial compensation to the above, there would be no Hard Mode Boost...which also means Rutger, Milady, and Perceval are nerfed.

Because the usual Game Breakers are completely nerfed, you're forced to rely on other units to complete the chapters. How's that for balance?

FE6 Binding Blade - Lunatic: In addition to the Hard Mode Remastered above...

• Almost all enemies after Chapter 8 will have one of either killer or effective weapons.
• Existing Bandits, Thieves, and Pirates are located closer to villages.
• All reinforcements from the default Hard Mode will appear in full.
• You've got two less turns to clear the chapters leading into the Paralogues.

Edited March 7, 2022 by henrymidfields

[Jotari]

7 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Seems no one has done Thracia 776. Here's how I would make a "Munstrous Mode" for the game:

The Capture command no longer exists.

That's it, that's the extent of the changes.

So Thracia, Leif is super fucking poor. Id there any way to get money in Thracia without selling weapons; and any way to reliably getting weapons without stealing or capturing? Well if stealing still exists then I guess that's an avenue towards funds. Lifis and Perne top tier.

[henrymidfields]

6 hours ago, Jotari said:

So Thracia, Leif is super fucking poor. Id there any way to get money in Thracia without selling weapons; and any way to reliably getting weapons without stealing or capturing? Well if stealing still exists then I guess that's an avenue towards funds. Lifis and Perne top tier.

Actually, did someone do a "No Capture" run on 776? Any LPs?

[Shaky Jones]

1 hour ago, henrymidfields said:

Actually, did someone do a "No Capture" run on 776? Any LPs?

I feel like someone has definitely done that somewhere, but not an lp that I know of here at least. Tried a quick Google search, but no dice. I doubt no one's tried it before though.

7 hours ago, Jotari said:

So Thracia, Leif is super fucking poor. Id there any way to get money in Thracia without selling weapons; and any way to reliably getting weapons without stealing or capturing?

I'm pretty sure you never receive money throughout the game's story. Selling is how you'd achieve that, but a lot of your weapons are meant to be coming directly from the enemy. Theoretically, you could just arena abuse for money. You start with 0 gold, but you could sell what few weapons you start with if you have any when you reach the arena, then just keep earning gold until you can reliably buy weapons from stores throughout the game. Of course, why do that when you can have Lithis carry the game as always? That dude had enough con for me to steal killer lances in chapter 9. To heck with capturing. I'll steal and kill all day. Who wouldn't want an LP where Lithis and Perne do everything?

But instead of removing capture as a difficulty, why not just completely embrace the fatigue system? If they go too much higher than their limit, they die from exhaustion, or from a heart attack. Either one's fine. Vulneraries are replaced with water. They become somewhat more common items in the game, but instead of healing you, it prevents you from gaining dehydration, which doubles the rate in which you are fatigued, and of course, you die if you don't drink water for too many maps. This might sound stupid, and it is, but it's meant to encourage players to take care of themselves, both in game and in real life. Stay hydrated and remember to take breaks.

[Jotari]

2 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said:

This might sound stupid, and it is, but it's meant to encourage players to take care of themselves, both in game and in real life. Stay hydrated and remember to take breaks.

Thracia is nowhere near magnanimous to care about the health of human beings.