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[Verdant Wind] If only Judith or/and Nader are playable.


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On Verdant Wind except Lord, there is no special characters like Jeritza in Crimson Flower and Gilbert in Azure Moon. I wonder if only Judith can become playable in Verdant Wind it's be ok for her because she is more appears in Verdant Wind.

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Yeah,, I'd have like them to be playable as well. I'd like some more to be recruited in some of the other routes as well, alongside one or two who might die during the playthrough as well (e.g. on top of these two, make Rodgrigue (and another rep) playable in AM, Randolph and Ladislava in CF and Acheron for VW. SS would be more awkward because I can't think of obvious answers, especially for active Church reps.).

Having multiple units recruitable in Part 2 would be a major benefit in a game where your options are few if you don't go out of your way to recruit outside your house.

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For SS, well, probably the whole route should have been overhauled (or for that matter, merged with AM), but maybe a rescue chapter to retrieve Rhea? Then you can use her for the few chapters leading into the Endgame?

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On the one hand, sure, it would be nice to have more playable characters. I don't think many people would argue against that. But on the other hand, I'm not sure how useful they'd end up being. Judith only starts showing up in Chapter 15 and Nader not until Chapter 18, and the skill system in Three Houses is typically not kind to late-joining units. Gilbert's late arrival isn't the only reason that he's widely thought of as one of the game's worst units, but it's definitely a big contributing factor. And Judith and Nader would both be coming in even later than he does.

Another option would have been to do what they did with Jeritza and give them completely busted skills, but I'm not sure that I like that either. I don't really enjoy playing with overpowered abilities like Counterattack, due to how they distort the game around them.

Or maybe they could have made it so that late joiners came with some class masteries already unlocked. Which I wish that they did for Gilbert, Alois, Seteth, etc. already. But then there's another problem: what builds do you give them? For Judith, a class progression that would fit her character would be to give her mastery in Noble, Mymidon, Lord and maybe Mercenary. Which would be better than nothing, but would still elave her weak. A more optimised build might be something more like masteries in Noble, Soldier, Pegasus Knight and Brigand, but that ends up feeling too gamey for my tastes.

Which isn't to say that these are insurmountable problems. I'm sure that there are ways that late-joining characters could be made to work in Three Houses. But it isn't a trivial issue.

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I think it's because they wanted to give more focus on Cyril, who plays a larger role with Claude in story dialogue.

In terms of gameplay, Jeritza and Seteth are very equivalent to me, and you get Seteth for VW too, aside SS and AM. Both units are late-joiners whose availability is their biggest disadvantage, but are combat ready in their routes and join right when you get more deployment slots, making them easy to fit in and keep training to remain useful.

3 hours ago, lenticular said:

Or maybe they could have made it so that late joiners came with some class masteries already unlocked. Which I wish that they did for Gilbert, Alois, Seteth, etc. already. But then there's another problem: what builds do you give them?

Does Seteth really need anything beyond Death Blow though? Which can just auto-certify it and Knowledge Gem master it.

I guess Hit+20 is nice, but his Chichol Wyvern Co battalion boosts hit by 15 and could just be an alternative. He's not far off from A authority either.

Anything else I missed?

Edited by DaveCozy
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11 hours ago, henrymidfields said:

For SS, well, probably the whole route should have been overhauled (or for that matter, merged with AM), but maybe a rescue chapter to retrieve Rhea? Then you can use her for the few chapters leading into the Endgame?

If that happened alongside special classes for Seteth and Flayn, I would have definitely played SS...

 

Judith being playable would have been super fun, as would Nader. We know Judith's in Three Hopes, and Monica is playable there, so maybe Judith will be too!

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1 hour ago, DaveCozy said:

Does Seteth really need anything beyond Death Blow though? Which can just auto-certify it and Knowledge Gem master it.

I guess Hit+20 is nice, but his Chichol Wyvern Co battalion boosts hit by 15 and could just be an alternative. He's not far off from A authority either.

Anything else I missed?

I wouldn't go so far as to say that he needs anything else, but there are certainly other things he could make good use of. Hit +20 is one, as you mention, and I would definitely want to spend the time to master Soldier for Reposition (and Def +2 while we're at it). And yes, Cichol Wyverns are great, but they're great on pretty much everyone and giving them to Seteth means not giving them to someone else.

But yes, I do take your point that Seteth is one of the best of the late joiners. Decent stats, starting off in the best class line in the game, Swift Strikes and the Major Crest of Cichol are all very nice to have. These numerous advantages combined with the disadvantage of joining late make for a unit who is solid but not remarkable. Now, compare that to Judith, who shows up 3 chapters later, as an infantry sword class. Without some sort of special treatment, she'd end up possibly worse than Gilbert.

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22 minutes ago, lenticular said:

Now, compare that to Judith, who shows up 3 chapters later, as an infantry sword class. Without some sort of special treatment, she'd end up possibly worse than Gilbert.

Oh, ok I see what you're saying. I guess another comparison is this theoretically playable Judith would be like a worse Silver Snow Catherine. Yeah that'd be pretty bad, likely relegated to the bench without having some really good abilities or skill ranks on join to make her worth using or reclassing immediately beyond special treatment.

Even Gilbert can at least reclass to Paladin from base on chapter 14 (unfortunately not 13 cuz it's Hunting by Daybreak), so I'd say definitely worse without something like that 😛 

Edited by DaveCozy
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I'd be even more worried about making Nader useful. Not only is even later, but the niche he fills seems like it'd be already filled by Seteth. You'd have to give him much better stats to make him stand out at all. Incredibly good speed would help, since the other high-str latejoiners all have mediocre to bad speed except Jeritza.

For both Judith and Nader, I think a good, interesting personal skill would do wonders. I could see Judith having a skill similar to Fates's Inspiration (+2 atk/def/res to all allies within 2) which would be neat, especially if her own stat build and combat art set were appealing.

To be clear I don't think this would have happened; I basically agree with lenticular that most latejoiners were made pretty underwhelming for all the reasons she outlined. But it could have been done and it'd be cool if it were, since it'd give all the houses at least one unique latejoining PC.

 

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54 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I'd be even more worried about making Nader useful. Not only is even later, but the niche he fills seems like it'd be already filled by Seteth. You'd have to give him much better stats to make him stand out at all. Incredibly good speed would help, since the other high-str latejoiners all have mediocre to bad speed except Jeritza.

For both Judith and Nader, I think a good, interesting personal skill would do wonders. I could see Judith having a skill similar to Fates's Inspiration (+2 atk/def/res to all allies within 2) which would be neat, especially if her own stat build and combat art set were appealing.

To be clear I don't think this would have happened; I basically agree with lenticular that most latejoiners were made pretty underwhelming for all the reasons she outlined. But it could have been done and it'd be cool if it were, since it'd give all the houses at least one unique latejoining PC.

 

Just give Nader instant access to Point-Blank Volley, plus a personal skill that grants him +5 Attack when initiating combat at 1-range. GG EZ.

14 hours ago, lenticular said:

maybe they could have made it so that late joiners came with some class masteries already unlocked. Which I wish that they did for Gilbert, Alois, Seteth, etc. already. But then there's another problem: what builds do you give them? For Judith, a class progression that would fit her character would be to give her mastery in Noble, Mymidon, Lord and maybe Mercenary. Which would be better than nothing, but would still elave her weak. A more optimised build might be something more like masteries in Noble, Soldier, Pegasus Knight and Brigand, but that ends up feeling too gamey for my tastes.

My approach would be to give late joining units "halfway to Mastery" class EXP in prior classes that they have access to. So Gilbert, for instance, would only need 30 class EXP (rather than 60) for Fighter mastery. Gives the player a leg up, while still leaving the question of going for it at the player's discretion.

10 hours ago, DaveCozy said:

I guess Hit+20 is nice, but his Chichol Wyvern Co battalion boosts hit by 15 and could just be an alternative. He's not far off from A authority either.

Anything else I missed?

Strength +2 from Fighter mastery. Makes a difference of 4 damage with Swift Strikes, or a Brave Weapon. Sure, it's only a third as effective as Death Blow, but 4/3 * DB > 1 * DB.

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On 6/8/2022 at 1:56 AM, Dark Holy Elf said:

For both Judith and Nader, I think a good, interesting personal skill would do wonders. I could see Judith having a skill similar to Fates's Inspiration (+2 atk/def/res to all allies within 2) which would be neat, especially if her own stat build and combat art set were appealing.

I've been thinking about this some more, and I agree that strong and interesting personal abilities would be the best way to make late joiners relevant. An AoE buffing ability could be neat, but Three Houses seemed to want to tune down all such buffs to be for adjacent units only, so I can't imagine this would happen. Instead, I'm imagining that Judith could get something along the lines of Sword Avoid +20. I think this would give her a niche, and it would be neat to allow a sword dodge tank build without having to sacrifice your dancer. Depending on how powerful you wanted to make her, you could either have (a renamed) Sword Avoid be her personal, or you could have her "learn" it at low rank swords (like how Jeritza gets mastermind) and then give her another personal on top of it. I'm imagining "Hero of Daphnel: unit has +4 strength when counterattacking" as a strong option.

For Nader, you've pretty much got to put him on a wyvern to fit his character, which is kind of a problem, given that you're guaranteed to already have Seteth as a lance wyvern and Claude as a bow wyvern. So my solution would be to emphasise his tankiness. "Undefeated: This unit is immune to super-effective damage, critical hits, and follow-up attacks".And yes, that is aggressively tuned to be powerful, since it combines Effect Null, Vital Defense, and (an improved version of) Wary Fighter. It would be easy enough to tune it down by removing one or more of the abilities if it ended up too powerful.

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I think it was a deliberate choice to make the late-joiners meh because they were only supposed to be replacements for students you lost/screwed up - Seteth and Jeritza being the exceptions, because of plot reasons (being a pseudo-lord/Death Knight respectively). If so, then a recruitable Judith probably shouldn't be much better than SS Catherine, and Nader would either be a worse Seteth (as people have already said), or at best this game's version of Renning (decently high strength and fairly hyped in-game, but not normally worth the deployment slot due to lack of development). By itself this isn't that satisfying, I agree.

However, the standard is the massive variance in quality of late-game recruits across the previous games, when late-game recruits served a particular purpose (as opposed to 3H, where they don't really). Given that, if you still wanted playable late-game recruits but would also resent their eventual uselessness, maybe lock one/both of them behind some extra recruitment conditions, and then give them a strong unique item to justify their recruitment - like Stefan, although he was also a pretty good unit when you got him. It isn't quite fair compared to the other routes, because AM and CF get their characters for free and the Scythe of Sariel is very good, but strong items on recruitment + good rewards from a paralogue would hopefully balance that out. Hopefully this is the right level of compromise between recruitment/utility/satisfaction/completionism, while also meaning Judith/Nader don't outshine the students you've been training up the entire time. 

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