Is there any reason why we shouldn't have magic users of every movement type?

[Alastor15243]

One thing I've noticed Fire Emblem is exceedingly hesitant about throughout its entire history is creating classes of certain movement types with access to magic. It seems to go, in order of most to least likely: foot, cavalry, flying, armored. The lattermost, to my knowledge, has never seen a playable magic-using class in any mainline Fire Emblem game.

Even in Three Houses, which supposedly was all about breaking the weapon-class relationship and allowing units to use basically anything, they made a very conspicuous exception for magic. Flying mages weren't available until the DLC, and armored mages still aren't available at all.

To this day, the only way to get an armored tome user outside of Heroes is temporarily, via engaging with a tome-using Emblem while in an armored class. Micaiah means staff-armors have a bit more luck, however.

And I have to ask: is there any sensible reason behind this? For the combo to have eluded mainline use for so long, you've gotta figure they have some reason for it at this point. But I can't for the life of me figure out what it is. I get that most magic-users tend to be fragile, but the cavalry ones in particular have often received more than enough defense to see action on enemy-phase, so I can't imagine armored mages would be that devastating in the player's hands. Especially since they're in the running for worst class in the series so far.

Thoughts?

[Original Alear]

Quote

It seems to go, in order of most to least likely: foot, cavalry, flying, armored. The lattermost, to my knowledge, has

never seen a playable magic-using class in any mainline Fire Emblem game.

There actually are armor mages called "barons" in FE4. They tend to be in the arena or castle bosses. Maybe FE5 as well.

The general explanation for D&D games IIRC is that armor mages have trouble focusing their magic while wearing heavy armor, or something like that? Or that mages tend not to have the str/con to wear the armor.

Edited May 20, 2023 by Original Alear

[lenticular]

I would guess that it's a general paranoia about overtuning armour units in general. They almost always end up making armour units too weak. To some extent, that makes sense. Having over-tuned armour users is probably bad for the game in ways that having overtuned fliers or cavalry isn't. If you can trivialise every map just by sending in an armour unit and letting them be invincible, then the game isn't very fun. So they might be looking at the idea of an armoured mage the same way. Making a unit that was immune to all physical attacks and could easily one-shot all physical units in return would be bad. I think that they're over-paranoid and they absolutely could tune it to be fun and not overpowered, but I can somewhat understand why they might think that way.

[AnonymousSpeed]

Magic is basically the best weapon type as long as you have an actual magic stat, so I would understand not giving it to "better" movement types like cavalry and fliers- yet they really don't have many issues with that. Fliers (with some restrictions) have had tomes in most recent games- Sliepnir, Dark Flier, Malig Knights. Those haven't been terribly broken, though.

I'm not sure why they wouldn't give tomes to armors. I suppose there is valid concern around having a unit that is especially resistant to physical enemies but also hits them back very hard. Obviously armors tend to either not be that resilient or never get attacked in practice, and they might not even have a good magic stat, but I say this is a guy who plays on higher difficulties. For people on normal mode where stat thresholds are more forgiving, it might be harder to balance them so they don't trivialize that difficulty and yet aren't useless on hard. That fate kind of befell Bors and Barth in FE6.

[Jotari]

Yes it's really just mage armourers that are losing out by this point in the series. It took them a while to get to Mage Fliers, but once they did, they put a mage flier in every subsequent game, even Shadows of Valentia (not that you can make any use of Overclasses in an interesting way since they're all too busted for even Thabes). There is some hope though, as Engage has it's DLC Ballista class which is armour magic focused. Not actively using tomes, but it shows the idea is somewhat on their radar.

For anyone curious about what class ideas they haven't tried yet with the existing movement and weapon options, I made this thread a while back

 

Edited May 21, 2023 by Jotari

[Armchair General]

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

And I have to ask: is there any sensible reason behind this?

Personally, I think that an heavily armored mage would probably electrocute themselves

But then I remembered that the generic Dark Knights from Fates exists. Of course, they're cavalry units who managed to wear an nearly complete set of "regular" armor

 

As for 3H, well, something had to get the shittier end of the stick, somewhere along the line.

 

 

 

 

Edited May 21, 2023 by Armchair General

[Dark Holy Elf]

As others have mentioned there are certainly (flavour-wise) armoured mages in the series, from barons in FE4 (and Arvis) to dark knights in the more recent games. I don't think the game adopts a "mages can't wear armour" philosophy. However, whether it's due to the casual influence of D&D or other things, armoured mages aren't a very common trope in most media, including FE.

Early FE had a particular design in mind for mages, robe-wearing infantry. Games have slowly expanded what a mage can be, with FE4 adding a few (the cavalry stuck around, the armour mostly didn't), and eventually fliers as well. But I imagine the devs are a little worried about overtuning magic (with 1-2 range and better stats than javelins/hand axes in most games, it has the potential to run wild), so that limits some of the class options it gets.

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, Armchair General said:

Personally, I think that an heavily armored mage would probably electrocute themselves

But then I remembered that the generic Dark Knights from Fates exists. Of course, they're cavalry units who managed to wear an nearly complete set of "regular" armor

 

As for 3H, well, something had to get the shittier end of the stick, somewhere along the line.

Going to express the common opinion that Edelgard's personal armoured classes should have had magic access.

1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

As others have mentioned there are certainly (flavour-wise) armoured mages in the series, from barons in FE4 (and Arvis) to dark knights in the more recent games. I don't think the game adopts a "mages can't wear armour" philosophy. However, whether it's due to the casual influence of D&D or other things, armoured mages aren't a very common trope in most media, including FE.

Which is a bit funny, as mages have just as much reason to protect themselves as any other martial discipline. Sure any excuse can be made because it's magic and its rules can be anything the author imagines. But for general fiction there really shouldn't be anything odd about an armoured mage.

1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Early FE had a particular design in mind for mages, robe-wearing infantry. Games have slowly expanded what a mage can be, with FE4 adding a few (the cavalry stuck around, the armour mostly didn't), and eventually fliers as well. But I imagine the devs are a little worried about overtuning magic (with 1-2 range and better stats than javelins/hand axes in most games, it has the potential to run wild), so that limits some of the class options it gets.

Even in Jugdral the armoured mages weren't exactly an experimental thing, as they weren't avilable to the player. Barons are very much designed to be boss characters who can do everything and are better than regular classes (though funnily enough if we did have a playable one that movement stat would kill their utility). The only real reason they can even use magic, I posit, is that they had decided to make a legendary weapon for every weapon type (plus one for lances and swords) and the tomes mostly went to enemy characters whom they didn't want just dying instantly and being an easy boss fight. I think there's even evidence that Reptor was originally meant to be a Sage.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

For what it's worth, I do think the mage classes should nerf a unit's physical defense in much the same way an armor knight class is dropping your speed. Instead they just give magically inclined units slightly less base defense and expect that gap to hold for the whole game - and it won't if the mage is gaining exp at a faster rate than the poor armor knight. There's so many balance considerations that go into how a mage class ought to perform and I haven't seen any fire emblem game making these kinds of tough calls. The theoretical balance is something like this: 1-2 range attacks that target the enemy's Resistance are obviously potent on both phases, but the units in question are (ideally) fragile and have to be positioned cautiously to mitigate risk. An armor knight's defenses and a mounted unit's canto mess with that balance. Most promotions (Sniper, Swordmaster, General) double down on the unit's strengths rather than covering for their weaknesses. And honestly, I don't want an army of units with no weaknesses, that's boring and makes me start auto piloting.

Side rant: If anything, it's the mages, not archers, that ought to have been restricted from 1 range attacks. Name me one language that doesn't have a figurative expression for why you shouldn't play with fire. If I'm an armored jerk getting set on fire, I'll be fine, and I'm coming in for that hug. Mage robes look flammable. 

Edited May 21, 2023 by Zapp Branniglenn

[Dark Holy Elf]

28 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Which is a bit funny, as mages have just as much reason to protect themselves as any other martial discipline. Sure any excuse can be made because it's magic and its rules can be anything the author imagines. But for general fiction there really shouldn't be anything odd about an armoured mage.

I think one of the root causes here is that mages, as they were originally popularized (for instance, Merlin or Gandalf) were not members of a military whose job was to fight battles, but instead unusual, exceptional individuals who maybe ended up using their magic to fight on occasion, but it wasn't their primary purpose. Gandalf spends most of his time wandering the wilderness; armour would not have been particularly helpful to him.

Once you start making mages a common feature of armies (as FE does) and thus expected to have to deal with things like stray arrows, then yeah them wearing armour starts to make way more sense, but character design didn't really catch up with this.

 

[Armchair General]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Going to express the common opinion that Edelgard's personal armoured classes should have had magic access.

Yeah, there's certainly an excuse for Edelgard, considering how her custom suit of armor isn't slowing her down, much.

 

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Which is a bit funny, as mages have just as much reason to protect themselves as any other martial discipline. Sure any excuse can be made because it's magic and its rules can be anything the author imagines. But for general fiction there really shouldn't be anything odd about an armoured mage.

Well, the real question is just how armored should they be? I can get around with them being lightly armored in the sense that it's supposed to be rated against the occasional skirmisher if they're supposed to be attacking from an distance. But the "walking fortress" deal only works when someone who's actually strong enough to wear it without being encumbered by it.

[Alastor15243]

12 hours ago, Original Alear said:

There actually are armor mages called "barons" in FE4. They tend to be in the arena or castle bosses. Maybe FE5 as well.

Yep, that's the reason for the "playable" qualifier.

 

8 hours ago, Jotari said:

Going to express the common opinion that Edelgard's personal armoured classes should have had magic access.

With dark tomefaire for the love of christ. Whoever's bright idea it was to make dark magic a mostly-female thing and then make the dark mage classes male-only...  well I have to assume it wasn't any one person's "bright idea", because that's the kind of idiocy that can only result from multiple people completely failing to communicate.

[Dark Holy Elf]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

With dark tomefaire for the love of christ. Whoever's bright idea it was to make dark magic a mostly-female thing and then make the dark mage classes male-only...  well I have to assume it wasn't any one person's "bright idea", because that's the kind of idiocy that can only result from multiple people completely failing to communicate.

In fairness, the only class with Dark Tomefaire (Dark Knight) is not in fact gender-locked. And the only other class with a dark-magic-buffing passive (Valkyrie, with Dark Range+1) is gender-locked... but to women only (sorry Hubert).

Of course that just shifts the stupidity around, in that Three Houses has "Dark Mage" classes that don't actually make you any better at using dark magic.

[Armchair General]

8 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

With dark tomefaire for the love of christ. Whoever's bright idea it was to make dark magic a mostly-female thing and then make the dark mage classes male-only...

To be fair, you can unlock Dark Tomefaire by getting S+ in Reason. But I never really got an lot of mileage out of the dark magic classes. Yes, Poison Strike and Fiendish Blow was nice; but it was usually overkill, in my experience.

[Bylift]

If you like the idea of mage armor, I highly recommend playing Vision Quest (FE8 Romhack--yes I realize it's not 'mainline').

In addition to being a phenomenal romhack, you get a Lord mage armor. He has 5mv and a busted prf tome. Good stuff.

[Samz707]

On 5/21/2023 at 12:11 AM, Alastor15243 said:

One thing I've noticed Fire Emblem is exceedingly hesitant about throughout its entire history is creating classes of certain movement types with access to magic. It seems to go, in order of most to least likely: foot, cavalry, flying, armored. The lattermost, to my knowledge, has never seen a playable magic-using class in any mainline Fire Emblem game.

Even in Three Houses, which supposedly was all about breaking the weapon-class relationship and allowing units to use basically anything, they made a very conspicuous exception for magic. Flying mages weren't available until the DLC, and armored mages still aren't available at all.

To this day, the only way to get an armored tome user outside of Heroes is temporarily, via engaging with a tome-using Emblem while in an armored class. Micaiah means staff-armors have a bit more luck, however.

And I have to ask: is there any sensible reason behind this? For the combo to have eluded mainline use for so long, you've gotta figure they have some reason for it at this point. But I can't for the life of me figure out what it is. I get that most magic-users tend to be fragile, but the cavalry ones in particular have often received more than enough defense to see action on enemy-phase, so I can't imagine armored mages would be that devastating in the player's hands. Especially since they're in the running for worst class in the series so far.

Thoughts?

As people have said, probably because heavy armor unit that can tank physical then nuke physical with magic would be hard to balance.

I've always assumed part of the reason Res/DEF was seperated (Since while def is technically a stat, it does seem to be generaly tied to units with armored classes or even armored designs as having high def.) since I presume magic and armor don't exactly..mix well.

I won't pretend to have an idea of what casting it would be like, but I presume armor against magic is actually just a liablity. (Metal heats up when exposed to fire and conducts electricity) so while admittingly for some of the other magic it probably wouldn't have an effect, I imagine against the common fireball or bolting that armor would actually hinder your chances of survival. (plus mages do hand motions alot of the time, no idea if they're actually needed for magic but if we assume they are, having bulky armor probably doesn't help.)

Kinda like how in reality, yeah a tank is immune to bullets, doesn't stop the fact that for a very long period of time, a simple bottle of alcohol with some gasoline mixed in was still incredibly effective at destroying them so I've always assumed there was a similar logic to armor vs magic. 

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Samz707 said:

As people have said, probably because heavy armor unit that can tank physical then nuke physical with magic would be hard to balance.

The thing about this logic is...does that matter? Do we need all the classes to be balanced? Wyvern rider is just straight up better than most other options in multiple games. A class that is generally better than other classes won't break the game, so long as that class has weaknesses and isn't the main issue to solving every scenario. Which an armoured mage wouldn't be. Armoured units are considered some of the worst in the series, so an armoured mage would still be held back by their low speed and movement. If they have a magic stat a lot more moderate than a typical mage and typical low resistance for armoured units then they really wouldn't be broken at all. It's like if we gave max strength to Generals so their counter attacks are stronger. That would certainly be very appreciated, but they're still going to be Generals with the issues Generals have.

[Dark Holy Elf]

5 hours ago, Samz707 said:

(plus mages do hand motions alot of the time, no idea if they're actually needed for magic but if we assume they are, having bulky armor probably doesn't help.)

Y'know I've seen this argument before (I think some early edition of D&D made it) and it's always felt unconvincing to me. You know who else needs to do hand motions to fight? Anyone wielding a sword, lance, axe, or other weapon. I don't buy for a moment that armour which allows you to swing a sword freely (or in the case of Three Houses, throw punches and kicks!) would stop you from making hand motions. Additionally, there's no reason to believe that armour for mages wouldn't be optimized to give them as much manual dexterity as they needed while being protective otherwise.

I think your take about metal armour being a liability for fire/lightning is an argument that has merit, though.

[Armchair General]

5 hours ago, Jotari said:

Wyvern rider is just straight up better than most other options in multiple games.

Aside from low res, occasionally taking bonus damage from wind magic, usually has an weakness against archers and certain swords. But the only reasons why their popular in the last two major games is because of their stat spread and mobility. Plus, the opposition rarely goes insane with spamming magic users everywhere (even though they should in 3H)

 

As with mage armors, I can easily see them eating up an entire wave of conventional soldiers if you went high magic and physical defense with medium resistance; sure, an regular armored unit could have done the same at an slightly slower rate, but it gets kind of boring watching someone cheese the game after an while. As for mobility, well that's what the rest of your army is for.

 

 

 

[Jotari]

8 hours ago, Armchair General said:

Aside from low res, occasionally taking bonus damage from wind magic, usually has an weakness against archers and certain swords. But the only reasons why their popular in the last two major games is because of their stat spread and mobility. Plus, the opposition rarely goes insane with spamming magic users everywhere (even though they should in 3H)

 

As with mage armors, I can easily see them eating up an entire wave of conventional soldiers if you went high magic and physical defense with medium resistance; sure, an regular armored unit could have done the same at an slightly slower rate, but it gets kind of boring watching someone cheese the game after an while. As for mobility, well that's what the rest of your army is for.

That's only if they have high magic, and even then a lack of speed will further diminish their ability to enemy phase an entire map.

[Samz707]

On 5/27/2023 at 3:56 PM, Dark Holy Elf said:

Y'know I've seen this argument before (I think some early edition of D&D made it) and it's always felt unconvincing to me. You know who else needs to do hand motions to fight? Anyone wielding a sword, lance, axe, or other weapon. I don't buy for a moment that armour which allows you to swing a sword freely (or in the case of Three Houses, throw punches and kicks!) would stop you from making hand motions. Additionally, there's no reason to believe that armour for mages wouldn't be optimized to give them as much manual dexterity as they needed while being protective otherwise.

I think your take about metal armour being a liability for fire/lightning is an argument that has merit, though.

Yeah I guess in Houses case that doesn't make much sense.

I was thinking of the GBA Armor Knights, which clearly have to move with slow deliberate steps and need a chain attached to their lance to retrieve it after attacking, that sort of armor looks like something you can't even bend down in.

Edited May 28, 2023 by Samz707

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Maybe this creates an opportunity to flex with the class' animations. We've seen mages in modern games temporarily float in the air during their attacks. That defying of the laws of physics can be taken to a new extreme. So imagine this mage using their magic powers to float around with an exoskeleton of armor pieces. Like an arcane golem of dis-attached parts of armor that only suggest the shape of a man. So when an attack is coming, the armor pieces fall off and disassemble, the person is yanked free from the mesh, then the parts reassemble in their new location around them. Then for physical attacks we can get the callback to GBA generals where they throw their lance, and reach out with their hand to pull it back with telekenetic force. The justification for low move and low speed is that it takes a lot of magical concentration to fight like that and the person's natural agility isn't contributing to the fighting style.

[Alastor15243]

43 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Maybe this creates an opportunity to flex with the class' animations. We've seen mages in modern games temporarily float in the air during their attacks. That defying of the laws of physics can be taken to a new extreme. So imagine this mage using their magic powers to float around with an exoskeleton of armor pieces. Like an arcane golem of dis-attached parts of armor that only suggest the shape of a man. So when an attack is coming, the armor pieces fall off and disassemble, the person is yanked free from the mesh, then the parts reassemble in their new location around them. Then for physical attacks we can get the callback to GBA generals where they throw their lance, and reach out with their hand to pull it back with telekenetic force. The justification for low move and low speed is that it takes a lot of magical concentration to fight like that and the person's natural agility isn't contributing to the fighting style.

That actually sounds really, really cool.