Luninareph

Speaking from a purely theoretical standpoint, I think he's salvageable, but only as a Samurai/Trueblade. His passive gives him a sweet +15 AVO to help circumvent that low SPD growth, but only at full health, so he kind of has to find a way to dodge-tank without relying on SPD so he can stay at full health so he can keep dodge-tanking, if that makes sense. Trueblade has a base +10 AVO, so add that to his passive and Flowing Strike and he should be pretty untouchable on the ally turn. Also, though his SPD sucks, his HP and DEF are actually pretty good, so adding on Vantage is a good way to protect him during the enemy turn for when his evasion fails him. If you want him to be a flier, Golden Kite is pretty safe, since it keeps him out of the way of retaliation, and he can use bows like the Steel Yumi (ability to double attack -3,) Expert Yumi (cannot double attack, has 3 range,) or Horizontal Yumi (cannot double attack, has 1-2 range) pretty safely since his SPD is likely crap anyway. He is very bad as a Falcon Knight combatant, but he's an outstanding Falcon Knight healer, since he has surprisingly high MAG (20% for a not-primarily-a-mage is outstanding). So, he's strange and you have to do strange things with him to make him work, but he's not completely useless, especially since he can ALWAYS become a Falcon Knight staff-user and be useful that way no matter how screwed his stats get, which frees you up to put Sakura or Asama into combat classes (since their growths are kind of ridiculous).

What's kind of cool is, Dark Mage and Samurai have equal STR growth (10%). As such, you can level him as a Dark Mage until you're ready to promote him, then take stock. 1) If his MAG and SPD have grown well, you can just promote him to Sorcerer and be done with it. When Odin's stats pan out, he's a great Sorcerer. 2) If his MAG is good but his SPD is suffering, you can pump some levels of Trueblade (20% SPD) or Dark Falcon (15% SPD) to salvage the stat. Dark Falcon's 15% MAG and 20% RES don't hurt either. Then go back to Sorcerer and enjoy. 3) If his STR and SPD have grown well, he can easily slip into Trueblade or Weapon Master and pound faces in, no problem. He has great SKL, so Astra suits him well anyway. 4) If his STR, MAG, and SPD are lacking, go Trueblade. Trueblade should save his SPD, the base CRIT bonus is awesome, and he'll get Astra to hopefully save his offense regardless of stats. 5) If he ends up STR, MAG, and SPD-blessed, on the other hand, there's always Dark Knight for hybrid damage purposes. He needs to be damn SPD-blessed, though, since Dark Knight only gives 5% bonus SPD growth and his 35% base is shaky enough as is. I don't know that physical or magical is really "better" than the other for him, and if you're trying to save him from being fragile... well, both Sorcerer and Trueblade are fragile, so I don't know what to tell you there. However, Odin has 55% HP growth, 40% DEF growth, and 20% RES growth, which is pretty good defensively. He'd probably be tankiest as a Dark Knight TBH (close second being Weapon Master, distant third being magic-tanking-Dark Falcon). At a rough guesstimate, leveling Odin as a Samurai (10 HP, 20 SPD, 10 RES) then promoting into Dark Knight (15 HP, 15 DEF, 5 RES) would be the tankiest path for him.

Me too. Doing it my first playthrough so I don't meet and miss Eponine; then I can be really happy about getting her later, instead of upset about having to sacrifice her :)

Well, I for one am really excited about the kids! I enjoyed them in GotHW, I enjoyed them in Awakening, and I'm really looking forward to sinking my teeth into them in Fates now too :)

First playthrough: Nohr Second playthrough: Hoshido Third playthrough: Invisible Kingdom

I like the idea of Dark Mage Zero, personally. Second Seal him into Dark Mage ASAP and he keeps the same 10% STR growth as Outlaw, plus 20% bonus MAG growth. If both stats grow evenly, he can promote into Dark Knight and wreck face; if his STR is iffy or his MAG is super-blessed, you can just go straight Sorcerer and tear things up that way instead.

3. Setsuna isn't exactly useless, even with Takumi. She has twice his RES growth and a third again as much SPD growth, making her a specialized mage-killer, and she gets Ninja as a secondary class where Takumi gets Lance Fighter, which means she has natural access to Puppeteer and Copycat while Takumi would have to marry for it. Also, Takumi really wants to stay Holy Bowman to maximize the usefulness of the Wind God Bow, which gives Setsuna more room to go Golden Kite or Puppeteer and take on a completely different role from him. Takumi may be stronger, but that doesn't mean Setsuna doesn't have her own niche. 4. Frederick wasn't a Jeigan, he was an Oifey--a crutch character early on who actually has the growth rates to stay viable throughout the game. Gunther IS a Jeigan, an actual Jeigan, and in fact if you compare his growths to the original Jeigan, Gunther's stats are actually BETTER than his. So comparing Frederick and Gunther is erroneous. 5. Mozume's growths are extremely good, especially when stacked with Aptitude's flat 10% growth bonus. 40 STR, 50 SKL, 55 SPD, 45 LUC? Pre-Aptitude? Pretty great. I think the complaints about her arose because she has terrible BASES, because Villager, and because of her 30% HP growth specifically, not the rest of her growths. If you promote her to Great Merchant ASAP, that extra 20% HP and 10% DEF will quickly fix her HP and you shouldn't have any further problems.

Doesn't bother me at all, any more than it bothers me having multiple versions of Pokemon or a remake of a game I loved that has now added more content. Disgaea 2 PSP has made my original copy of Disgaea 2 completely obsolete with all its bonus content, but that doesn't mean I regret having bought and loved the hell out of the original.

I definitely do support Singer!Azura most of all, purely because she is the only person who can become a Singer, and if we were considering reclassing via Kamui then Great Merchant would be a shoo-in for the 20% HP, 15% LUC, and 10% DEF. However, if for the sake of argument you really want to put her in a class that isn't Singer and Kamui isn't being considered (as per these rules,) I think Azura does quite well as a War Priestess. She has 25% MAG growth, which is quite high comparatively - definitely high enough for some fancy staffwork, with the War Priestess' +10% - and Azura has such high growths in STR, SKL, and SPD that she doesn't need a whole lot of help there. On the other hand, her LUC falls a bit behind those others, so War Priestess' +15% LUC is appreciated. War Priestess doesn't give her any DEF, which is bad, but it does give her 10% HP, which she NEEDS, and 20% RES, making her a brutal mage counter, especially with bows, which also give her some much-needed distance and protection from melee attacks. Granted, Hoshido already has a lot of staff-users and I tend to overload on them (overload, what overload, there's nothing wrong with having nine staff users in FE6,) so take my advice with a grain of salt. However, considering Azura's fragility relative to, say, Sakura's or Asama's, I'd rather stick her in the back with the healing and change them into more combat-oriented classes to compensate instead of leaving Azura charging in with that phenomenal 25% HP and 15% DEF.

I think it's hot :P

I disagree. There are plenty of games that do chop off ridiculous parts of games to make DLC. I do not believe FEFates is one of them. As far as I can tell, FEFates is capitalizing on the Pokemon structure, not the DLC moneygrubbing phenomenon. Hoshido and Nohr are akin to Ruby and Sapphire, but taken up to eleven in terms of having completely separate plots and structure, even moreso than R&S did. But the principle remains the same: you have different recruitable units in both versions of Pokemon and both versions of Fates, you have to cooperate with other people or buy the other cartridge in order to get the best of both worlds, and the separation of the two parts has an actual function for the gameplay: it helps force you to pick a side. Would we have Hoshido and Nohr emblems to add to our banners if choosing between the two was basically a glorified difficulty level switch in game based on dialogue choice? I doubt it. Nobody has "Good" or "Demon" badges for Soul Nomad (which is admittedly a much less popular game, but I don't think that's the only deciding factor here). Also, you're assuming we'd be able to get all of the same content squashed into one game if they had decided to put it all on the same cartridge. I really don't think that's true either. As far as I can tell, the intention is for a person to play both sides of the conflict to get to know all of the characters, then play the third path once they have all of their emotional investment made in the other paths. What this means is, the writers were able to get all of the necessary character development out of the way in the divided paths, then work on the third path with the understanding that people would have the character development down. That gives a writer the freedom to work on plot instead of character defining moments. It's no wonder the third path has the best story: it can rely on the world-building the other two paths already laid down in order to focus on said plot. Complaining about that is like saying "The third movie in that trilogy was the best, they shouldn't have even bothered making the first two." You wouldn't have the finale if you didn't have two movies of setup. And finally, FEFates was a LONG project. They've been working on this thing for years. They have put a ton of time and money into this. They have put a ton of writing, animating, and testing into this. They put a ton of characters and a ton of brand-new characters, weapons, and systems into this. To have three plotlines selling individually obviously projects a greater profit. To have a greater profit predicted gives the team the freedom to deserve more money to work on the project, because they are counting on it making more back. I can't imagine they would have let the game develop for so long and expand to be huge enough to functionally be three separate games--which it is, make no mistake; it is not "here is one game you're buying three times," it's three different stories, regardless of how much you like them--if they didn't have the projection they presumably did. So if they squashed Fates into one game, we wouldn't have two separate sets of classes and two full casts of characters and two different stories with a grand, interwoven climax. We'd have "Nohr +1." There are games I get angry about the DLC practices of. Fates isn't one of them. Of course, that's just my personal opinion.

Butler Island army sounds amazing XD

Matoi or Hisame for Hoshido. Ignis or Eponine for Nohr. Nine times out of ten I'll be playing a female anyway--I have way too many husbandos in this game--but for that tenth time, I already have my scapegoats (probably) picked. Apologies in advance to Matoi's legion of fanboys :P

I don't tend to put together enormous five-skill setups like this out of theorycrafting, but there are some smaller skill combos that sound pretty good. Flamboyant + Lethality: Flat +15 activation for Lethality? Sweet. Miracle + Lucky Charm (Midoriko): +20% chance of Miracle activating is kinda nice. Easy Life + Extravagance + Lucky Charm (Midoriko): Easy way to rack up Gold Coins for Extravagance. Prescient Victory + Raven Strike + Snake Venom: An easy setup (for Setsuna specifically) to turn her player-phase attacks into well-targeted bombs. Add on a -faire for even more kick. Copycat + Eastern Heart/ Sun God/ Tuning (Shigure)/ Haiku (Mitama): AOE healing with careful positioning from two separate locations.

I would play as many paths as Fates chose to give us, more than likely :D

I would participate if such polls were begun :D

Oh man... I am definitely on the "too many candidates to pick" train. M!Kamui Hoshido: Mitama, Setsuna, and the ever-popular Rinkah. F!Kamui Hoshido: Sexy beasts Shinonome, Asama, Nishiki, or Yukimura, or adorable Takumi or Kisaragi. M!Kamui Both: Midoriko. F!Kamui Both: Jakob <3 M!Kamui Nohr: Camilla, Effie, Nyx, maybe even Ophelia or Velour. And definitely Zero at least once. F!Kamui Nohr: Odin, Flannel, Siegbert, and, much to my own surprise, Foleo. At least I can concretely say my first playthrough will be M!Kamui marrying Zero. I managed to make that decision at least. But then I haven't the faintest idea about Hoshido, nor about whom I would marry next in Nohr, and as for the Independent path... @_@

I think the fact that they have some individualized promotions shows that IS would LIKE to do something like this but for reasons unknown to me haven't yet. Maybe they don't feel color schemes is enough and they want to get to the point where they can have everything be individualized like Lissa's Emmeryn-Sage? I don't know, but I DO think it's something IS would like to do and hasn't felt they have the ability to yet.

HAHAHA. I probably won't do this, but it sounds like an amazing idea and I wish you the best... worst?... of luck in making it happen :D

I think being a dragon is a pretty good reason. On Hoshido Kamui also has the advantage of knowing everything about Nohr, making him or her an invaluable information source, which is pretty relevant. I can't say much for the Nohr side, but IIRC which is also pretty relevant. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but Kamui seems to be in the position that most main characters of strategy games are in, which is to say, s/he's essentially the general and figurehead, not primarily the tactician. Robin was actually an anomaly in that s/he was explicitly NOT the person in charge but instead the primary adviser, which meant s/he HAD to have that level of competence in order to assist Chrom in the necessary ways. Kamui is the Chrom, not the Robin: s/he has the help of all the other important personages in the army to keep things running and make tactical decisions, and his/her real relevance is "being the person the army is willing to follow into battle." Which, again... freaking dragon. It's no wonder people would follow "the royalty that is also a dragon."

IS did say we'd have to make tough decisions!

I know nothing about her other than her bio and what you've posted here, but I was pretty fond of her just from her design. Subtle, understated, yet strangely memorable. If I have space in my Nohr team, she's likely to make a slot :)

I'm afraid I have no idea. The most I could respond to was the joke at the end, so I did. I hope somebody else can help you with the actual question in question.

...In his post he claimed he wanted the information to execute the best parents so they couldn't rebel against him. His name and picture are both Garon. He was clearly roleplaying the question, so I roleplayed back by trying to mislead him to execute the wrong people. Relax.

Nope. Children are definitely tied to the mother. Just like the other games. Yes, definitely. Which is why if you're going to execute units to make sure they don't create a rebellious child, it is definitely the women you should look at. Not the men. This is definitely a thing that is true and not obfuscation in the least.