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It will become a question of the extent to which its worthwhile brining up a low-speed child (due to their fathers) vs. compounding the speed advantage of an already fast child. I suppose this depends on how the meta/DLC develops, as well as whether the character would realistically ram against their caps in the main game or not. Its also an issue to Matoi… she gets her -2 SPD as well (just like Takumi and Leon affect Kisaragi and Foleo), although in this case its from her father, Subaki. As noted before and in other friend, Subaki's mods and growths are really weird for a Pegasus Knight… its something closer to what you might expect for some sort of Wyvern Rider… well, excepting that he also has a -1 STR mod in addition to a neutral magic mod, which doesn't fit that expectation. Of course, I'm mentioning Matoi here due to tentative "waifu bias"… I liked Cordelia back in Awakening and wouldn't mind pairing off with a Cordelia look-alike again in Fates…. Fortunately, Matoi's mother only needs a +1 speed modifier to return her to at least neutral speed (thanks to the +1 child bonus, which means that combined with a +1 speed mother's modifier would end up canceling out Subaki's speed penalty, in as far as caps go). Matoi also has a decent speed growth as well, so that helps there to offset that of her dad's. And fortunately for me, both of the characters who would yield a redhead Matoi (to help punctate the Cordelia reference, even if not totally optimal) carry at least this modifier: Hinoka gets +1; Luna gets +2. [That said, Luna seems to have overall inferior growth rates to Hinoka in most relevant stats, although growths aren't everything…. skills also matter in the main game, so there is also the issue of whose skills you want more, as well as which class access appeals more. But growths wouldn't matter if sufficient grinding (from Hoshido skirmishes or grind DLC) and level cap raising seals eventually let you cap out the unit). There is also the question of whether another unit wants Hinoka more, or whether another unit wants Luna more on the other hand. These are what they would be like: Hinoka!Matoi : +1 Str, +0 Mag, +2 Skl, +0 Spd, +0 Lck, +3 Def, +2 Res; Pegasus Knight, Samurai, Lancer Luna!Matoi : -1 Str, +1 Mag, +2 Skl, +1 Spd, +0 Lck, +5 Def, +0 Res; Pegasus Knight, Samurai, Mercenary (earlier I had made a calculation mistake that wrongly stated Luna!Matoi's luck mod as +1 and her res mod as -1) Here are the growths… Hinoka's are clearly better, although growths only matter before stats cap: Hinoka's growths: 45% HP, 45% STR, 15% Mag, 40% Skl, 45% Spd, 40% Lck, 35% Def, 40% Res Luna's growths: 40% HP, 30% STR, 5% Mag, 25% Skl, 45% Spd, 30% Lck, 45 % Def, +30% Hinoka growths -Luna growths: +5% HP, +15 % STR, +10% Mag, +15%Skl, +0 % Spd, +10% Lck, -10% Def, +10% Res She literally matches or beats Luna in everything but defense…. Luna's growths actually seem to stink compared to Hinoka…. she does get two breakers (Axe, Kunai) and Sol, that said, so she still has a purpose. Of course, mother's growth rates only affect 1/3 of the growth rates of the child, if they work like Awakening, so the change on Matoi's growth rates of one mother over the other: Matoi's growth rate changes by having Hinoka over Luna as a parent: +1.667% HP, +5% Str, +3.333% Mag, +5% Skl, +0% Spd, +3.333% Lck, -3.333% Def, +3.333% Res. Obviously, Hinoka is still better in these regards, but its not as pronounced of an effects as the division by three comes in as it gets averaged in with Subaki and Matoi's personal growths… again, assuming its like Awakening… Over 38 levels (1 -> 20 gains 19 levels, 1 promoted to 20 gains 19 levels) : +0.633 HP, +1.90 Str, + 1.267 Mag, +1.90 Skl, +0 Spd, +1.267 Lck, -1.267 Def, +1.267 Res So taking Luna!Matoi is an obvious sacrifice in 20/20 stats prior to grinding. The question would be whether her more defensively orientated skills would make her worthwhile in a game where it seems that achieving ORKOs is much more difficult. You know, stuff like being to run Axebreaker to better deal with Berserkers that are supposedly extremely deadly in this game. Of course, Luna!Matoi would only be available on the 3rd route anyways…. Speaking of third route, it seems (assuming the information and supports that have been obtained in the datamine are true) that the various royals can marry amongst each others. I might very well be tempted to pair up the 4 Hoshidan royals and the 4 Nohrian royals on the 3rd route, just for the idea of putting aside their kingdom's animosities up to the point of having all the core members of their families marry each other… you know, I would highly doubt either Ryoma or Marx would desire hostilities at any point in the future when not only Ryoma is married to a Nohrian princess, but all of his siblings are also married to Nohrian royalty, and the same with Marx/Xander being married to a Hoshidan princess and all his siblings also being married to Hoshidan royalty… I just really like the aesthetic of the idea. So, while that itself might not be optimal for the 3rd route, it IS possible to optimize within a particular constraint. So what are people's opinions on what would be the best 3rd route combination of marrying the 4 Hoshidan royals to the 4 Nohrian royals and vice versa? Xander x Hinoka OR Sakura Leon x Sakura OR Hinoka Ryouma x Camilla OR Elise Takumi x Elise or Camilla I'm kind of tempted to go with the first listed pair of each of these sets: Xander x Hinoka, Leon x Sakura, Ryoma x Camilla, and Takumi x Elise…. but does anyone think that I should reverse any of these pairs, given these hypothetical constraints?

Oh, I see… In any event, at least three of the Hoshidan exclusive characters DO have it… http://serenesforest.net/fire-emblem-fates/hoshidan-characters/class-sets/ Orochi: Spellcaster/Herb Merchant Asama: Priest/Herb Merchant Oboro: Lance Fighter/Herb Merchant Granted, these are secondary class trees, but its still present on several Hoshidan characters. Its just not any 1st gen Hoshidan's primary. But they could class change to it in the main game if they wanted to.

At least they're giving us campaigns that are (mostly) different…. By all means, I'm not keen on the whole version split either from a convenience standpoint and the fact that some people may end up missing key information from the other routes, but I'm more than happy to be getting lots of new maps to battle on.

They have the growth rates for Puppeteer, and they have the max stats for Herb Merchant and Great Merchant, but the Growth Rates data that have been posted on http://serenesforest.net/fire-emblem-fates/hoshidan-classes/growth-rates/are missing Herb Merchant and Great Merchant. Hopefully this can be corrected when it is convenient to the administrators. I just wanted to point it out in case it hadn't yet been noticed. If its already been noticed and is being worked on or is being planned to be worked on, feel free to ignore this post.

They didn't sink ANY ships because the already established mechanics of Awakening have already explicitly showed there to be multiple independent versions of the Awakening world. Any given player with the base game + DLC knows of a bare minimum of three: the main game, the bad future the kids came from, and the Future Past world. Add onto that the point that we could consider each individual's player world to be separate as well…. In other words, the fact that these particular versions of Inigo, Severa, and Owain don't correspond to existing ships in no way sinks said ships, as the ships do exist in Awakening universes…. just not the ones that these versions of them came from. Many worlds…. Basically, there can be a different Awakening for each different outcome and combination, a multitude of possibilities… Actually, I prefer it this way in some of these kid's cases…

In terms of inheritances (classes, stats, skills, etc.), although its more complicated than before, do we have a sense of which women are more desirable from min-maxing stand points. You know, in Awakening the kid was associated with the woman and the question was which man was the best husband to make her child a strong unit. Now that its the males who have the kids associated with them, which wives are the best to make the children units as strong as possible?

Totally agreed. Fates is looking like an extremely promising SRPG game in the Fire Emblem series and it looks like playing its battles is going to be a blast. And the SRPG stuff is the main reason why I play the series in the first place. But this does not make it immune to criticism either. This support does indeed seem problematic for the reason listed above. Its not something that should cause something extreme like "BAN THE GAME!" or any nonsense like that. Rather, this is a place where localization can target a specific issue and fix said issue by rewriting the supports/characters to alter the situation/characters in a way that avoids creating this situation where the red flags go up. And its not like they'd even need to rewrite the entire game either…. its not even something that's part of the main plot/main story anyways. Rather, this is just one set of what I'd guess are on the order of hundreds of sets of side conversations accessed through the support system. Changing a single of these sets that appears problematic should be very easy to do…. Regardless, I'm still very much looking forward to the strategy aspects of the SRPG, as well as the core/main story…. that they messed up one of the optional side-conversations in a version of the game [the Japanese version] that was not intended for English speaking audiences does not concern me, as it will almost certainly get fixed for localization. Even if it doesn't get fixed in localization [but I hope that it does], I'll still get the English version, as I'm looking forward to the SRPG that much…. I'll just intentionally avoid the Soleil x Corrin support line if that's the case, and thus would never end up seeing such a problematic thing while playing the game itself. I'm not going to let a single rotten apple ruin the game for me when said apple is highly ignorable. Just like in Awakening I avoid the Inigo x Nah support. Besides, I had no interest in pairing Corrin with Soleil anyways. But, as I already said, they'll almost certainly fix this in localization anyways, so there doesn't seem all that much to worry about for the localized version.

Shinonome and Matoi was nice…. Can we see Matoi's one of the Avatar…. please? (I'm honestly surprised this one isn't out yet… with Cordelia being such a popular "waifu" from Awakening, I was confident that Matoi would get her Kamui/Corrin support translated early on… I guess I was wrong)

Of course, obviously the incentive to sell DLC is there, I won't deny that, but as a counterpoint I might also point out the following: While narratively speaking missing information is a bad thing generally speaking (and thus problematic for a game), in a more real-life like scenario you often will end up missing information that you might have learned if you had taken the other road. So to me, to an extent, it makes perfect sense that in a more "realistic" view of events (not that the game, being fantasy, is truly realistic) that there would be a good amount of missing information as stuff that you [as people undergoing the events of the game] legitimately missed out on the opportunity to learn by going down the other route. The problem is that since generally video game story telling is not realistic storytelling, this missing information is problematic as we have the reasonable expectation that such information will be provided to us in the game.

Thinking about it in retrospect, I think that we (as a community) widely made too sweeping assumptions about "internal reform" meant, even though we've seen a variety of other works of fiction in which "internal reform" sounds like a good idea but often results in the would-be reformist end up as a lapdog of the system until some opportunity arises. I mean, look at

To the best that I've been able to infer from a set of multiple examples: The child has their own starting class. The father passes down their starting class, or their secondary class if the child's starting class is the same. The mother passes down their starting class, or their secondary class if the child already has it. Kanna's starting class is Nohr Prince(ss), so she should end up receiving both of the Avatar's classes is the hypothesis holds. Other children should end up only inheriting Nohr Prince(ss) from the Avatar because they don't already start with it. That's my current understanding to the best of my knowledge (I could still be wrong about this, but I honestly believe that its correct from everything I've seen so far.)

I do like the sound of it…..

So, defensively, that makes both Fighters and Mercenaries valuable, as they provide Brave Hero, and thus Axebreaker…. and Fighters also provide Berserker, so that could enable a counter-Berserker Berserker with Axebreaker.

EDIT: Responding to Bovininan: Well, you could always just patch up one of your disadvantages… better than nothing. ADDENUDUM… well, of course, I should consider that Matoi's personal skill also gives her a situation +4 damage boost, so she also has offensive applications as well…. it works off comparing the enemy's stronger offensive stat to her corresponding stat, so I suppose that if she's running a more defensive or hybrid set with normally lower offense caps (but perhaps better defensive stats) she still might end up hitting much harder than she'd normally do so thanks to frequently getting the boost against specialist units. Meanwhile, she's still benefit from the more defensive lean of a build…. basically, using prodigy to take on a sturdier class and then offsetting its normally lower offenses.

Of course, in my earlier post, I wasn't saying that it would be good, only what was possible. Breakers can be useful on higher speed classes that already have a substantial avoid, particularly when compound with weapon triangle advantage. They can also be useful if you are using them to shore up a hit-rate for a specific match-up, using them offensively rather than defensively. Of course, stuff like Raven Strike exists, but without skill buying shennagins, there will be a good number of units who don't get that…. and Nohr doesn't have that on Nohr native units (but they do get it through shared units). So Breakers might be a good alternative for Nohr to accomplish that. EDIT: Your chart doesn't seem to display correctly. In any event, I've seen the chart, and am pretty sure that the pairing is possible. I was just speaking in the hypothetical in case a mistake was made, we were hoaxed and none of us had caught on yet, etc. Not likely, but just covering my bases there.

Seeing that there are SIX breaker skills, its flat out impossible to have all of them equipped at once…. Of course, perhaps you could achieve 5 with lots of skill buying, re-classing, marriage, buddying, breeding,etc….

I want to have my Avatar marry Matoi (assuming there's nothing hugely objectionable about her characterization when the support stuff comes out, seeing that I really liked Cordelia in Awakening and thus Cordelia 2.0 appeals to me). Of course, Matoi is only an option on the Hoshidan and 3rd Routes. I have a preference for red haired Matoi, which would imply Hinoka!Matoi on Hoshido and Hinoka or Luna!Matois for third route, assuming the claims about the 3rd route are actually true. I mean, strictly speaking, it doesn't HAVE to be that way, but I'd kind of like that. I also kind of like being a more magically orientated character (partly thanks to its association with intellect, even as stated in the game's Japanese descriptions of the assets/flaws, as I understand) and my own real-life intellectual bent. Of course, Matoi is more a physical unit, growth wise, but perhaps there are still good classes that she could pick up skills from from some of the other classes in Second Sealing…. I'm wondering if something like taking Dark Mage would be a good idea for the Avatar… that way, not only do I get the magic user I like, but I also get to pass on a hybrid class (Dark Knight) to Matoi for her use while picking up skills (she could use a sword and her strength stat and not be totally crippled by poor magic growths in the meantime)… she could then grab things like Lifetaker (Matoi inherently leans defensive thanks to her father's +3 Defense mod, so the ability to further boost her survivability by letting her regenerate large chunks of HP from kills might be of use here. Although it does seem that kiling enemies in one round might not be as common as before, so maybe its not as worth it… not sure yet…. Magic Seal could be also useful, both to the Avatar and/or Matoi, as I'm pretty sure that you don't really get anything in the way of Dark Mages on the Hoshido route, which means this seal is unavailable otherwise…. that and Draconic Curse from the Dark Blood would be Nohr/3rd route only, presumably. So taking this would let me cover one of the missing seal skills. By the way, if you equip multiple seals on a character, do they all trigger, or does only one of them do so? For instance, Hinoka!Matoi would get access to Defense and Speed Seals from the Holy Lancer, and could pick up a marriage-sealed Magic Seal. And she also has natural access regardless of parentage to Strength Seal through weapons Master. If I were to take any random combination of these seals in tandem (as probably I might want to use some skills for other purposes) would they ALL trigger, or just one. Basically, could such a Matoi proc up to 4 such different Seals simultaneously if I wanted her to? But of course, if I took Spellcaster or Priest, I could get Tomefaire instead for my Avatar. So that would be a tradeoff. Just thinking about these things. Luna!Matoi wouldn't get all the seals, but she'd get to play around with Breakers…. Mercenary gives Kunaibreaker and Axebreaker form promotions. And Sorcerer on Avatar would enable access to Bowbreaker, which also covers Matoi's flier weakness as a Pegasus (and Axebreaker covers up her weapon triangle disadvantage to an extent). She wouldn't have Lancefaire, but she could possibly run quite a defensive set…. Since she always has Samurai and Pegasus, and thus Flowing Strike, Swallow Strike, and Mirror Strike, she could run some combination of these strikes and breakers as an altnerate build…. and thanks to Luna's +1 defense mod, Subaki's +3 mod, and the +1 child bonus, she'd have a +5 defense bonus regardless of class. Of course, she wouldn't' need to be in Pegasus…. she could do a Swordfaire Hero or something, although she'd have -1 strength mods if Luna was her mother. Or she could pull Dark Knight by marriage seal if I went with a Dark mage secondary on my Avatar…. oh, and that would let her emulate Cordelia's class set (and more) with Pegasus, Mercenary, and Dark Mage (marriage seal) alongside Subaki's Samuari class that she gained. What are people's thoughts on these various Matoi builds?

Takumi and his son are both Holy Bowmen… His son is going to most likely have superior stats, although the precise outcome depends on who is mother is. [He'll have higher stat totals as a child, but the more pertinent question is how they are distributed]. Takumi might very well (even most likely) have an edge thanks to his personal weapon. His personal skill can also give him an extra +3 damage. They both have both of the weaponfaires that would be useful to a Golden Kite Warrior, and of course they can both stick with Holy Bowman as well for stats and no flying weakness.

Oh, by all means, if the buy skill system and the logbook skill buying system works for you, by all means go for it! Although beyond my own limitations that I just mentioned, I really had a lot of fun tinkering around with class sets and pairings in Awakening, so I kind of want to do it myself…. I could get awesome skillsets the way you describe, but that just doesn't seems as fun to me personally. But thankfully its optional, so I can largely ignore it, while those who are interested in it can still make use of it. Win-win.

I honestly expected that some of the paths' stories would be problematic. I mean, SMT also seems to have this problem, with Law and Chaos pretty frequently being pretty clearly worse off than Neutral. Law and Chaos often feel that they go off the crazy deep end and involve stupid or petty or overly extremist evil. Granted, SMT contains all of the routes in one game, but in fairness to FE: IF, their branching points happen FAR later in the game, typically towards the endgame, whereas IF branches early in the game instead. Basically, I kind of saw issues like this occurring. I'm still looking forward to the games for their gameplay merits, the real reasons that I play them. I mean, I wouldn't have played Awakening nine times if I was doing it just for the story. And from all reports I'm hearing it seems like gameplay wise Fates is shaping up to what likely will be a get game, SRPG-gameplay wise, better than Awakening, even if the individual stories or the lack of details in other routes are legitimate issues (as largely, we can separate the gameplay from the story, seeing that the story largely provides an excuse or pretext for the gameplay). Of course, I like doing character supports, as well…. most of them I've been looking at on paste bin have seemed okay, although I'm uneasy (understatement) about that Kamui x Soleil one. But even Awakening had a few ones that I was uneasy with (Nah x Inigo, for example). I'll just make a point of ignoring that support if it really turns out that bad in localization or skipping it with the start button or something.

I'm personally not keen on buying skills because while I do have wireless internet access in my building for DLC downloading/eshop, its often unreliable/sporadic in its availability, such that I often go to a cafe or a library to get better/more reliable wifi access. Since doing this [going to one of those locations] every time I play the game (well, not literally, but you take my point) and the wifi here often cannot be fully relied on, I'm trying to come up with character plans totally independent of buying skills, such that I'm sure that my desired builds are attainable at all times and without the inconvenience of having to repeatedly make special trips to those places for no other reasons. But its good to know that seals are purchasable eventually infinitely, money allowing. At what level can you first reseal in this game?

Reclass. Skills are now learned differently when you class change. As long as you are at or above the base level requirement for the skill, then you start filling in the previous skills and then the skill itself at the rate of 1 per level. So, from a re-class at 15 promoted, you could pick up the 3 skills up to and including Luna (the first and 2nd cavalier skills and Luna from the Great Knight itself) over 3 levels… 16, 17, and then at 18 promoted you get Luna. You could then go to 19 to get Diamond shield, or you could class change to Paladin, go to 19 to get Defender and 20 to get Aegis, etc. And of course, this is ignoring the possibilities of Parallel Sealing earlier on (I suppose) so that you can pick up some of those other skills in the spare levels in between earlier on. Of course, Parallel Seals are probably going to be rare enough that you won't to use them wastefully (unless you can grind them through Hoshido skirmishes + MyCastle shops you built with Dragon Vein Points), but in principle it would be doable. And supposedly the seals that increase your level by 5 would also allow for picking up more skills in this manner. On a different note, can we discuss optimizing a Matoi married to Corrin/Kami? I don't have the game yet, but I want to put my Avatar with her.

Well, one thing that I can say about story issues is that if one plays things for the gameplay primarily and does a bunch of runs (I for example have run Awakening nine times already) you probably start skipping the story scenes anyways after a certain amount of time. I mean, sure, if there are legitimate story problems, that's a disappointment, but at least for me story isn't what keeps bringing me back to these games.

Everyone's pairings (as well as lack of pairings) are equally canon because none of them are canon one way or the other, therefore granting flexibility in the matter. And thanks to the multiverse concept, what happens in one Awakening does not affect another. Your OTP is "canon" in your Awakening, whereas in mine its not. In mine its Robin x Cordelia, for example. Basically, the concept of canon/non-canon becomes not very useful for optional things in multiverse based scenarios.

Also, as an extra rule, it seems that Azura cannot inherit her base class onto her son, and he already starts as a Pegasus Knight, so she randomly gives him Rod Knight instead.