Anomalocaris

I like having an avatar, but I'd rather they tone down the player-worship. Corrin was just a dreadful character. Robin was good for the first two-thirds of the game. Hell, even the last third, where they do the "Surprise! You were the main character all along!" thing is at least pretty inoffensive since it doesn't come across as "You're the chosen one! Don't you feel special?!" the way Corrin does, it just comes across as an unfortunate coincidence shoving you to the forefront. That being said, I wouldn't want them to do that again, it'd just get repetitive. I think the "ideal" player avatar would take some cues from Kris but also from Valm-arc Robin, which is Robin's best showing in my opinion; an aspiring young tactician who has no personal stakes in the main plot and is still just riding shotgun to the main character, but gets a few neat moments to actually do their job as a tactician. Definitely no cues from Mary Sue Corrin, though. No double-royalty. No super-speshul dragon transformation. No eight siblings all making you the center of their worlds to the exclusion of each other. No chainsaw-sword okay maybe chainsaw-sword because that's cool. No maids and butlers tripping over themselves to tend to your every whim and remind you how super-speshul you are. No two-bit villains whose only point of existence is to hate the player and thus be irredeemably evil because how dare they not like my speshul transforming royal dragon original character no decent person would hate Corrin and if they do they're probably just possessed by an evil insane dragon god (Tragic backstory! Take pity on Corrin!) because no one in their right mind would hate MY ORIGINAL CHARACTER DO NOT STEAL. Never again.

Ah, I see. Yeah, the parent/child thing makes sense now that I think about it. Regarding gender-locked classes, I have seen hacks to allow some silly things like Witch Forrest or Songstress Saizo, so I guess it's possible, but I don't know how feasible integrating that into a randomizer would be, and it might cause issues if the game tries to "naturally generate" a gender mix-up like that instead of just directly forcing a class change. Regarding stats and growths, I thought it could be neat if a character retains their normal growths and modifiers but has their starting stats rebalanced to fit their join point. Having those as separate options could work. Thanks for the response!

Hey y'all! I saw this tool used in that Youtube video and fell in love at first sight. I think I'll do a randomized run soon, it looks like a lot of fun! I just have a few questions before I go messing around with this: In all the screenshots I've seen, male characters only ever get replaced by other male characters, and female characters only ever replace female characters. Can this be disabled to allow cross-gender replacing? I wanna see someone like Xander replace Felicia. Are special classes like Songstress and Wolfskin up for grabs, or are they still locked to their respective characters like Azura? On a similar note, how about gender-locked classes? Can males be randomly assigned Shrine Maiden, Priestess, Troubador (F), Maid, Witch, or Great Lord? Can females be assigned Monk, Great Master, Troubador (M), Butler, Ballistician, Lodestar, Vanguard, or Grandmaster? Also, I'm curious as to how the legendary weapons work; do Xander, Leo, Ryoma, and Takumi keep their weapons regardless of who they replace, or do their replacements get the weapons instead (that is to say, if Azama replaces Leo and Leo replaces Hinata, who gets Brynhildr)? What about the amiibo units' personal weapons? Are the first generation and second generation segregated, or can they replace each other? Could Midori replace Camilla while Odin replaces Dwyer, for example? Well, aside from anything I mentioned above that can't be done in the current build, perhaps a feature to include capturable bosses in the mix as well? We have amiibos in the mix, so why not them? Options to include non-native units in a given route would be cool too (so Beruka could replace a playable unit even in Birthright, or Yukimura could replace someone even in Revelation). A way to adjust a character's starting stats to fit their new join time (so if Fuga replaces Elise, he'll have a starting stat total based on Elise's rather than being already capped in most of his stats) without randomizing their growth rates or caps. Or would that be way too complex? And maybe a checkbox that guarantees that units with special weapons like Siegfried are assigned a class that can actually use it?

See, I really liked Gangrel for the same reason we praise Hades and Metal Face (who is my favorite Nintendo villain of all time btw). He was petty and evil but he was genuinely funny. And you weren't even laughing at him all the time, you were laughing with him, and that does more to make a character sympathetic than slapping some tragic backstory on them (though the latter can certainly help if done right). We as a species use humor as a way of growing close to other humans, so a villain with a good sense of humor can be, perversely enough, magnetizing and likeable. This all made him entertaining in many ways. The ultimate goal of any consumable media is to entertain the reader. If you can do that through a dramatic, no-nonsense villain or a sympathetic, tragic villain then you've succeeded, but if you can do it through a funny villain you've also succeeded just as hard. Even Grima, dull apocalypse though he may be, at least gets some points from me for being unexpectedly sardonic, whereas Anankos is just bland and may as well been an insapient force of evil to be destroyed. I'm not really confident in the writers' ability to make a purely tragic and sympathetic villain, so for this game's big bad (or Gharnef archetype, if we're doing another apocalypse dragon) I'd rather see something more like a more developed, full-game Gangrel; entertaining and humorous in his villainy to make us like him, but still a credible, serious threat who poses a real danger to our heroes and the world to remind us that we're supposed to hate him, with some sympathetic undertones to allow a bit more depth of character. Oh, and mechanically speaking, make him or her a class other than a Sorceror or General, of course. Maybe make their signature weapon a lance, even. We've had plenty of evil axes and tomes but not many lances.

I think infinite levelling and grinding are fine, but they should make it harder to do mid-game and make it more or less just a fun thing for people to mess around with once they've beaten the game and don't have to worry about breaking game balance in twain. Maybe even make it so that Eternal Seals (or some better way to keep levelling) only becomes available for purchase right before or after the final chapter. Other than that, I think the system we have in Fates (built upon Awakening's) is pretty good as is; each unit has two base classes with two promotions each, and any additional classes are gained from supports or special items. The biggest thing that needs to change is not so much classes themselves but skills, I think. One idea I had was to make it so that only the first skill in each class is general-purpose; the second skill is always locked to that specific class. That way taking a tour of one class still benefits another class somewhat, but there are advantages to sticking with that class and "mastering" it that you can't just retain. So for example, the first skill learned in a magic-oriented class might be Magic +2. That's something you can take with you into another class, and it could be useful if you become a different type of magic user, or even become a Mercenary equipped with a Levin Sword. But the second skill learned might be something really unique like Replicate, Galeforce, Vengeance, ect. Under this system, you wouldn't be able to just stack all those skills onto a Sniper, or a General, or whatever; if you wanna take advantage of those skills you've gotta stick with the class that gave it to you. This would mean that you can't just go and make every unit have the same skillset like all the Replicate or Rend Heaven abusers in Fates, or pile a bunch of OP abilities together.

I think the best way to avoid another Yato situation is to just not have an Avatar-specific weapon. Robin got by just fine without one.

I'd be fine with an avatar sorta midway between Kris and Robin. They'd still be the viewpoint character and be an important supporting role to the protagonist, but they wouldn't have much actual involvement in the main plot itself. Kinda like Robin before Chapter 21 formally revealed their Grima connection. Just a skilled tactician who is also there for moral support.

Well, we all know Chrom is included, and Marth, Corrin, Xander, and Ryoma seem like guarantees. For characters I'd like to see, in no specific order I'd go with... Marth with Falchion. Very graceful, combo-based moveset. Tiki (either young or adult) with a Dragonstone moveset focused on unleashing destrucive force indiscriminately. Draug (DOGA) as the obligatory armored dude. Slow combos, but very good at keeping enemies away and interrupting their attacks. Good at choking points on the map. Minerva as our wyvern rider. Good mobility and power, but somewhat slow attacks. Gharnef as our villainous Dark Mage. Basically would play like Wizzro, except any map where he's an enemy automatically ends in failure because as we all know you can't win against Garnef. Alm with a sword and bow, as a mixed-range fighter. Celica, with a mix of assorted magic attacks. Dagdar with a hammer, because why not? We could use a Thracia 776 rep and a hammer user. Lyn with Sol Katti. Focused on quick attacks and surgical strikes. Hector with Wolf Beil. AXE TIME!! Jaffar with a Killing Edge. Very short range, but attacks very quickly. Ike with Ragnell. Crude, strength-based attacks, but still surprisingly swift and good range with the wind strike thingy. The Black Knight, with Alondite. Would probably play like an evil version of Draug, with a lot of guard-piercing attacks to represent Eclipse. Micaiah, with light magic. Ranged spellcaster type. Chrom with his version of Falchion. We've already seen him and some of his attacks. Very smashy. Lucina with her version of Falchion. Somewhat of a mix between Marth and Chrom's styles, having some elegance in her combos but also smashing enemies with them. Robin (male default, female alt) with Levin Sword and tomes. Somewhat bashy melee attacks since he's kind of a klutz, but more finess in magic-based ranged combos. Virion with a bow. Not sure how he'd handle close-range combat, but he'll manage. Cordelia with a lance. We gotta have a pegasus rider and I couldn't think of any others as popular as her. Plus she's nifty. Corrin (female default, male alt) with Yato and Dragonstone. Could probably take some cues from Smash Bros and do that janky dragon fang stuff for long-range melee attacks. Ryoma with Raijinto. Focused on "flowing" from one opponent to the next and hitting enemy captains with quick volleys of attacks before they can strike first. Xander with Siegfried. Somewhat defensive moveset with a lot of "get away from me" attacks. Kaze as our obligatory ninja. Attacks with shurikens and knives for a mix of ranged and close attacks. Very quick combos, but somewhat weak in power. Sigurd with a moveset relying entirely on catching fire and running into enemies. Flora as an alt costume. Man that's a big roster, but oh well. Also unrealistic, since we all know fucking Tharja is gonna sleaze her way into the roster somewhere, but we can always dream otherwise. I know there's some games not present here (Binding Blade, Geneaology) but is there any real class/playstyle I left out?

It'll probably be like Hyrule Warriors where the only "stats" pertaining to level-ups are HP and attack power.

There's tactical elements. It's just less about combat strategy and more about location. You can kick everybody's asses with blind flailing, sure, but you can't be in two places at once so you need to plan out your moves and prioritize important points.

I think that would work best. Make Discipline available only as a scroll skill, with about the same rarity and obtainment methods as stat boosters and Arms Scrolls. Maybe a little rarer. Increased wexp gain is not nearly as broken as increased exp gain, so they don't have to throttle its availability like they do with Paragon scrolls. For "training weapons" my idea was an E-rank weapon that never deals more than 1 damage per attack, cannot double attack, never procs skills, and does not apply debuffs or post-combat skills like Savage Blow, but has an inherent double wexp gain rate and is automatically a 1-2 range weapon.

I think locking exclusive, practical content behind amiibos (like the Spinner in Hyrule Warriors) is a bad idea, but aesthetic unlocks would be neat. My suggestion: Non-FE amiibos: random materials and weapons, like in Hyrule Warriors. FE amiibos, first scan: costume for the appropriate character. FE amiibos, subsequent scans: ordinary weapons/items pertaining to the character. Of course, this operates on the assumption that the weapon/material economy works like in Hyrule Warriors. For all we know, there could be aesthetic weapon skins in addition to character skins, or maybe instead of getting random weapon drops you just have one weapon that you augment with materials.

That's mainly an issue with children units, where it's very much possible to amass an army consisting entirely of the best class in the game due to the way inheritance gives them all six or so classes to choose from, and Fates where Corrin can give anyone any class through marriage. Reclassing itself doesn't cause that; there's nothing you can do to make Frederick or Gregor a Sorceror, for example. And of course poor class balancing, but that's inevitable.

I'll admit, I thought the "Burn" toward the end would be Sigurd.

So everybody just gets their starting class? That'd be kinda boring and limit playthrough variety, no?

Maybe third tiers exclusively for special classes like the main protagonist's. With some stat adjustments so that reclassing them to a second-tier regular class isn't a total downgrade.

Regarding story, I feel like Awakening did that okay. Yeah, Robin starts to take the spotlight toward the end, but that's after two whole arcs of being a secondary character, so it at least feels like an organic development, unlike Corrin being shoved to the center from the very start. I still would prefer an avatar who remains secondary even toward the end of the game, just wanted to defend Awakening's choice as working within the context of the game.

Predictions... Marth Tiki (Original or Awakening incarnation) Draug (for choking points) Alm Celica Roy Lyn Ike Chrom Tharja (unfortunately...) Guy Ass Cordless Delia Robin (male default, female alt) Lucina Corrin (female default, male alt) Xander Ryoma Camilla Takumi Anna This isn't my wishlist, just my predictions. If it were my wishlist then Haitaka would be on it obviously, as would Beruka and Permanently-On-Fire Sigurd.

Choosing personal skill is something I didn't think of that'd be pretty cool. What would our options be? Some kind of (context-sensitive) HP regeneration for defensive builds Some kind of damage booster for offensive builds Some kind of ability that boosts nearby ally stats, for offensive-support builds Some kind of ability that weakens nearby enemies, for defensive-support builds Some kind of item-gathering skill Some kind of skill that improves accuracy and crit rates, for sharpshooting builds.

Well, yes. But I'm operating under the assumption that this new avatar's personal class wouldn't be directly tied to their biology.

Barons would make for a good DLC class I think.

Oh, one other idea I had, to help make the avatar's personal class a little less exclusive; assuming the children mechanic doesn't make a comeback and give us a mini-me, have one of the unrelated paralogue units be the same special class as the player's avatar, but otherwise an ordinary unit. And make it so that it can be passed to spouses/best friends with Partner/Friendship Seals, instead of the avatar's secondary class choice.

Eye color customization Skintone customization Females keep hair decs, and males get facial hair as the equivalent customization feature Build on existing features like hair styles and colors, body types, voices, ect. Other than that I'm pretty okay with what Awakening and Fates gave us.

I theorize that if Sigurd or Flora get in, they'll be weak to Fire elementals.

I just like smashing in hundreds of mook's faces at a time. Fire Emblem is a series where singular enemies can be a huge threat and there's always a large risk of your units dying, so a game where you can just carve a path through them it'd make for a neat change of pace. And while smashy-smashy is mindless fun, many missions also invoke an element of strategy. I saw someone once compare the games to being Superman; you're virtually unstoppable, sure, but you can't be in more than one place at once, and that's where you have to make strategic decisions. The only thing I'm not looking forward to is the level-up mechanics. It was fine in the base version of Hyrule Warriors, where 99 was the cap and was very much a feasible goal, but then the DLC boosted it all the way to 255, which is not only excessive but also takes eons to reach for even one character, let alone all of them. Hopefully FE Warriors tones that down somewhat.