bethany81707

Sacred Stones has a horse-slaying lance (...I think it's called the Horseslayer). Hm... in Sacred Stones itself, it might be underwhelming, if anything. [Monster]-Slayer is so good because there's so many monsters in the postgame. The only postgame horse enemies are Tarvos, who tend to wield axes anyway.

In the Tellius series alone, soldiers have a promotion to halberdiers, lance-locked foot-units. While writing a story for a Sacred Stones setting, I found myself wanting to add an allied soldier unit to the party, which would mean I'd probably have a halberdier at some point. This is the question: all single-weapon second-tier units in Sacred Stones either have a heightened crit rate or a special Skill (like Sure Shot or Pierce). While halberdiers do have heightened crit rates in Tellius, I'd like to hear ideas for potential Skills this halberdier class could have.

Starting the trinity of magic with Anima, Mages are the bread and butter of any magical arnament. They are by far the most common type, and Anima magic is ordinary, yet effective. The lack of strong Resistances among enemies that aren't mages means high damage, and 1-2 range makes it easy to deal damage without fear of counterattack. The weakness of mages is that they lack HP and Defence, as well as tomes being rather heavy (which combines with the fact that Mages tend to lack whatever stat weight is based on), meaning that a strong physical attack on one of your mages often tends to be deadly- and an onslaught of them even more so. Trying to cobble together this list was rather interesting, seeing as how what is known as the standard 'Mage promotes into Sage' formula has been straddled in many non-Veteran games, as well as how Light and Dark have odd appearances and disappearances. Hopefully, the four Mage polls should go well.

What scares me more is how you plan to present your poll. I'm doing a variation on this, and look at what happened when I presented just the cavaliers. If you're adding every single character, playable or non (since FE Heroes poll has non), and only separating by male/female (fun fact: if you weren't forced to bring Ephraim to the final chapter, your endgame party could contain every single playable female in the game), your poll would be, quite frankly, massive.

Don't they have Locktouch? Using Shuriken, I'd think they're closer to thieves than Outlaws are. Plus they promote into a class that's close to Assassin, from what I hear.

Thieves are utility characters. They are typically very weak, unable to reliably damage many units while taking a lot of damage in return (though most thieves will take a singular hit while dealing two back), but they are still a good choice to bring because of their abilities. They can steal items from enemy inventories if they have enough Speed, and they can open locked doors and chests. Enemy thieves will show up on maps with treasure chests, and it is in your best interest to kill them quickly before they pilfer the spoils of the level... and your items, too. Thieves use Swords, Knives, or in Fates, Bows. While thieves require levels to gain the speed necessary to continue stealing items, it is often challenging to gain these levels. In some games, thieves don't even get a promotion. For this reason, it's often wiser to use the prepromoted thief, as without a solid diet of combat and luck, it's tricky for the starting thief to catch up in terms of speed. Assassins make good combat units due to Lethality and/or higher crit rates, but often lose some of the utility of being a thief. Well, now that the Cavalier business is behind us (almost- it double-posted, somehow, and I might need to do something about that), back to going through various infantry units of differing weapon classes. I kind of like thieves as a concept, especially since they'll have a few conversations where they get called out on their habits, and especially due to their role in Genealogy- hit with sword, steal all their money, get experience for giving it to someone.

Well, anyway, I've already sent a vote her way, so I'm honestly just wondering 'Light Magic or Swords'?

Elena was in the poll. Who's Elena? Ike's mother. You know, that character who's one fight was 'getting stabbed by her husband' and doesn't even appear in the Trial Maps to suggest what class she might be beyond maybe 'Cleric, because Greil's the same class as Ike'.

For this poll, I wrote down all characters on a Word document the night before, so I had made the same assumption. Also because Gaiden has, like, Mycen and Zeke.

I think he's Roderick.

Cavaliers are all about balance. Some might prefer skill/speed, others strength/defence, but in the end, a cavalier should be doing decent in everything, if not great at anything in particular. This is balanced by the fact they have a horse, which allows them to travel much farther than infantry over plains (though much slower over mountains and desert), making them far more versitale in strategic positioning, as well as being the cornerstone of low-turn strategies. And by golly, are there a lot of them. At least two archetypes require a total of three cavaliers to be represented in each game (the Crutch Pal and the Christmas Cavs), and that's not counting whatever generic cavaliers they add to pad out the roster (of which there is usually at least one). To celebrate the fact I got a new charger and can now do these off a laptop and not a phone, why not the biggest one by far? So many, it might've been downright ludicrous to pair them up into Classic/Veteran/Modern, at least without offering more votes- which I don't think I can do well here. Also, Modern is now finally not the smallest time period represented.

Cavaliers are all about balance. Some might prefer skill/speed, others strength/defence, but in the end, a cavalier should be doing decent in everything, if not great at anything in particular. This is balanced by the fact they have a horse, which allows them to travel much farther than footunits over plains (though much slower over mountains and desert), making them far more versitale in strategic positioning, as well as being the cornerstone of low-turn strategies. And by golly, are there a lot of them. At least two archetypes require a total of three cavaliers to be represented in each game (the Crutch Pal and the Christmas Cavs), and that's not counting whatever generic cavaliers they add to pad out the roster (of which there is usually at least one). To celebrate the fact I got a new charger and can now do these off a laptop and not a phone, why not the biggest one by far? So many, it might've been downright ludicrous to pair them up into Classic/Veteran/Modern, at least without offering more votes- which I don't think I can do well here. Also, Modern is now finally not the smallest time period represented. EDIT: Text fixes. Better than missing characters.

Fire Emblem Tellius's supports function somewhat similarly to the GBAs, but with new affinities and Crit chance (and possible Dodge) have been removed from the potential bonuses. Bonuses add as they do in GBA- it's how they're formed that's different. In Path of Radiance, units can support with similar rules to the GBA games (five supports total, across a limited support pool), but the definition of 'fought together enough' was changed from 'End Turn with them next to each other' to 'number of mutual sallies'. No matter how many times you End Turn when Mist and Jill are sat next to each other, they will always get their A Support at the same time. This allows the support script to reference events in the game's story. For example, in Chapter 20, you kill a wyvern lord named Shihiram, who is the father of Jill. Some supports which reference this event (like, I believe, Lethe A) are timed such that, even if you deploy Lethe and Jill in every single map possible, you cannot achieve them before the event has taken place. This system obviously allows the game developers to choose more topics for conversation than the GBA games can. In Radiant Dawn, supports return to being manipulable a la the GBA games, but with the same affinities in Path of Radiance. However, instead of just ending turn next to one another, other actions like dancing, healing, shoving and rescuing can increase support points. In Radiant Dawn, any one unit can support with ONE other unit in the cast. This unit can change, but if you delete an established support, you cannot reestablish it. To use an example, you can support Nolan/Edward for a while, and then change Nolan's partner to Zihark. This locks you out of switching back to Nolan/Edward. Probably because IS knew that writing supports for every pairing in Radiant Dawn's massive cast was an exercise in futility (I don't know if Fates comes close...), each unit has two lines for each rank, and each line sounds as if it could be addressed to anyone. One of Nolan's C-Rank lines (the one he delivers if he's talked to) is 'Hey there. You know, endurance is key in battle. Never overexert yourself.' This fits his character, but is rather bland. While some characters and conversations (like Oliver and possibly Micaiah/Sothe A, Ike/Soren A, and a few royals) have custom lines, this is about as much character development as you're going to get. It is also, as stated earlier, not mix-and-matchable. You cannot have Nolan/Zihark A and Nolan/Edward B- it's one or the other. I'd honestly not be opposed to Path of Radiance's system returning, but with between-chapter grinding, I think the innate advantage gets lost. Take Sacred Stones- it tries to do this- Eirika/Tana B mentions Innes, and your first chance to get it in Eirika's route without grinding in skirmishes or the Tower is Chapter 10, where Innes is recruited (and the mention references Tana/Innes's recruit conversation). However, if you do use skirmishes and the Tower, the effort just falls through. If the conversations are locked to story progress, then postgame grinding to pair off units you don't use might not work (it's what makes getting FE8's support log unlocked ingame bearable to me, and why I'll never do the same for FE7). FE10's system for gathering Support points is my favourite, and I always lament that it's not in the GBA games. I'm not sure how support points work in Awakening/Fates, but this system could be a goal for non-Pair-Up games. The Support conversations themselves and the mutual exclusivity, on the other hand, can remain in Radiant Dawn.

First Fire Emblem I saw? FE9 (and then 10 in short order). First one I picked up myself? FE7 (and then after much deliberation, FE8).

AbsoluteZer0Nova, I did check for Fates classes (do it by instinct now). 'Outlaw' redirected to 'Thief', so I'm going to lump Niles and his crew with the thieves.

Wolf and Sedgar are Horsemen, promoted Hunters. Dropping Hunters because they promote into Horsemen makes Neimi an edge case, so they remain. Midir, Lester and Astrid are Bow Cavaliers. Largely due to Tellius, this makes them feel more at home on the Cavalier list. The Nomads, mechanically, are more similar to the Bow Cavaliers than the Horsemen, so I will treat them as such.

I think I found the problem: the resorce I used doesn't list them as potential Snipers, while a search lsst night convinced me that all archers were listed. Well, now I've made mistakes in all three eras. Hope that means I'm done.

She won't be the last. I'd honestly say Briggid/Evyel is the MOST fair of all the examples we'll meet.

Had trouble finding the guys from Gaiden- weren't listed. Unless you were talking about the villagers?

Archers are interesting units. With low staying power and being locked to 2 range, it's hard to rack up counterkills, making them struggle to gain experience. Oh, how I miss Tellius, where the archers were potential endgame picks without needing a new weapon type (if only because of the Double Bow). Here was an interesting decision- not lumping in the nomads. To be perfectly honest, I think Nomads, to some degree, fit in with Cavalier- because bow cavaliers like Midir and Astrid are so mechanically similar, yet are clearly paladins... Cavalier might need a new split metric. EDIT: Added the wayward Gaiden archers.

Same. Despite Ephraim's first impression on me, I find my Eirika experience to be much better.

'Veteran' mostly because many non-Japanese Fire Emblem fans found their feet somewhere between 6 and 10. Classic, Veteran and Modern all feel distinct, even if the naming scheme is odd.

I suppose it's mostly because I'm more familiar with Eirika and Micaiah's criticisms. This might serve as an advantage to Sigurd, as he hasn't been dissected as much as his localised peers. Those currently leading also seem to have mechanical reasons for doing so. Lyn and Eirika's stats are a reason I enjoy using them, and aside from Micaiah, the Lords equal to or above Lyn are favourite units in battle. (Granted, Micaiah is a unit that can healbot and doesn't need a Restore staff to cure conditions).

...Now I'm just embarrased. (Wouldn't be the first time I forgot her, too...)

I just voted for Elena. Because you know your opinion is off the beaten path when your first choice is Ishtar, and I figure I may as well go all out.