Espinosa

Well, on H1 archer/hunter speed is pretty important. Draug has no trouble doubling right off the bat while the Steel Bows kids do for a long while.

Xeno and Attrom aren't very different. They come at nearly the same time, both underlevelled, and need zombie kills to catch up to the rest of the party. Attrom is more durable, since he learns Sol, which makes him tankier (too bad he hasn't got a Shram like Vega). They should be in the same tier, with Xeno a little above Attrom due to availability. Sun is pretty much Narron lite, with similar level-up speed and promotion gains, but later join time (depending on which route you recruit Narron) and poorer enemy phase. I kinda like Charge for breaking tough enemies' shields, though. She does learn Luna eventually, which helps her offence. Garo is definitely far from terrible. Sure, he has movement and hit rate issues, but there are maps where his Fighter skill gives him the same mobility as the better foot units, and he can double some weighed down enemies with axes, probably one-rounding where others cannot (like your numerous sword users who travel with Holmes on the first split and who have trouble with axe fighters and their bulk). Good strength and agility and decent growths in said stats make him at least somewhat proficient long-term. And putting Maruju into the mediocre tier should be a criminal offence. He has his own Wundergust tome (sure, it's no Sunflame but it's still a very good tome), his very early availability means he just might be your first promoted mage, and there's always Sylpheed and access to four sets of magic after promotion (plus better movement). Also, I've been wondering this about Blazing Wind's description: When activated the user KOs the enemy (enemy must have low HP and range of attack must be 1) Is this skill pretty much Lethality with a different name or what? I also don't get the "low HP" part because I'm pretty sure I've OHKO'd stuff like full health Knights with it before.

If anything, RPGs is the one genre that requires skill. Reflexes ≠ skills. People get better at genres like fighters and shooters by spending hours mindlessly repeating the same actions without giving it any critical thought. There's no skill here to even bring up, it's just mechanical masturbation systematically repeated, until you start reacting to certain stimuli like Pavlov's dog and all the possible patterns are engraved in your memory. With RPGs, there's a lot of planning, management and optimisation of resources, a process you have to do each time anew because the details will be different. For example, in Fire Emblem, your decisions will to a large extent depend on what level-ups your units got on a particular run, which affects whether or not you go on training them and how aggressively you have them behave on the field. Your mind will be constantly counting steps, subtracting stats, imagining approximate true hit rates and chances of death, etc. The more you play, the more you understand. If If that's not skill, then I don't know what is.

School. lol.

Perhaps looking ahead in time, if you know what I mean.

I thought this would be a thread for thinking new archetypes, as opposed to new additions to known archetypes. It'd be cool to have a character that starts out as a powerful melee unit but ends up as a proficient mage, or something like that, and the class change option kinda makes it possible.

I've read all of it several times, and still go back to it whenever I play FE7, so I wouldn't say it's a wasted effort. Perhaps submit it as a FAQ if you are looking for a wider audience.

Skill is something that makes you decide to drop Marcus with Florina as opposed to put Erk in places where he faces chances of death while the whole team is waiting, for example. Knowing what characters to use isn't the same as knowing what to do with them.

Combat, utility and efficiency seem like such closely related concepts, though. Every day on these forums, you can read something like "6/10 for Rapier utility", so utility is unchallenged combat niche and not simply extramilitary properties like rescuedropping and/or flight. And how else can you play efficiently when you lack good combat? Granted, in a game like FESD all you need is the Warp spell, a forge and a save point so that you can reset for a feasible enough critical for a 1-turn clear, but still.

The two need to spend 40 turns together for a B support, which is a pretty reasonable expectation. 80 turns for A seems like it would be harder to pull off, even with the game's huge maps. What I'm more hesitant about is bringing Lott to combat for the entirety of the game. To prove that a mediocre (at best really) unit is better than another one you have to assume another mediocre unit is fielded on a constant basis. That's two unit slots for very questionable combat in the end. Plus there's that Dieck / Lott / Ward support triangle idea being hinted on. All three are contesting for a Hero Crest and if any of them are getting the first one for a pretty hard portion of the game, it means Rutger needs extra luck to do the needed bosskills. Perhaps the assumption that Rutger fails to bosskill is the reason why Lott and Ward reach A support so early? Bosskilling takes forever and since these two contribute naught to it, they build their supports. Doesn't sound terribly efficient though.

A Lott / C Dieck before chapter 11 isn't very practical either, assuming by 'practicality' we mean turn counts. If we're okay with waiting turns after clearing maps to build supports, why not give the same treatment to Geese as well?

On my current run, Runan's level is lower than yours and I'm on chapter 24, lol. Then again, that's natural when I'm using guys like Narron and Zeek and not restricting myself in any way.

Is it really a good idea to assume Ward gets A support with Lott so quickly in the game? Hell, the sole notion that you have to continuously deploy his brother so that Ward is above average at best? Why not assume Geese gets some supports as well, though his options are arguably worse?

I don't think Gonzales's accuracy issues are limited to just him. Allen should have around the same hit rates with Javelins when Gonzo joins (unless you focus on training him above all others and give him that early Knight's Crest).

It would be funnier if everyone was switched to Wendy or Amelia instead. Oh wait, that would be a bit too cruel.

Lots of Alicia. BRENTHUNDER!

2/10 to everyone in this thread. Myself included.

That means I haven't skipped it at all then, thanks for clearing the confusion. I didn't know you could have Lionel AND Maruju's broken Sylpheed tome before you go rescue Samson and Alicia.

Map 11 is to the north of the map, right? I'll try if I can go there after the Attrom mission.

I can open them one at a time.

Pretty much. Also, during a random encounter, my game froze when Mahtel attacked one of the bandits. Not sure what the cause for this could be, but now I know it has nothing to do with Thomas. Might always be a good idea to turn animations off. And I just had to go a few save states back on my recent run because I somehow missed saving Samson and Alicia... 0_O I had no idea the maps were skippable in this game. These two are obviously too good to miss.

Can't you like drop him unto a hill with an Iron Axe to keep the enemy wyvern knights busy or something? I'm sure there's a lot you could think of with that defence of his.

The material world is an illusion.

Garo's problem is that he has a movement stat of 4 when the other melee fighters (Barth, swordfighters) have one point more. He also lacks a promotion, meaning no bonuses and being stuck with 4 mov when your other foot units will have 6. The skills he learns after lv. 28 are pretty damn good, but how will we get him to that level?

Bumping this since the OP is a good resource and since my question is addressed best in a general discussion thread for this game. Has anybody ever experienced any problems when playing the game? My game froze in the chapter where you recruit Narsus for the first time. It happened when Thomas attacked something on player phase (I had animations on). I'm really hesitant to bring him to any combat now.