zahlman

You forgot that YAOI FANGIRLS SHIP THEM ALL DAY.

Well, Ch18 can really suck if you don't have mobility, and Ch20 will really suck if you can't Warp effectively... Myrrh might be able to just fly up to Morva and wtfpwn, but your lord still has to get there somehow. (I'm not Refa btw) 5x is like 1 chapter, and even if you're lazy like me and just let Ephraim wander his full move each turn while Orson pwns everything, you can't really take more than 10 turns, vs I'm pretty sure 7 is the theoretical minimum if you have all of them. Also, you think Duessel > Saleh, but you didn't take Duessel given the chance... o_O

Ah, right, you don't trigger zones if you move through them starting and ending outside. Nice job... I guess you're pretty familiar with it though :P

Did you, like, have Florina ferry Pent/Marcus through a 1-tile-wide corridor along the river to avoid that reinforcement zone (just N of the starting area) as well? kinda wish I'd had that luxury :P

He needs a better set of bodyguards I guess that will actually take reinforcements out on the turn they arrive. Blocking some of those spots helps too.

It's all good, you picked yourself a good team at least :) Enjoy it while it lasts. The best competition is against yourself anyway IMO. Approached correctly, self-improvement is lots of fun, or at least rewarding. Try to do a little better every draft ;)

It's a rout map, not a seize map. Eliwood is best left near the starting point with some guards, so that Vaida can be recruited instantly and the reinforcement points can be blocked off. Eliwood doesn't do horribly against the reinforcement wyverns if he has a couple of helpers. (I guess the Wyrmslayer wouldn't hurt either, but no chance Eclipse burned turns to grab that...) Of course, her team actually has Vaida, which is nice :P

My analysis: This is going to be a fairly decent challenge for everyone. "As-is" is tough enough without the unit competition of a draft and no Seth. However, everyone does still get Myrrh, who I expect will be doing most of the heavy lifting later for all these teams, and almost all of it for some of them. Franz is still good without the ability to promote because the early game exists. Natz is nice to have when you don't have access to powerful units, except that she's probably going to have durability issues while she's trying to fix everyone else's. Cormag is hurt a lot by the no-promotion thing as he's already lv 9 to start, but a physically durable flier isn't a bad thing to have. (Although he will cost turns one way or another to recruit, unless the team is doing really badly anyway.) Lv 20 Lute will pack quite a punch and probably have enough speed to be useful even later. The two trainees aren't bad either since no promotion item is required for the first promotion, and 10/20 Ross is among the strongest units available and quite durable - not bad for a final-pair pick at all. Already having Lute, I would be tempted to forget I had Ewan, honestly. Marisa would have been a better pick IMO. This team seems likely to struggle later with only one prepromote, and especially with the gorgon egg chapter since the only high-MOV units are low-RES. Ironically, Ewan will look good here if he's used, but it's hard for me to imagine him getting trained up in time. This seems like a really solid team on the face of it. Under the conditions, Duracell has got to be pretty high tier even with the low availability and only 12 levels of room for growth, just because of the difficulty of scraping up good late-game combat. (I can't help but be reminded of dondon's 0% growths playthrough.) Rennac's combat isn't bad either, and Syrene is at least usable for combat, even if 20/1 Vanessa compares favourably (way ahead in Skill and Spd, not far behind anything else) to base Syrene. Plus she'll be able to improve while Vanessa has hit the end of the road. Gilliam is also nice to have for early game, as is Vanessa. Of the four teams on offer, I would probably take this one. However, Racer is already posting some pretty horrible times to be perfectly honest, and AFAIK Baldrick and Refa actually know what they're doing, so... Dozla is an interesting early pick. He has some spots where he shines, but I'd prefer Duessel here for sure (and yeah, too bad about not getting Saleh). Gerik would seem to be hurt maximally by the lack of promotion items, but lv 20 Gerik is still pretty badass. Hat will be upset about the lack of access to Swordmaster bonuses, Audhulma etc. but he has room to grow and is solid combat from the get-go. L'Arachel will probably be close to useless due to a combination of class, lack of access to promotion and join time. Neimi is Neimi, and sometimes you need a little chip damage I guess. She's probably still better off than Knoll here so yeah. One weakness I see here is the lack of early-early game units. Artur and Eirika will probably take a while to mop up Ch 4 and Eirika will still be soloing at Ch 2 (but that may not be as bad as I'm making it out to be). Tana is a flier of average availability and average awesomeness who probably isn't hurt too much by the no-promotion rule, assuming she isn't going to be relied upon for combat. I'd prefer Cormag if it weren't for the recruitment requirements. Saleh is pretty darned pwnsome. Garcia covers early-game combat pretty well, and Forde is a cav who's reasonably comparable to Kyle (a bit luckier, but otherwise pretty much a wash in terms of growths; Kyle's bases are probably somewhat better overall). It seems strange to me that the two were recruited so far apart. Beyond that, it kinda goes downhill. Without promotion, Knoll basically loses the only thing he's good for, so it's not a big surprise he was picked last. Colm is a thief with less-than-great combat, and there's less to steal since promotion items aren't needed and there's lots of money available (I guess he'll still be going for stat boosters though). Moulder can become a warper without promoting, but Saleh will make him pretty much redundant, and can do the combat thing too. Of course, healing is never a bad thing, and while Saleh will eventually be able to do it as well, he'd rather be fighting or warping. This should be fairly interesting to watch.

Where's the "I like to LTC the shit out of Easy" option? Selection bias IMO. The hardcore ones are the ones who do the most talking about actual playing/strategy, for hopefully obvious reasons.

The argument is that being weak and... predictable in her interactions with others (what I think you're getting at with "poorly executed" is the exact source of the moe. It's not supposed to be rational. Don't get me started listing other supposedly moe characters that most rational adults actually capable of socialization would find utterly intolerable. :P Personally I don't care because I am a yuri fanboy and lyn x florina is pwnsome

8 maps done, 43 turns so far. I was kinda lazy on 5x. RNG abuse is pretty minimal (5 total explicit RN burns, plus stalling and move reordering tactics - and I'm not even using undrafted units to burn RNs ;) ) so far, although I'm hard-resetting for each chapter and writing out a complete script so that everything can be reproduced. Could have saved a turn on Ch3 with a critblick on the boss but it would have taken 11 extra RN burns despite Eirika's decent crit rate Details later.

The only real problem is the HHM swordreavers. Actually, I like the idea that more of the enemies go for Zephiel initially, but they start further away and switch to targeting blue units if they're in range. Jaffar should maybe also have a higher HP threshold for using his Elixir. Nino doesn't require any buffs to survive the chapter. There is no way that you can suck badly enough to let Nino die without Jaffar or Zephiel becoming a problem first, the way things are calibrated at the moment. The only reason to buff Nino would be to improve her as a blue unit.

wait wait wait what the fuck I know people in FE communities that aren't actually about FE get fixated on growth units, but they seriously think Wendy is good? Did they not notice the part where you can't even really train her because she isn't even good at the one thing her class is supposed to be good at, and joins in a chapter full of enemies of the same class that are better at it? I mean I once drank the "OMG don't use Marcus" kool-aid pretty unquestioningly but I still figured out that Wendy is impossibly useless like right away. I mean shit, even if she had a horse and a few levels and the same stats and bases she'd be comparable to, well, Treck. Yes yes and yes. Compared to Kent and Sain he's more DEF-oriented. It's saved my bacon a couple of times (e.g. 13x on first HHM playthrough). Granted, he doesn't get as good growths overall as Hector and Oswin, but he already has an awesome class and you can't have everything. Not many other units can rival 90%hp/40%def. Yeah, well, it's moe. So there. ;P (Seriously, the designers were, as far as I can tell, expecting her to get praise for her personality exactly because of how weak and horrible it is, and they weren't even trolling, because it's a proven formula.)

They're taken directly from the ROMs you did your playthroughs with, right? So I think that makes pretty thorough testing of the ROMs themselves. The only thing you could really have messed up is the patch creation, which honestly is hard to do if you're using something like NUPS. Anyway, thanks! I suspect you underestimate the demand. ;)

We kinda have that information right here for you to look it up.

I've never really read Ray's dialogue, but Cath fancies herself the setting's equivalent to Robin Hood. That hardly seems "closed-minded, childish, self-centered" to me. Back on topic... fucking Guy, man. Or as I call him, "yay free Killing Edge". Rutger he ain't.

Imma copypasta from the main thread. I was totally going to make this thread actually but was too lazy :P It seems like some people whose names I shall not mention (I am not excluding myself from this set, but in my defense I am very adventurous with rule changes and although I consider myself very good at that sort of thing, I have gotten in over my head somewhat both times and had to fix things) have some difficulty with doing this properly. Possible problems include but are not limited to: * Changing absolutely anything once drafting has already started carries a serious risk of screwing over one or more people unfairly (e.g. they picked someone early for vital X utility, and then a character with X utility is made free; or a character is picked for good combat because a character with X utility is free, and then that gets revoked; or access to X utility is changed by changing restrictions on X-related items). * It may become logically impossible for someone to draft their entire team. Depending on conditions, this may be deliberately planned for, but it would be an extremely bad idea in a SOYO with a non-recruitment turn penalty. * Turn bonuses or penalties may be unbalanced or have bad loopholes, or special conditions may be overly strict (or even impossible to deal with except via massive RNG abuse). * Going ahead with rules as stated, when potential players are raising objections, is an extremely bad idea. Talk it out before you start drafting. * Changing the set of free characters may cause things to cease to be 'clean'; i.e. an odd number of characters may be left over. That isn't a huge problem, but it's one that was, to my understanding, at least considered in the development of all the standard rules. * Allowing known OP characters to be drafted requires serious thought. This is sometimes done as an experimental "Does X need to be banned" draft. It is worth exploring options for compensating the X-less teams (one option is a choice between {X} or {A, B, C} free, with none of those available for drafting). * Modifying turn penalties may require serious thought in order to have the intended effect. It is worth thinking through what a typical strategy looks like with vs. without the penalized action, how often the penalized action is invoked in such a strategy, and how many turns it typically saves. * The set of free characters requires serious thought. It won't always be OP characters plus lords; it may be characters with unique utility or exceptional availability out of units with the same utility. I like to think I have a pretty good understanding of why you made it Ninils in normal mode for FE7 but Serra for hard mode; but I think people are better served by thinking about it than being fed an explanation. However, you are free to disagree and make your reasoning extremely explicit. ;) Anyway, depending on the nature of the draft, modifications may be necessary. Sometimes this is done for theme reasons (Erk, in my Serra SOYO) and sometimes for essential utility reasons (Matthew, in my Serra SOYO). * Writing unambiguous modifications to the rules is harder than you think. Seriously. Check for contradictions, loopholes and omitted cases. Consider whether you are really writing a new rule or an exception to an existing rule. Consider whether other rules need to be modified to accomodate a new rule. Spelling and grammar count, too.

IIRC xdelta is normally used for NDS ROMs because it has a better understanding of the actual "filesystem" that the DS implements, so you don't get a massive patch if you take a 1MB chunk of data and shift it over a few bytes. See for example http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=27481

6 Marcus, Percival, Miledy ; Dieck, Rutger, FA. 7 Marcus (hurrdurr), Florina, Vaida; Harken, Lyn , Pent. 8 Seth (HURRDURR), Vanessa, Tana; Saleh, Gerik, Myrrh.

Not to mention his kids and family. Guile's Theme starts playing

What you've fixed it to is completely redundant with the first rule. Not that that's a bad thing, mind you. The first rule works pretty well ffs. If you want undrafted thieves to have more utility, what ought to be obvious is to move 'opening Doors and Chests' from rule 2 to rule 1 (i.e. into the allowed set for undrafted units). Of course, that would also allow undrafted units to use keys and Unlock, but that's probably not a big deal. Regardless. Rennac and Neimi.

Oh god this just keeps getting worse. >_>

Could we, like, have a separate topic to discuss the art of modifying the rules? It seems like some people whose names I shall not mention (I am not excluding myself from this set, but in my defense I am very adventurous with rule changes and although I consider myself very good at that sort of thing, I have gotten in over my head somewhat both times and had to fix things) have some difficulty with doing this properly. Possible problems include but are not limited to: * Changing absolutely anything once drafting has already started carries a serious risk of screwing over one or more people unfairly (e.g. they picked someone early for vital X utility, and then a character with X utility is made free; or a character is picked for good combat because a character with X utility is free, and then that gets revoked; or access to X utility is changed by changing restrictions on X-related items). * It may become logically impossible for someone to draft their entire team. Depending on conditions, this may be deliberately planned for, but it would be an extremely bad idea in a SOYO with a non-recruitment turn penalty. * Turn bonuses or penalties may be unbalanced or have bad loopholes, or special conditions may be overly strict (or even impossible to deal with except via massive RNG abuse). * Going ahead with rules as stated, when potential players are raising objections, is an extremely bad idea. Talk it out before you start drafting. * Changing the set of free characters may cause things to cease to be 'clean'; i.e. an odd number of characters may be left over. That isn't a huge problem, but it's one that was, to my understanding, at least considered in the development of all the standard rules. * Allowing known OP characters to be drafted requires serious thought. This is sometimes done as an experimental "Does X need to be banned" draft. It is worth exploring options for compensating the X-less teams (one option is a choice between {X} or {A, B, C} free, with none of those available for drafting). * Modifying turn penalties may require serious thought in order to have the intended effect. It is worth thinking through what a typical strategy looks like with vs. without the penalized action, how often the penalized action is invoked in such a strategy, and how many turns it typically saves. * The set of free characters requires serious thought. It won't always be OP characters plus lords; it may be characters with unique utility or exceptional availability out of units with the same utility. I like to think I have a pretty good understanding of why you made it Ninils in normal mode for FE7 but Serra for hard mode; but I think people are better served by thinking about it than being fed an explanation. However, you are free to disagree and make your reasoning extremely explicit. ;) Anyway, depending on the nature of the draft, modifications may be necessary. Sometimes this is done for theme reasons (Erk, in my Serra SOYO) and sometimes for essential utility reasons (Matthew, in my Serra SOYO). ETA: Derp, I forgot the most important one * Writing unambiguous modifications to the rules is harder than you think. Seriously. Check for contradictions, loopholes and omitted cases. Consider whether you are really writing a new rule or an exception to an existing rule. Consider whether other rules need to be modified to accomodate a new rule. Spelling and grammar count, too.

Battle Before Dawn. Night of Farewells is the gaiden. Not usually; most people are smart enough to explicitly handle thieving utility in the rules. That said, the fact that a question like this can be asked is part of why I handle things the way I do (undrafted characters can't be fielded; once a unit is on the map it has no restrictions). Of course, that has implications of its own (largely to do with recruitment) that have to be considered carefully... The standard rules say "may not do anything not listed above, including but not limited to" for a reason. The added rule "Undrafted Theives are free for doors/chests. Entering combat is a penelty" (i) ought to go in the exceptions section; (ii) doesn't allow stealing from enemy units as written, but seems intended to; (iii) spells two words incorrectly.

DAT energy ring is exactly what I was thinking of. I'm sure you can imagine why, looking at my team. Also, I figure he's better early-game combat than Ross. Especially if we can train the thieves in the tower and not the recruits (wtf?). Although I honestly might not bother training him much if at all. This might matter since (a) rout maps (b) certain Franz rushes might leave some enemies behind.