Othin

He can't actually use Wind until after promotion...

You are the fourth person to post the answer to that question. The third edited it into the post you quoted.

Yeah. I checked the stats thinking it was one of the crazy +6 Spd promotions and that even the absolute minimum would be absolutely ridiculous, but this works too.

Promoted Homeros has at least 14 Spd, probably more from several level-ups with Elite and 70% Spd growth. By the time he's using Resire, he should be able to handle it with a few points of AS to work with, even if they aren't much.

Bld doesn't reduce AS loss from magic in FE5. He's taking the full 12 penalty. Which is also the same position Salem would be in with his one dark magic spell if he ever used it, except it's not actually good. On the other hand, he's awesome without it, so who cares?

I don't think story is even relevant for this. It's more of a matter of, which is better for gameplay: Making every character as different as possible with their own substantial merits, or making them all the same? Seems to me making them different allows for more interesting choices in terms of your team as a whole. It's the same reason as why I prefer Golden Sun's Djinn system to, say, FFV's job system. (Haven't played enough of any other game with a job system enough to talk about them.) You have options, but you have to work within limits and dealing with costs rather than just doing what you want, and characters have important core abilities that can't simply be traded away. This is also why I advocated FE4's generation system as an example of good customization in the other thread, having the same truths to it.

Perhaps I wasn't clear: This is not a skill tier list or anything of the sort. The purpose is not to rank and compare skills, and certainly not in isolation: the purpose is to evaluate and compare the games themselves in terms of the relevance of their skill systems. FE9 and FE10 failed at making good trade-offs; that does not mean the system as a whole is flawed. Again, I must point to Berwick Saga as offering just a few excellent examples of how it can be done better. http://serenesforest.net/wiki/index.php/Berwick_Saga_Skills A few skills stand out as notable. I believe I've already mentioned Pulverize a few times; it allows a character to double their attack power on their first melee attack if they use it before moving and in exchange for reducing the character's Defense to 0 for the duration of the battle. Two axe users use the skill to break through high-defense enemies and OHKO almost anything else, at the cost of being sometimes tricky to set up or risky to use. Like with most skills in its game, Pulverize is limited to the characters who have it from the start, both ensuring that it remains an ability unique to those two characters and preventing it from winding up in the hands of a character that would be game-breaking with it, such as a mounted unit that could move afterward. It's also used by several enemies throughout the game, and must be planned around when fighting them. Surprise is particularly relevant, as it similarly requires use before movement, in exchange for negating the enemy's ability to counterattack. (Unlike Pulverize, one of its users is mounted, and can therefore move afterward.) Indeed, movement tends to be the sacrifice for most of Berwick Saga's skills, for a variety of uses. Perhaps the most notable skill that uses a more "conventional" trade-off is Deathmatch. It targets an enemy able to counterattack, and locks them into five rounds of combat, almost guaranteeing an immediate kill if the user can kill the enemy first, but risking heavy damage in the process. Enemies cannot usually be killed in one round without special weapons or skills, so as one of the fastest and least restrictive ways of killing enemies, it plays a substantial role in defining the two characters with access to it. Time between uses is a great alternative trade-off, and also one seen with a few skills in Berwick Saga, but with a simpler system where you simply select to use it when it's charged and when you need it rather than having some random occurrence as well. An example is Starstrike, which requires seven turns to charge but unleashes five consecutive attacks when selected, allowing for quick and controlled removal of major threats with almost no risk. (Used only by one character, and only after promotion.) It's not even just attacks to focus on, either, with abilities like Guard, having a character cut their own defense and avoid in exchange for protecting an adjacent ally from all attacks, entering combat in place of them. The three characters with the skill can all use it effectively but differently, with their varying merits in terms of offense, defense, and mobility. Of course, there are many more options, but I think these make for some great examples of concepts to work with to improve tactics and character variety. There's also the matter of having a game where using those skills effectively is a key skill to master rather than just overkill. Berwick Saga certainly accomplished that, and I think IS is capable of making a game like that as well.

Randomly. A random effect with a low activation rate and an effect not overly relevant has little to no tactical value. The skills that actually matter are, for the most part, the ones that are always in effect or allow you to get a bonus in exchange for something else. There's an idea I've been having of grouping skills within games based on their tactical value to compare relevance. Let's try it with FE4: High Tactical Value Ambush Bargain Charisma Dance Elite Pursuit Wrath Moderate Tactical Value Charge Continue Critical Meteor Sword Prayer Steal Low Tactical Value Awareness Big Shield Moonlight Sword Sun Sword Groups are ordered alphabetically. Life is excluded because it's not player-available. List is open to suggestions. I think we'd get some rather interesting results trying to apply this same idea to, say, FE10. But first, let's find a standard to agree upon here, with less skills to work with.

Naturally. And that larger market is a symptom of video games being "for" more people for whatever reasons, rather than a cause of it.

Many people played those games, but certainly not everyone. The Wii has already outsold the NES, indicating that it's "for" more people than the NES was.

Hannibal also uses axes, if anyone cares about him.

Change is good. Change means we might get a non-remake with gameplay that's also not a stripped-down FE5 rehash for the first time in 10 years.

Thinking about customization again, it can be good as long as characters retain important unique qualities. For example, let's look at FE4's generation system. You can customize many of the Gen 2 characters' capabilities, but for the most part, they still remain unique in their own important ways. There are 13 types of Sety and 13 types of Arthur, all with many different capabilities, but none of Arthur's let him get Sety's high base stats and access to staffs and Lightning, and none of Sety's let him get Arthur's horse and access to Wrath. As much as they can be customized, they remain distinct in important ways. It's certainly not a perfect system, obstructed mainly by the fact that you have to play through FE4's entire first generation largely the same way in order to get to the customization. But it goes to show how customization can be effective when properly limited.

Pokemon + Nobunaga's Ambition is set to be released in Japan for the DS approximately a year after the 3DS was released. Who knows what that says about its chances of localization, but it goes to show that the DS isn't gone yet.

Celice and Arthur's placements show that FE4's generations are being counted separately, as they should be. So I'd say there's no question about Sigurd for #1, if only because he's the Jagen and main Lord fused into one. Access to unlimited repairs for the Silver Sword, quickly becoming the Killer Silver Sword, doesn't hurt either. I recall on my Sigurd/Celice solo, it had over 90 kills by the end of Chapter 1.

You could change Mage Knight's name to Arch Mage; that might be a bit more clear.

Two wrongs make a right now? In any case, I'm just talking about issues with the system in general, not in its application to two already seriously flawed games. Tell me, how would you define an RPG that's too easy?

If the game gave us the option to freely turn characters into Demon Kings with 50 in every stat, would it be the player's fault for making the game ridiculously easy? No, it would not, and it's the same here. We could ignore the option and stick with what we were given for a more interesting game, but that option would be cheapened by the existence of the alternative. Or perhaps an example that actually exists: FE8 gives you the option each chapter turn one of your character slots into a Demon King known as Seth. You can ignore that option and have a game that's not nearly as easy, but it's not nearly as meaningful as if Seth hadn't existed or hadn't been so overpowered in the first place. I never said the rest of the series was perfect at it, especially the worst offenders of what you describe. (Which is mostly the games with Reclass anyway.) It mainly depends on skills to give the game more than "this character has more stats than that one"; the games with them typically did better in that area. FE10 not so much, since it ruined the skill system both with the same excessive customization and with making the skills largely irrelevant anyway.

Too much customization gets rid of characters' abilities to have meaningful individual capabilities, as seen with the reclassing disaster in the DS games.

Do you think the people posting here are so foolish as to start talking about FE4 and FE9 entirely at random? Everything you see here (or perhaps almost everything) was brought up to prove a point about the implications of such a change to the gameplay mechanics. The relevance is clear in the posts where those parts of the discussion began; feel free to re-read it and see for yourself. It's clear that you haven't been following the discussion well, and certainly not well enough to tell people how to proceed with that discussion. I'm not going to bother explaining these things when you can see them for yourself and should have already done so before jumping into the discussion.

Ah, never mind then.

Don't twist my words. There's nothing more relevant to this than discussing ideas and their implications.

Someone proposed gameplay mechanics involving being able to control the progression of the game, so people are discussing whether or not that would negatively impact the story. It's as relevant as anything else, at least most of it is.

She has 12 types. You could get that in four generations from the start of the blood types being mixed - that's 16 great-great-grandparents, so as long as almost all of them have one of the holy blood types needed, it would work out.

Of course it doesn't. That is not the dispute here, and I have explained that to you countless times already. I am saying that it exists in another relevant form, exactly like Iron and Steel weapons do.