Skarthe

What shadowofchaos said, plus: it's much easier to read what you're saying if you divide it into sentences instead of one run-on.

It can take some time to get used to. How many times have you played through the game, and how much experience do you have with the series? I had multiple playthroughs on every FE in North America (plus FE4) and one on Awakening Hard, and I still lost on the Lunatic prologue a couple times. Still do if I get an unlucky crit from the Elthunder mage or something. But yeah. The people who frown on grinding DLC, as I understand it, mostly do so because it removes the challenge from the game; why play on a higher difficulty setting if you're going to grind to trivialize it anyway? To each their own though.

My guess would be event tiles on a Scramble map, but I dunno for sure.

Saving Ricken and Maribelle is made quite a bit easier if you do Paralogue 1 first to acquire the Rescue staff from it.

Limit Breaker, a DLC skill from Rogues and Redeemers 3. Raises all stat caps (except HP) by 10. EDIT: ninja'd

I was basically going to say exactly this. Counter can be nice for screwing with Streetpass teams or something but that's about it; both Counter and Wrath rely on the unit taking decent damage, which Manaketes shouldn't do.

I think there are some purposes for which it could be useful, but... it's not really optimal. In Streetpass teams it fails to other breakers or to Manaketes (who aren't that strong offensively, but can probably take you if they have five skills and you have zero), in Lunatic+/Apotheosis it immediately fails against Hawkeye. It's workable on Lunatic or below, but so are a lot of things that'll give you more to work with.

To add to the voices giving advice: Morgan is pretty much always amazing, Lucina is pretty much always at least usable, and Cynthia - due to a relatively easy paralogue and Sumia's limited husband pool - is usually solid as well, if requiring a little bit of catching up. Most of the rest aren't really worth it for no-grind due to various factors, including somewhat poor bases (Owain, Inigo, Brady usually all fall to this, due to the relative difficulty in levelling up their mothers) and difficult paralogues (Inigo, Nah, Noire, Severa, Gerome fall to this, given how late their mothers are recruited) that set the character behind by the time they're recruited. Kjelle and Laurent aren't quite as reliably good as Cynthia, but are very usable nonetheless. For DLC and for grind-enabled playthroughs, ignore the entire preceding paragraph and use the children. Grind eliminates the factors that work against the children, making them amazingly strong.

Topic owner is also playing on Lunatic, not Lunatic+, so I assumed you were talking in general, not about his playthrough specifically. My bad.

In Awakening, I think the usual is 10 if you're not restricting yourself from grinding (and possibly if you are) since due to Second Seals, there's no limit to the number of levels you can get overall.

DLC/Logbook invalidates pretty much all strategy though. Even Lunatic+ can be beaten through grind, it just takes a bit more luck than other difficulties.

-shrug- They did the same thing in FE7 with Lucius, plus I spotted right off that he was a War Monk and not a War Cleric. Not too surprised.

I found the early game of Lunatic+ to still be the hardest part, personally (low single-digit attempts per chapter in lategame, as opposed to double-digits in earlygame), though the lategame does scale better than Lunatic's does. But yeah, I like +DEF/-SKL over +DEF/-STR, since pairing up with Frederick (or Vaike, which I found useful in Ch2) gives a solid STR boost that makes Bronze Sword damage very good. Seems to take enemies in Ch1 and 2 from 4/3HKO to 3/2HKO, which is pretty nice when you need to clear enemies quickly to get your squishies (i.e. pretty much everyone) out of the line of fire in Ch2.

The Chapter 2 sister retreats on defeat; she is still shown in the post-chapter cutscenes. Anna is also recruitable if you opt to do Paralogue 4 before Paralogue 2.

I believe that walking noise is Walhart leaving the room, since then Cervantes and Excellus start talking like he isn't there.

Counter is nice for bow-users, which can make it very handy on Lunatic+.

Yeah. Luck on Ch2 and Ch3 (and Ch1) is pretty much always required even with a water-tricked +Def Avatar; I'd argue they're the hardest three chapters of the run altogether. Going with anything other than +Def makes it even more difficult.

I'm saying physical as compared to Ricken, who passes better mods for magical use. You aren't wrong though.

Avatar is the best parent for ANY applicable child character, not just Inigo; using the Avatar to breed anyone results in the same argument for every other child. From a gameplay standpoint, the only question is whether one would rather optimize Morgan (in this case, by passing her Manakete from Tiki) or have basically two slightly weaker Morgans. On top of that, yeah, I prefer Tiki's supports over Olivia's, but I'm also biased because I really like Tiki. And as Euklyd said, Inigo wouldn't exactly be a watered-down Laurent. Despite being a worse Nosferatank, he arguably makes a better offensive unit in any case due to Galeforce access, which Laurent can never have. He has natural access to Sol and Armsthrift, plus with Kellam or Ricken for a father to give him Luna (Kellam for physical, Ricken for magical) he's an excellent attacker, and he makes a pretty decent one without them anyway. I don't know how good those supports are though, I haven't tried them.

I agree with Euklyd's skill suggestions. Dunno if I agree with swapping Henry and Frederick, since both are excellent for Cynthia (dunno how Henry!Gerome is tbh) but otherwise that seems to be solid advice. I would like to point out that Counter can be useful on Lunatic+ depending on what you're doing; my own personal Lunatic+ playthrough made pretty significant use of my Avatar with Counter and a bow tanking the map. Counter in this case allowed me to still deal damage to melee-range enemies without having to swap to a melee weapon (and thus open myself up to enemy Counters). I did Avatar/Nowi for my run as well; Nah and Morgan each got good use out of Counter as well, though not nearly as much as my Avatar. I do think Sol is still a better skill for Gaius to pass, but Counter shouldn't be completely disregarded.

I think LB3 is definitely your best bet if your characters can handle it; pull up the map and check the stats, then exit from the prep screen if it looks too bad.

What do you have? Pretty much any of the CoY or LB can be used in a pinch. SB and R&R work, but are sub-optimal for speedy clears due to SB's doors and R&R's map size + enemy difficulty (bad luck with Linus, Ike, or Jaffar can probably kill you outright, so you don't necessarily want to autopilot R&R)

CoY2 is typically preferred over CoY3 though, I think; CoY2 only has ten enemies but you can feed nine of them to a unit turn 1 if you have a flier to get them into position (read: right above Marth), and then one unit can take out Roy (the tenth unit) on turn 1, making for easy 1-turn clears that offer slightly under a level per run on a minimum-XP unit with no XP boost skills, at roughly a minute per run.

Any kind of non-DLC grind is difficult on Lunatic. Best way would be DLC maps with lots of enemies that can suicide onto your units in not a lot of turns, like LB3 or CoY2.

For a support unit, the notable stats are: the primary attack stat (Str/Mag), Skl (for accuracy and Dual Strike chance), and Def/Res (for Dual Guard). Spd isn't terrifically relevant on a unit that you aren't going to have directly attacking. Any other stat is mainly useful in increments of 10 for contribution to the main unit's stat bonuses. Without modifiers, Dread Fighter's stat caps are 80/42/38/40/41/45/39/43. Getting DG+ requires that you have a father with either Cavalier or Knight (or both), which limits your pool to something like Kellam / Ricken / Frederick / Stahl. Let's assess from there. For reference: Cherche gives Wyvern Rider, Priest, and Fighter to Gerome. Her mods are pretty weighted towards physical combat (+3 Str, +2 Def, -1 Skl/Spd, -1 Res) so with that plus Dread Fighter having four more Str than Mag, I'm not sure shifting him to primarily magic is a great idea; seems like a waste of that Str mod to me. Let's see how the GK-passing fathers compare though. Kellam passes Knight / Thief, plus the redundant Priest. His mods are +3 Def, +1 Str/Skl, -2 Spd/Luck. Counting the +1 for being a child character, this gives Gerome +5 Str, +1 Mag, +1 Skl, -2 Spd, -1 Luck, +6 Def, +0 Res. Good offense and the stats he loses are mostly things he wouldn't want anyway. The Thief line gives some nice side perks like Locktouch, Acrobat, and Pass, but those are not helpful in combat and mostly just help his personal utility. Not a lot of useful support skills otherwise: Lethality, Pavise, and Rally Defense don't see a lot of use on support units. Ricken passes Cavalier / Mage / Archer. His mods are -1 Str/Def, +2 Mag, +1 Luck, giving Gerome a total of +3 Str, +3 Mag, +0 Skl, +0 Spd, +2 Luck, +2 Def, +0 Res. Lack of negative mods is kinda nice, but he doesn't have any huge positive ones either. This is a decent magic user, but I don't think Tomefaire+forged Celica's Gale from Ricken!Gerome will beat forged Brave weapons from a Gerome with a better Str mod unless the enemy has reasonably better Def than Res, since Celica's Gale has poor base Mt and even with Tomefaire, Demon Fighter Ricken!Gerome's magic is only one point above his strength. Frederick passes Knight / Cavalier, plus the redundant Wyvern Rider. His mods are +2 Str/Skl/Def, -2 Mag/Spd, leaving Gerome with a total of +6 Str, -1 Mag, +2 Skl, -2 Spd, +1 Luck, +5 Def, +0 Res. Not a lot of help with skills, but those are some pretty helpful mods. It does drop a Spd point from his support bonus, so if Nah needed a make-or-break point of Spd she'd be out of luck, but that's the main downside I see to these mods. Stahl passes Cavalier / Myrmidon / Archer. His mods are +2 Str/Def, +1 Skl, -1 Mag/Res, -2 Luck. This puts Gerome at a total of +6 Str, +0 Mag, +1 Skl, +0 Spd, -1 Luck, +5 Def, -1 Res. Very similar mods to Frederick, and you don't lose the Speed point from the support; on top of that it gives Swordfaire access, which can be kinda useful. So for the setup you want (DG+ Dread Fighter)... my personal recommendation, to my own surprise, is Stahl. My recommended skillset would be DG+, DS+ and LB, with other usable skills including Swordfaire, one of Sword/Lance/Bowbreaker, and All Stats +2. I'm far from an expert though; other people may have better ideas.