Czar_Yoshi

Do remember that GF only does something if you get a KO, and without max Vengence you're very likely to need some assistance ORKOing many things. You could put it on everyone and hope it comes in handy, but odds are you'll be getting at least a few units per turn who are on softening duty and as such don't need it. Of course, you should make sure you'll have the offense to clear out Wave 4 on time, but odds are you'll be taking it slow for the most part and trying to kill ~5 enemies per turn (since they do spawn in groups of five most of the time...). Killing off units for Barracks boosts isn't needed- once you've got the boost sitting in the Barracks and waiting to be picked up, it's possible to control who gets it. You should PM Tables about this if you're curious since he discovered it and probably knows more about it than I do, but the basic idea of it is that events are assigned to positions in your roster rather than units themselves, so if you save, check the events, reset, enter battle, move around the units in your roster by selecting/deselecting, exit battle and go back to the Barracks, you can give events to whoever you want. This is also incredibly useful for securing semi-reliable support for things like early Chrom x Sumia S in Lunatic(+).

About what I'd expect. I feel like I've seen more Morgan-Fs but eh.

No such thing as speed in a run containing 200-400 turn maps.

Pavise doesn't do anything in the back, no.

Says who?

Gonna have to dissent from the majority opinion here. There might be another hag like Tharja and I'm glad I currently have nothing to do with the poll that placed her at the top.

^Yeah all of that is solid advice. Unpairing for setting up Vengeance is great at mitigating RNG, but is also pretty unintuitive and requires either planning two turns in advance or having a free Rescue, so you might want to practice it a few times on regular runs first if you're going to do it here. Also for Anna, it you could always fodder a Spotpass unit on her- it doesn't matter in the long run if they die. Not very pretty, but there's no way for RNG to stab you in the back if you're planning on it.

Oh, most of us are fine with huge turncounts when there's no pretense of efficiency. The problem is that you've both got huge turn counts (and not just not small, really really huge) and are trying to justify using Donnel in terms of saving time elsewhere- either you care about time or you don't, make up your mind. Want to spend 200-400 turns breaking weapons for him? That's fine. But it also means you should have no problem spending more time training up other units, and claiming to have a problem with doing that (or even that not needing to is a good thing) just reeks of Donnel bias.

You know, you could have waited for April Fool's and still been inside the necro limit.

Astra's damage is entirely dependent on how much you're already doing. Since you're doing very little before procs, it'll give you a very small boost and might be worth testing whether it improves your output at all (since it has priority over Luna, it might actually lower it). You're leaving Faires off lots of units in favor of Defender. Don't do that unless you've ran calcs and know that that +1 Spd/Def/whatever is vital for some important threshold- odds are it's not worth losing 4 leading and 5 supporting Atk (when you're so low already, you need as much as you can get). If you want a crit Laurent/Nah, either go in lightly enough that failure won't get you killed (use it for chipping, not for Vantage) or go all out. I've got a crit build somewhere back in the Pairing Thread I made when AC was doing his run (so it's no DLC/Rally compliant) that can get 100% crit and 27 base damage (*3 is 81, OHKO) on every 55 Lck non-Aegis+ enemy in S.Apo with double perfect Barracks and 1HP VV- I don't recommend using it but it's what you should aim for if you want a crit sweeper. Anyway, choosing your pairings and then playing to those children's strengths might not cut it here. Donnel!Kjelle and Gaius!Noire in No Holds Barred are second rate GF leads compared to the likes of Lucina, Cynthia and Severa. Here, without anything amazing they can do, that performance gap will be much greater. I strongly advise giving Gaius to Kjelle (with a +5 Spd mod, she's got a decent chance to be a Thronie chipper, and can at least hold her own with the big three) and finding something else to do with Noire: she's got native Sniper/Vengeance, make use of it poking stuff. Poking doesn't need GF, so consider someone other than Donnel.

Nowi needs to get past her hump quickly or she most likely never will- the Dragonstone+ is important. Keep in mind that you can't S Morgan and Lucina.

I don't think DSes are going to be as strong as you think they are. They may hit twice but they're not getting procs or pairup boosts, making them a source of side damage that you can pile up to overwhelm stuff, but not a oneshot. Getting one DS out of four is something that's really likely, but it also makes very little difference. Also keep in mind that Yarne already has Berserker. He doesn't need Gregor to give that to him. Hawkeye.

There's a difference though between what kinds of bad luck you can have: sometimes it will cause you to miss a KO, and sometimes it causes you to die. So you could have a run that never has you with a chance of death (my goal for runs) but there's still plenty of variation in what can happen, or you can have a run where you have to trust the RNG not to kill you and end your run when it's perfectly capable of doing so.

Yeah there's no random component to damage you take once crits, procs and hitrates (and more annoyingly, DGs) are taken into account. It's very possible to manipulate your HP to be whatever you want if you're willing and able to plan far enough ahead. This isn't like Pokemon where the end result of all damage gets a random multiplier from 100% to 85% just to mess with consistency.

Well, that would certainly be a way. I suppose we should just see what TC thinks.

Vengeance as an offensive skill doesn't (and is pretty much the lifeblood on No DLC/Rally as it's the only way to do any real damage), but if you want to clean house on EP two hits from Vengeance don't quite do the job after all the stat drops. Say you've got a Sniper with a Double Bow, BF, Tonic and Berserker pairup. It's looking at 78 Atk, which is going to be something like 2 damage against Thronie. Vengeance could add 10-11 more to that if fully charged. The Berserker, assuming a +5 Str mod, AF, Str+2/Tonic and a 5/15 Brave Ave (and actually hitting, which isn't a given even with Axebreaker and Hit+20) has 82 Atk and is doing around 7+7 damage. Alternately, a Sage support with a +5 Mag mod, TF, Mag+2/Tonic and a 5/15 Celica's is looking at 71 Atk, or 8+8 damage. Exactly how many Snipers do you plan to throw at him before finishing with the Sage? Hitting 50 Skl is pretty easy but is still something that could feasibly not happen and get in your way if you take it for granted and don't bother checking.

No, +Spd Avatar!Kjelle specifically gets there without All+2 which is why she's so good. LB will be plenty on them (try LB/GF/AF/Ignis/Luna). Despoil for goofing around, otherwise it doesn't matter because you won't use any of them. Vengeance is an offensive skill that's used to boost damage. You can use it to get KOes on EP, and you can use it just as well to get KOes on PP. I consider it roughly equal with Luna in terms of overall usefulness and as an offensive proc, but in the hands of somebody who knows what it is and how to repeatedly reliably set it up, it's far better due to the 100% activation rate and usually higher damage boost. It also doesn't require 100% DS/Hit to be "safe" since you can choose your battles with more freedom and fight something that won't kill you in case of failure (such as engaging NS at 1-range).

It's supposed to do that. There's a cutscene that occurs then where Excellus appears and talks for a while during an EP, and the music changes after that. The DLC music changing isn't a bug. Once you've cleared a map once, it has a random chance of playing your normal Risen battle theme, or the theme it normally plays. But he's not talking about different themes that can play for the same map, he's talking about the music changing mid-battle.

This is No DLC/Rally. Things that aren't relevant in No Holds Barred are extremely relevant here, and things that used to matter there don't here. It's a different animal and assuming old things work well but harder isn't going to get you very far. One of the biggest differences is that being out LB and Rally means an automatic -20 Skl and -24 Lck, which translates to -42 Hit. You can't just sponge that and expect to continue going about your business as normal- mooks will be dodging things and it makes sense to pack Breakers for the +Hit against bosses alone. Gregor!Yarne@Berserker with just Tonics boosting him and a 5/15 B.Axe is going to have 171 Hit when supporting. The threshold for 100% on non-bosses is 220, and anything less than 198 gives imperfect Hit on everything before WTA- Yarne will be whiffing nearly half his hits even on mooks without +Hit investment. Against the likes of bosses (who he's normally supposed to be the one killing due to being a high Str Berserker), you're staring down Avo in the vicinity of 150. 20% True is 8.20% real. You can't just do that and expect to win. Hit isn't something you aim for after insuring that your KO is possible here. It's your first priority after making sure you aren't doubled and ORKOed. Even DSt+ requires 120 total Skl, which you're not getting easily on a magical pair with no DLC/Rally. On some units, even hitting 100% Vengeance can be an issue- AC had to revise his pairings last minute when he realized that his Owain was 1 Skl off. Actually Spd aims at not being doubled and ORKOed. You must have at least one 60 Spd unit if you want to avoid being doubled by Thronie, and unless you can take him out reliably in 6 hits you're going to need to do that. Having more than one helps a lot, when AC did this he made getting them his top priority, got three, and said it was the best thing he did in his team. Being original is fine and all, but sometimes strategy has to take a back seat to the raw stats required to survive a certain encounter. Lon'qu!Severa has +6 Spd, all those others have +5. If you want to survive a round of combat with Anna... Getting to 66 Spd is unfeasible so you'll want to go with a dodgetank for this, which unfortunately is going to have trouble hitting 100% Avo due to the -42 from your restrictions. AC had to make do with a slight chance for Anna to actually hit, I believe. You could also try to take her down with Longbows while she's still on the Throne, but there's a high RNG component to this method as well if you don't have enough Staves to bail everyone out afterword and fail to get the KO due to misses and whiffs. Spd itself won't make a difference on your Avo here, you'll need skills and lots of them. If you can get her down within range of a guaranteed Vengeance 2HKO and bail then, that's probably the best/safest way to handle her. Luna isn't going to be as good as it is normally due to the -20% activation rate. It'll still be an important damage booster but is not the automatic key to making units good anymore. VV will not work reliably here due to Hitrate and DS issues here. You'll be looking at 80-85% DS rates on most of your units in addition to the Hit problems plaguing everyone (Yarne was my demonstration, but just because he's a Berserker and others aren't doesn't mean they have nothing to worry about). If you're fine with an EP having a >50% chance of death for the VV unit, use it. I'm not fine with that. Precisely. But even though it's needed it won't be enough- Gregor!Yarne doesn't have a good enough compliment of +Hit skills here. You'll need to use Breakers at the very least, and I'd advise more on top of that. COnsider changing parents to someone with more of them as well. And you can't change his dad to a Wyvern dad? What is your current pairing plan? What's your plan for dealing with Thronie?

I thought this was Cht.20...?

For everything but Apo, Swordbreaker will be better due to covering WTD. However, in Apo there are very few swords, none of them being threatening, so it's not actually likely to see much use. When I use Stahl!Yarne I usually just wind up passing Deliverer for non-Apo purposes. I don't want to do numbers for every single female lead so you'll just have to take my word that having a S support with Aggressor (and possible/likely procstack up front) beats out Agg up front in every scenario. Morgan-M may be the best suited Galeboy to lead, but he's still a worse lead than all the females (including non-GF Nah, as I'll address next). Nah shouldn't be trying to tank in Apo. It doesn't work. Outside she can try, but inside the idea for her is to pack a somewhat normal female lead set sans GF (hence the somewhat, she's got so many free skillslots that she can do an insane amount of stuff), have her husband take a kill, activate GF, and switch to her for the last kill. This both lets their pair have one turn of Agg support (as opposed to none), and lets Nah end up front, which is good as she tends to have more Mov than her husband due to the possibility of Deliverer. Her main sets for this are Vaike!Nah@Hero (Luna/Axefaire) and Henry!Nah@Valkyrie (Vengeance/Tomefaire or Aura stack). +Spd will be amazing on her. Keep in mind that Sully's Skl/Spd mods are actually on par with Cordelia's- GF really is the only thing holding that pair back. The children will both be fine. I don't know if you're using DLC but having a +7 Spd Wyvern allows you to double every enemy in Apo without All+2 and with a +3 Spd support (Berserker/Hero), which is great. With no DLC, it puts her at 45 Spd alone which doubles everything ingame with a +1 Spd pairup (Dread Fighter) and no Tonics/Rallies (51 Spd total, fastest promoted class is 46). So Dread Fighter Laurent will work nicely there, though if you're packing Gregor/Stahl!Laurent he's actually pretty good at going physical as well as magical- he'll be able to make use of DF's other weapons, or even go Berserker, BK or Hero (Gregor only). -Def will be fine. You could go -Lck if you want to preserve a bit of Wyvern's tankiness but with Sully's -1 Def mod that's kind of moot anyway. Definitely don't go -Mag/Res though as that will cause you to lose both the Apo and ingame Spd thresholds on Morgan/Kjelle. RK is useful on Inigo when he first arrives due to boosting both Sol and AT, but not very good later since there are other skills with priority over it. Sniper is for insane Skl + ranged braves or Longbows, both of which are very useful in Apo. Mire to soften stuff doesn't really work because between not doubling, no DSes, Dragonskin, possible Aegis+ and high Res it rarely does much (10-20 damage, which is never going to put something in OHKO range). Every class is pretty much useless in enemy phase on Apo due to dying from getting swarmed by 80+ Atk units with high proc rates and whatnot, so it's not a con unique to Bows there.

Or Villager, for that matter.

Oh wow, I must not have been paying attention when I responded to those posts because that's a lot of stuff that I missed. Yeah if you want to use weapon breaking strats that's cool but please never mention doing so in any kind of efficiency context. Quick thing about those scary Generals (assuming talking about Cht.23, because nobody cares about Cht.25 so they're the strongest in the game): base Lunatic Basilio with a Flavia pairup and his Hammer kinda has 51 Atk (71 against Generals), which against their 34 Def and 80 HP is a clean 74 damage. Flavia is packing a 61.56% chance of getting at least one DS, KOing them. Even if that should fail, Basilio's 27 Def and 72 HP is beefy enough to take two Silver Axe++ hits (no Luna+/Counter) and survive, so you're not even risking anything on failure. And if you know you won't be able to take the extra hit for whatever reason, engage with the Hammer on EP, then kill with the Short Axe or Silver Bow next PP. Luna+ won't be enough to OHKO him in that case. Basilio and Flavia are recruited that chapter with all that stuff. Your Donnel has had 200+ turns of weapon break KOes, a forge and a pairup that needed a MS, and still only has "a chance" to KO the same enemy- so they're on just equal footing after that massive investment. That's really wimpy.

A few corrections. 1. No, Morgan-M is still better as a support. 2. Wrath isn't very good outside of fully dedicated crit builds, and in non-Apo contexts shouldn't even be active. VVW is an old and too RNG-reliant strategy. 3. No, she works best as a Paladin or Wyvern Lord. They have better Mov and in Wyvern's case Atk and Hero doesn't hit any notable thresholds they don't. 4. Luna + Sol is a bad combo due to Sol taking precedence over Luna- if you need a pseudo-Aether for whatever reason Sol/Astra is better (Vaike!Nah doesn't have that though). Wrath is also bad when not combined with high crit weapons. Vaike!Nah's best bet is an Axefaire Hero with only one of Sol/Luna depending on context. 5. Lucina should always be running both Aether and Luna unless she's a hard support for VV strats on extreme challenge runs. It outdamages even Agg on average, let alone a Faire.

Avatar's family tend not to be the ones with weapon rank issues, it's all the peripheral supporting units that could take occasional kills to help out that have trouble (stuff like Lissa's Tomes). Avatar also shouldn't need to wait for Cht.9 to promote when there's a perfectly good MS in Cht.8 and a SS in the Renown. Before Cht.8 is usually the standard promotion time after one base reclass. For what it's worth, I've never had issues with running out of Rescue on GF-heavy playthroughs unless I just forget to buy them or something.