Genealogy Questions

[Hrothgar777]

I expect this to be the last new Fire Emblem 4 thread that I make until the completion of my little passion project, a comprehensive and fairly technical overview of everything that would be in the (hypothetical) remake, which I'll share with the Forest namely for my own satisfaction. While I'm not a super motivated guy, I still believe that December 31 of this year isn't an unrealistic deadline.

Anyway, I can't finish that unless I know a bit more about the mechanics of the OG game. And yes, the wiki (the good one with detailed information, not as much the other one) is my first turn-to for understanding the ins and outs of FE4; I'm posing these questions here because consulting the wiki wasn't enough to answer them for me. After this initial post I'll likely have additional questions later on, which I'll ask here too. And, I guess, anyone else who has Genealogy-related questions is free to this thread as well. Without further ado, I'll get to it, and my thanks in advance to whoever drops in to lend a helping hand.

 

1. My understanding is that class determines weapon level. However, some playable units differ from their class in this respect. For example, Mages have a Fire rank of C, but Azelle, who is a Mage, starts out with a Fire rank of B. Did they program a special exception for this character, or is my understanding of how this works simply wrong?

 

2. I don't really get base stats either. For example, Duke Knights have the following stats:

 

HP: 40 / Strength: 12 / Magic: 0 / Skill: 7 / Speed: 7 / Luck: 0 / Defense: 8 / Resistance: 3 / Movement: 9

 

However, the same wiki gives Quan's stats (presumably when you first get him in the Prologue) as follows:

 

Level: 4 / HP: 34 / Strength: 16 / Magic: 0 / Skill: 10 / Speed: 10 / Luck: 5 / Defense: 10 / Resistance: 3 / Movement: 9

 

The intuitive explanation here is that the first set of numbers would be for a Level 1 Duke Knight, which is why Quan, at Level 4, is higher in many stats. But what this doesn't explain is why his HP is lower, at 34, than the original 40. What's going on here?

 

3. If a class's base stats are the same as a stat floor, then if you promote without having reached that for the new class, will your stats automatically rise to match that? It's my understanding that in FE4 you get awarded a fixed bump in certain stats for promoting; if so, does this stack with the aforementioned rise? If at Level 20 your Skill is 2 less than the base for the new class, and you also get Skill +3 for promoting, will you gain Skill +5? Or again, am I fundamentally mistaken?

 

4. I need a breakdown of how child characters work. For example, what does Diarmuid inherit from his father? His initial stats? His growths? All of his father's weapons/items? Just some of his father's weapons/items? Those in storage? Anything from his mother? Personal skills? What about Nanna?

 

5. How does holy blood affect growths?

 

6. If a unit has no holy blood, are their growths the same with those of their class?

 

7. Is it possible for a unit with a growth of less than 101% in a given stat to gain 2 points in such through leveling up once?

 

8. How does Leadership work? Can Sigurd/Seliph gain more stars by leveling up? Or does it happen automatically by clearing a certain chapter and starting another one? Or is it none of the above?

Edited November 24 by Hrothgar777

[indigoasis]

You can actually find a lot of good information on the main site, if you haven't already checked that. It can maybe answer a decent portion of your questions. Regardless, I'll answer the ones that I can off the top of my head. I hope you find this somewhat helpful!

1 hour ago, Hrothgar777 said:

1. My understanding is that class determines weapon level. However, some playable units differ from their class in this respect. For example, Mages have a Fire rank of C, but Azelle, who is a Mage, starts out with a Fire rank of B. Did they program a special exception for this character, or is my understanding of how this works simply wrong?

That's due to his holy blood. He has Minor Fjalar, so he gets a boost in rank to fire magic since that's the weapon type that his particular holy blood is specialized in. Characters with Major holy blood get their respective weapon rank boosted to the max (so Baldr and Od boost Sword rank to Star, for instance).

2 hours ago, Hrothgar777 said:

4. I need a breakdown of how child characters work. For example, what does Diarmuid inherit from his father? His initial stats? His growths? All of his father's weapons/items? Just some of his father's weapons/items? Those in storage? Anything from his mother? Personal skills? What about Nanna?

You can find information about inheritance here that puts it better than I can. As for stats and growths, there's an old site that has a pretty good calculator for Gen 2 if you want to play around with that, too.

1 hour ago, Hrothgar777 said:

5. How does holy blood affect growths?

You can find the info for that right here. Minor adds the normal growth bonuses and Major has those growth bonuses doubled. The calculator I linked should factor that in, but this part of the main site has good info, too.

2 hours ago, Hrothgar777 said:

7. Is it possible for a unit with a growth of less than 101% in a given stat to gain 2 points in such through leveling up once?

I don't have anything that can back up what I'm gonna say here, but if what how little I've learned about how math works in this series has taught me anything... I don't think growths below that threshold will do that. 😭

2 hours ago, Hrothgar777 said:

8. How does Leadership work? Can Sigurd/Seliph gain more stars by leveling up? Or does it happen automatically by clearing a certain chapter and starting another one? Or is it none of the above?

Based on my understanding (that being what I got from the fandom wiki and this post), Leadership stars give a +10% bonus to accuracy and avoid for each star after the first one to units within three spaces of Sigurd and Seliph, as well as to Sigurd and Seliph themselves. There's no way for Sigurd to raise his stars, but Seliph can gain an additional star by... resetting the game at the start of Chapter 6 so he has the number of stars he's supposed to have, which is 3. Just a weird glitch.

And since Seliph is supposed to have 3 stars, I think that means he's supposed to give +20% to accuracy and avoid if I have my math right.

[Hrothgar777]

20 minutes ago, indigoasis said:

That's due to his holy blood. He has Minor Fjalar, so he gets a boost in rank to fire magic since that's the weapon type that his particular holy blood is specialized in. Characters with Major holy blood get their respective weapon rank boosted to the max (so Baldr and Od boost Sword rank to Star, for instance).

I see. So if Azelle were to promote to a Mage Knight, which has a Fire rank of B, he would stand at A, enabling him to use Bolganone?

 

20 minutes ago, indigoasis said:

You can find information about inheritance here that puts it better than I can.

Alright, thank you. I think I'd tried browsing the Serenes Forest database once or twice before but I found the interface off-putting. But the link appears to fully answer my question. The "old site" looks useful too.

Quote

The childrens’ growth rates are equal to their same-gender parent’s base growth rates + half of their other parent’s base growth rates + the child’s own Holy Blood bonus. (Base growth rates are the growth rates without the Holy Blood bonus factored in.)

Just to clarify, if a character has a growth of 40% in, say, Strength, and a 30% bonus was added to that, this would be 40% plus 30% (giving a total 70% growth in that stat) and not 30% of 40% added to 40%, right?

20 minutes ago, indigoasis said:

Based on my understanding (that being what I got from the fandom wiki and this post), Leadership stars give a +10% bonus to accuracy and avoid for each star after the first one to units within three spaces of Sigurd and Seliph, as well as to Sigurd and Seliph themselves.

Right. I got this much. I probably could've worded that differently so that's on me.

But to clarify, Sigurd has the same number of Leadership stars on Turn 1 of the Prologue as he does on the last turn of Chapter 5? And the same goes for Seliph, the aforementioned glitch notwithstanding?

Edited November 24 by Hrothgar777

[Jotari]

53 minutes ago, Hrothgar777 said:

I see. So if Azelle were to promote to a Mage Knight, which has a Fire rank of B, he would stand at A, enabling him to use Bolganone?

Yes, minor holy blood gives a rank boos of 1 regardless of the class as I understand, so long as a unit can use the weapon in question to begin with (e.g Adean can't use bows so she gets nothing on that front from her Holy Blood). Where this really matters is inheritance, where you can give weapon ranks to units who couldn't otherwise be able to use certain weapons depending on who their father is.

53 minutes ago, Hrothgar777 said:

Just to clarify, if a character has a growth of 40% in, say, Strength, and a 30% bonus was added to that, this would be 40% plus 30% (giving a total 70% growth in that stat) and not 30% of 40% added to 40%, right?

Yes, it's just plaid additive. To keep Azelle as an example, he only has a 10% magic growth, but his Holy Blood bumps it up to 40%. Again, the most significant aspect of this is for inheritance, and that's why Gen 2 would generally be considered easier than Gen 1, because you can get some absurd child units if you pair well (and that's not hard to do, the characters that are naturally pushed towards each other tend to be good pairings anyway). Though, most units in Genealogy don't have high personal growths to begin with, so their bases with the holy blood aren't usually giving stats any higher than 70% and only in certain categories. Modern games probably have higher growth rates across the board than Genealogy even with Holy Blood factored in. The exception to this is HP, where it's very easy to get a growth rate above 100%.

53 minutes ago, Hrothgar777 said:

But to clarify, Sigurd has the same number of Leadership stars on Turn 1 of the Prologue as he does on the last turn of Chapter 5? And the same goes for Seliph, the aforementioned glitch notwithstanding?

Yes, Sigurd will always have 2 leadership stars giving +10% hit to nearby units, and, once you reset, Seliph will always have 3 stars. This mechanic is honestly more relevant for enemies than your player units. I've always thought it'd be cool if there was a growth rate for leadership though.

[Hrothgar777]

14 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Yes, minor holy blood gives a rank boos of 1 regardless of the class as I understand, so long as a unit can use the weapon in question to begin with (e.g Adean can't use bows so she gets nothing on that front from her Holy Blood). Where this really matters is inheritance, where you can give weapon ranks to units who couldn't otherwise be able to use certain weapons depending on who their father is.

So why does Azelle only get a bump in his Fire rank? Mages can also use Thunder and Wind magic, but unpromoted Azelle is still a C in both. Does holy blood only target a specific weapon type corresponding to that bloodline's holy weapon?

[Jotari]

3 minutes ago, Hrothgar777 said:

So why does Azelle only get a bump in his Fire rank? Mages can also use Thunder and Wind magic, but unpromoted Azelle is still a C in both. Does holy blood only target a specific weapon type corresponding to that bloodline's holy weapon?

Yes. Fjalar blood is associated with Valflame, the Fire Tome, so it increases the fire rank.

[Eltosian Kadath]

I feel like others have done a good enough job answering other questions, so I will cover the ones other people missed, although I extrapolate slightly on the last two questions.

4 hours ago, Hrothgar777 said:

 

2. I don't really get base stats either. For example, Duke Knights have the following stats:

 

HP: 40 / Strength: 12 / Magic: 0 / Skill: 7 / Speed: 7 / Luck: 0 / Defense: 8 / Resistance: 3 / Movement: 9

 

However, the same wiki gives Quan's stats (presumably when you first get him in the Prologue) as follows:

 

Level: 4 / HP: 34 / Strength: 16 / Magic: 0 / Skill: 10 / Speed: 10 / Luck: 5 / Defense: 10 / Resistance: 3 / Movement: 9

 

The intuitive explanation here is that the first set of numbers would be for a Level 1 Duke Knight, which is why Quan, at Level 4, is higher in many stats. But what this doesn't explain is why his HP is lower, at 34, than the original 40. What's going on here?

The base stat of a class are a component of a character's complete base stats, as units generally have personal base stats added on top of those class base stats, even units that start at level 1 like Finn. They act as a floor for the stats of a class, and are mostly used for generating generic enemies more than anything, unless you are hacking in a randomizer or something.

 

4 hours ago, Hrothgar777 said:

 

3. If a class's base stats are the same as a stat floor, then if you promote without having reached that for the new class, will your stats automatically rise to match that? It's my understanding that in FE4 you get awarded a fixed bump in certain stats for promoting; if so, does this stack with the aforementioned rise? If at Level 20 your Skill is 2 less than the base for the new class, and you also get Skill +3 for promoting, will you gain Skill +5? Or again, am I fundamentally mistaken?

The promotion gains are simply the difference between the starting class's base stats, and the promoted class's base stats, so you never run into that below the floor issue. In fact the maximum stats of the base class and promoted class are also incremented by the promotion gains, so you also don't run into the issue of hitting the stat cap of the base class and having to either loss stats you aught to get, or roll invisible level ups like some games. The only exception in both cases is HP...

 

4 hours ago, Hrothgar777 said:

 

6. If a unit has no holy blood, are their growths the same with those of their class?

No, class growths are only used for generating enemies that don't have growth rates of their own, and they are extremely generic.

 

4 hours ago, Hrothgar777 said:

 

7. Is it possible for a unit with a growth of less than 101% in a given stat to gain 2 points in such through leveling up once?

You need growths above 100 to see multiple stat gains in one level, and if you have above 100 you are usually guaranteed to gain at least 1 in the stat, with 2 exception. The first is if you have capped the stat, the second is a bug that was removed in the Naga translation patch in which particularly long battles in the arena (and in tool assisted levels of luck potentially during the repeated proccing of the Charge/Accost/Duel skill (I always forget which translation is in vogue)), where the RN string the game uses runs out and it can't generat new numbers resulting in blank levelups (you could avoid this in the original hardware or older translation patch by exiting the arena to the change weapon menu just before killing the enemy and reentering to let the game refresh the RN string it uses).

 

4 hours ago, Hrothgar777 said:

 

 

8. How does Leadership work? Can Sigurd/Seliph gain more stars by leveling up? Or does it happen automatically by clearing a certain chapter and starting another one? Or is it none of the above?

Both should be set at the start of the generation, but due to a quirk of how the game was coded (which the Naga translation patch corrected) quite a few values are only updated when the game is reset, one of which is the leadership value of the lord. This quirk led to a lot of odd errors, most notably the game softlocking when the cut-scene plays where Sylvia dances to get the defender sword, the priority system for when love points are distributed (this becomes relevant due to another bug in the game that became known as the jealousy system, but without resetting the game the priority is blatantly based on recruitment order), and the relevant one here where Seliph will go from the 2 star leadership his father had to the 3 star leadership he should have. This is only the case on original hardware and older translation patches (as the Naga patch fixed this bug).

[Hrothgar777]

54 minutes ago, Jotari said:

To keep Azelle as an example, he only has a 10% magic growth, but his Holy Blood bumps it up to 40%.

So I take it this 10% in Magic is his "personal growth", which differs from the 30% that Mages normally get in this stat. So class growths only apply to non-playable units, who can't level up in FE4 to begin with?

 

(Edit: Ah, it seems the poster right before me answered this already.)

Edited November 24 by Hrothgar777

[Hrothgar777]

19 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

The base stat of a class are a component of a character's complete base stats, as units generally have personal base stats added on top of those class base stats, even units that start at level 1 like Finn. They act as a floor for the stats of a class, and are mostly used for generating generic enemies more than anything, unless you are hacking in a randomizer or something.

Regarding playable units, how do personal base stats interact with class base stats to produce a final value? Going back to the example of Quan, why is his HP lower than the base HP of Duke Knights? I'm assuming there's more to it than the two being simply added together.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Hrothgar777 said:

Regarding playable units, how do personal base stats interact with class base stats to produce a final value? Going back to the example of Quan, why is his HP lower than the base HP of Duke Knights? I'm assuming there's more to it than the two being simply added together.

I'm not sure, but I don't think class base states have any influence on playable characters. I think it's just for enemies. On that subject, I've also been told that enemy stats are pretty fixed. Any two enemies of the same class+level will have the same stats, even bosses. This, and also to give them the ranks to use certain weapons, is why some innocuous late game bosses have Minor Holy Blood (which, while purely done for gameplay, has some fun lore implications).

[Eltosian Kadath]

1 hour ago, Hrothgar777 said:

Regarding playable units, how do personal base stats interact with class base stats to produce a final value? Going back to the example of Quan, why is his HP lower than the base HP of Duke Knights? I'm assuming there's more to it than the two being simply added together.

Yeah, HP and Luck (I forgot to mention it before) are the weird exception to stats in all of this. They are the only ones to have a global cap instead of ones based on class, you don't gain them in promotion gains, and you don't see the kind of variance in class's base HP that you do in other stats, the game treats them differently with inheritance, ect. I think the only thing that really touches those class HP bases are generic generation, and you never even see those base HPs because the coders were a bit lazy and have enemies level up from those bases at level 0, and all the generic class growths for HP set to exactly 100, so even level 1 generic enemies of that class will have those bases +1. There is even a bit of evidence that the game treats the base HP of player's classes as 20 globally by how inheritance works...

 

15 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I'm not sure, but I don't think class base states have any influence on playable characters. I think it's just for enemies.

I haven't dug into the code myself, only having a passing interest in what people will say about the code, but I think the non-HP stats are used by player characters. If you pay attention to the hand calculations used for inheritance for instance (with the exception of HP and Luck which are both treated differently), you will notice that they remove class bases from parent's stats, and add them into the base stats of the children, and with the relative ease people have in creating class randomizers for Genealogy of the Holy War, all of this implies that they are used internally by the game for player character (again with the exception of HP and Luck).

 

12 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Any two enemies of the same class+level will have the same stats, even bosses.

Also quite a few bosses have custom stats, but not all of them, but otherwise this is true. The global 100 HP growth for all enemies is a clear tell for that.

 

[Jotari]

12 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Also quite a few bosses have custom stats, but not all of them, but otherwise this is true. The global 100 HP growth for all enemies is a clear tell for that.

Which bosses break the rule? Obviously bosses with unique classes, like Julius/Hilda/Alvis aren't beholden to anything because no one else uses their class (eh, well almost, since the Arena exists). I think Reptor breaks standard class mechanics as he has a magic stat far beyond other barons, I think even higher than what the cap for Baron is meant to be. But I can't think of other examples, but I'm sure there are some weird ones. I'd like to see a list of which ones deviate. Because you'd think if it were simple to just customize boss stats then we wouldn't have stuff like the Pegasus Trio at the end all having minor Forseti blood.

[Eltosian Kadath]

2 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Which bosses break the rule?

The obvious tell is any boss they gave a luck stat to, as that never occurs naturally from enemy stat calculations, but to pick a random one out of the hat, how about Roberto the Paladin boss of Edda's mercenaries during endgame. Do the calc yourself and you will see he doesn't have the generic stats he should. Compare that to Bishop Rodan from the very same army, from the very same chapter, who does have the generic calculated stats. I do mean it with the luck stat comment, it is by far the most consistent tell for which bosses were generically generated and which weren't.

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

The obvious tell is any boss they gave a luck stat to, as that never occurs naturally from enemy stat calculations, but to pick a random one out of the hat, how about Roberto the Paladin boss of Edda's mercenaries during endgame. Do the calc yourself and you will see he doesn't have the generic stats he should. Compare that to Bishop Rodan from the very same army, from the very same chapter, who does have the generic calculated stats. I do mean it with the luck stat comment, it is by far the most consistent tell for which bosses were generically generated and which weren't.

Very fortunate that Serenes has a page on boss stats then

https://serenesforest.net/genealogy-of-the-holy-war/characters/boss-data/

And from it we can see that the list of enemies with a luck stat, not counting player characters are (units in Bold have some form of Holy Blood)

*Eldigan

*Ishtore

*The Three Mage Sister Bamba, Folta and Eriu (though they all have the same luck stat of 7, in fact, all their stats are identical to each other)

*Blume

*Ishtar

*Travant

*Musa

*Arion

*Riddell

*Hilda (also has a unique class)

*Julius (also a unique class)

*Alvis (also a unique class)

*Roberto (as mentioned, a minor endgame boss)

*Boyce (also a very minor endgame boss)

*Brian (a slightly less minor end game boss, though he also has holy blood)

*Scipio (should have Holy Blood but doesn't from what I can recall)

*The Pegasus Trio, Meng, Bleg and Mabel (who have 30 luck! No wonder they're so hard to hit)

*Manfroy

*All the Deadlords (even the ones without Holy Blood)

 

Repto is not on that list, but his stats has been modified, well, specifically his Magic stat. We can compare him to his partner in crime, Langbolt, who is also a Baron of the same level. The two have identical stats, except Reptor has 20 more magic. Which means it seems like the Holy Blood growth bonuses are doing nothing for enemies, despite Langbolt being the only(?) enemy in the game with Holy Blood who doesn't have unique stats.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

17 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

The promotion gains are simply the difference between the starting class's base stats, and the promoted class's base stats, so you never run into that below the floor issue. In fact the maximum stats of the base class and promoted class are also incremented by the promotion gains, so you also don't run into the issue of hitting the stat cap of the base class and having to either loss stats you aught to get, or roll invisible level ups like some games. The only exception in both cases is HP...

Actually, the promotion bonus is the difference between the CAPS for each class. Pegasus Knight has a Speed cap of 27, while Falcon Knight's Speed cap is 30. So, when Erinys promotes from Pegasus Knight to Falcon Knight, she will gain 3 Speed. If she capped Speed before promoting, then her post-promo Speed will still be capped.

This explains why HP (and Luck) never increase upon promotion. All playable classes, whether promoted or not, have an HP cap of 80 (and a Luck cap of 30). As such, the "promotion gain" in each of these stats calculates out to 0.

 

[Eltosian Kadath]

4 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Actually, the promotion bonus is the difference between the CAPS for each class. Pegasus Knight has a Speed cap of 27, while Falcon Knight's Speed cap is 30. So, when Erinys promotes from Pegasus Knight to Falcon Knight, she will gain 3 Speed. If she capped Speed before promoting, then her post-promo Speed will still be capped.

 

Its both, as the stat caps for a class (with the exceptions of HP, and Luck which have their global caps of 80 and 30) are just the class's base stats +15.

[Dr. Tarrasque]

19 hours ago, Hrothgar777 said:

Regarding playable units, how do personal base stats interact with class base stats to produce a final value? Going back to the example of Quan, why is his HP lower than the base HP of Duke Knights? I'm assuming there's more to it than the two being simply added together.

It doesn't. Typically in the older games the characters you recruit aren't impacted by the class growths and bases, those are there for generic enemies. I believe the same is true for bosses.

 

I believe it is since Shadow Dragon in which a class' base stats and growth rates started to impact the overall numbers of your units due to that game introducing the more flexible class system.

[Jotari]

2 minutes ago, Dr. Tarrasque said:

It doesn't. Typically in the older games the characters you recruit aren't impacted by the class growths and bases, those are there for generic enemies. I believe the same is true for bosses.

 

I believe it is since Shadow Dragon in which a class' base stats and growth rates started to impact the overall numbers of your units due to that game introducing the more flexible class system.

No, all the games work that way. As said above, playable units do use the class bases, it's just HP and Luck that are exceptions. And I know from personal experience going under the hood of the GBA games that units there are using class bases+personal bases. For example, Eirika has no personal bases, because she has a unique class, they just put all of her base stats into the class bases. But someone like Franz uses the regular cavalry class bases plus an additional point or two in each stat (for a specific example, he has a personal strength base stat of 2 and cavalry has a class base of 5, so he ends up with a strength base of 7). Course, there's no way an average player could ever know this as how they do it is completely irrelevant to how it functions in gameplay, though, if I'd guess, they do it this way to make sure the playable characters are always a little stronger than the generic enemies for their level. Though negative personal base stats do exist in some circumstances to make characters have more defined roles.

[Hrothgar777]

How does class Luck growth work?

 

I'm starting on the list of class base stats (finished the last of the character bios yesterday, which admittedly glossed over most of the Gen 2 roster but whatever), and a lot of classes start with 0 Luck, 0% Luck growths, but a maximum of 30 Luck. How are they supposed to reach this cap? Doesn't 0% growth mean zero chance of gaining any points in said stat?

 

(Edit: Alright, it looks like playable characters tend to have Luck growths greater than 0%, but why don't classes? Does this simply mean that randomly generated enemies are meant to have a Luck stat of 0?)

Edited yesterday at 12:29 AM by Hrothgar777

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Hrothgar777 said:

How does class Luck growth work?

 

I'm starting on the list of class base stats (finished the last of the character bios yesterday, which admittedly glossed over most of the Gen 2 roster but whatever), and a lot of classes start with 0 Luck, 0% Luck growths, but a maximum of 30 Luck. How are they supposed to reach this cap? Doesn't 0% growth mean zero chance of gaining any points in said stat?

 

(Edit: Alright, it looks like playable characters tend to have Luck growths greater than 0%, but why don't classes? Does this simply mean that randomly generated enemies are meant to have a Luck stat of 0?)

You might have missed the conversation above where we talked about enemy luck. I compiled a list of all the bosses in the game with an actual luck stat. The answer seems to be, yes, enemies are just not expected to have luck. And this isn't actually all that strange for the series. While other games give a few token luck points to the enemy, luck tends to be something generic enemies lack in any relevant amount. The reason for this I expect is because luck's main purpose is crit avoid (and, depending on the game, actual evasion too), and crits are one of those things that are really fun in the player's hands but horrible in the enemy's hands. So giving the player some additional resistance to crit chance while giving the player a splattering of occasional crit chance works better for overall design (though Genealogy crits do work different so to some extent that might not actually apply here at all).

Edited yesterday at 01:28 AM by Jotari

[Hrothgar777]

38 minutes ago, Jotari said:

You might have missed the conversation above where we talked about enemy luck. I compiled a list of all the bosses in the game with an actual luck stat. The answer seems to be, yes, enemies are just not expected to have luck. And this isn't actually all that strange for the series. While other games give a few token luck points to the enemy, luck tends to be something generic enemies lack in any relevant amount. The reason for this I expect is because luck's main purpose is crit avoid (and, depending on the game, actual evasion too), and crits are one of those things that are really fun in the player's hands but horrible in the enemy's hands. So giving the player some additional resistance to crit chance while giving the player a splattering of occasional crit chance works better for overall design (though Genealogy crits do work different so to some extent that might not actually apply here at all).

Understood, thanks. For what it's worth I did check earlier but didn't see that comment by Eltosian Kadath about bosses "they gave a luck stat to", which strongly hinted at the answer you gave just now.

That's good to know. So I guess I can safely assume every class has a 0 Luck base, 0% in Luck growth, and a 30 Luck cap, which'll make filling these out a little faster.

[Hrothgar777]

This one's not a "I need to know", but rather I'm just asking out of curiosity.

 

How does the game's code classify battles undertaken with the Besiege command? Like, I know that the Arena matches ranged units with ranged opponents (IIRC this is also the case in Three Houses), but Besiege allows an archer and a dude with a Steel Lance to exchange blows. So does the game have a third category beyond melee and ranged combat? If so, does the Arena not employ it simply out of fairness (since bows are weaker than lances and axes but have low accuracy)?

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Hrothgar777 said:

This one's not a "I need to know", but rather I'm just asking out of curiosity.

 

How does the game's code classify battles undertaken with the Besiege command? Like, I know that the Arena matches ranged units with ranged opponents (IIRC this is also the case in Three Houses), but Besiege allows an archer and a dude with a Steel Lance to exchange blows. So does the game have a third category beyond melee and ranged combat? If so, does the Arena not employ it simply out of fairness (since bows are weaker than lances and axes but have low accuracy)?

Does besiege work that way? I thought the bosses swap to the weapon that will let them counter if they're attacked in a way that they can't retaliate.