How many characters should I use?

[Jhesta Tu]

Hi everyone. As you can tell I'm both new to the site and new to FE6. I'm working on my first playthrough now, just doing NM and using good but not necessarily the best characters. Right now I'm on chapter 10A, and I'm trying to plan out who to fill out my team with. To whit: what is a good number of characters to use as part of my regular team while still keeping pace with enemy levels? I'm not arena abusing this time around, except to level any low-level characters that I want to use. I think that about 10 or so main units is a good number to have (at least, it has worked for me in other FE games) as that would allow me to add in useful characters (to help recruit, or thieves for stealing/treasure, things like that). But I'd like your input on how many characters I should use.

[DragonBladeSniper]

Well you have 10 units for end-game, including Roy and Fa, so 8 optional units (7 wielding divine weapons and one extra). So maybe 8 + thief (or several thieves if you want) + 2-4 other units + Roy & Fa. Just make sure at least 7 units have S rank in different weapons for end-game.

[Jhesta Tu]

Ok, thanks for the info. I'll do some planning for about 7 optionals plus a thief then.

[whase]

I'd say max 8, counting Roy, not counting thieves and healers.

[shroudening]

Don't bring thieves to endgame. That last slot can go to either the dancer or bard, or another promoted unit.

Thieves aren't really cut out for fighting as much as in FE7/FE8. Your best bet is to let them avoid fighting and get the chests.

Edited August 19, 2011 by 55caasi

[dondon151]

Your best bet with the chests is to just buy Chest Keys and give them to your other units.

[Radiant Dragon]

It's usually not a good idea to plan your team based solely around Chapter 24, since it is only one chapter.

Edited August 19, 2011 by Radiant Kitty

[Mikethfc]

Well you have 10 units for end-game, including Roy and Fa, so 8 optional units (7 wielding divine weapons and one extra). So maybe 8 + thief (or several thieves if you want) + 2-4 other units + Roy & Fa. Just make sure at least 7 units have S rank in different weapons for end-game.

I've never found Apocalypse and Aurolea to be that handy in this. Alan/Lance/Dieck are very useful throughout the game they should turn out decently enough for you. If you've used them so far it might be worth carrying on as they generally remain pretty solid throughout the game if not Percival might be a better shout with his bases.

Magic users do a lot of damage against mamkutes so training one or two might be worthwhile.

[dondon151]

Are you kidding? Apocalypse is one of the best S rank weapons available.

You don't really even need to "train" a magic user, so to speak, to annihilate mamkutes with one. Niime OHKOs all level 8 mamkutes in chapter 24 with Apocalypse at base and falls anywhere from 0-2 HP short on the level 12 mamkutes in chapter 23.

Edited August 19, 2011 by dondon151

[shroudening]

Your best bet with the chests is to just buy Chest Keys and give them to your other units.

I would think that using the lockpicks that you get from Chad and Astol, and the ones you can steal from other thieves would be more efficient than buying a chest key for everything, especially since they aren't always available.

Care to explain? :)

[Anouleth]

I've never found Apocalypse and Aurolea to be that handy in this. Alan/Lance/Dieck are very useful throughout the game they should turn out decently enough for you. If you've used them so far it might be worth carrying on as they generally remain pretty solid throughout the game if not Percival might be a better shout with his bases.

Magic users do a lot of damage against mamkutes so training one or two might be worthwhile.

Apocalypse is a very powerful weapon. Niime can usually OHKO dragons with it, and Niime can easily fill any gap in your team since she makes a great staff user in addition to powerful offense and potential to Nosferatank.

[dondon151]

I would think that using the lockpicks that you get from Chad and Astol, and the ones you can steal from other thieves would be more efficient than buying a chest key for everything, especially since they aren't always available.

Care to explain? :)

You can buy Chest Keys as early as chapter 7. From then on, they should never be in short supply. There's no limit to how many that you can buy and the remaining number of chests in the game is certainly finite.

Next, any unit can use Chest Keys. You can stick them on a mounted unit and you basically have the equivalent of a thief with +2 mov (if the unit in question is promoted), much higher aid, canto after most actions, etc. Probably the biggest benefit is that the player gets to deploy a combat-functional unit in place of a thief, who usually are terrible at fighting.

As for the cost of Chest Keys, that is negligible given the vast amount of money provided by the game. If we were to convert cost to turns saved, the cash saved from using Lockpicks instead of Chest Keys would amount to the equivalent of a Boots purchased in the chapter 21 secret shop at best. The turns saved from that extra Boots would not exceed the turns saved from deploying a mounted unit with Chest Keys in lieu of a thief.

The only circumstances after Chest Keys become available where thieves can be optimally deployed is if stealing is involved (chapter 16 Delphi Shield comes to mind especially), if the extra fog of war vision is necessary (warp skipping chapter 21x), or if it just doesn't matter who's in the last unit slot. Chapter 14 to pick up desert items as well, I suppose. But, you shouldn't be deploying 3 thieves in chapter 16, and you shouldn't be deploying any thieves at all in chapters 20 or 22.

[-Cynthia-]

I find Astohl a decent choice for many of the Western Isles chapters, his combat parameters+Mov are better than a lot of the cast for a few chapters at least.

[Thor Odinson]

After that, though, I'd rather do what dondon suggested. I don't think a new player would be doing warpskipping, but 20x is made of bolting sages and it's a higher priority to keep Roy's ass durability alive by feeding him the robes and the other boosters. While Astohl can get to pretty good avoid, even a 30% can screw you over pretty easily. It's just easier to have your more durable units grab the chests on their way, as it's one less person to worry about.

Bolting sages are pretty annoying even on NM.

[Anouleth]

After that, though, I'd rather do what dondon suggested. I don't think a new player would be doing warpskipping, but 20x is made of bolting sages and it's a higher priority to keep Roy's ass durability alive by feeding him the robes and the other boosters. While Astohl can get to pretty good avoid, even a 30% can screw you over pretty easily. It's just easier to have your more durable units grab the chests on their way, as it's one less person to worry about.

Bolting sages are pretty annoying even on NM.

I wish I warpskipped 21x first time I played the game. Some chapters are just too long to play all the way through. Plus it was normal mode and I was pretty much godmoding through the game by that point.

[Thor Odinson]

21x is an annoying long-ass bitch, that I agree.

[Mekkah]

21x is usually when I grow impatient with the game, 22 isn't much better with its corridors and three seize spots. In 21x, you can skip a large part of the map even without Warp by using fliers and Berserkers to rescue/drop people like Roy across the water north to your starting point. Leave some powerful units behind for the time being because there's some enemies rushing you, including two Heroes.

[Mikethfc]

Are you kidding? Apocalypse is one of the best S rank weapons available.

You don't really even need to "train" a magic user, so to speak, to annihilate mamkutes with one. Niime OHKOs all level 8 mamkutes in chapter 24 with Apocalypse at base and falls anywhere from 0-2 HP short on the level 12 mamkutes in chapter 23.

I was going based on the dark magic users, and I'd forgotten about Niime. Its been far too long since I last played FE6 evidently.