13th vs Kithe

[13th]

Ah, Geitz and Harken. Two of the Four Oddities of recruitment. They have interesting prerequirements to recruitment.

Geitz is a Level 3 Warrior upon his recruitment in the Linus Four-Fanged Offense, which means your lords need to be Level 50 or higher in total. He comes with decent enough stats.

Level 3 Warrior

40 HP

17 Strength

12 Skill

13 Speed

10 Luck

11 Defense

3 Resist

13 Con

6 Mov

As a prepromote Warrior, this is quite good, especially compared to the other fighter/warriors. He has inferior HP and Strength to both Dorcas and Bartre, but he has more Speed than both of them. He also comes with a Killer Axe and Steel Bow. He starts in the Southeast corner, and is recruited by Dart, whom, unless you killed him in 17x, will be alive. Given 17x is a 4 turn clear with Florina, its likely you have him. Now, getting Dart CAN be tricky, but its doable with Hector/Oswin/Marcus as bait to get him to attack with his steel bow.

With his Con, there are only a few weapons at this point he's weighed down by. The Steel Axe, but he doesn't need it with that Strength. He is weighed down by the Devil Axe. (Who isn't?) He's weighed down by the Hammer and Halberd. And he's weighed down by the Brave Axe. But more useful is his weapon ranks. B Axes and B Bows is excellent. His Strength and Con makes him the best Archer you get at this point. Wil, Rebecca, and Rath all are pretty bad to begin, and Dorcas and Bartre, besides being slower, also start with E Bows. His rank means he can use Steel Bows, Longbows, Killer Bows, and the Brave Bow.

Compare that start to Harken. Harken comes 3 chapter later, in Pale Flower of Darkness. Either version, he requires not fulfilling a requirement. In Kenneth, you need to NOT kill 2 or more promoted enemies. In Jerme's, its doors. Like 4 doors or something nets you Karel. Harken comes with decent bases as well.

Level 8 Hero

B Axe, B Sword

38 HP

21 Strength

20 Skill

17 Speed

12 Luck

15 Defense

10 Resist

11 Con

6 Move

He also comes with a Brave Sword. To recruit him, you need to talk with one of the Pheraens, Hector, or Oswin. The Snow slows him down, but when he arrives, he can be dangerous. The problem with him is that he gets slowed down by more of the good weapons. When it comes to Swords, you have Eliwood, Lyn, and at least one Cav who wield it well. Hector also wields swords well after promotion. So sword competition is tight. But Axes, besides being the better weapon, has less competition. He has Dorkas, Barftre, Dart, Hawkeye, Hector, Geitz, and/or Marcus. Of these, only the last three are real competition. By now, if Marcus is being used, he has S Axes, Geitz is going to use bows, especially after the wyverns of Chapter 26. Hawkeye is slower. But Harken has 11 Con. That means the only axes he uses without AS loss are Iron and Killer.

The thing is, there's efficiency to think about. Harken has to wait until turn 10 of PFoD to appear. Usually, a good player can get to the throne with Hector on turn 8-10. That means Harken may not be recruited. Harder is not recruiting Geitz, epecially if you want the Earth Seal. He practically guards that seal. So that's Geitz 1, Harken 0.

to be continued.

[MacLovin]

When it comes to Swords, you have Eliwood, Lyn, and at least one Cav who wield it well. Hector also wields swords well after promotion. So sword competition is tight. But Axes, besides being the better weapon, has less competition. He has Dorkas, Barftre, Dart, Hawkeye, Hector, Geitz, and/or Marcus. Of these, only the last three are real competition. By now, if Marcus is being used, he has S Axes, Geitz is going to use bows, especially after the wyverns of Chapter 26. Hawkeye is slower. But Harken has 11 Con. That means the only axes he uses without AS loss are Iron and Killer.

to be continued.

Hmm, I dunno if this is important, but you forgot Raven for swords and axes

[KitheOfEvrark]

Ok, first FE debate. Here we go.

Battle of the Mid-Late game prepromotes. Since you already gave their base stats, we can see right off that Harken is superior statistically. However, we have to ask what that means it terms of actual performance. Let's analyse this.

Harken: 21 Str, 17 Sp

w/ Hand Axe: 28 Atk, 16 AS

w/ Brave Sword: 30 Atk, 16 AS

w/ Steel Axe: 32 Atk, 13 AS

w/ Steel Sword: 29 Atk , 17 AS

Obviously Harken's very good in terms of offensive power. For a comparison, Marcus never reaches Harken's base str, Sain has to be 20/2 just to match it and Raven doesn't reach it until Lvl 20/10. In addition, Marcus never reaches his base speed and Sain has to wait until 20/10 to match it. Since that we're talking about efficiency, we're not waiting until level 20 to promote anyone. Given that Raven is top tier for his combat ability alone, the fact that Harken compares well to him is very significant. An especially key point is the shiny number 28 that Harken reachs with hand axes. Because this is Hector Normal Mode, rather than Hard, the loss of 1 AS doesn't matter as 16 AS doubles nearly everything anyway. 28 atk and doubling at 1-2 range is VERY good offense. Thus, from his recruitment, Harken is an excellent offensive unit. The combination of Axes and Swords also means Harken never has to face WTD.

Geitz: 17 Str, 13 Sp

w/ Hand Axe: 24 Atk, 13 AS

w/ Killer Axe: 28 Atk, 13 AS

w/ Brave Bow: 27 Atk, 13 AS

w/ Longbow: 22 Atk, 13 As

Geitz is slightly less fortunate than Harken in pure offense. 24 Atk, while fairly good, is not anything special. Many characters at this point can reach that level of offense. 13 speed is also not particularly good, but it is still enough to double a large portion of enemies. So Geitz is fairly good offensively. However, he will sometimes be dealing less damage due to the fact that he will face WTD from swords. Sure he can switch to bows to avoid that, but that makes him lose his enemy phase. Overall, I'd say Geitz is pretty good offensively.

However, an important point to note is that Harken can wield every axe that Geitz can, given that their weapon rank is the same. Harken will always have higher speed than Geitz and Geitz won't get higher strength on average until level 20 at which point Harken has capped. Thus Harken will always have superior offense to Geitz. The only area Geitz can claim is against fliers with his bows. However, given that Harken will have superior offense against literally every other enemy type, this is a minor advantage at best, especially since Harken can still rock his awesome offense on enemy phase.

Now I'll deal with your objections to Harken's offense.

The problem with him is that he gets slowed down by more of the good weapons.

This point does not really matter because Harken surpasses Geitz in speed regardless. With a base speed 4 points higher and a growth equal to Geitz, Harken will always be superior in speed, even wielding heavy weapons.

So sword competition is tight. But Axes, besides being the better weapon, has less competition.

Harken's competition does not matter significantly simply because he is better than most of the competition. Since this is efficiency, money is not an issue as we can sell unneeded items. One of Lyn and Eliwood will be unpromoted so that takes out one of the competition. The cavs can use other weapons so they won't be using more than a couple swords. Guy may not be used as he's pretty mediocre in HNM. Raven is competition, but can still share a few swords. As far as axes go, they are the cheapest weapon type and Harken is arguably the best user of them so competition on that end is negligible.

Now let's look at their durability. Harken has 2 less Hp but 4 more defense and 7 more resistance. This is a significant defensive win. It takes Sain level 20/17 to reach Harken's base defense, Kent 20/15 and Raven 20/18. Given that Harken's durability is better than that of top and high tier units, we can infer that it is very good. The additional resistance allows Harken to take extra hits from Bolting/Purge enemies though there are only a few of those as well as giving him more avoid against those rage inducing Berserk/Sleep staves. The fact that he never has a reason to face WTD and has 15 defense at base means he'll never really be in significant danger.

Geitz has enough durability that he can take a few rounds of combat, but still pales in comparison to Harken. Harken's durability allows for more tactical flexibility as well as giving him more situations where he can throw himself at enemies and not be in danger.

Moving on to recruitment. I personally don't believe recruitment costs should be considered when comparing units, but since you brought it up...

Harken has to wait until turn 10 of PFoD to appear. Usually, a good player can get to the throne with Hector on turn 8-10. That means Harken may not be recruited. Harder is not recruiting Geitz, epecially if you want the Earth Seal. He practically guards that seal.

To recruit Geitz you have to access Linus' version of FFO. This means you have to raise Lyn and Eliwood to high levels, which may slow you down in efficiency due to them being fairly mediocre characters. In addition, the Lloyd version can be cleared much faster. Thus to even get Geitz' chapter, you have to slow yourself down by possibly 5-6 turns. When in that context, Harken's max of 2 doesn't seem that bad.

To recruit him, you need to talk with one of the Pheraens, Hector, or Oswin. The Snow slows him down, but when he arrives, he can be dangerous.

If we can reach the throne in 8-10 turns, we can reach Harken's spot easily before he comes. Given that we assume the player knows what (s)he is doing, recruiting Harken is not going to be difficult at all. This isn't other FEs where enemies move on the turn they show up. Moving Eliwood, Isadora, or Lowen to a position to recruit Harken on the turn he appears isn't difficult at the speeds effiiency is expected to be played.

A minor point in Harken's favor is the possibility of an Isadora support. Though they are units of two different movement types, their support is fast enough that they may very well get a C. They only need to be together ten turns so we likely won't even have to slow down to get it. This gives Harken slightly improved Crit and Avoid. Is this significant? No, but it is there.

One advantage Geitz does have is availability. However, it is only three maps. Harken's superior performance in every other chapter outweighs this.

Finally, we should consider special uses or utility for the characters. Now they are both combat characters so they have similar purposes. However, Geitz has the claim to fame of being the best bow user in the game. His means he can tak down fliers with ease. Harken, on the other hand, has probably the best offense on the team when using his brave sword. This is important for facing bosses. Harken is among the best lategame boss killers on efficiency, especially since he doesn't even have to be trained. Killing bosses better than anyone else seems more important than killing generic enemies slightly better than most.

In conclusion, Harken has superior offense and durability than Geitz meaning he is undeniably better in combat. His recruitment is less costly than Geitz' as well. Finally, Harken perfoms an important function as the best boss killer in late game maps. All this gives Harken a significant advantage over Geitz.

Edited December 8, 2011 by KitheOfEvrark