Rule Discussion

[CT075]

I figured that this would be necessary sooner or later.

ANYWAY

I have a problem with the current FE4 ruleset. It could be me just being out-of-touch with FE4 drafting these days, but how much does Oifaye actually do that warrants his being free. Seeing as Gen 2 is mostly trivialized by Serisu anyway, is Oifaye really that much of a game-changer? That is, how much does he actually do?

As far as I can see, all he does is clear a few obstructions from Celice's path.

[Integrity]

It might have been relevant in the Wayback Place of, what, last year. I think that my pioneered Celice solos have changed the draft game from when the FE4 rules were concocted.

As far as I've used him for, he clears one unit in C7 - a Thunder Mage - from Celice's path, and Julia does the rest. After that I usually have somebody else to do clearing or Oifaye is too fragile to tank.

EDIT: The answer is I don't know if Oifaye really has a claim to being free anymore.

Edited December 9, 2011 by Integrity

[zahlman]

Imma copypasta from the main thread. I was totally going to make this thread actually but was too lazy :P

It seems like some people whose names I shall not mention (I am not excluding myself from this set, but in my defense I am very adventurous with rule changes and although I consider myself very good at that sort of thing, I have gotten in over my head somewhat both times and had to fix things) have some difficulty with doing this properly. Possible problems include but are not limited to:

* Changing absolutely anything once drafting has already started carries a serious risk of screwing over one or more people unfairly (e.g. they picked someone early for vital X utility, and then a character with X utility is made free; or a character is picked for good combat because a character with X utility is free, and then that gets revoked; or access to X utility is changed by changing restrictions on X-related items).

* It may become logically impossible for someone to draft their entire team. Depending on conditions, this may be deliberately planned for, but it would be an extremely bad idea in a SOYO with a non-recruitment turn penalty.

* Turn bonuses or penalties may be unbalanced or have bad loopholes, or special conditions may be overly strict (or even impossible to deal with except via massive RNG abuse).

* Going ahead with rules as stated, when potential players are raising objections, is an extremely bad idea. Talk it out before you start drafting.

* Changing the set of free characters may cause things to cease to be 'clean'; i.e. an odd number of characters may be left over. That isn't a huge problem, but it's one that was, to my understanding, at least considered in the development of all the standard rules.

* Allowing known OP characters to be drafted requires serious thought. This is sometimes done as an experimental "Does X need to be banned" draft. It is worth exploring options for compensating the X-less teams (one option is a choice between {X} or {A, B, C} free, with none of those available for drafting).

* Modifying turn penalties may require serious thought in order to have the intended effect. It is worth thinking through what a typical strategy looks like with vs. without the penalized action, how often the penalized action is invoked in such a strategy, and how many turns it typically saves.

* The set of free characters requires serious thought. It won't always be OP characters plus lords; it may be characters with unique utility or exceptional availability out of units with the same utility. I like to think I have a pretty good understanding of why you made it Ninils in normal mode for FE7 but Serra for hard mode; but I think people are better served by thinking about it than being fed an explanation. However, you are free to disagree and make your reasoning extremely explicit. ;) Anyway, depending on the nature of the draft, modifications may be necessary. Sometimes this is done for theme reasons (Erk, in my Serra SOYO) and sometimes for essential utility reasons (Matthew, in my Serra SOYO).

* Writing unambiguous modifications to the rules is harder than you think. Seriously. Check for contradictions, loopholes and omitted cases. Consider whether you are really writing a new rule or an exception to an existing rule. Consider whether other rules need to be modified to accomodate a new rule. Spelling and grammar count, too.

[General Horace]

Honestly, in most runs, Oifaye is my second most used unit in gen 2, (unless I have some OP shit like Levin!Arthur), but he outclasses Lackche/Skasaher/Lester/Delmud/Nanna/Corple/Faval/Patty/Altenna/Tinny more often than not. I seem to be a minority in using Oifaye however.

He should at least be free for guarding the Chapter 6 home castle, if you have no other drafted units (extremely unlikely, but still) you must auto take a penalty. Although this is similar to the prologue as well, if you only have Sigurd, so idk.

[Shin]

I've taken a liking to Oifaye lately, however, the situation Horace described is valid. We usually have one unit left over, which I quite like having banned.

Jamka could be an option for a free unit, since he's usually impossible to recruit in a sensible time frame. He's not really a game changer like Fin is, so it wouldn't really affect stuff.

Edited December 9, 2011 by Dokutayuu