Multiple Anima Ranks

[NinjaMonkey]

Mages are so nerfed in FE9. Tomes overall have lower might than physical weapons.

So? Most enemies you fight have far less Res than Def, which makes up for the weaker might of tomes.

[Icon of Sin]

I agree with these two, magic should be split, but the different types need to be different enough to warrant this. That said the differences need to still be balanced otherwise we run into the dnd issue at high levels the casters are basically gods, and the non magical people are dead weight most of the time.

It does make a bit of sense though, considering they started weaker and gain their immense power through near-limitless magic rather than pushing their physical limits, but it's a bit harder to apply in a tactical RPG where mounted units move further than mages outdoors.

Indoors, perhaps a mage shouldn't be able to cast spells through walls, such as summoning a fire orb or undead, so that makes even melee infantry have their own niche as mounted units lose their mounts indoors.

Edited May 11, 2014 by Woodshooter

[dondon151]

So? Most enemies you fight have far less Res than Def, which makes up for the weaker might of tomes.

and yet this would only put mages on offensive parity with physical units, were it not for their overall lesser stats and poorer movement.

[Lord Glenn]

But do we really need five distinct magic types? They struggle to make three magic types different as it is. Though to throw out ideas wind magic could be basically a magic type of bows, effective against fliers but can't be used a short range. Maybe a longbow type three range wind tome too.

Intelligent Systems' failures are not indicative of a problem with having that many types of magic. It's indicative of their own lack of thought, lack of common sense, and their inability to balance. Just because they can't come up with solutions doesn't mean that it couldn't work. There are plenty of suggestions both in this thread and in this subforum that have been talked about over the past years that would fix the problems and actually improve on Intelligent Systems' implementation(s).

EDIT - Let it be said that X-Naut and Woodshooter pretty much said everything that I would have back within the first five posts of this thread before I even had a chance to see this topic, so I won't beat a dead horse and repeat what they've already said.

Edited May 12, 2014 by Lord Glenn

[Jotari]

Intelligent Systems' failures are not indicative of a problem with having that many types of magic. It's indicative of their own lack of thought, lack of common sense, and their inability to balance. Just because they can't come up with solutions doesn't mean that it couldn't work. There are plenty of suggestions both in this thread and in this subforum that have been talked about over the past years that would fix the problems and actually improve on Intelligent Systems' implementation(s).

EDIT - Let it be said that X-Naut and Woodshooter pretty much said everything that I would have back within the first five posts of this thread before I even had a chance to see this topic, so I won't beat a dead horse and repeat what they've already said.

Okay I'll rephrase what I said. Do we need magic to be that diverse? Do we need five different unique magic types when there are only four types of physical weapon. Five mages specializing in each type would make up half your army with units that have terrible defensive parameters. I'm not saying we do or we don't want magic to be that diverse. I'm honestly asking for opinions. Of course you don't always have to use all five types in each playthrough and advance classes should be able use multiple types but should magic really have more diversity than physical weapons which, as it is, devolve to hit things with varying levels of accuracy vs power.

[Lord Glenn]

Honestly, I'm the type of person that prefers having more options, variety, and diversity. That would including more for the physical side too - more types of weapons (or, at the very least "subtypes" that could fit under one of the existing types but would feature special properties a la your Armorslayer) that aren't just variations of Hit, (Weight), Might, Critical, and Uses. And, if you open the physical side up, you should definitely do the same for the magic side*.

Also, in response to "but should magic really have more diversity than physical weapons", I would have to say yes, but for reasons outside of the above on principle. Magic is, well, magic - it's not as bound to the laws of physics and chemistry as a blacksmith would need to be to forge a weapon. It's whimsical enough that you should be able to think outside of the box enough to easily have diversity, where it realistically would be harder to have diversity in terms of physical weapons (outside of weight / size, power, effectiveness, etc.). And the fact that FE basically has the diversity backwards is baffling to me.

(*Though, I'm personally of the opinion that weapon types should be a lot more fluid than they currently are; why should every spellcaster train in only one type of magic? There are certainly prodigies that could handle learning Fire and Wind simultaneously, while other characters might be like Nino and have a hard time learning a single spell, let alone different types of magic. Make it more about the character than the class and then let new weapon types and ideas spring from that. Perhaps Wind spells, in addition to the classic single-target variety, have a focus on hitting a line of enemies? And Fire is more prone to hitting a radius around a target doing splash damage and DoT. I feel like the rigidity of Fire Emblem is one of the things causing the problems. Once that's out of the way, you can have units "specialize" in different things instead of just weapon type or various degrees of hit rates, damage values, and critical rates.)

Edited May 12, 2014 by Lord Glenn

[NinjaMonkey]

Do we need five different unique magic types when there are only four types of physical weapon.

Axe, Bow, Lance, Sword, Knife, Dragonstone, Laguz Strike, Taguelstone - that's eight.

and poorer movement.

Mages are supposed to be range attackers. Thus, they don't need as much movement as close-range attackers, such as Fighters or Myrmidons, do.

Edited May 12, 2014 by NinjaMonkey

[Titamon]

Axe, Bow, Lance, Sword, Knife, Dragonstone, Laguz Strike, Taguelstone - that's eight.

Mages are supposed to be range attackers. Thus, they don't need as much movement as close-range attackers, such as Fighters or Myrmidons, do.

Inferior movement is still inferior movement

Also, even with the Def/Res gap FE9 Mages have issues dealing outstanding damage to most enemies. They generally need a lot of levels (or spirit dusts) to 1-round generic enemies.

[Icon of Sin]

Mages are supposed to be range attackers. Thus, they don't need as much movement as close-range attackers, such as Fighters or Myrmidons, do.

On the contrary, their low movement makes them easily left behind when Paladins, Wyvern Lords and Falcoknights have 3 more movement per turn. If Blizzard, Bolting and Meteor were common place, that might be worth the movement drop, but considering their rarity it really isn't. Furthermore, lower movement means less combat, therefore less experience, therefore they get stronger much slower than the mounted units.

As far as magic goes, I'd really like a Dungeons and Dragons type of system where magic isn't treated as yet another weapon, nevermind that magic should be exploited more than just attack, healing and warping. Status staves exist too, but they're pretty rare. What about enchanting weapons with magic spells? Various types of summons (such as those used in TRS)? Morphing into magical being different than Manaketes such as elementals or werebeasts? Positive Berserk? Stat lowering spells? AoE magic? Illusions? There's so many diversity with magic that FE feels like it's barely exploiting it.

Magic itself is also supposed to take quite a toll on its user, so a system of Mana or X number of spells per chapter should be interesting to implement, or HP for blood magic such as FE2.

Edited May 12, 2014 by Woodshooter

[dondon151]

Mages are supposed to be range attackers. Thus, they don't need as much movement as close-range attackers, such as Fighters or Myrmidons, do.

fighters and wyvern riders are range attackers, too.

[Baldrick]

Archers too.

[BANRYU]

TBH I find it a little unthinkable that any original FE title that followed Radiant Dawn (in other words, Awakening) WOULDN'T reuse the game's magic system, especially if they make a point of impelmenting the different elements of anima and sheer number of pointless, barely-different tomes from RD. It's a really bizarre and lazy design choice and it was one of the first problems I had with Awakening.

As far as magic goes, I'd really like a Dungeons and Dragons type of system where magic isn't treated as yet another weapon, nevermind that magic should be exploited more than just attack, healing and warping. Status staves exist too, but they're pretty rare. What about enchanting weapons with magic spells? Various types of summons (such as those used in TRS)? Morphing into magical being different than Manaketes such as elementals or werebeasts? Positive Berserk? Stat lowering spells? AoE magic? Illusions? There's so many diversity with magic that FE feels like it's barely exploiting it.

Magic itself is also supposed to take quite a toll on its user, so a system of Mana or X number of spells per chapter should be interesting to implement, or HP for blood magic such as FE2.

In particular, this strikes me as a really creative and interesting idea for the series. I'd love to see something like that implemented into the game, myself-- it'd certainly make sense to have new spells take the place of things like Tonics and the various rings from FE7. Having only one unit in a game (IE, the Dancer) that's actually intended as a dedicated support role is kind of a shame IMO, so it'd be nice if stave-users and other mages could potentially get in on some of that. Staves like Rescue and Barrier are a step toward that, but we haven't seen any new or interesting ones like that in quite a while-- in fact, IIRC, Goetia was the only super high-ranking/legendary weapon in Awakening that was actually made up for the game.

Weaponized staves that deal neutral damage and can be used at higher Staff weapon-ranks might be interesting as well.

Edited May 12, 2014 by BANRYU

[dondon151]

Having only one unit in a game (IE, the Dancer) that's actually intended as a dedicated support role is kind of a shame IMO, so it'd be nice if stave-users and other mages could potentially get in on some of that.

this is what happened in thracia 776. as charming as it was to trivialize every map with staffers and a dancer, the general consensus is that it was somewhat cheap.

fire emblem's gameplay is not conducive to myriad support roles.

[General Banzai]

in dondons world, everyone is a ranged attacker, or else theyre not in the game

"dondons world" would be a cool name for a rap album btw

Edited May 12, 2014 by General Banzai

[Baldrick]

@Banzai but what about Rutger?

Quite a few support mechanics do exist in the series. Charisma/Daunt/dancer rings/heron abilities/Rally skills/status staves/supports (of course!). With limited range, Warp/Rescue aren't gamebreaking.

[General Banzai]

@Banzai but what about Rutger?

Quite a few support mechanics do exist in the series. Charisma/Daunt/dancer rings/heron abilities/Rally skills/status staves/supports (of course!). With limited range, Warp/Rescue aren't gamebreaking.

Rutger expired back in Blade Runner

Support mechanics key phrase

Imagine a unit who literally only did Daunt/Charisma

like a herald or something

even if the numbers were functional enough to make the unit viable the gameplay behind that is just ugh, nobody would want to field him

[Baldrick]

Such a unit would probably have some Rally skills as well at the very least. You wouldn't want to field a whole team of them but they'd certainly have a niche.

[BANRYU]

this is what happened in thracia 776. as charming as it was to trivialize every map with staffers and a dancer, the general consensus is that it was somewhat cheap.

fire emblem's gameplay is not conducive to myriad support roles.

I haven't played Thracia but you're probably right. Wouldn't know until you tried it, I guess.

I guess a better alternative to status/supporting magic might just be more spells like Celica's Gale and Katarina's Bolt and fewer of the other more useless spells so that there's not a huge pool of useless tomes.

[BrightBow]

I guess Thracia is pretty much like 3rd edition D&D. Eventually battles only revolve around disabling the enemy casters,

Still, I am sure that it is possible to take a few pages from one or two D&D rulebooks without breaking the game in half.

If nothing else, it shouldn't be much of an issue to introduce a few more buffs spells, area effect magic and to bring back summons.

[Jotari]

Axe, Bow, Lance, Sword, Knife, Dragonstone, Laguz Strike, Taguelstone - that's eight.

Mages are supposed to be range attackers. Thus, they don't need as much movement as close-range attackers, such as Fighters or Myrmidons, do.

Laguz Strikes are the counterpart of Dragonstones and Dragonstones are the same things as Taguelstones, they even use the same weapon rank icon, and don't actually have weapon ranks. All three of which are also character specific weapons and not weapons in the physical sense either, magedragons can even do a magical attack.

What you should have pointed out is crossbows (even though they didn't have a weapon rank in Radiant Dawn, they still easily could have one).

Edited May 12, 2014 by Jotari

[dondon151]

even if the numbers were functional enough to make the unit viable the gameplay behind that is just ugh, nobody would want to field him

i would field such a unit if i had a spare unit slot to do so. the problem with support units is that it's hard to strike the correct balance between them being boring and too good. a support unit is necessarily in low supply and in either low or high demand, but not anywhere in the middle.

[Byte2222]

I feel like the magic itself is half the problem but the other problem is the classes that wield them. FE9 and FE10 had the most interesting system but can you recall any occasions where you made use of the magic triangle? Magic users in FE10 in particular didn't normally attack other magic users, partly because there were so few but partly because they had such high res that you're better off using a physical attacker (RD magic users were also all crap but that's another issue). It wouldn't be hard to make one class a hard-hitter, one class speedy and one better at tanking physical (or look at the GBA system, for example).

[BANRYU]

Yeah, I feel like differentiating the mage classes is the biggest key here to making each of the magic types unique and interesting.

Heck even with the Anima triangle you can give them slight differences that set them apart, or maybe even make the hit/avo differences between Mages that much greater to emphasize the triangle more.

[Knight]

Personally, I like the GBA system, I just wish there were more spells for the anima line.

[RJWalker]

I think splitting the Magic tomes into different ranks adds flavour to the world. And I'm in favour of worldbuilding without relying on long text based descriptions.