Beating the game with Villagers

[rowcla]

Hey all, not a huge fan usually of creating accounts for just one topic, but I hope you can forgive me just this one time.

Recently I've started a run of Awakening in which I just use villagers. To compensate for the lack of playable villagers in the game, I've named my MU Villager, and I plan on marrying her to Donnel and using Morgan, and Maiden!Lucina.

The thing is however, while I would like to keep my characters in their base classes (2 villagers, a tactician and a lord) I'm concerned about how feasible beating Grima would be given the horrible stat caps of these characters, particularly Donnel, for which it is essential that he deal the finishing blow to Grima.

So basically, my question is this: Is it feasible to beat Grima (on Normal) with just a +Lck/-Str Tactician, Villager Donnel, Donnel!Morgan Villager and Maiden!Lucina. Or should I just reclass anyway?

[Elieson]

Not checking numbers but I would assume yes, as I managed to do this on Hard.

I'll check numbers later on, but Villager caps aren't that bad when compared to Tier1 units, and Lance access is always good

[Czar_Yoshi]

It's definitely possible, Lucina could probably solo Grima with P.Falchion. Normal doesn't put up much resistance.

Granted, you'd have to rely on Lucina a good deal due to her being much better than everyone else.

Hard mode would be a little trickier, but still possible. Assuming everyone has never left their base classes...

Lucina will have 38 Spd with an Avatar A support and a Spd tonic. That's just enough to double Grima. With P.Falchion, Avatar A and a Str tonic, she has 74 Atk. Grima has 41+3 Def, so Lucina will do 15 damage for a normal attack and 15+25 for an Aether (18% chance). Lucina also has a decent crit chance- 18(base) +10(Solidarity) +10(A support) +5(P.Falchion) -33(Grima's Lck) =10.

Avatar can do a bit of DS damage as well, with 52 damage Valflames that do 5 damage per hit to Grima. Since Grima only has 88 HP, you can ORKO it with either two Aethers and two DSes, a crit and an Aether, or two crits. Aether can also crit as well- if the Sol half crits, you need one DS to finish the job, and if the Luna half crits it's an OHKO. Of course, Grima also has a 38% Pavise chance and you need those not to happen.

If Donnel absolutely must land the finishing blow, you need a combination that can get Grima as low as possible (two Aethers and one DS will give 3 HP remaining). Donnel needs 50 Atk to finish that off, which he can attain with the Gungnir, a Str tonic, and a Robin support (you'll have to transfer Robin from Lucina to Morgan, and then from Morgan to Donnel to do this in one turn).

Breaking through the wall of enemies that's present on Hard could also be a problem, but Robin with a forged Celica's Gale and a Lucina support can probably sweep them with enough lucky dodges.

I'll check numbers later on, but Villager caps aren't that bad when compared to Tier1 units, and Lance access is always good

Villager caps are all 20 except for Lck/HP and most of Donnel's mods are negative so his are even lower. Compare to the likes of Maiden!Lucina's 27/30 Str/Spd and 25/25 defenses, and it's at least 20% worse. Since Avatar is +Lck/-Str Morgan is going to turn out just as bad as Donnel (+1 Spd, all other relevant mods the same), so Avatar and Lucina are really the only competent units in play (and competent is stretching it since they're still tier 1).

Edited June 8, 2015 by Czar_Yoshi

[Elieson]

Oh I though they were 30s all around sans modifiers, not 20. That's what i get for not checking my facts.

Even so, Lucina and Chrom can carry the show, even as Lords, since pumping them up with boosters, Solidarity from Robin (and Morgan) and PairUp bonuses/Tonics/Aether etc, it's doable on Normal.

[rowcla]

Thanks for the help! Glad to hear that it's doable. I'm not really especially interested in doing something really challenging, particularly since I haven't even finished Lunatic yet. On that note though, are the first few chapters even beatable with solo MU? Not to mention, +Luck/-Strength MU. I remember I actually almost died on Normal, so Hard would probably require you to get really good dodges to even stand a chance, even killing Roddick with donnel may not be possible.

Regardless though, glad to hear I don't need to *shudders* promote any characters. Cheers!

[Czar_Yoshi]

Avatar solo is the easiest way to clear earlygame on any difficulty that won't hurt you in the long run. You might have issues with enemies going for the non-combat units since you can't un-deploy them yet and there's nowhere for them to hide, but that's about it.

Allowing other units to pair up with Avatar (even if they're unequipped) would make it significantly easier, since Veteran and Fred's pairup bonuses are good and Chrom will need a place to hide (since he's permenantly force-deployed, but isn't part of your run).

[rowcla]

Interesting, I don't really have the enemy stats to look at it, but I still wasn't aware that MU could easily solo the first few chapters without Pair Ups. I imagine "any difficulty" is only normal and hard though, correct?

[Czar_Yoshi]

Any difficulty means all four of them. Normal, Hard, Lunatic, and Lunatic+.

Obviously you'll want to use pairup well on the harder two, but the principal of giving 90% of the exp to Avatar and having them hit Lv.19-20 by the end of Cht.4 is a very dominant strategy in Lunatic(+).

Edited June 8, 2015 by Czar_Yoshi

[rowcla]

Yarr, no pairup is kinda key here. It doesn't really seem like +lck/-str MU has the stats to ever really beat Lunatic, let alone Lunatic+. Hard is at least slightly plausible, but I imagine it would require a fair bit of luck nonetheless...

[Bovinian]

+Luck/-Strength is not even as bad as you're making it sound. I'm not entirely sure how asset/flaw affects growths in unrelated stats, but Robin is better off using magic anyway, and pairing up with Fred can patch up any Str deficiencies. Generally things like -Speed, -Def, and maybe -HP are more painful early on.

[Czar_Yoshi]

Without pairup you'll have a harder time keeping the enemies off your force-deploys' backs in the early chapters, but can still take them down with a bit of luck.

[rowcla]

To be completely honest, I kinda mixed up Magic and strength this whole time. It's actually +lck/-Mag.

This means that the Avatar starts with 19 HP, 6 Str, 4 Mag, 5 Skl, 6 Spd, 8 Lck, 6 Def, 4 Res.

This means that in the prologue alone, the myrmidions will deal 4 (100%) damage against our 6 (100%). Barbarians will deal 6 (73%) against our 6 (100%). Mages will do 4 (95%) against our 7 (100%). And the boss does 7 (72%) against our 5 (100%) or 7 (67%) against our 4 (100%). With 3 myrmidions, 2 mages, 2 barbarians and the boss, each with about 20 health, beating the level without the use of other characters (that includes healing/trading/pairing up) shouldn't even be possible, due to the myrmidions alone. Even if my calculations were a bit off (which they admittedly, probably are) it would still require an absurd amount of luck. And that's only the prologue!

I'm going to stick to Normal