Critique These Mechanic Tweaks

[Lepanto7]

Hey all.

Here are some varied ideas I've come up with for fine-tuning FE's mechanics. I'm thinking about making a future fangame with some of these ideas, but I'd like to see what series vets think of them in general first.

• Nerf the second hit of a double attack, so it only does 1/2 damage.

Doubling makes Speed disproportionately critical. In canon FE, a viable unit must be able to double most enemies, and therefore needs Speed. Slower characters/classes (like Knights), who can't double and might even BE doubled, cannot make up the damage gap with Str alone.

Doubling also exacerbates juggernaut syndrome, by letting your best units kill whole armies on the enemy phase.

Halving the second attack's damage might dethrone Speed from its place as king of stats, without nerfing Speed/doubling into irrelevance.

Another option: increase the doubling threshold, so units can only double enemies approx. 8 speed slower than themselves. Doubling is no longer mandatory, and becomes the province of super-fast units like Myrmidons, etc.

• Units take a temporary debuff every time they're attacked on the enemy phase.

For every enemy a unit fights on their defending phase, they lose -1 skill/strength/something until their next attacking phase.

This will hopefully nerf juggernauts, so you can't throw one guy into the middle of an army, and have to balance your units.

Also, it'd add some realism (after all, you can't defend against 5 opponents attacking at once as easily as you could defend against one at a time.)

This might also give your weaker units a reason to bother attacking bosses, to debuff them a bit so your stronger units can clean up?

• Differentiate the Light/Dark/Anima triangle.

To give the three GBA-era magic schools some more identity (and a justification to keep/restore the magic triangle), I'm thinking of giving each school a separate shtick.

Some Light tomes lose some attack power, but they inflict status effects to compensate. Like lowering enemy stats, inflicting sleep/silence/etc. This gives Light tomes a debuff niche, like hidden weapons in Fates. Your monks would hit strong enemies with a debuff status effect, then let another unit clean up.

Anima focuses on high Mt, with some effectiveness tomes to give Anima mages some of the same target versatility that physical classes have with Armorslayers/hammers/etc.

Dark is changed the least. It's the home of all the special-effect tomes that don't fit in either of the other two schools (Nosferatu, etc.)

• Give the weaker classes a solid niche, with better class skills.

Skills help differentiate classes, so they still have a role even when other units may have better stats.

Fighter: Overwhelming Strike. If your attack would leave the enemy with approx. 1-2 health, it kills them instead. You've all groaned when enemies survive attacks with 1-2 HP. So, a unit that excels at ORKOing them would be useful indeed.

Archer: Volley. If you stand still/only move 1 or 2 spaces, you get two attacks during the player phase? Something that makes archers downright lethal at 2 range, defining their niche vis-a-vis the more versatile mage classes. (Also agree with MarkyJoe's suggestion of giving them early-game longbows.)

Knight: Dunno. Maybe a skill that cancels the swarm debuff from above, making Knights even better at tanking? (Also give Knights 5 MOV. They're just too slow to be viable otherwise.)

So. Thoughts? Similar suggestions? Constructive criticism?

(FYI, I've only played a couple of the GBA games, so forgive me if any of this is inaccurate/old news.)

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

only thing i can really say that in more recent emblems, knights have had 5 movement for anwhile (heck even in FE4 they had 5 movement)

issue being in these games, everyone else also has 1 more movement.

[Augestein]

Doubling in and of itself is not the problem. It's the fact that speed is tied to the ability to double AND it's the primary stat for evasion. What's the problem with that? It literally means that someone that doesn't double has terrible evasion as well, even if they have a high luck stat. This means that you need a killer defense to survive or super skills (not the stat, but abilities themselves) In most Fire Emblem games, having luck means that you have to have like twice the luck for speed. IE, 10 luck + 5 speed would be 20 avoid, but having 8 speed and 4 luck is better because you can double any enemies that have less than or equal to 4 speed while the first unit can't double anything that has... More than 1 speed. And also take note that the unit with 10 luck and 5 speed technically has MORE of each stat. The issue is that IS would do stuff and be like "oh, the unit with 10 luck and 5 speed has better stats because they have higher stats)... But luck sucks to have as your "good" stat unless the rest of your bases kick so much ass that it doesn't even matter.

Doubling where you do half strength would be okay, but might not solve the problem too well. A skill like Astra for instance would be awful on a second attack, picture this: You do 6 damage x2 to an enemy. Under normal circumstances, that would be 12 damage total. But let's look at this in your land.

Astra Proc on first strike:

(6/2) * 5 + (6/2) = 18 damage. Versus

Astra Proc on second strike:

6 + ((6/2) / 2) * 5 = 13.5

Assuming you round down (most games do when it comes to damage), you'd be doing 13 damage instead of 18 simply for procing the attack on the second hit. The damage variance would only get more wild as you got higher in level. Let's try 12 x 2.

Astra Proc on first strike:

(12/2) * 5 + (12/2) = 36 damage. Versus

Astra Proc on second strike:

12+ ((12/2) / 2) * 5 = 27

While the 2nd strike proc is about 25% less effective each time, there's a larger difference between 36 and 27 is a lot more noticeable than 18 and 13 (presumably on rounding), and makes your damage annoyingly variable. It only gets more annoying the higher the stats are as the enemies don't scale in such a way that this wouldn't matter. What it means is that instead of the fixed damage we know and love from Fire Emblem (with criticals and proc skills being nice things). Instead, procs become super spotty and even less reliable than they already are now, and if procs always do standard damage, you can see how this causes more of a problem than we had in the standard Fire Emblem land.

The issue is that speed needs to not be the primary dodge stat and the ONLY way to double outside of hero/brave weapons. Doubling should just plain be a skill, where it asks for speed or skill or some other stat. Hell, even making it just what a class does would be a better idea. Or even having a double strike attack be something the player initiates but sacrifices something to do that-- ie, evasion ,accuracy, defense... Something.

As for magic? For me personally, I'd have light be AoE damage. Have mage skills be like you can hit in a straight line, a cross , and X... That's 3 skills, and say these only work with light magic, and you could have some interesting things. We already have skills like the weapon faires that only work for certain weapons, I don't see why you can't extend that further.

Honestly, I'd have knights have 5 (assuming this is standard move) or 4 movement based on the armor they wear. For each map, you could make them choose which armor they want. I'd then probably add things like shields in the game that just up your evasion based on skill + speed instead of speed x 2 and give knights the ability to equip them. Mounted units wouldn't be able to have shields, and I'd probably give knights a skill that debuffs everyone's movement by -2 if you try to go passed their aura (so walking passed a knight's aura is like walking through a forest). I'd also probably differentiate between 1 handed and 2 handed attacks for units as well.

Edited August 1, 2016 by Augestein

[Enaluxeme]

The system used in FE Binary might solve your problem.

In FE4, you need the skill Pursuit to double, and Pursuit activates if your AS is higher (even by 1 point) then your opponent. In Binary, units without pursuit can double if they have at leas 6 more points in AS than their opponents, while characters with pursuit only need 3.

I would personally make the gap bigger, like 1 more with pursuit and 5 more without, but that depends by stat inflation.

Otherwise, instead of halving the damage, I would just decrease it by a fixed amount (1 or 2, can't go under 1 unless it already was), then making skills that remove that mechanic for the unit (good for myrmidons) and skills that double it for the unit's opponent (good for knights).

[NekoKnight]

I don't have a problem with doubling mechanics or enemy phase combat (and Fates added a number of skills to incentivize Player Phase combat). I could agree with the argument that Avoid and one's ability to double should be governed by different stats.

For magic, I had my own ideas about how to differentiate them. Anima would be the base school of magic. Fair damage and accuracy. Light would be the second school, weaker than Anima but more accurate and give the user an Avoid bonus. Dark would be be the 3rd school, stronger but less accurate than anima and have Avoid penalties. All spells would have varied effects so a mage and a dark mage would be quite different in their abilities.

[spoiler=Anima]

[spoiler=Light Magic]

[spoiler=Dark Magic]

I don't think much needs to be done about Knights/Archers, as far as the most recent game (Fates) balance is concerned. Giving them appropriate base stats and skills is enough to make up for their limitations.

[Augestein]

Archers I'm fine with so long as they reign as the supreme 1-2 damage dealers. So long as they do that, they are fine in my eyes.

As for magic, would you only be having 3 types of mages, or would you have multiple ones? One thing that bothered me in Fire Emblem is how there was like 1 of each mage type but multiple types of weapon users.

[NekoKnight]

As for magic, would you only be having 3 types of mages, or would you have multiple ones? One thing that bothered me in Fire Emblem is how there was like 1 of each mage type but multiple types of weapon users.

Is that directed to the OP or me? Well, in my case, I thought about there being 8 tome using promoted classes and 4 base classes (mages) using tomes. Were it up to me, Light Mages would be have high speed and luck, Dark Mages, high magic and defense and regular Mages would have high magic and resistance. I suppose there could be other combinations/niches if you tinkered with their stats or skills.

[Augestein]

Is that directed to the OP or me? Well, in my case, I thought about there being 8 tome using promoted classes and 4 base classes (mages) using tomes. Were it up to me, Light Mages would be have high speed and luck, Dark Mages, high magic and defense and regular Mages would have high magic and resistance. I suppose there could be other combinations/niches if you tinkered with their stats or skills.

it was directed at you more so because I saw what spells you had. I was curious since people have so many different and nifty ideas.

[KoimanZX]

Is that directed to the OP or me? Well, in my case, I thought about there being 8 tome using promoted classes and 4 base classes (mages) using tomes. Were it up to me, Light Mages would be have high speed and luck, Dark Mages, high magic and defense and regular Mages would have high magic and resistance. I suppose there could be other combinations/niches if you tinkered with their stats or skills.

The funny thing is that I had an idea for a bulky armored dark mage, but later started to question it (it might be too broken with Nosferatu, even with the nerf given to said tome and this hypothetical class's low speed and resistance). Maybe give it a lower magic cap than most magic-using classes?

[KoimanZX]

Is that directed to the OP or me? Well, in my case, I thought about there being 8 tome using promoted classes and 4 base classes (mages) using tomes. Were it up to me, Light Mages would be have high speed and luck, Dark Mages, high magic and defense and regular Mages would have high magic and resistance. I suppose there could be other combinations/niches if you tinkered with their stats or skills.

The funny thing is that I had an idea for a bulky armored dark mage, but later started to question it (it might be too broken with Nosferatu, even with the nerf given to said tome and this hypothetical class's low speed and resistance). Maybe give it a lower magic cap than most magic-using classes? The witch class is a bit too broken with its warp ability, but I like the idea of a glass cannon magic class (with perhaps the ability to use light and dark magic?)

[Enaluxeme]

How about making an armored mage like in FE4 hacks? Slightly less defence than physical armors and slightly less resistance than other magic users. Stat-wise a very good class (speed excluded), only limited by the low movement.

[NekoKnight]

The funny thing is that I had an idea for a bulky armored dark mage, but later started to question it (it might be too broken with Nosferatu, even with the nerf given to said tome and this hypothetical class's low speed and resistance). Maybe give it a lower magic cap than most magic-using classes? The witch class is a bit too broken with its warp ability, but I like the idea of a glass cannon magic class (with perhaps the ability to use light and dark magic?)

They could give Nosferatu diminishing returns if Nos-tanking is considered too powerful. Or they just lower the bulk of the dark magic using classes. I liked Dark Mages how they were in Awakening, having higher defense than resistance (Henry and Tharja had 50/30 and 45/30 defense/resistance growths) and using Hex and Anathema to make up for lower hit.