Thoughts on Permadeath and How You Would Improve It

[Hawkwing]

In one of the first posts I ever made, I asked which game in the Fire Emblem series handled permadeath the best. However, I believe I presented the question quite confusingly there, as I didn't get too many responses. That, and I was asking a specific question, and thus received specific answers.

Now, as the title implies, I'm asking more broadly about what you think about permadeath in Fire Emblem, as well what improvements or changes you would make to this series staple.

My Overall Thoughts:

(I put this into a spoiler partially to save space, but also because, put plainly, I don't have a high opinion of how the series handles permadeath, and I know that not everyone enjoys reading a (subdued) rant. I also don't want this thread to delve into "why permadeath sucks" or anything like that. I just want to see what your thoughts on the matter are.)

Spoiler

Even though I've only played three Fire Emblem games at the moment, I personally don't think the series has taken much advantage of this mechanic. I know that it ranges between games on how expendable your units are, but I never got the impression that unit balancing, or the gameplay in general, walked hand-in-hand with the permadeath mechanic.

When I look at X-COM, loosing units is always bad, and the game can become much, much harder if you loose all your top troops and have to work with inexperienced recruits, but the game rarely, if ever, reaches an unwinnable state in this situation occurs. When I look at Battle for Wesnoth, there are many strategies that rely on leveling up a solid and rounded group of units, but there are also strategies that rely on producing cannon fodder after cannon fodder, and there is never a point in the game where the loss of a single unit will turn the game on its head. Although Jagged Alliance has permadeath, you also have a large selection of mercenaries to choose from, meaning that loosing a merc is always bad, but it's not the end of the world. That, and the game in general is very hard, and it's built so you won't be able to win every game you play.

When I look at Fire Emblem, I don't see many of the games being designed with the mechanic in mind. Sure, none of the games become unwinnable if you lose most of your army, but that's because your remaining units will most likely end up as powerhouses due to the abundance of experience being fed to them, and many of the series lords tend to also become one-man-armies. I could give theoretical situations all day, but it would be better to bring up examples from the three Fire Emblem games I've played in the series thus far:

• It was when I was playing Awakening that I really became aware of the handling of permadeath. Half of this is due to the child mechanic, as every female first generation unit is technically two units, you have spend a minimum of half the game to get the child units, and, depending on your avatars gender, you can only spare 1-3 first generation male units if you want every child. The other half of this is the unit balancing. For the other half, you only have one myrmidon, one mercenary, and one knight, and so on, to work with for half the game, which isn't too bad from a certain point of view. However you only have one (technically two) default axe-user(s) to work with for the early portions of the game, and you only get another one at the halfway-mark, meaning that if you loose Vaike, you will be limited having the weapon triangle advantage without reclassing or promotions.
• The small cast of Gaiden/Shadows of Valentia is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it means that every unit has a use, no matter how well or how badly they turn out, and it also means there are less opportunities for writing hiccups that can occur with a larger cast. On the other hand, it means that amount of units you can spare can be counted on one hand, especially since some classes only appear once or twice on each route.
• I personally believe that Mystery of the Emblem handled permadeath the best, as you are given many more units that you need (heck you even get an extra thief!). However, units you get later tend to have average growths and base stats, meaning that while loosing a unit won't the end of the world, the player has to compensate by working with a less than outstanding replacement. There were actually quite a few times where I had to seriously think about whether to bring in my best units to a battle but risk them dying, or to bring in my less than outstanding unit so that while the chapter would be harder, it wouldn't be. This is the only time this thought was ever brought up in a Fire Emblem game, which by contrast this situation happens repeatedly in other strategy games that have permadeath. It wasn't implemented perfectly, however, as loosing Caeda, for example, locks you out of a crap-ton of recruitable units, and you don't get another knight until late(r) in the game, so losing Draug means you've just lost one of the few tanks in a game where knights actually have a use (in book 1, at least).

I know it looks like I'm ranting about how Fire Emblem uses permadeath poorly, and I am, but I'd like for permadeath to have a stronger effect on gameplay, to prevent soft-resetting from being the go-to response whenever a unit dies.

The improvements I would make:

• This could work if the game in question had multiple campaigns (a la Battle for Wesnoth), as I know not everyone would like this if it was its own game, but either have the ability to recruit characters (maybe like Jagged Alliance), and/or you would be given more characters than you would need, and have the difficulty be designed where loosing a few units is expected, and the player has to decide which units are worth raising, and which ones they could sacrifice in need be. As I said, I don't want this to have an entire game around it, but a change of pace might be nice.
• Bringing back a modified and improved of the gaiden mechanic from Shadow Dragon. It would be possible to unlock every available unit, but you would either need to go out of your way to unlock some of them, or you would get them later down the line. If you loose a certain amount of units, you would get these characters earlier on with less hassle. It would be a way of allowing those good at the game (or completionists) to still get everyone, while people with trouble could get a powerful unit to compensate for their losses. They would still be punished for bad playing, but the game wouldn't become more difficult that it would need to be.
• Keep casual mode and Mila's turnwheel, though lower the amount of uses allowed for the latter. Also have The Aum staff appear again, but give it more than one use and the ability to repair it, while still keeping its uses very limited.

So those were my thoughts on permadeath in the Fire Emblem series. What are yours?

[Magical Glace]

I like Permadeath and want it to stay.  It encourages being perfect every chapter, and I really appreciate that.  

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I feel like the whole point of Fire Emblem beyond making a "medieval sequel" to Famicom Wars was permadeath and how it prompts the player to improve and learn the game's systems. These are units with a portrait and a line of dialogue. They had as much characterization as a playable character in the late 80s era of JRPGs, but you can't bring them back with a phoenix down, they don't revive by going to a church. 

It is a problem when you have players always resetting after every death, especially if you intend to make the game difficult even on its Normal difficulty, which you should. But I think they already fixed this problem with the Turnwheel. Player makes a mistake, they have the surgical ability of correcting their mistake. Boom, your player doesn't get frustrated at how they have to reset, AND the player learns from what they did wrong. So how I would improve Permadeath is really how I would improve the Turnwheel.

First Turnwheel tweak: Don't have it re-roll RNG. It's gross how you can re-roll an enemy phase in hopes that your unit dodges a lethal strike. No mistake is being corrected in that scenario. And if you're really turning back time, every RNG roll should be maintained until the player has altered the course of action for the units involved. Even grosser is how you can re-roll other, non combat instances of RNG, like how many enemies a summoner has spawned, whether the summoner spawns enemies on that turn at all, whether witches choose to warp or walk to their destination, and how effective your Expel spell is. I know a lot of those gameplay factors probably won't return in a future Fire Emblem game, but I still hate that Echoes handled RNG this way.

As for how many uses the player should have, I think I would institute a system in which the player starts with no uses on turn 1, and must earn more uses that can only be used on that map. This can be by clearing optional objectives on the map, but that may overcomplicate the balance of a map. Especially if the player has access to reclassed units or really any access to grinding that can trivialize objectives. My favorite idea is to designate certain, strong enemy units as "captains" in a battle. And by defeating captains, you earn a single use. Another idea I had was have it so the Lord himself must defeat enemies in order to charge up the turnwheel, since presumably he or she is the character that has physical access to the turnwheel item. And since losing a Lord is a game over scenario, there's a risk/reward dynamic. However, the Lord is no doubt capable of becoming one of your strongest units in their own right, taking out most of the risk unless the designers decide they want another wimpy lord like Roy that's capped on potential strength arbitrarily.  

[Florete]

Recent FE games clearly aren't made with permadeath in mind, and I don't think the series' structure fits well with it, either. In few scenarios throughout the series does a character death actually have any impact, and in Fates/Awakening half the cast doesn't even die when they're killed. Even the so-called "Iron Man" run fails because you're forced to reset if the main character dies, rendering any other deaths null. And it limits the narrative because writers have to completely avoid using certain characters who could be dead at any time.

I don't think there really is a "fix" for permadeath in FE as it is. A Fire Emblem that really used permadeath would probably be a very different game from what we're used to. Mila's Turnwheel is a good thing to have if they want to keep permadeath around, but I wouldn't call it a fix.

[Slumber]

27 minutes ago, Florete said:

Even the so-called "Iron Man" run fails because you're forced to reset if the main character dies, rendering any other deaths null.

Whoops, misread.

Yeah, Fire Emblem lacks the kind of Iron Manning where it gets its namesake from because of lord deaths. But this is true for many SRPGs. Langrisser was game-over if main characters died, Final Fantasy Tactics was game-over if Ramza crystalized, Vandal Hearts was a game over if Ash dies... And I don't think permadeath feels "out of place" in any of those. Maybe because they're all influenced by FE, but they all disregard reckless play that betray the "strategy" part of "strategy RPG". Random unlucky crits are going to be a thing that will probably always exist in FE, but it's another part of cautious play. Don't run up to the Killer Sword wielding Swordmaster with a unit who could easily die to an unlucky crit.

I want permadeath to stay a main focus of the franchise, though. If the games start coming up with alternative solutions for permadeath, like Mila's Turnwheel, I think it'd be for the best. As much as the Swordmasters with Killer Swords with 50% crit are something you plan on tackling cautiously, there's not much you can do to the random Bandit who gets the 1% proc off. That kind of stuff is where something like Mila's is acceptable.

Edited December 24, 2017 by Slumber

[NekoKnight]

As a reset player, I think permadeath is a boon to the series as it demands you don't make any critical mistakes if you want all your characters to survive. And that's where FE sets itself apart from other strategy games; you don't WANT a single character to die because they all have personalities unless they're SD characters and the player grows attached to them. Rather than think about it from a practical standpoint (ie, how hard is it to complete the game if a character dies), think of how to make deaths interesting and involving. Here are some ideas.

1. Make certain paralogues that only open up if someone died. Unlike SD, don't make it require half your army to die.

2. Give a temporary debuff to units who were able to support with the fallen character but later give them a permanent buff that gets stronger the higher their support ranking was. It will represent their grief and later their resolution to make the sacrifice of their companion meaningful.

3. Change story dialogue, supports and epilogues to reflect casualties. PoR did the first two and SoV the last.

4. Create an Ironman mode that gives additional awards compared to the normal campaign.

Edited December 24, 2017 by NekoKnight

[Thane]

I think it would be interesting if this tied into the narrative in interesting ways in addition to being purely a gameplay component. We've already seen dialogue changes and the like, but I think it would be cool if having a certain character alive meant that you could, for example, take another path and get a different map or two while on your way to your destination. 

There are bad ways of doing this as well. I think Binding Blade has handled permadeath the worst in the series because of the obscure true ending requirements. Some characters are vital, but you can't know which ones unless you check a guide, which is bloody paranoia-inducing. 

It'd also be interesting if there were methods of encouraging not resetting, but maybe that's just me. I personally like to try and keep going even if someone dies so long as it was my fault that they died, because I feel like that's what permadeath is all about, rather than resetting and trying again. 

At any rate, I'd be content with just more dialogue changes and acknowledgements that people are, indeed, dead if they fall in battle. Right now there's more or less a complete gameplay/story segregation.

[Twisted Tactician]

I'm a big fan of permadeath; it teaches good habits even on normal.

I played my first FE game (Awakening) in normal/casual mode and picked up all kinds of terrible habits like spreading my units too thin. If they died, no great loss. When I started a new game in hard/casual, I got destroyed because I would never have enough units left by the end of a map. Playing in normal/classic helped me bridge that gap by forcing me to put value on every move and now I play Awakening on hard/classic.

I would definitely keep casual mode as an option, but I would discourage new players form using it unless they care about the story more than gameplay.

As for improvements, I wish that death was acknowledged off the battlefield as others have said. As it is, the only thing that happens when a unit dies is they're not usable. If there were other changes resulting from unit death, even aside from gameplay, I might feel more inclined to accept the consequences of my mistakes and let a character die once in a while instead of resetting.