FE Multiverse Tournament of Power Who Would Win?

[Quickpawmaud]

So if the 10 strongest units from each FE game fought in a tournament who do you think would win. Ideally people should have played every game or at least the majority of them. I have only played about half so I can't really think of a good answer to this. Any discussion would be interesting to see though. I know it is a pretty complicated question.

[TheChoZenOne]

Tellius 😎 or Fódlan

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

Teach, and their various students from Three Houses. Because even if they lose, they can just keep rewinding time until they win.

Wait - is it just playable units, or are NPCs and enemies allowed? Because the likes of Ashera, Grima, and Anankos could be quite formidable...

[Jotari]

If it's including villains, then it has to be either Awakening or Tellius. Because their antagonists are just plain ridiculous.

Not only is Grima an absurd size, cqapable of just flattening any arena you play on, but even if you somehow know his weakness and can teleport onto his back, you can't kill his Avatar unless you A)Have a Falchion or B)Are Grima yourself. So the A criteria eliminates pretty much every other setting besides Archanea and Valentia. Maybe the likes of Book of Naga or Hero's Relic could take him out, but even so, just getting to him is going to be a massive challenge without a dragon god or Gotoh figure on your side.

Ashera is going to be in the same camp. The story makes it pretty clear that without Yune (aka Ashera's own power) propping up the team, they would have stood no chance. Oh and she can also revive the dead, so if you have to mow down Ike and Deghensea to get to her, be prepared to see her just Night King them back onto her feet and have them attack you from behind (coming to think of it, why didn't she just do that in Radiant Dawn?). Anankos has some similar feats as these two, but killing him actually turned out to be relatively simply, involving walking up and killing him. Not literally using his own power against him. So I'm sure Ashera and Grima could take him out with little trouble.

 

If we're just going with playable units well then I'd say Jugdral or Fodlan. The Relics are narratively depicted as putting the characters who wield them in a combat class of their own and if we're just going raw stats, then we still haven't seen anything quite as crazy as Julia with the Naga tome.

Edited September 2, 2022 by Jotari

[Quickpawmaud]

5 minutes ago, Jotari said:

If it's including villains, then it has to be either Awakening or Tellius. Because their antagonists are just plain ridiculous.

Not only is Grima an absurd size, cqapable of just flattening any arena you play on, but even if you somehow know his weakness and can teleport onto his back, you can't kill his Avatar unless you A)Have a Falchion or B)Are Grima yourself. So the A criteria eliminates pretty much every other setting besides Archanea and Valentia. Maybe the likes of Book of Naga or Hero's Relic could take him out, but even so, just getting to him is going to be a massive challenge without a dragon god or Gotoh figure on your side.

Ashera is going to be in the same camp. The story makes it pretty clear that without Yune (aka Ashera's own power) propping up the team, they would have stood no chance. Oh and she can also revive the dead, so if you have to mow down Ike and Deghensea to get to her, be prepared to see her just Night King them back onto her feet and have them attack you from behind (coming to think of it, why didn't she just do that in Radiant Dawn?).

 

If we're just going with playable units well then I'd say Jugdral or Fodlan. The Relics are narratively depicted as putting the characters who wield them in a combat class of their own and if we're just going raw stats, then we still haven't seen anything quite as crazy as Julia with the Naga tome.

Yeah probably just playable units then. Each using the rules from their own game. The relics in Fodlan don't seem *that* strong though. Some of the skills are crazy though like Quick Riposte.

Edited September 2, 2022 by Quickpawmaud

[Morgan--Grandmaster]

I might go with Fódlan based on sheer versatility. Anyone can make pretty much any weapon work. Give Annette a Bolt Axe and have her go to town on Low RES combatants, same with Lysithea/Hubert and Dark Spikes Τ that strike fear into anyone on a horse. Not to mention having three Lords on the same team, and Byleth, the ability to dismount, Personal skills, and Crests.

Edited September 2, 2022 by Morgan--Grandmaster

[Jotari]

53 minutes ago, Quickpawmaud said:

Yeah probably just playable units then. Each using the rules from their own game. The relics in Fodlan don't seem *that* strong though. Some of the skills are crazy though like Quick Riposte.

True, in gameplay the relics are underwhelming. But that brings about the question as to wether it's being analyzed in terms of literal gameplay performance or if it's in terms of narrative. Because while the relics are underwhelming in terms of narrative, they are OP in terms of narrative. Likewise, Kurthnaga isn't that great a unit, even when trained, in Radiant Dawn. Yet in terms of narrative, he's probably the most powerful fighter Yune's army has. If it is in terms of gameplay, well then what might interest people is my lords tourney I did earlier in the year which used a formula to counteract modern stat inflation, yet the Three Houses characters still managed to dominate because their skills are so strong.

 

[Quickpawmaud]

13 hours ago, Jotari said:

True, in gameplay the relics are underwhelming. But that brings about the question as to wether it's being analyzed in terms of literal gameplay performance or if it's in terms of narrative. Because while the relics are underwhelming in terms of narrative, they are OP in terms of narrative. Likewise, Kurthnaga isn't that great a unit, even when trained, in Radiant Dawn. Yet in terms of narrative, he's probably the most powerful fighter Yune's army has. If it is in terms of gameplay, well then what might interest people is my lords tourney I did earlier in the year which used a formula to counteract modern stat inflation, yet the Three Houses characters still managed to dominate because their skills are so strong.

 

That post looks really cool and similar to what I was thinking. Just with way more characters.

[SnowFire]

The title suggests a "plot power" tournament, but if this is actually a gameplay tournament...  hmm.   Sounds like some ground rules need to be set.  Here are some of mine:

• I assume the teams face each other on a selection of maps cobbled together from each team's home game (rather than Link Arena style "positioning is meaningless").  The maps are designed to be small to make run-and-gun Canto strategies possible, but constrained.  Say the size of a FEH map where an infantry unit takes ~6 turns to move from top left to bottom right and a cavalry unit might take ~4.5 turns (except crammed with 20 fighters rather than ~8-12, and it'll be larger than actual FEH maps because normal FE games have higher movement amounts).  Each map is played twice with each team having a turn as the "offense".  The offense goes first (relevant for "who Silence Staffs the other Bishop first").  The winner is whoever has more kills after ~10 turns, or if that is tied, the offense if they control a seize point that starts on the defender's side, and the defender otherwise.  (Basically this means that one unkillable unit that is unable to get kills itself still loses because the other side got 9 kills, and if both sides refuse to engage, then the defender wins by default.)
• I assume that stats are scaled to each team's home game, rather than taken literally.  (If you take them literally, then Radiant Dawn or aftergame Awakening units really like this, because Big Numbers!)  Note that this has the curious effect of "rewarding" imbalanced casts like FE4's, as it's not how good you are, but how much better you are than your competition.
• Based on the prompt, it sounds like these units are going wild rather than restricting themselves to "plot claims", so if Robin wants to be a Sorcerer for Nosferatu rather than a Grandmaster, FE7 characters want to bust out their rare Brave weapons supply for this, or RD staffers want to grab that Sleep staff, go nuts.  (Okay, maybe no go on some absurdly rare stuff, like FE11 Aum Staff).
• I'm ignoring Mila's Turnwheel and Divine Pulse.  If you allow them, then Echoes can fish for crits / dodges and the like using it.

Anyway, some initial impressions of rough power level... feel free to critique if I missed something!

• 2017 Launch Heroes: 1/10.  Stick 4 Takumis in front, back them with 2 Physic users hiding behind them, have a Nino & Linde for magic damage in the middle, throw in 2 dancers, and hope for the best I guess?  It might kill a few heavy-flyer teams, but loses to any sort of tricks.
• Sacred Stones: 2/10.  They are also very fair.  Many of their best weapons are range-1 (e.g. Sacred Twins).  They don't have a lot of "tricks" other than equipping Reavers to mess with the Weapon Triangle (and get wrecked the next phase by someone who exploits the new double-weakness) or weakness-hitting weapons.  Sure Shot Snipers can occasionally hit perfect evade targets, Pierce Wyvern Riders can get lucky against super-tanks (with animations turned off!), and Myrrh is a bit of a death-tank, but it doesn't seem like enough.  Maybe if you allow the single Berserk staff, that can get some work done vs. teams that don't pack Restore?
• Blazing Blade: 3/10.  See Sacred Stones, but Dark Magic has some interesting options.  Athos & Canas can fling Luna, which is VERY good vs. these endgame enemies due to ignoring the climbing Resistance stats, and even has decent Crit.  If they're still alive late in the fight, they can switch to Nosferatu tank stratz.  Like SS, there's a single PC-side Berserk Staff (at least according to quick a Wiki check) that might be handy if allowed.  
• Shadow Dragon: 3/10.  Very fair, no tricks, with one exception...  range.  Ballisticians can do some chip, and I guess Gotoh can throwdown with Swarm from a distance and there can be some sort of tome trade to compensate for no dancer to allow multiple Swarms in a single turn to go for a KO.  Can also Warp staff with infinite range if there's a straggler somewhere.  That said, this just forces the enemy to engage on the SD team, and some FE casts are very good at this.  Oh, some hellishly tanky Generals that might become unkillable if the enemy team loses all their magic damage from getting sniped by the Swarm/Ballista crew, but just...  don't let that happen.
• New Mystery of the Emblem: 3/10.  At least they have a dancer, and the cast is so huge that the 10 best characters have a notable stat edge from being compared with scrubs.  Their high move characters like Falcoknights have truly crazy high move for setting up dives on the backline too.  But not much else to 'em.
• Binding Blade: 4/10.  You can build some authentic dodgetanks in BB (although I suppose you could chalk this up to crappy enemy accuracy) with a Rutger / Clarine setup, and similar to New Mystery, so many scrubs makes the top 10 look relatively better.  Eclipse is cute too even if the hit rate is garbage.  Nosferatu strats are notably better than FE7 due to the much lighter weight, so a super-Raigh is a genuine threat here.  Usual staff nonsense like a rare Berserk staff that could tip things.
• Path of Radiance: 4/10.  I think you're all-in on a dodgetank plan here - have Ike / Oscar lead the charge and hope they don't get status'd or something that doesn't check evade.  Canto + most of the best units being cavalry and flyers is what you want for a setting like this, though, and allows some hit & run strategies.  Very physical damage heavy, though, which can be a problem against defense-walls, especially if the Sonic Sword / Flame Lance wielder dies.
• Radiant Dawn: 5/10.  Definitely the team most relying on just raw combat smiting, the scrubs help make the titans look good.  Helped by endgame RD classes generally having some sort of crit-style "Skill/2% chance enemy TOTALLY DIES".  Cain & Giffca will be nearly unkillable for some teams that don't pack fire magic, and Tibarn can be a sniper of key frail backline staff units.  Maybe some Sleep staff hax too?
• Echoes: 5/10.  While a "smart" opponent won't be as fooled by Phantom spam as the AI is, clogging the battlefield is still handy.  More importantly, Echoes has some crazy range games - Bow Knights with Hunter's Volley that will outrange enemy counters, and two mages with Mage Rings for +2 range.  Combined with some anti-mage Mortal Savants up front, you're good to go.
• Echoes Aftergame: 6/10.  Sonya learns spammable Entrap at very high levels, which is battle-winning if uncontested (Entrap your units one at a time and murder them horribly), so it forces the other team to engage even if they drew "defense".  And hell, just doing it on turn 1 to snipe a unit is often enough.  Mortal Savants who Villager-looped to Bow Knight with Hunter's Volley kill everything from very long range very dead very accurately.
• Fates: 6/10.  I might be underestimating Fates here, a skill system is always powerful, and joint attacks + Rallies are certainly handy for massively amping up damage when in good formation.  But a lot of Fates' most powerful stuff has drawbacks, and building an unkillable unit is intentionally a bit tricky (sorry Midori infinite Miracle hax), although Ryoma is still great of course.  Good news is that Spy's Shuriken / Poison Strike / Savage Blow provides a very good way to deal with enemy super-tanks (as the ENEMY team demonstrates in CQ Ryoma's map...), but Fates' own units remain fairly killable, and Corrin doesn't like how common dragon-slaying is in other FEs.  Similar to Echoes aftergame, the Entrap staff exists here too, and while not spammable, merely entrapping 4 enemies is powerful enough already.
• Three Houses: 6/10.  The 3H cast is all about setting up some insane dive with Gambits - a pile of flyers getting Stride, Dance of the Goddess, Raging Storm, an actual Dancer who got Danced by DotG, etc.  They lose some oomph if this dive fails, but even if they can't kill everyone, a don't move effect from a wide-area gambit aimed at the lowest Charm opponent can help them survive (thanks Ashes & Dust), as can Impenetrable Wall from a tanky Paladin.  If they can kill off the most accurate members of the opposing cast in their dive, can potentially set up an unkillable dodgetank, too.
• Awakening: 7/10.  Pair-Up is busted, Galeforce is busted, Pair-up and Galeforce together are busted, and at endgame you can have a bunch of A/S rank supports running around such that Dual Guards become distressingly common if you try to fight back.  Waste & Brave Weapons are storebought and can trigger pair-up attacks with each attack (and characters like Chrom & Lucina even have a boost to pair-up attack rate), so yeah, damage output is positively insane.
• Awakening Aftergame: 8/10.  At very high stats, certain "random" skills stop being so random, especially with skills like Rightful King, so stuff like Luna and Pavise trigger really often, which kind of "breaks" stat scaling since skill activation is still going up even if the stats vs. average aren't.  Plus this means you've had time to do cross-class nonsense like giving everyone who can hit Sorcerer Tomebreaker.
• 2022 Heroes: 9/10.  Go play modern Aether Raids, it's fun!  But there's some amazing BS at the high tiers, Ymir has Joint Drive Miracle, Save Armors intercept your attacks while being extremely tanky, skills like Odd/Even Recovery clear enemy status effects at the start of turn, Dancers with Wings of Mercy come out of nowhere to help an unkillable Brave Seliph go on a killing spree, skills like Fatal / Pulse Smoke to shut down critical / draining strategies, etc.  If you could set 10 units in an AR-D, yikes.
• Tokyo Mirage Sessions: 10/10.  Tetrakarn and Matarkarn affect the entire party in this game.  So only Almighty-equivalents can stop them (status attacks from staves, and maybe Radiant Dawn blessed weapons that break Mantle?!).  They can't even hit their 10 character deploy count but 2 characters spam defensive stuff while the others go on a killing spree seems powerful, especially since weapon triangle weaknesses are extremely plentiful to hit here.  Repeated actions can break this, of course, but the lost action economy is pretty awful.

Edited September 2, 2022 by SnowFire

[Quickpawmaud]

3 hours ago, SnowFire said:

The title suggests a "plot power" tournament, but if this is actually a gameplay tournament...  hmm.   Sounds like some ground rules need to be set.  Here are some of mine:

• I assume the teams face each other on a selection of maps cobbled together from each team's home game (rather than Link Arena style "positioning is meaningless").  The maps are designed to be small to make run-and-gun Canto strategies possible, but constrained.  Say the size of a FEH map where an infantry unit takes ~6 turns to move from top left to bottom right and a cavalry unit might take ~4.5 turns (except crammed with 20 fighters rather than ~8-12, and it'll be larger than actual FEH maps because normal FE games have higher movement amounts).  Each map is played twice with each team having a turn as the "offense".  The offense goes first (relevant for "who Silence Staffs the other Bishop first").  The winner is whoever has more kills after ~10 turns, or if that is tied, the offense if they control a seize point that starts on the defender's side, and the defender otherwise.  (Basically this means that one unkillable unit that is unable to get kills itself still loses because the other side got 9 kills, and if both sides refuse to engage, then the defender wins by default.)
• I assume that stats are scaled to each team's home game, rather than taken literally.  (If you take them literally, then Radiant Dawn or aftergame Awakening units really like this, because Big Numbers!)  Note that this has the curious effect of "rewarding" imbalanced casts like FE4's, as it's not how good you are, but how much better you are than your competition.
• Based on the prompt, it sounds like these units are going wild rather than restricting themselves to "plot claims", so if Robin wants to be a Sorcerer for Nosferatu rather than a Grandmaster, FE7 characters want to bust out their rare Brave weapons supply for this, or RD staffers want to grab that Sleep staff, go nuts.  (Okay, maybe no go on some absurdly rare stuff, like FE11 Aum Staff).
• I'm ignoring Mila's Turnwheel and Divine Pulse.  If you allow them, then Echoes can fish for crits / dodges and the like using it.

Anyway, some initial impressions of rough power level... feel free to critique if I missed something!

• 2017 Launch Heroes: 1/10.  Stick 4 Takumis in front, back them with 2 Physic users hiding behind them, have a Nino & Linde for magic damage in the middle, throw in 2 dancers, and hope for the best I guess?  It might kill a few heavy-flyer teams, but loses to any sort of tricks.
• Sacred Stones: 2/10.  They are also very fair.  Many of their best weapons are range-1 (e.g. Sacred Twins).  They don't have a lot of "tricks" other than equipping Reavers to mess with the Weapon Triangle (and get wrecked the next phase by someone who exploits the new double-weakness) or weakness-hitting weapons.  Sure Shot Snipers can occasionally hit perfect evade targets, Pierce Wyvern Riders can get lucky against super-tanks (with animations turned off!), and Myrrh is a bit of a death-tank, but it doesn't seem like enough.  Maybe if you allow the single Berserk staff, that can get some work done vs. teams that don't pack Restore?
• Blazing Blade: 3/10.  See Sacred Stones, but Dark Magic has some interesting options.  Athos & Canas can fling Luna, which is VERY good vs. these endgame enemies due to ignoring the climbing Resistance stats, and even has decent Crit.  If they're still alive late in the fight, they can switch to Nosferatu tank stratz.  Like SS, there's a single PC-side Berserk Staff (at least according to quick a Wiki check) that might be handy if allowed.  
• Shadow Dragon: 3/10.  Very fair, no tricks, with one exception...  range.  Ballisticians can do some chip, and I guess Gotoh can throwdown with Swarm from a distance and there can be some sort of tome trade to compensate for no dancer to allow multiple Swarms in a single turn to go for a KO.  Can also Warp staff with infinite range if there's a straggler somewhere.  That said, this just forces the enemy to engage on the SD team, and some FE casts are very good at this.  Oh, some hellishly tanky Generals that might become unkillable if the enemy team loses all their magic damage from getting sniped by the Swarm/Ballista crew, but just...  don't let that happen.
• New Mystery of the Emblem: 3/10.  At least they have a dancer, and the cast is so huge that the 10 best characters have a notable stat edge from being compared with scrubs.  Their high move characters like Falcoknights have truly crazy high move for setting up dives on the backline too.  But not much else to 'em.
• Binding Blade: 4/10.  You can build some authentic dodgetanks in BB (although I suppose you could chalk this up to crappy enemy accuracy) with a Rutger / Clarine setup, and similar to New Mystery, so many scrubs makes the top 10 look relatively better.  Eclipse is cute too even if the hit rate is garbage.  Nosferatu strats are notably better than FE7 due to the much lighter weight, so a super-Raigh is a genuine threat here.  Usual staff nonsense like a rare Berserk staff that could tip things.
• Path of Radiance: 4/10.  I think you're all-in on a dodgetank plan here - have Ike / Oscar lead the charge and hope they don't get status'd or something that doesn't check evade.  Canto + most of the best units being cavalry and flyers is what you want for a setting like this, though, and allows some hit & run strategies.  Very physical damage heavy, though, which can be a problem against defense-walls, especially if the Sonic Sword / Flame Lance wielder dies.
• Radiant Dawn: 5/10.  Definitely the team most relying on just raw combat smiting, the scrubs help make the titans look good.  Helped by endgame RD classes generally having some sort of crit-style "Skill/2% chance enemy TOTALLY DIES".  Cain & Giffca will be nearly unkillable for some teams that don't pack fire magic, and Tibarn can be a sniper of key frail backline staff units.  Maybe some Sleep staff hax too?
• Echoes: 5/10.  While a "smart" opponent won't be as fooled by Phantom spam as the AI is, clogging the battlefield is still handy.  More importantly, Echoes has some crazy range games - Bow Knights with Hunter's Volley that will outrange enemy counters, and two mages with Mage Rings for +2 range.  Combined with some anti-mage Mortal Savants up front, you're good to go.
• Echoes Aftergame: 6/10.  Sonya learns spammable Entrap at very high levels, which is battle-winning if uncontested (Entrap your units one at a time and murder them horribly), so it forces the other team to engage even if they drew "defense".  And hell, just doing it on turn 1 to snipe a unit is often enough.  Mortal Savants who Villager-looped to Bow Knight with Hunter's Volley kill everything from very long range very dead very accurately.
• Fates: 6/10.  I might be underestimating Fates here, a skill system is always powerful, and joint attacks + Rallies are certainly handy for massively amping up damage when in good formation.  But a lot of Fates' most powerful stuff has drawbacks, and building an unkillable unit is intentionally a bit tricky (sorry Midori infinite Miracle hax), although Ryoma is still great of course.  Good news is that Spy's Shuriken / Poison Strike / Savage Blow provides a very good way to deal with enemy super-tanks (as the ENEMY team demonstrates in CQ Ryoma's map...), but Fates' own units remain fairly killable, and Corrin doesn't like how common dragon-slaying is in other FEs.  Similar to Echoes aftergame, the Entrap staff exists here too, and while not spammable, merely entrapping 4 enemies is powerful enough already.
• Three Houses: 6/10.  The 3H cast is all about setting up some insane dive with Gambits - a pile of flyers getting Stride, Dance of the Goddess, Raging Storm, an actual Dancer who got Danced by DotG, etc.  They lose some oomph if this dive fails, but even if they can't kill everyone, a don't move effect from a wide-area gambit aimed at the lowest Charm opponent can help them survive (thanks Ashes & Dust), as can Impenetrable Wall from a tanky Paladin.  If they can kill off the most accurate members of the opposing cast in their dive, can potentially set up an unkillable dodgetank, too.
• Awakening: 7/10.  Pair-Up is busted, Galeforce is busted, Pair-up and Galeforce together are busted, and at endgame you can have a bunch of A/S rank supports running around such that Dual Guards become distressingly common if you try to fight back.  Waste & Brave Weapons are storebought and can trigger pair-up attacks with each attack (and characters like Chrom & Lucina even have a boost to pair-up attack rate), so yeah, damage output is positively insane.
• Awakening Aftergame: 8/10.  At very high stats, certain "random" skills stop being so random, especially with skills like Rightful King, so stuff like Luna and Pavise trigger really often, which kind of "breaks" stat scaling since skill activation is still going up even if the stats vs. average aren't.  Plus this means you've had time to do cross-class nonsense like giving everyone who can hit Sorcerer Tomebreaker.
• 2022 Heroes: 9/10.  Go play modern Aether Raids, it's fun!  But there's some amazing BS at the high tiers, Ymir has Joint Drive Miracle, Save Armors intercept your attacks while being extremely tanky, skills like Odd/Even Recovery clear enemy status effects at the start of turn, Dancers with Wings of Mercy come out of nowhere to help an unkillable Brave Seliph go on a killing spree, skills like Fatal / Pulse Smoke to shut down critical / draining strategies, etc.  If you could set 10 units in an AR-D, yikes.
• Tokyo Mirage Sessions: 10/10.  Tetrakarn and Matarkarn affect the entire party in this game.  So only Almighty-equivalents can stop them (status attacks from staves, and maybe Radiant Dawn blessed weapons that break Mantle?!).  They can't even hit their 10 character deploy count but 2 characters spam defensive stuff while the others go on a killing spree seems powerful, especially since weapon triangle weaknesses are extremely plentiful to hit here.  Repeated actions can break this, of course, but the lost action economy is pretty awful.

I see you left out Jugdral. Otherwise this is great. Although I am surprised Awakening is so high I agree with your reasoning.

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, SnowFire said:

The title suggests a "plot power" tournament, but if this is actually a gameplay tournament...  hmm.   Sounds like some ground rules need to be set.  Here are some of mine:

• I assume the teams face each other on a selection of maps cobbled together from each team's home game (rather than Link Arena style "positioning is meaningless").  The maps are designed to be small to make run-and-gun Canto strategies possible, but constrained.  Say the size of a FEH map where an infantry unit takes ~6 turns to move from top left to bottom right and a cavalry unit might take ~4.5 turns (except crammed with 20 fighters rather than ~8-12, and it'll be larger than actual FEH maps because normal FE games have higher movement amounts).  Each map is played twice with each team having a turn as the "offense".  The offense goes first (relevant for "who Silence Staffs the other Bishop first").  The winner is whoever has more kills after ~10 turns, or if that is tied, the offense if they control a seize point that starts on the defender's side, and the defender otherwise.  (Basically this means that one unkillable unit that is unable to get kills itself still loses because the other side got 9 kills, and if both sides refuse to engage, then the defender wins by default.)

In other words, Shadow Dragon's multiplayer.

4 hours ago, SnowFire said:

• Echoes Aftergame: 6/10.  Sonya learns spammable Entrap at very high levels, which is battle-winning if uncontested (Entrap your units one at a time and murder them horribly), so it forces the other team to engage even if they drew "defense".  And hell, just doing it on turn 1 to snipe a unit is often enough.  Mortal Savants who Villager-looped to Bow Knight with Hunter's Volley kill everything from very long range very dead very accurately.

Oh wow, she does...I don't think I've ever levelled her that much...even though I know I have got her into her Overclass. Maybe I just didn't notice or forgot. Can you entrap units like Grima and Duma?

I'd also add here that Tatiana is one of, if not the best, healer in the series, as she can just spam Fortify from the back row on literally every turn (well, almost, if the battle runs really long her HP drain will outpace what ever ring you have on her, but then someone like Celica can just heal her).

4 hours ago, SnowFire said:

• Three Houses: 6/10.  The 3H cast is all about setting up some insane dive with Gambits - a pile of flyers getting Stride, Dance of the Goddess, Raging Storm, an actual Dancer who got Danced by DotG, etc.  They lose some oomph if this dive fails, but even if they can't kill everyone, a don't move effect from a wide-area gambit aimed at the lowest Charm opponent can help them survive (thanks Ashes & Dust), as can Impenetrable Wall from a tanky Paladin.  If they can kill off the most accurate members of the opposing cast in their dive, can potentially set up an unkillable dodgetank, too.

Of course every non TH unit has a Charm stat of either 0 or NAN.

4 hours ago, SnowFire said:

• [snip]

No Jugdral? As I've mentioned earlier, Julia with Naga is an absolute beast of a unit. And she can even staff spam is that becomes the meta. And if that is the Meta, then Thracia!Leif has a unique niche over every other unit in the series by being completely immune to all status effects.

[AnonymousSpeed]

On 9/1/2022 at 9:08 PM, Quickpawmaud said:

So if the 10 strongest units from each FE game fought in a tournament who do you think would win.

Easy. Saul. Because of his faith, all of his dreams will come true, including the dream of winning the epic victory royale.

Volke is a close second because he'd assassinate everyone instead of actually fighting.

[SnowFire]

On Jugdral: I encourage you - yes, you, the person reading this right now - to go post your thoughts on the merits of FE1-5 in such a scenario.  I haven't played those games seriously so it'd be just theorycraft if I were to talk... although I know Sety / Ced is supposed to be some unkillable uber-speed dodge-tank in FE4 2nd Generation with 110 Evade, at least with proper eugenics, so FE4 would have that at least, along with some supreme scrubs dragging down the internal stat average to make the Crusader blood folks look good (Corple, Lynn, etc.).  

On Awakening: There's definitely a harsher scaling that makes Awakening less broken, but since the characters CAN act individually, I'd be inclined to see pair-up attacks (even when not directly paired up) as basically damage that doesn't go against the "average", which makes Awakening (and Fates when deployed spread-out in offense formation) having naturally extra damage if either paired-up, or if set up in a properly crowded formation.  Even at regular endgame levels (rather than aftergame), you *could* have Dark Fliers Robin, Sumia, Cordelia, & Cynthia, and with pair-up covering damage issues, they're just constantly taking extra turns after they dive, and can potentially even ferry in tankier units to switch to for the stragglers left in enemy phase.  And then even when the enemy team gets their action, they have to roll the dice against Pair-Up Defenses nulling their stuff.  Pretty tough.

On Charm: I'd say that Radiant Dawn leadership stars are at least vaguely in the same universe as Charm.  Would definitely spot non-3H characters some Charm so that the match doesn't crash and the connection disconnect after a 3H character tries to use a Gambit, presumably on similar rules - Lords get a lot, jerks and/or loners tend to get a little, everyone else is somewhere in the middle.

On Echoes: Yeah, there's a known bug with Overclasses and spell-learning - basically switching to an Overclass "resets" spell-learning level rather than adding to it, so characters "forget" any spells their normal last class learns, and learn them at the levels expected for their regular normal class.  I've never tried to Entrap Duma (it requires L10 Priestess / whatever her Overclass is, so more an aftergame dungeon thing) but don't see why it wouldn't work.  (Entrap doesn't have infinite range, though, so this isn't a turn 2 kill or something...  you'd have to get at least somewhat closer.)

Edited September 3, 2022 by SnowFire

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, SnowFire said:

On Jugdral: I encourage you - yes, you, the person reading this right now - to go post your thoughts on the merits of FE1-5 in such a scenario.  I haven't played those games seriously so it'd be just theorycraft if I were to talk... although I know Sety / Ced is supposed to be some unkillable uber-speed dodge-tank in FE4 2nd Generation with 110 Evade, at least with proper eugenics, so FE4 would have that at least, along with some supreme scrubs dragging down the internal stat average to make the Crusader blood folks look good (Corple, Lynn, etc.).  

One weird thing about trying to fit Shadow Dragon NES into any comparative system is the way it handles magic. In that there is none. Like there is literally no magic stat. And it's not like it's Str and Magic combined like the GBA games, no magic just is not factored into damage calculations at all. Tomes, essentially, deal set damage, as there's also no resistance. The one exception to this is Gotoh who comes with maxed out resistance (that is to say, 7). Which means if you're comparing him as "better than his peers" he has infinite resistance as 7 is infinitely bigger than 0, the resistance of every other unit in the game. Course you could also average the resistance by adding the resistance of every character in the game and dividing by the number of characters, but then Gotoh comes with a minuscule resistance stat (because (51*0+7)/52 = Something a hell of a lot smaller than 1.

[SnowFire]

14 hours ago, Jotari said:

One weird thing about trying to fit Shadow Dragon NES into any comparative system is the way it handles magic. In that there is none. Like there is literally no magic stat. And it's not like it's Str and Magic combined like the GBA games, no magic just is not factored into damage calculations at all. Tomes, essentially, deal set damage, as there's also no resistance. The one exception to this is Gotoh who comes with maxed out resistance (that is to say, 7). Which means if you're comparing him as "better than his peers" he has infinite resistance as 7 is infinitely bigger than 0, the resistance of every other unit in the game. Course you could also average the resistance by adding the resistance of every character in the game and dividing by the number of characters, but then Gotoh comes with a minuscule resistance stat (because (51*0+7)/52 = Something a hell of a lot smaller than 1.

You're talking about something I've thought a lot about!  (Okay, in coordination with others, this is from the RPGDL interps...)  First off, NES "Gato" is part of the average *himself*, so the average resistance of the cast is ~0.1 rather than 0.  Second, the better way to interp relative resistance is probably "damage taken vs. incoming magical attacks", and FE1 has Tomes with >7 Might.  So a toy cast might look like this:

vs. Enemy Mage with Tron (13 might):

Marth: 13 damage, Jagen: 13 damage, Abel: 13 damage, (...): 13 damage, Gato: 6 damage

Average damage taken = (13*[Cast size -1] + 7) / (Cast size)

If the FE1 cast only had 4 members, then it'd be (45/4) = 11.25 average damage, so Gotoh would reduce incoming magic damage by ~0.53, while the other members would take ~1.15 additional damage from magic.  The actual cast size is apparently 54 characters, so that comes out to ~12.87 average damage, so most FE1 characters multiply incoming magic damage by 1.01, and Gotoh multiplies it by ~0.47.  (If you assumed an enemy mage with a weaker Tome, then Gotoh looks better, of course.)  So Gato is tanky to magic, but not by an insane degree, at least if the assumption of Tron-equipped mages is reasonable (not familiar with actual endgame FE1 enemy mage loadouts, if they use weaker tomes that'd help the cause). (I'm using http://twilkitri.fewiki.net/FE1/fe1table.htm and http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=1742.0 for reference, for the record.)

Compare this with, say, The Binding Blade, where the endgame cast average of Resistance is ~10.9 (can vary a bit depending on what you see endgame level as, this is assuming 20/13 for most characters), but you have characters like Yoder with 30 Resistance and L17 Fae with 34 Resistance.  I believe that on Normal mode, only Brunnya can possibly pierce that insane resistance, and only does so for lol damage.  They're being compared against a huge cast, many of whose resistance is terrible, so I'd be inclined to respect them as magic tanks a lot more than FE1 Gotoh.  (See http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6549.0 , note that it uses the "old" names so Yodel and Fa and the like; I ended up with Fae reducing incoming magic damage by a multiplier of 0.06, so 94% reduction.)

[Acacia Sgt]

You'd probably better off using the DS stats and calcs, since it's more in-line with the rest of the series than the originals.

Although, it makes sense from a story perspective. Magic in Archanea has only been (re?)introduced to humans for less than a century by Gotoh, so just about no one having Resistance fits.

Edited September 4, 2022 by Acacia Sgt

[Jotari]

9 hours ago, SnowFire said:

You're talking about something I've thought a lot about!  (Okay, in coordination with others, this is from the RPGDL interps...)  First off, NES "Gato" is part of the average *himself*, so the average resistance of the cast is ~0.1 rather than 0.  Second, the better way to interp relative resistance is probably "damage taken vs. incoming magical attacks", and FE1 has Tomes with >7 Might.  So a toy cast might look like this:

vs. Enemy Mage with Tron (13 might):

Marth: 13 damage, Jagen: 13 damage, Abel: 13 damage, (...): 13 damage, Gato: 6 damage

Average damage taken = (13*[Cast size -1] + 7) / (Cast size)

If the FE1 cast only had 4 members, then it'd be (45/4) = 11.25 average damage, so Gotoh would reduce incoming magic damage by ~0.53, while the other members would take ~1.15 additional damage from magic.  The actual cast size is apparently 54 characters, so that comes out to ~12.87 average damage, so most FE1 characters multiply incoming magic damage by 1.01, and Gotoh multiplies it by ~0.47.  (If you assumed an enemy mage with a weaker Tome, then Gotoh looks better, of course.)  So Gato is tanky to magic, but not by an insane degree, at least if the assumption of Tron-equipped mages is reasonable (not familiar with actual endgame FE1 enemy mage loadouts, if they use weaker tomes that'd help the cause). (I'm using http://twilkitri.fewiki.net/FE1/fe1table.htm and http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=1742.0 for reference, for the record.)

Compare this with, say, The Binding Blade, where the endgame cast average of Resistance is ~10.9 (can vary a bit depending on what you see endgame level as, this is assuming 20/13 for most characters), but you have characters like Yoder with 30 Resistance and L17 Fae with 34 Resistance.  I believe that on Normal mode, only Brunnya can possibly pierce that insane resistance, and only does so for lol damage.  They're being compared against a huge cast, many of whose resistance is terrible, so I'd be inclined to respect them as magic tanks a lot more than FE1 Gotoh.  (See http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6549.0 , note that it uses the "old" names so Yodel and Fa and the like; I ended up with Fae reducing incoming magic damage by a multiplier of 0.06, so 94% reduction.)

Oh yeah, I didn't say the average was 0. I said it's a hell of a lot less than 1. And the fact that Gotoh doesn't just shrug off magic is part of what makes it hard to compare to the rest of the series. He has infinitely more resistance compared to his peers, but he doesn't actually have infinite resistance. If he did things would actually be pretty neat. 

Another thing to FE1's advantage if it was counted amongst the rest of the games is that FE1's Falchion gives Marth immunity to physical melee weapons. They can't even try to attack him. His only weakness are magic, bows and dragons (which he has effective damage against). So he is just straight up beating the likes of Ike and Dimitri. Falchion can also be used to restore all his HP. FE1 Marth is kind of insane. Though unfortunately for his continuity, he doesn't really have the back up from his own game as the low stat caps put characters in the same range (at least if they can promote, but even those that don't get pretty close to caps), they also lack the range of the Shadow Dragon remake. Though Bantu is essentially immune to physical attacks too, which would certainly help.

[Acacia Sgt]

9 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Oh yeah, I didn't say the average was 0. I said it's a hell of a lot less than 1. And the fact that Gotoh doesn't just shrug off magic is part of what makes it hard to compare to the rest of the series. He has infinitely more resistance compared to his peers, but he doesn't actually have infinite resistance. If he did things would actually be pretty neat. 

Another thing to FE1's advantage if it was counted amongst the rest of the games is that FE1's Falchion gives Marth immunity to physical melee weapons. They can't even try to attack him. His only weakness are magic, bows and dragons (which he has effective damage against). So he is just straight up beating the likes of Ike and Dimitri. Falchion can also be used to restore all his HP. FE1 Marth is kind of insane. Though unfortunately for his continuity, he doesn't really have the back up from his own game as the low stat caps put characters in the same range (at least if they can promote, but even those that don't get pretty close to caps), they also lack the range of the Shadow Dragon remake. Though Bantu is essentially immune to physical attacks too, which would certainly help.

Oh yeah, forgot that about OG Falchion.

On that logic, Tiki too since the Divinestone gives even more Defense than the Firestone. It's also curiously weaker, having four less MT... and isn't effective against Medeus.

Edited September 4, 2022 by Acacia Sgt