What if Fire Emblem had the same growth rates for every character?

[Fates-Blade]

I think if FE had the same growth rates for every character any character could grow in any way which is pretty crazy, in fact I think every playthrough would be different if every character had the same growths. For example the main character could become more proficient at magic than physical attacks or become a knight that has good resistance or a paladin with low Str but high Str.

I also feel that base stats could play a more significant role if this idea were implemented in a FE game.

I tried making a growth rate that would be used for this idea:

HP 127, Str 35, Mag 35, Skl 45, Spd 30, Lck 45, Def 30, Res 30. 

What do you all think of this idea and the growth rates?

EDIT: For the main character the growths would be: HP 142, Str 40, Mag 40, Skl 55, Spd 35, Lck 55, Def 35, Res 35. 

Edited April 30, 2023 by Fates-Blade

[Jotari]

Base stats are already far more important than growths. Giving everyone the same growth rates would mostly result in characters becoming more samey the closer you get to endgame.

[Light magic is cool]

Extremely boring.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

That´d just reduce outliers like Nyx, Charlotte and so on, unless you´d give units extremely varied starting stats like Panettes 25 STR and then also mess around with stat caps.

Would be an upgrade for a Jeigans tho. bleh

[AnonymousSpeed]

Because class growth rates are thing, this isn't totally homogeneous even discounting base stats.

On 4/30/2023 at 6:12 PM, Jotari said:

Base stats are already far more important than growths. 

Kinda depends on the game at this point. For GBA games, absolutely. But for a game like Fates, where stats and growths are so inflated and where enemies have such high stats, character growth rates actually matter a lot.

On 4/30/2023 at 4:17 PM, Fates-Blade said:

I also feel that base stats could play a more significant role if this idea were implemented in a FE game

Continuing off of that, bases outclass growths when your caps are lower and pre-promotes join with stats that are liable to one-round enemies.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I was thinking about this, and honestly, if you changed it so in any given game, every character had the same growth rates... I don't think it would have a massive impact on most games.

Sure, there are one or two characters like Myrrh who would lose most of their niche. There are also cases like Bartre vs. Dorcas where now Dorcas just completely outclasses Bartre (instead of just mostly). But for the most part, the same characters would be worth using. And that kinda drives home how overly fixated people are on growths, even now.

One thing about growths I often reflect on is that we kinda take them on faith. Now, as more and more people hack into ROMs this is less likely than it used to be, but I've certainly asked myself in the past, what if the growth rates that are published are wrong? What if a bug caused e.g. non-HP growths above 50% to actually only be 50% in practice? How would we figure it out? It's actually remarkably difficult to do so, unless everyone sits down and starts carefully comparing notes... or more likely some nerd (endearing) gets in there and carefully looks at the code. Worth noting that things like this have happened in the past: in the early days of Blazing Blade, it was commonly believed that sharing an affinity with the tactician granted +5% to all growths. Turned out, this is just wrong. Another, more recent one is some people made wildly incorrect assumptions about how Three Houses ensures a two-stat minimum for characters on levelling up, resulting in Constance having (by their assumptions) an effective magic growth of close to 80% (I forget the exact number), instead of the ~64% it turned out to be. The fact that these errors can be made and not caught, potentially for years, says much.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I was thinking about this, and honestly, if you changed it so in any given game, every character had the same growth rates... I don't think it would have a massive impact on most games.

Sure, there are one or two characters like Myrrh who would lose most of their niche. There are also cases like Bartre vs. Dorcas where now Dorcas just completely outclasses Bartre (instead of just mostly). But for the most part, the same characters would be worth using. And that kinda drives home how overly fixated people are on growths, even now.

One thing about growths I often reflect on is that we kinda take them on faith. Now, as more and more people hack into ROMs this is less likely than it used to be, but I've certainly asked myself in the past, what if the growth rates that are published are wrong? What if a bug caused e.g. non-HP growths above 50% to actually only be 50% in practice? How would we figure it out? It's actually remarkably difficult to do so, unless everyone sits down and starts carefully comparing notes... or more likely some nerd (endearing) gets in there and carefully looks at the code. Worth noting that things like this have happened in the past: in the early days of Blazing Blade, it was commonly believed that sharing an affinity with the tactician granted +5% to all growths. Turned out, this is just wrong. Another, more recent one is some people made wildly incorrect assumptions about how Three Houses ensures a two-stat minimum for characters on levelling up, resulting in Constance having (by their assumptions) an effective magic growth of close to 80% (I forget the exact number), instead of the ~64% it turned out to be. The fact that these errors can be made and not caught, potentially for years, says much.

Characters still don't massively deviate much from the averages we have. At least in my experience.

[Dark Holy Elf]

6 hours ago, Jotari said:

Characters still don't massively deviate much from the averages we have. At least in my experience.

Yeah, that establishes that the growth rates we have are at least roughly correct. It's basically impossible that Lilina secretly only has 30% magic growth, for instance.

But smaller errors would be much harder to detect, as per the examples I gave.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

I'm gonna be honest, I don't care much for variation between how a unit turns out between different playthroughs. Like, say I have a run where Eliwood gets Res-blessed, but Skill-screwed. It's... interesting, sure, but not enough to make me feel more or less joy about using him. If I've resolved to use him, then I'm not dropping him for a couple bad levels-up. Nor am I necessarily promoting a "filler" unit to "main squad" because they get blessed once or twice.

So, this sort of change would do little to add to my enjoyment, and do a lot to make units feel more "samey" with one another. I definitely wouldn't want it to happen in a growths-heavy game, like Three Houses. Part of what distinguishes Lysithea and Constance is their high Magic growths - take that away, and they lose their "premier offensive mage" status. Likewise, if Raphael loses the ability to tank physical hits, then all of a sudden he's offering literally nothing unique.

As others have mentioned, though, it wouldn't make a big difference in games where bases are king. And in games like Old Mystery and Thracia, you could still use equippables to affect your units' growths. If you're doing it, though, I'd suggest easier to calculate numbers: a flat 30 in all stats, except for HP, which is 70. Then they could see their growths modified by class growth rates, plus equippables. That wouldn't be the worst system in the world.

[Dark Holy Elf]

8 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

So, this sort of change would do little to add to my enjoyment, and do a lot to make units feel more "samey" with one another. I definitely wouldn't want it to happen in a growths-heavy game, like Three Houses. Part of what distinguishes Lysithea and Constance is their high Magic growths - take that away, and they lose their "premier offensive mage" status. Likewise, if Raphael loses the ability to tank physical hits, then all of a sudden he's offering literally nothing unique.

So here's the thing, even those examples are a much smaller difference than people often think.

Raphael in particular. Let's talk about his defence growth. 45% growth is pretty cool, right? Let's say we lowered it to 30%, equivalent to someone like Felix or Petra. Is this a major nerf? Well... not really. By Level 10 he'd be 1 or 2 points below where he normally is. Armour Knight certification comes along, though, and raises his stat to 12... which is higher than either version of Raphael averages. So, unless Raphael was defence-blessed the gap's now zero. By Level 20, again he might open up a gap of 1 to 2 points... but Fortress Knight minimum comes along, and again, nope, the gap vanishes. Only after Level 34 is Raphael's supposed good defence growth resulting in more than 2-point advantage on this nerfed Raphael, at least on average.

Granted, some other examples aren't as easily fixed by class minimums. Magic is one, and Lysithea/Constance do have an edge there, though IMO one that is dwarfed by the importance of spell list differences (fortunately, both have pretty solid spell lists anyway). Speed is another; if Petra lost 15% speed growth that would be a pretty major nerf, since 5-6 less points by lategame will almost surely cost her doubles against a class of enemies, possibly multiple, and most Petra bulds rely on doubling. But overall, I still think people tend to kneejerk overrate the impact of growth differences.

[Jotari]

31 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

So here's the thing, even those examples are a much smaller difference than people often think.

Raphael in particular. Let's talk about his defence growth. 45% growth is pretty cool, right? Let's say we lowered it to 30%, equivalent to someone like Felix or Petra. Is this a major nerf? Well... not really. By Level 10 he'd be 1 or 2 points below where he normally is. Armour Knight certification comes along, though, and raises his stat to 12... which is higher than either version of Raphael averages. So, unless Raphael was defence-blessed the gap's now zero. By Level 20, again he might open up a gap of 1 to 2 points... but Fortress Knight minimum comes along, and again, nope, the gap vanishes. Only after Level 34 is Raphael's supposed good defence growth resulting in more than 2-point advantage on this nerfed Raphael, at least on average.

Granted, some other examples aren't as easily fixed by class minimums. Magic is one, and Lysithea/Constance do have an edge there, though IMO one that is dwarfed by the importance of spell list differences (fortunately, both have pretty solid spell lists anyway). Speed is another; if Petra lost 15% speed growth that would be a pretty major nerf, since 5-6 less points by lategame will almost surely cost her doubles against a class of enemies, possibly multiple, and most Petra bulds rely on doubling. But overall, I still think people tend to kneejerk overrate the impact of growth differences.

Three Houses isn't a growths or bases focused game. It's a ranks and skills focused game.

[Shadow Mir]

This whole thing makes me think "When everyone is super... no one will be".

[Whisky]

On 5/1/2023 at 10:13 PM, Dark Holy Elf said:

Another, more recent one is some people made wildly incorrect assumptions about how Three Houses ensures a two-stat minimum for characters on levelling up, resulting in Constance having (by their assumptions) an effective magic growth of close to 80% (I forget the exact number), instead of the ~64% it turned out to be. The fact that these errors can be made and not caught, potentially for years, says much.

Wait, how does the two stat minimum work? I’ve calculated averages factoring in class bases and caps before but just ignored the two stats minimum because I didn’t know how it was calculated. Now I’m curious.

[Dark Holy Elf]

19 hours ago, Whisky said:

Wait, how does the two stat minimum work? I’ve calculated averages factoring in class bases and caps before but just ignored the two stats minimum because I didn’t know how it was calculated. Now I’m curious.

triabolical figured it out; you can read about it in this Serenes thread (some discussion/elaboration follows). The tl'dr is that ignoring the effect as you did is perfectly fair; the most it will do is maybe give Constance an extra point of magic by lategame.

[AnonymousSpeed]

On 5/3/2023 at 1:59 PM, Shadow Mir said:

This whole thing makes me think "When everyone is super... no one will be".