Fire Emblem Dice-based RP

[simj26]

Hm. I've actually told @FatherGigantor about this project a while ago, and while the worlds haven't been created, I have somewhat solid mechanics put up.


However, I need opinions on each and every one of these mechanics so to better cater to the public. Keep in mind, however, the stats that I will be following will be of the GBA games, which means that there will be no uber stats at the 60s, and growths will be at very, very salt-inducing levels, those are confirmed. Without further ado, allow me to present my questions.


1) Skills


With FE: Fates confirming that there will be personal skills unique to each character, and we, being an RP site, should, if we haven't, be heavy on characters. This, being FE, as well, should also focus on characterisations. As such, I believe that skills, including personal ones, should be included.


However, the problem lies in that GBA games have no skills, and this will come up in the next topic.


2) Luck


Oft seen as the shittiest stat, Luck never really did matter, other than to take off the enemy's 1% crit chance which could potentially fuck you over in the GBA games.


In the GBA games, Luck not only took away your opponent's crit chance by one with each level, it also added 0.5 to your Evade and Crit stats. This was nerfed in the newer games, where skills take precedence, and they were knocked down to 0.3 per level. (I.e. At 20 Luck, one would have +10 Evade and +10 Crit in the GBA games, whereas in Awakening, you'd only have +6 to both).


In line with the previous question, and due to @Homage 's suggestion, I will keep the new games' 0.3 per level. Unless, of course, one can argue otherwise?


3) Laguz?


Perhaps not. Apparently, everyone loves the RD games for some reason, and seem to like including Laguz into their RPs. With Manakete and killer rabbits in Awakening and the inclusion of werewolves/Garou in Fates, what do you think? Should I also tweak my battle systems to include Manakete, Garou, Taguel, and/or Laguz (though their name might be changed)? I can't seem to understand why you people would like to play a race that everyone hates. Filthy subhumans.


4) Shortbows


We all know how shitty these bows are. However, a recent patch that came out to mod the weapons restrict shortbows to only 1 tile, allowing archers to have an enemy phase (thank god). Should I follow suit? It does make archers more viable that way, instead of getting them benched every other game, or having no one play them in an RP.


5) Con and Weight


Something that was removed from later games. Con, for those of you unlearned, basically states just how physically strong a character is, and whether they can hold heavier weapons. Attack Speed was very dependent on a character's Con.


The formula was as such:


if Con >= Weight, AS = Speed


if Con < Weight, AS = Speed - (Weight - Con)


The big question is


Bring back Con, or no Con?


NOTE: Although Con is listed as a stat, it DOES NOT level up and has no growth stats at all.


6) Rescue


Along with Con, there was the Rescue mechanic. It allowed characters to pick up another character with a lower Con. It allowed easier traversals, such as a wyvern knight picking up a general and carrying him across impassable mountains and dropping him there. However, the recent removal of Rescue and addition of Pair Up may have already caused this mechanic to go stale.


As of Fates, Pair Ups function differently as well.


Father gigs explains it:

Units adjacent always attack together in pair-up, which is known as offensive stance.. The actual pairing-up Awakening style in Fates is defensive stance, where stat boosts are given to the main unit. The support unit will dual guard a main unit attack after a set amount of attacks on the main unit, and they will also DG every attack made by support unit enemies in offensive stance. The trade off is that, you essentially lose one unit, and that the paired up units cannot participate in offensive stance attacks. Father Gigantor

What are your thoughts on this? Which should I take? Keep in mind, if we're bringing back the old Rescue mechanic, Con becomes slightly mitigated in terms of relevance.


7) Option to restart


Because every Fire Emblem is this. You lose a unit, you reset. Should I be a nice guy and allow soft resets of a map or story line if someone dies?


This, of course, may mean that you lose all those sweet level ups another character received, respawn every other annoying enemy on the map, etc, etc.


That's all the questions for now.


So, Emblemiers and those looking for a stupidly tough time trying to figure out how I calculate everything, what are your thoughts on these? I expect to hear your opinions, Roy or isn't our boy at all.

 

[Father Gigantor]

M80, lrn2tag pls.


 
Also, you made a mistake on your Pair up section. Units adjacent always attack together in pair-up, which is known as offensive stance.. The actual pairing-up Awakening style in Fates is defensive stance, where stat boosts are given to the main unit. The support unit will dual guard a main unit attack after a set amount of attacks on the main unit, and they will also DG every attack made by support unit enemies in offensive stance. The trade off is that, you essentially lose one unit, and that the paired up units cannot participate in offensive stance attacks.

 

[simj26]

[QUOTE="Father Gigantor]M80, lrn2tag pls.
 
Also, you made a mistake on your Pair up section. Units adjacent always attack together in pair-up, which is known as offensive stance.. The actual pairing-up Awakening style in Fates is defensive stance, where stat boosts are given to the main unit. The support unit will dual guard a main unit attack after a set amount of attacks on the main unit, and they will also DG every attack made by support unit enemies in offensive stance. The trade off is that, you essentially lose one unit, and that the paired up units cannot participate in offensive stance attacks.

[/QUOTE]
Ah right, okay, will fix, thx

 

[Father Gigantor]

With the whole shortbow thing, I think it's probably also important we discuss archer balance which is an unbelievably finicky issue. 90% of the games have archers right at the bottom of the bin due to a several important factors besides just their utter absence of their player phase. Namely, absolutely garbage bases and the existence 1-2 range weapons. (hand-axes javelins, tomes etc.)


Bases are pretty self-explanatory, the greatest growths in the world mean jack shit if you don't have an acceptable base to start off with. After all, why bother spending inordinate amounts of time raising a shit unit into a good unit when you can just use a unit that already starts off good? For those of you reading this thread who don't already know, combat unit usefulness is ranked along the lines of this:


(good bases and good growths > good bases and shit growths > shit bases and good growths > shit bases and shit growths.)


Now, early archers like Rebecca, Gordin or Wolt have pretty good offensive growths but garbo bases, which if you combine with the fact that they have practically no player phase, means that in order to train them properly they can pretty much only pick off already weakened units. The only usable archers throughout most games tend to be pre-promote snipers with good bases like Shinon or Klein. So the solution to all this is of course, to give archers either better bases or an inherently better player phase than your melee units. Jamke from FE4 is a standout example of this, he's a prepromoted sniper that joins fairly early with low-ish base stats for a promoted unit but which are still far and away better than those of your puny unpromoted ones. He comes with a killer bow and the powerful adept and charge skills, meaning that while he's still helpless during the enemy phase, any enemy he engages with at range will almost always assuredly be dead by the end of the fight. It doesn't hurt either that he joins in an area practically covered in forest terrain, limiting the use of your mounted units.


The next factor, probably the most damning one of all is the existence of 1-2 range melee weapons. Spell Tomes don't really count because of the fact that they're wielded by mages, the squishiest units in the game. Hand axes and Javelins however, give your regular melee units the full benefits of ranged combat ability while still retaining their standard 1 range attack as well. Sure, they may have low mt and hit most of the time, but that stops mattering once your units have sufficiently high stats, and even then Tomahawks and Spears are still a thing. The strongest weapon of choice for say, Seth or some other powerful unit? Nope, it's not silvers or the mythical S-rank weapons with 5 uses in total, It's the humble javelins and handaxes that allow them to slaughter anything and everything that comes with 10 meters of them.


This factor isn't quite as easy to balance as the previous one. They were sort of balanced in games like FE6 and 4 where hit rate and skill was actually worth a shit, and throwing weapons sucked ass, but archers weren't great in those games either. The path taken by the latest game, FE14, was to completely nerf throwable weapons into the ground, turning them into situational weapons. They can no longer double, make it WAY easier for enemies to double you and can no longer critically stike. Bows have also been buffed in general, having higher mt across the board. The addition of a skill called Magic Counter, which returns any damage you deal with magic back to you at any range, and the existence of counter which reflects physical damage dealt back to adjacent attackers, means that archers are now the most reliable ranged damage dealers AND the most reliable way to deal with enemies that have counter. This of course raises the question, have archers have become a bit too good?


So, how do you want your archers balanced folks?

 

[Killigrew]

I'd prefer rescue to a pair-up. Pair up was too OP -- the chance to block an enemy attack is pretty dumb.


as for skills, I'd keep them limited to one per character since the skills stacked and got so OP as well... just one would make it more interesting, I think. Perhaps 2 skills though -- one for a class and one for the character?


No laguz since laguz are lame and have no role in the story. Dragons did, and were interesting in FE7. I think laguz would have to have an origin story and not just be "part of the world" since it's more interesting to have humans as a focus in FE (esp with all its ties to the Song of Roland).


Also, I'd love to help out with worldbuilding. Pls include me tooooo

 

[Father Gigantor]

Rescue and shove, along with a few new similar returns in 14 too alongside the revamped pair-up system, actually. Though they're now skills bound to certain classes, like rescue and cavs for instance,

 

[Chisengen]

I've actually ran a fire emblem based rp in the past. I used d&d 3.5 with some homebrew. Anyway, I would recommend taking CON out. It's a rather unnecesary system in my opinion, and it seems like it would be too crippling for melee characters in my opinion.