I don’t think it’s too controversial to say that Speed is an incredibly valuable stat in most FE games. Aside from evasion, which is useful in a pinch, it’s mainly good for allowing units with high enough Speed to effectively double their damage output by performing follow-up attacks AKA doubling
…Which, is strong yeah? Not that it’s broken or poorly designed, but it does seem that Speed is very dominant. You always want to have it, in addition to good offenses or Build/Constitution to offset the weight of weapons, to do a shit-ton of damage. Classes with good speed are pretty useful in most cases. Classes with low speed suffer offensively AND defensively, even if their bulk is respectable (Armor Knight I’m sorry).
On a related note, I played a demo for a game called Unfated, which is a FE style game which, among other cool things, wanted to address this problem, and seeks to do so in a way that I think is interesting. And that, honestly, I’m planning on borrowing for a small project of my own, potentially.
As a disclaimer, the game is not out yet, and I’m no expert in how this actually works but I’ll try to explain to the best of my abilities:
As it’s described on the Kickstarter
Speed as a stat in SRPGs is frequently a “you must be this fast to be viable” requirement that ends up being very restrictive. Rather than use an all-or-nothing threshold, Unfated has a wide spectrum of outcomes on follow-up attacks. Units only slightly faster than their target may strike again at reduced strength, while fast units can take full advantage of their speed and potentially even strike a third time!
As an example, say a unit needs 5 AS over the foe in order to double. If a unit who meets that threshold deals 10 damage, their first attack will deal 10 damage, while their second attack will deal 5.
As described, this system is designed to reduce the offensive dominance of the SPD stat, while still rewarding high speed units for surpassing thresholds, and allowing for some more strategic gameplay involving weapons.
Of course, again, the game I got this idea from isn’t out yet, so I have no idea if it actually works, but I trust the devs to make it balanced. They seem like they’ve put a lot of thought into this.
What do you think?