So what’s the low down on Class Changing? It’s a pretty popular feature of the newer games, I’m sure someone has tried to implement it in a hack. All I’ve found from searching it is this thread though
Which brings up a pretty good point about stat promotions but doesn’t actually address the idea of reclassing in general.
Right now I can think of one way to sort of make it if you give units the option to promote by just plain giving tier 1 options to units to promote to using a master seal and allow promoted units to promote into other promoted units with a master seal, but that wouldn’t be great as if you want to give different units different class options you’d need to make a unique class for every unit. So maybe some sort of patch that makes promotions unit based instead of class based? Of course the best thing to do would be to simply have two different promotion menus available, one for promotion and one for reclassing with a second seal item available for reclassing. I think maybe this could be possible as the Trainees in base Sacred Stones might have two different promotion menus, the default first playthrough one and a second that features super trainees as an option. Though I’m not exactly sure how the Super Trainee implementation is worked. So yeah, any information on reclassing would be appreciated.
EDIT: Before I even posted this I had a look at the patch list in FireEmblemGBABuilder again and I see that there is a patch to make separate promotion items provide separate promotions options. So that’s great, implementing Second Seals wouldn’t be difficult at all. Though this would be purely based on the Awakening method of resetting the level and not the Fates style where promotion resets levels while class changing doesn’t. Hmm, though I suppose you could just use the “Don’t reset levels on promotion” patch and have units grow to level 40. Though that would throw out the cost benefit decision aspects of early promotion. And even with second seals implemented like that, it’d still have the issue of promotion being class based instead of unit based, so every unit needing personalized classes to have personalized reclassing options.
I’m pretty sure you can do this through event commands. There is a Change Class command IIRC, and it could probably be done through State or something similar too - force promote command could work also.
From there, it’s just a matter of using the route split or Y/N menu and repurposing either for class selection (and recording the user’s input, of course). In fact, I did a very ungraceful implementation of the latter in my hack.
This would have to happen during an event though (so a start event, chapter itself, or end event), rather than the prep screen.
Perhaps instead of an item it could be done through a location on a map? Like a Mila shrine stand-in. I’m not super good with events but I could mess around with it to see how I would do it like that and let you know how it goes.
Okay so what I ended up doing was taking a random house on Chapter 1 and instead of the usual villager dialogue I called up a Yes/No menu asking if the unit wanted to reclass. Selecting Yes called the Change Class Event which I simply tested by having Eirika switch from Lord to Archer. It worked, without a promotion cutscene, and changed her to the Archer class. However, she retained her E rank in Swords and did not gain a weapon rank in Bows.
This is just from a very basic test though, there might be workarounds and patches already in place for this.
I’ve looked into eventing parallel seals a few times. There is no good option for having both promotions and Parallel seal type re-classing.
Event command to re-class does not change base stats, weapon exp, or skills
Doing this manually with events is a huge effort, which I decided wasn’t worthwhile
I would recommend deciding between promotion items or basic reclassing. Then you could simply use promotion items to swap between classes (resetting lvl or not). However, you cannot exceed a level of 31. Suspending and resuming a chapter at lvl 33 will bring you down to lvl 1. You would need to edit EMS and run a custom build (or use buildfiles) to exceed lvl 31.
I think the easiest way to make this viable with events is to build on the Take Over Unit patch to include magic and skills. This would require a little bit of asm.
Edit: If you turn promotion items into parallel seal reclass options, you could still force promote units via events pretty easily. That would be the easiest option without asm.
I’m actually a bit surprised. I thought it would be something people would have worked on making years ago and I just wasn’t researching it well enough. It’s really that hard huh? What about that give different items different promotion options patch I mentioned. If that works how I’d expect it to (which is basically like the Elysian Whip and Master Seal in Shadow Dragon) I can’t see how it wouldn’t allow for the creation, effectively, of second seals. With the only real issue being a non personalized aspect to it. Though using classes as a shared base it shouldn’t be hard at all to implement Shadow Dragon’s “reclassing sets” idea where several classes are linked together.
Or here’s another idea, what about making every unit in the game a trainee, upping the trainee forced promotion event to level 20 instead and then having promotion items be reclassing while using actual promotion being the end of chapter event that’s already in the game. Would that work? Can you expand the trainee promotion list to include a dozen or so more characters? I’m just spit balling here but that seems like a pretty good way to implement both.
I’ve tried this exact method. In order for this to work, you have to install the “no level reset after class change” patch, because otherwise people would use reclassing as a means of resetting their level and thus gaining infinite levels. And you also have to get rid of promotion bonuses, because people would just see master seals as “free stats”, and use them to create one really strong character. Due to getting rid of promotion bonuses, classes kinda lose their identity. Unless you’re restrictive with promotion and reclassing options, you allow the player to have an unusally fast knight, or an unusually tanky mage. You could use the patch that makes the game handle growths the way modern FE does, but that would lead to having to do A LOT of balancing.
So messing around with the split promotion items patch I can get tier 1s to class change pretty nicely. They can even promote into the class changed promoted class. And the promotion based on bases patch I linked earlier also works wonders for the stats aspect. However for some obfuscating reason I can’t get the promoted classes to change. I’ve done all the same things as I did for the tier 1 classes. Listed their promotion option in the regular promote area and their reclass in the patch’s split promotion item list. At first I thought it was because they were under level 10, so I used the minimum promotion level patch and set it to 0. That didn’t work so I thought maybe because 0+1 (which it says the minimum promotion patch uses) I used the level after promotion patch and set it to 2, but that didn’t work at all. So I think maybe those two patches are incompatiable with the split promotion item patch. But then I set Seth’s base level to 10 at the start of the game and he was still unable to use either the Master Seal (which should sent him back to Cavalier) or the Second Seal (which should make him a General). I even unselected the promoted unit check box in the class editor and for some reason Paladin and General are unable to use either promotion item while Cavalier and Knight can. To be honest I’m a bit baffled at this point. How does the game even know wether it’s a promoted class or not when I’ve told it nothing?
The lose weapon ranks upon promotion patch also seems incompatible as I’ve written that one too yet it doesn’t seem to be working. This would obviously be an issue as if you class change a sniper to a mercenary you don’t want the mercenary to still be able to use bows. Though it could actually make for an interesting motivation for class changing, it’d need an awful lot of battle animation work to ensure every class can use every weapon.
Ah, I know now they it wasn’t working. Was forgetting to list the promoted classes in the promotion item list. Honestly the only real issue with this system now is the loss of weapon ranks patch not being compatible and it not being personalized to characters at all.
I think you can do something with the weapon usability calc loop for shadowgift/lumina. However it’s currently disabled in my buildfiles for another patch, and it won’t change which ranks get displayed which can be a little bit confusing. Looking for a better solution too.
I can’t say I’ve used Shadowgift and Lumina, but that would only cover two weapons types, right? But in the same vein, one potential fix would be to assign a weapon to each of the Weapon Locks. So Myrmidons/Swordmasters could be for Swords while Ephraim is lances, and then assign every class and weapon with weapon locks. Then they’ll only be able to use that weapon. Only five weapon locks though, but if Lumina and Shadow Gift do indeed cover just one weapon type then it could be bumped up to every weapon aside from Staves (though if we’re not mixing physical and magical weapons four is enough). Though using weapon locks would unfortunately also mean prf weapons are out of the question. It would also have the problem of displaying all the weapon ranks instead of just the useable ones).