Class Balancing Concepts I want to share

I’m very new to the fire emblem community since the only games I played are from the GBA so please take anything I share here with a shaker full of salt.

So there was this RomHack that I wanted to make with Fe8 being the base ROM because I wanted to make use of the branching promotions however I ran into a roadblock.

Not all classes are good.

So I thought of these balancing ideas off the top of my head. If you want to give your own (possibly better) suggestions then feel free to do so.

Ideas:

  • Archers and Snipers can use swords and the game treats Bows like Staves (Equipped on player phase but gets swapped out for other weapons during enemy phase). This makes it historically accurate to actual archers during medieval warfare (used swords in desperate situations), but it also doesn’t clash with the Player Phase-focused nature of the class (Indirectly buffs Warriors). I also made bows (except for the short bow) have a 2-3 range (with the longbow getting a 2-4 range).

  • New Promotion Option for Brigands (which are playable in this hack I plan) the Brawler. The Brawler has access to all 3 weapons in the triangle and has a 1.25x bonus avoid on all terrain that offers avoid (Pillars, Forests, etc.) but cannot traverse water as a result (Brigands have the option to promote into Berserkers as well). I thought of this since one person suggest on my Playable Brigand thread that bonus avoid sounds like a good way to make the Brigand class more unique than the other two axe based classes.

  • Falcoknights get the same Con promotion bonus as the Wyvern Knight. In exchange, the Peg Knight gets a new promotion option to replace Wyvern Knight.
    The SkyWatcher (name pending), a class that gains a bow rank instead of the sword rank that Falcoknights get. SkyWatchers get the Con bonus that Falcoknights originally got.

So what do you guys thinks? Is it good? Is it bad? Is it terrible? Is it Questionable? Feel free to add your own input to these ideas below.

Thanks for reading!

3 Likes

There’s an asm hack that lets units equip a weapon in order to counterattack. Not exactly what you are looking for, but vaguely related.

I don’t know that it makes sense to say that units actually equip staves (or equip anything for that matter), as they simply use what’s at the top of their inventory, and if it’s an equipable weapon, they fight with it. You’d have to write asm to have a unit equip a type of weapon each turn, I think.

Bonus avoid you could just type in new values for that class. No need to do anything fancy (though showing it as a skill in skillsystems would look nice). You could take a display only skill (eg. Nice Thighs) and change the text/icon to match.

Balance wise, these things sound fine within the context of vanilla fe8. That said, personally I feel like fe8 is a pretty easy game and generally you just want to use mostly Seth anyway, so the balance of classes with low movement is generally a moot point if you’re speed running or trying to play optimally. Of course, that isn’t always the most fun gameplay, so I understand wanting to raise up units like Amelia too.

ngl i kinda just like when archers have good stats to negate their weaknesses

2-3 range bows are kind of weird as a standard. Also Archers used hatchets irl, not swords.
Really the only reason to have 2-3 range standard is if your archer is so incredibly frail that they die to anything in one hit. Take for example Beryl from Souls of the Forest. While he may actually survive a hit here and there in lower difficulties, he will die to anything post midgame/on Lunatic Mode. He needs that extra range to contribute anything before he gets his mount and staff access.
Generally 2 range standard is enough unless you decide to give enemies 1-2 range, in which case you need to take a cold shower and look into a mirror long and hard, questioning why you would even think of doing that.
The others I don’t really care for.

while this can buff archers significantly it may also make it far better than a lot of other footlocked base classes, it also doesn’t do much for promo since ranger is still just better because horse. I would personally make a new type of sword that can only be equipped by archers (you can do this by tying all unique swords to one of the unused locks then set the archer classes to have those locks as well) where the swords are weaker than normal swords, this will greater deemphasize the worth of the 1 range option.

this… may be too good, having 1.25x bonus avoid is good enough to make it better than the warrior by default but letting it use all 3 weapon types… you’ll need to either give it bad promo bonuses, have those weapon ranks be absolute trash or limit their movement to make them balanced, this is one of the reasons why paladin was stripped of their axe privileges in favor of the great knight gaining all three types (although that’s a bad example since they should’ve had 1 more mov to actually give it cav movement)

falcoknights getting the con bonus and skywatchers not gaining it creates the same problem between wyvern knight and falcoknight previously, a bow rank isn’t going to balance that, I’d recommend maybe giving the skywatcher worse promo bonuses in favor of an extra move? It works with the name and gives it greater rescue dropping potential and worse combat potential.

I did the same for my own Pegasi, but they get Light instead.