Just as a quick note, an addition of +10% growth rate means that, after 40 levels, you’ll have an average of +4 to the stat. This isn’t actually that small an amount if you get that far, but in practice if it makes a difference then the unit was exceedingly borderline anyway (because in practice, it will likely only really make a difference of one or two points, if anything – most units do not get a full 40 levels to utilize their growths).
So unless your class modifiers are gigantic, I don’t really think it makes all that much of a difference.
I think the more important thing to take stock of is stat caps and con.
It doesn’t really matter how good the growths of a unit are if they are screwed over by lackluster con or gimped by their class caps.
Like how nomad troopers having a speed cap of 30 vs the paladin speed cap of 24, or how training a flyer in any FE game with con is a bloody headache due to their abysmal con.
10 speed at level 1 and a 60% growth is useless if a gatdamned iron lance slows you down.
As long as you don’t have a reclassing system, Class-Growth Bonuses are unnessecary.
They are useful to ensure that a character that has a high Speedgrowth can’t become a Speedy General for example.
It can be used to punish a player for promoting too early by making the Growthbonuses of a Promoted Class higher - But I think it is already enough of a drawback that a Unit is promoted before she hit level 20. Not as much if you’re promoting around Level 15, but the sooner a unit is promoted, the less stats the unit will gain in total. And while a big instant statbonus is very good at one moment, the unit also gains less experience and depending on the time of the game this can be very punishing and show in their stats later on. I think the timing of Promotion is a big part of the Ressource Management the player has to deal with. Many players are already conflicted enough with those 6 potential good level ups they would waste, even though a promoted unit could make their life so much easier in the current chapter. Making the chance of good level ups lower makes these thoughts even worse and strengthens the thought of “Promoting earlier than Level 20 is baaaaaad. Very baaaad.” So I’m not a big fan of that.
Basically if you’re designing a game like Awakening, Fates or Three Houses, where you can reclass every unit to almost anything (or to a big number of certain secondary classes) it is a good descision to make class growths a thing. Because then your decisions as a player have an impact and you have to be careful about what unit is good in which class (at which time) and if it’s worth to go for this class to learn that skill, etc. But for any other game, especially those where reclassing isn’t a thing, I’d recommend to stick to the classic method. By doing that you don’t need to double check if the added growths don’t result into something too strong or too weak plus you have more freedom to do what you want.
You’re forgetting the whole issue of the 20 stat cap all unpromoted units have in gba style hacks that are what are mostly made though, if a myrmadon caps speed and skill by level 17 and has a 30% str growth, those three levels are a actually more harmful since there is a much higher chance of them getting blank levels and the immediate additional strength will be more beneficial then the 1/27 chance of getting 3 strength out of those 3 skipped levels.
Modern growths don’t really work when every character has the same caps in the gba games since the only change in those caps comes from gender, while awakening and fates doesn’t use class or gender caps it uses character caps.
Oh yes, that is a depth to consider as well! And it opens up another “problem” (depending on the way the system works).
If you have a reclass system you could simple change a unit into a class that gives her a boost in the stats the unit lacks. You could see this as another strategical thing to consider (I like reclassing Roshea to a myrmidon for 1 or 2 chapters after a bunch of Level Ups that boosted his Speedgrowths due to him not gaining a stat boost and crossing my fingers for RNG). But I think it could ultimately distract the player or result into the danger that, if not balanced properly, Units could cap more stats than they’re meant to cap.
But I think you could set the cap of unpromoted units higher to solve this problem (if I’m not wrong).
The ultimate limit still remains 30 for promoted units (unless you don’t care about small graphical bugs).
Well that’s where a stop gap idea could be used. Since the gba games check if a unit has used a promotion item normally you could probably rig up a new seal that allows a single reclass and only to classes with weapons they don’t primarily use.
Think a hero only being able to reclass into a sniper or sage with a -3 str to magic conversion penalty.
Make the reclass screw over their weapon ranks to compensate for the new caps.
The only mistake that was made with the Shadow Dragon and New Mystery reclassing system was it was free, and awakening just gave you so many opportunities to grind.
The whole reclassing system is pretty bad imo. If every character can become every class, the sense of uniqueness is lost. 3 Houses made this even worse by making all weapons available for all classes, meaning there’s nothing stoping the player from assembling an army of wyvern riders with complete weapon coverage.
thats where awakening and fates did it best though. since you 1, still needed an external item to reclass, and 2, each character had only 2 inherrant other classes they could swap to. granted that made the whole child is op a thing.
as per 3 houses, personally I’m not some FTC UBERelite Fuckstick who minmaxes the game to the point of not being fun anymore so I maybe have 1 or 2 flyers at most.