FE6 CLASS SWAP+
What is a 'class swap'?
FE6 Class Swap+ is a hack that swaps around the class lines of the playable cast in a malicious manner, attempting to create the weakest cast possible (with some restrictions) while keeping the number of units in each class line the same. The personal bases and growths of units remain the same, but their actual bases (personal bases + class bases) will be different because their class bases are different, sometimes radically so.
An example:
Vanilla Clarine:
FE6 Class Swap+ Clarine:
To prevent units from joining with inventories full of weapons they can’t use, the weapons and staves that each unit starts with are replaced with weapons/staves of equivalent rank that that unit can use (or for weapons/staves of any usable rank if the unit can’t use any weapons of that rank- an E rank weapon in the inventory of a shaman, for example). Unlike FE8 Class Swap, these inventory adjustments are NOT malicious, although they can sometimes be cheeky.
Also unlike FE8 Class Swap, each unit, except for Roy, must end up in a different class line than they started in and the player must receive an early healer. Healer starvation was a neat gimmick last time, but I’d rather not repeat it here.
Promoted units remain promoted, and unpromoted units remain unpromoted, although they can both accept class lines from each other. For example, Geese could receive the cavalier (male) class from Marcus. Elphin/Larum are treated as a single unit and dancer/bard are treated as a single class. Triangle attack capabilities are transferred along with class. This means that all three pegasus knights/falcoknights can triangle attack, but only three of the four knights/generals can triangle attack, as one of them got their class line from Douglas. One of their descriptions tells you who the other knight/general TA’ers are.
Weapon ranks are converted upon class change as well (and then raised to class base weapon ranks if lower). For example, Saul will start with a C rank in a weapon type in whatever class he ends up in.
There are some additional restrictions/edge cases related to the swaps, but they’re pretty irrelevant to the summary.
tldr; This is basically a hack built on a cursed randomizer seed.
Oh, and to clarify: The class (and weapon) assignments were chosen ahead of time by me. They’re not, like, chosen by the game on the fly or anything like that.
What's the + for?
As I learned from FE8 Class Swap, just changing the classes around maliciously (and then throwing in some panic patches because Seth continued to Seth) is a nice thought experiment, but doesn’t actually make for a pleasant final experience.
My goal with FE6 Class Swap+ was to create a class swap hack, then polish it into something actually playable, interesting, and hopefully fun. From the playtesting my friends and I have conducted, I believe that I have succeeded.
The cast the player is given is still pathetic, but the player is also given new tools that, along with the player’s tactical expertise, will allow those coughing babies to survive and thrive in challenges meant for functioning members of society.
Also, since I was changing some things about FE6 anyway, I wanted to touch up some things that had always irked me about it.
wait does that make this a rebala-
FEATURES
- All of this stuff from Adthor’s FE6 BugFixReduxVers, which this hack was built upon:
- A weak cast with unusual statlines.
- Custom unit descriptions for every playable member of the cast!
- 10+ new weapons! And some tweaked stats and reworked gimmicks for existing ones. Significantly changed weapons have been marked by name changes.
- No ambush spawns! And no zone-based spawns either! They’ve been converted into non-ambush, turn-based reinforcements. The only exceptions to this are Clarine in Ch. 4 and the pirate king in the Pirate’s Challenge trial map. I don’t have anything against the concept of zone-based spawns, but FE6’s engine forces zone-based spawns to be ambush spawns, so they had to go. Adthor missed some of these when he made his patch, including Ch. 21’s reinforcements, so I went and converted (or removed) them myself.
- Reworked support system! All supports start at C rank and can’t grow. They provide +5 hit and +3 crit avoid, but no other bonuses.
- No fog of war!
- No gaidens! Ghosts of Bern (Ch. 23) and Legends and Lies (Ch. 24) have also been cut for the sake of pacing. They will not be missed. And yes, you do still get Karel.
- No gaiden requirements! You’ll receive the legendary weapons regardless of if Glupp Shitto is alive or if you beat a certain map before an arbitrary turn count.
- You don’t need the legendary weapons to be intact to fight Idunn, although you do still need to defeat her with the Binding Blade in order to get the true ending.
- Whether or not you go to Ilia or Sacae is now based on your response to a dialogue option at the end of Ch. 16, not how much EXP Shanna, Thea, Sue, and Sin have obtained.
- Reworked Unattained Dream (Ch. 22, a.k.a. the Zephiel map)! It’s still recognizable, but it has an extra gimmick, an altered map, and redesigned enemies. I wanted it to be a fitting finale.
- The Idunn fight has been tweaked a bit, but is still completable with an untrained Roy.
- Desert items are no longer RNG-dependent! The desert item zones are the same as the ones in the vanilla game, although some of the items you collect from them are different.
- The usual QoL suite: HP bars, danger warnings, null movement display, and animations off battle number display. Sadly, custom minimug box patches and growth display patches don’t exist for the FE6 engine, but since growths are vanilla, you can consult a bot like Ninian if you need to check them.
- Additionally, care has been taken to ensure that the null movement display patch is accurate; the AI settings of some enemies have been adjusted so that they won’t mislead the player.
- Hard mode is selectable from a fresh save file (and is what I personally recommend). The hack is playable on normal mode, though.
- Roy has convoy access, although due to technical limitations, he does not provide convoy access to adjacent units.
- The prices of some items have been rebalanced.
- Statboosters have been nerfed.
- Secret shops can now be accessed without a member card. Their contents have been changed. While you can’t buy Angelic Robes in Ch. 16 anymore, you can still buy +Mov statboosters in Ch. 21, because I don’t hate fun.
- The silver card and member card have been replaced by other things. Be frugal!
- The map changes in The Frozen River and Battle in Bulgar now happen at the start of player phase instead of the start of enemy phase.
- Reduced mountain/peak/thicket avoid bonuses to 20.
- Fixed some manakete terrain movement cost oversights that the vanilla game has.
- Female manaketes are now weak to anti-dragon weaponry, to account for berserked units. Similarly, transporters (and nomads and valkyries) are weak to anti-cavalry weaponry.
- Healing staff descriptions have been updated to be more accurate/helpful.
- Bishops and valkyries no longer get bonus exp from kills compared to other classes.
- Ch. 7, Ch. 21, and a few other chapters no longer spawn extra red units between preparations and the start of turn 1. Perceval’s gang is an exception to this due to technical limitations.
- Trial map enemies now get HMBs. The unpromoted trial map enemies have been promoted (except for the ones in Roy’s Trial). Some of the AI settings for enemy units in the trial maps have been tweaked (for example, the staffers in Pirate’s Challenge will now actually heal injured units).
Weapon Adjustment Details
Basic Tweaks:
Generally, I wanted to avoid just increasing the hit rates of weapons across the board, as imperfect hit rates are a part of FE6’s identity. As such, hit rate buffs have been concentrated on the weapons that needed them, and most don’t exceed the hit rates of their iron counterparts.
There are also 10+ new weapons that I’ve added to the game, but I’m going to leave their details a mystery until you actually encounter them.
Known Bugs and Issues
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Units with more than 6 support partners (Roy, Lilina, Shanna, and Larum) will produce graphical oddities when you check their weapon rank/support page. The graphical oddities are harmless, and exiting the menu will fix the issue.
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The longer bow’s range is not displayed properly.
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When holding Hellfire, your Atk in the status screen is calculated with effectiveness already factored in. This does not affect battle forecasts or actual combat.
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Hammerne? and the Radiant Dawn cards ignore silence.
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The range of ranged staves is still incorrectly listed as “Mag” in their descriptions. This is an issue with the English translation patch that I don’t know how to fix (it doesn’t seem to be in the list of text entries?).
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There’s a mild discoloration in the in-battle WTA/WTD arrows, rescue icons, and status effect icons, but the normal glaring graphical errors that come from blindly applying the HP bar patch are not present.
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The obtainment events for some of the legendary weapons may incorrectly claim that they have been “pilfered”.
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While units can trade multiple times in one turn, they cannot manipulate the convoy multiple times in one turn (without a refresh or the like). The Thracia trade patch sadly did not cover that.
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The name of a certain lategame enemy type doesn’t quite fit into the minimug box.
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The convoy persists between run-throughs of the tutorial.
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The edge of the spectre card’s name clips slightly.
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Due to technical limitaitons, the hut reinforcements in The Law of Sacae still spawn on enemy phase, but I’ve made them not move on the turn they spawn. Their AI may behave unusually if you remain on the map past turn 255, but that’s unlikely to happen in normal play.
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Due to technical limitations, the pirate king can still pseudo(?)-ambush spawn you in the Pirate’s Challenge trial map.
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The sandstorm doesn’t seem to die down in ch. 14? This doesn’t seem to affect anything, though.
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Units that were hard mode-only mapstart enemies in vanilla FE6 now also appear on normal mode. Due to technical limitations, I can’t make them not appear on normal mode without making them do that post-preps gotcha thing on hard mode.
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Not a bug: Talk convos are not free actions!
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Not a bug: Reavers in FE6 do NOT multiply the weapon triangle, they just invert it. The FE6 weapon triangle is also only +10/-10 hit and +1/-1 mt.
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Not a bug: The naming convention of the English translation patch for FE6 capitalizes only the first word in item names (unless the item is a proper noun).
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Not a bug: The devil weapon backfire rate in FE6 is [21-Lv.]% and is NOT based on Lck. This uses your displayed Lv., so a Lv. 1 promoted unit will have a backfire rate of 20%, not 0%.
Download and Credits Link
Apply to a Japanese FE6 ROM.
Dropbox
I might try this later. I was also interested in the FE8 Class Swap but it was taken down?