Wow this got interesting real fast lol.
Jokes aside, I really do get the sense that everyone who posted here more-or-less had the same feeling of “now that I think about it…” about the Great Knight class.
Which is good- I wanted to ask something thought-provoking.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but according to here, the near-universal consensus seems to be to buff their move, from what I can tell, and a focus on the GK’s ability to use Axes, their tankiness… and that’s it.
Yeah?
Sounds about right. All of its other stats are fine really.
you can make great knights useful in the same systemic way you can make archers and armors useful: make the game player phase focused with enemies who hit hard. this makes units with good bulk and weapon triangle control appealing and worth using.
going into specifics of the class itself, one problem that fe8 has thats pretty much unique to it and fe7 is that its promotion bonuses are fucking awful in terms of material stat bonuses. gks give +2 to most meaningful combat stats which is at least better than paladins +1 (lmao) but not worth considering. give gks like +4 defense on promo you cowards.
of course you could always just increase gk move but then theyd just become fe7 paladins who fold to hammers so if you do this youd probably have to take lances away or something like that if you really want to balance them for split promotions. one thing you probably should do regarding movement whether youre increasing their move or not is fix their awful movetype, not being able to go through 1 forest without it eating half your movement sucks.
if split promotions arent in the equation and youre deciding to put someone into gk and gk only however “class balance” is only a useful goal insofar as it preserves their niche when compared to other units. fe7/8 archers are only bad because they dont provide anything worthwhile. fe6, a game on the same console whose archers are even worse in comparison to the enemies than in the other gba games, still has a place for them because the enemy design favors them. class design isnt worthwhile in a vacuum. does duessel care that the hammers wielded by fodder enemies who have 30 hit 2 shot him when none of the other enemies around can finish him off?
Unironically I think the FE4 version of Great Knight actually hits most of the points wanted for this class in an older age.
It was effectively the Axe equivalent of Duke Knight, Forrest Knight and Arch Knight, as the promoted Axe-specialist cavalier type. Despite being this, it fits the bill quite well.
It had good single-hit damage with the ability to use the 22-MT Silver Axe and solid physical bulk (mainly due to FE4 units having a crap load of HP), but was held back by mediocre SKL and nonexistent SPD. It had the same movement as all other cav types, making it mobile enough to do its job and could fairly consistently 2HKO squishier units with the Silver Axe, or 2RKO with the Brave Axe. On the other hand, the idea of mounted armor didn’t exist at this time, and consequently it was not weak to the Armorslayer.
The solution to fix GK is to give it enough damage to 2RKO most classes, 1HKO squishy units (mages) with strong weapons as well as be bulky enough to take multiple physical hits. This has always been its role. Of course, with modern views on armor and mobility, I find that making GK Horse-1 movement is only viable in high-movement games where cavs already have 8-10 Mov. In those cases, the -1 movement does its job in separating GK from more mobile cav units. However, on lower-move scenarios where other cavs only have 7-8 movement, taking away movement becomes too detrimental, as it gets too close to promoted infantry movement, so it’s just better to leave it as is and throw in harsher terrain penalties.
On the other hand, the reason GK is hit with mediocrity is because of General being bad, and GK can’t just be General on a horse. General, as a class, historically simply lacked the stats it needed to do its job; its DEF wasn’t high enough to take enough hits to warrant its weaknesses, its STR was good but it couldn’t hit things with its bad SKL. Fundamentally, to prevent GK from being a bad combination between Armor and Cav, both going all in on Armor and all in on Cav must be sufficiently viable in its own right. General needs higher DEF, like in Engage, as well as an overall buff to SKL to make it consistent enough at 2RKO-ing stuff on the frontline, for it to be sufficiently viable. Once General becomes viable, then GK can also have its STR and DEF buffed (and SPD/RES nerfed) to give it a distinct difference from Paladin without outright just having everything General has but with extra mobility.
Example statlines for mid-late game recruit
General
HP: 46
STR: 23
SKL: 16
SPD: 10
LCK: 12
DEF: 25
RES: 11
CON: 16
MOV: 5
Great Knight
HP: 40
STR: 20
SKL: 15
SPD: 12
LCK: 13
DEF: 20
RES: 9
CON: 13
MOV: 7
Paladin
HP: 36
STR: 17
SKL: 18
SPD: 19
LCK: 15
DEF: 14
RES: 13
CON: 12
MOV: 8
I agree with many of the points made here about great knights being inferior to paladins, in FE8. I just have these vague memories of them being really good at tanking and having enough movement to keep up with the rest (unlike generals). Also, their animations are more fluid and their palettes are easier on the eyes.
My one thing with the General personally isn’t necessarily just all of those things, but the fact that they had such low Speed kept them from being able to truly tank. (As they get doubled which leads to bad things).
With them, it was either you hit them hard or you did next to nothing at all to them.
Otherwise, I agree fully with your take.
Oh yeah, I’ve always really liked the Great Knight anims. They look so cool…!
Like I said- it’s a shame that with anims like those that they kinda are just mid.
Also late but you hit the nail on the head too- at the moment, what really makes a Great Knight, well, Great, and not just ‘Paladin but not as good’?
Don’t have branched promotions. Then you don’t need to make it competitive with paladin as a class, you can just make your characters who are great knights competitive with your characters who are paladins. Sure, your guys who promote to great knights would rather promote to paladins. So would your mercenaries, your myrmidons… and they’d probably all take wyvern lord or valkyrie highest of all, and that’s fine, because they don’t all get to.
I think there can be a case to be said about GK and Paladins in the Fates games, both as playables and as enemies, and see how can they be translated to the romhacking scene.
Fates Greatknights have the following features:
Complete Weapon Triangle Control (remember that because tomes, daggers and bows are also part of the regular weapon triangle)
7 Mov
Luna and Armored Blow skills
Higher HP, Str, Def than Pallys, but the other stats are inferior to pally’s
GK pair up gives 2 str, 4 def 1 mov while Pally gives 2 str, 2 def, 2 res 1 mov.
There are legitimate reasons to go great knight, even if temporarily, to get the skills or a more opportune pair-up bonus, but I’m only talking about the player side, it gets much more sinister from now on.
As enemies, the great knights will always weapon triangle your units (unless you’re a dragon/beast, and pray they don’t have a wyrm/beast killer), so enemy-phasing them is hard, in fact in birthright Great Knights are the biggest threat you face, as they have insane HP and Def combo and will hit you for major damage on enemy phase if not dealt with, even Ryoma is on death’s door if the hybrid RN system decided to be quirky for one turn when faced with multiple silver lances.
In Conquest you seldomly face great knights, instead master of arms take their place, which have their merit, but aren’t as threatening as Birthright’s Great Knights. The GKs in Conquest are only in Endgame and paralogues (if I missed somewhere else please let me know), but you can imagine how frustrating it can be to enemy phase these behemoths, and if you miss out on a KO, they can cluster up with more enemies, and because they hit so hard and have weapon triangle over you, they are often your first priority.
So, with that in mind, how can we make Great Knights… not suck? Here are a few ideas I have come up with:
Much like mainline games, most romhacks, for better or for worse, often revolve around having most of your engagements be in enemy phase, but by having Great Knights be a durable and threatening force if not dealt with, they can announce great trouble for the player, give the GKs the triangle control, and make the triangle something more than an incovenience (as is with base Sacred Stones weapon triangle), have your mages and archers, with are not affected by the weapon triangle, be less durable and more likely to fall by the heavy strikes from these enemies.
I see that a lot of people dislike knights and, by extension, great knights as well, and a factor is how slow-moving and how they get affected by effective weapons. So with that in mind, you, as a designer, can simply remove that from the enemies arsenal most of the time. Don’t punish the player by using armored units, specially from all the setbacks they already have, instead encourage them. Tying with my next point, you can also make horseslayers weaker to the point they don’t affect great knights as hard as they do with other cavs, this is done by reducing the overall defense of paladins and cavs and/or the might of horseslayers. Suddenly their two “weaknesses” aren’t weighted so heavily on these heavy cavs, but you can still give the player hammers and armorslayers to deal with enemy great knights, knights, generals.
This may or may not be controversial, but the reason why paladins are so good is because they stat distribution is no different than a Hero’s or General’s, except they have a fat 8 mov, they super mobile, sturdy, have good speed, access to javelins (and axes in some games), they’re just too good and no reason to not use them! So… don’t make them objectively better than other classes. Footlocked classes have the upside of not being weak to horseslayers and mov penalties, sure, but also have that reflect their stats, let footlocked be faster because they have more flexibility, don’t let paladins solo entire battalions before your lower mov units can catch up, and suddenly if paladins cannot solo your game, great knights seem like a more reasonable choice. Some people might think nerfing paladins will make the game less fun, but I think that entirely depends on how the dynamics of your units play out in the chapters, because if your hack depends on the shoulders of how good paladins are, there are bigger problems in your hack.
Great Knight is weird as there are essentially two distinct incarnations of it, that may as well be different classes. For some reason, I’m fascinated by this. There is the original axe-locked version, localized as “Axe Paladin” in Radiant Dawn, because that’s essentially what it is: simply a promoted Axe Cavalier. There are games where regular Paladins can use axes, but aren’t a separate class. Apart from using axes, the only thing differentiating GKs from other monoweapon cavalry in Jugdral/FE10 is their statlines.
I will not just be listing numbers, because as everyone here says, stats need context. Instead, I will be comparing the Axe Paladin GK to other monoweapon promoted cavalry (MPC).
In FE4, they have the same base (and max) mov, HP, Mag, & Res as any MPC, tie for the greatest strength with Lances, also tie for the lowest skill and speed as Lances, with the only stat difference from Duke Knight being having the greatest defense.
In FE5 class bases are godawful, so the variation between MPC stats are lesser. Every one of them has the same HP, Mov, Str, Mag, Skill, and Def. Only Rangers have 1 more Speed, and GKs have the most Con.
FE10 class bases are inane. Female variations are just awful, for example the Female Axe Paladin is inferior in every non-mov stat, except has 2 more HP. But Titania is the only Female Axe Paladin in the game, and luckily has great personal bases. I don’t think female MPC ever appears as an enemy anyway, so I will be comparing the male MPC here only. But the insanity of FE10 class bases isn’t just limited to misogyny. Axes have the least HP, the most Str & Skill, are tied for least Speed with Bows and Swords, and are tied for least Def with Lances. All MPC have 5 Mag, except swords get 4. All have the same Res, Move and Con. I suppose Axe Paladins are glass cannons?
And then there’s the modern armored version with multiple weapons, which everyone else is talking about.
For FE4, GK is strictly superior to DK in terms of raw stats, having +2 DEF and nothing else. The problems are mainly caused by FE4’s bad weapon balancing and even worse class base/cap allocation among classes (Warrior is notorious for drawing the short end of the stick, with Forrest in there as well).
For FE8, GK overall sucked due to its horrendous 6 movement with terrible terrain penalties. Duessel saw use mainly due to his high base stats being sufficient to justify his poor mobility, but beyond that, all cavs were better off promoted into Paladin, or just benched completely in favor of Seth and other high-mobility units like Rangers and fliers.
For FE13, land mounts as a whole were largely obsolete in Lunatic(+) play due to the dominance of Nosferatu Robin. Frederick saw use as a means to clear early maps before Robin could get off the ground but his status as the Oifey (with accordingly high base stats) and his Silver Lance are arguably more important to his ability to do his job, rather than his class. GK is one of the better classes for him to be in in the earlygame, due to the extra DEF being legitimately valuable for tanking the hard-hitting enemy roster in the earlygame, but even then, a similarly tanky class like Warrior, General or even Wyvern Lord could have sufficed.
For FE14, GK is arguably at its most powerful incarnation yet. Its main selling point is a pair up bonus of +2 STR, +4 DEF and +1 Mov. This is extremely good by pair up bonus standards, especially due to Gunter starting in this class, making him a no-investment pair-up bot, especially as he is among your first permanent recruits on Revelations, where the stat bonus is especially appreciated. As juggernauts now need substantially more effort to create, other units actually see use, and GK remains a viable class on most units that can get into it. Silas is notorious for using this class due to his STR/DEF focused growths and his availability on all three routes. On BR, GK is usually better than Paladin due to the large enemy quantity making high DEF more valuable for tanking many at a time. On CQ, the decision is more competitive due to many other units also being able to get into GK; it’s still viable, but Paladin also is with speed support. On Rev, Silas joins with extremely good bases; Paladin is more often used due to the ease of access to Swordmaster pair ups to fix SPD issues, but GK remains strong as a low-investment option.
For FE16… GK sucks. It’s a Master Class, requires both Heavy Armor and Riding (which few units have, and the units that do have better classes to be in). It’s also in a game where evasiontanking is at an all-time high, meaning its durability is not necessary and not efficient, especially as Impregnable Wall fixes any bulk issues you may have when needing to bait something powerful. Fortress Knight was already terrible, but Great Knight takes it a step further with an even higher barrier to entry yet not actually being any more useful than Paladin or Bow Knight.
I am not an expert, but great knight should just get 7 mov (they have 6 in FE8) to make them basically “general on a horse” since thats what they are really… (they even use same weapon types), so you basically get 2 mov at cost of mov penalty in rough terrain and being fragile to horse slayers.
Perhaps give them unique ability as well? (generals have it too in some games - the great pavise or however its called). I think Trample would be interesting, which on skill% simply makes enemy not counterattack if you attacked from 1 range. I get that sounds fairly weak, but would be nice with flavor as trample would be especially deadly with armor knight - the heaviest of cavarly (plus piercing defence is already taken by wyverns)
IIRC, In Echoes, Armor knights and Barons take half damage from Bows. I think this is a neat mechanic that should be brought back.
In my hack I’m doing something similar, where Armor Knights have a class skill that reduces ALL damage from range. Great Knights can still have it, but only if they promote from Armor Knight.
This is kinda how GKs are in the Sacred Trilogy hack. 7 movement with Armored Blow and Nullify as learnable skills, with the latter being notable for taking away its infamous double-weakness. It also gets Canto+ like all mounted classes, so it can move even after attacking.
I do like the idea of giving the armor flag it’s own property though.
Cavalry/Flier trade off that effectiveness with Canto of some flavor, having the Armor flag reduce damage for follow up/double attacks would greatly reduce one of their bigger stat weaknesses as compensation for generally lower move and effectiveness costs.
Only Barons, Spartans, Fiends, Guardians and units equipping Kriemhild take half damage from bows.
As for giving large damage reduction to ranged attacks, while it does solve some of the problems, it can also make the class extremely powerful when given 1-2 range. Armors already have a ton of DEF, so most melee-attacking enemies are not a threat, but also halve damage from mages, one of their main weaknesses? Now they’re almost unkillable outside of Armorslayers/Hammers, and even then those can be tanked as well. This is especially true if Pure Water/Barrier is easily accessible; stacking it with halved damage just takes it too far.
Alternatively we could always just get rid of their mounted weakness and keep just armor weakness
This wouldn’t make much sense, as the GK’s entire identity is that it’s a combination of an armored and mounted class (but without the sheer tankiness/good speed and movement that defines the General/Paladin).