How would you implement "Dragon Ball-esque" power escalation and "transformations" in Fiire Emblem?

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For those who don’t know (somehow), Dragon Ball is notorious for the absurd escalation of power across each arc. For example, at the end of the Saiyan Saga, Goku using his strongest technique has a “power level” of ~24,000, but at the end of the very next arc, the Namek Saga, he obtains the Super Saiyan transformation, which boosts him all the way to ~150,000,000, an increase of over 6000x his previous strength.

Now, imagine for a moment that you’ve been tasked with making a Fire Emblem-style game with a similar level of absurd growth, where characters in-lore are meant to start as regular combatants but eventually become strong enough to destroy planets with their attacks, and have “transformations” that make them several times stronger. How would you handle that?

The first and most obvious answer would be to just let the stats inflate into the thousands. Plenty of other RPGs do that. The immediate problem though is that Fire Emblem’s entire gameplay system is predicated on numbers being small enough to do the math yourself; there hasn’t been a single FE game where stats have gone above 99 as far as I’m aware (aside from boss HP), and most games in the series have much smaller caps than that

I did have an idea on how to maybe handle this, though it is really hard to explain. Have you ever seen one of those size comparison youtube videos for like anime characters or movie monsters where, whenever they get to the next order of magnitude, the perspective zooms out, so that the new giant things are the same size on your screen but feel larger because of the zoom? Imagine that, but with stats. Every time the game reaches a new order of magnitude, say multiples of 10, every unit’s stat is divided by that number for mechanical and mathematic purposes, but wiith some visual shift to avoid it feeling like the stats are shrinking (and of course some mechanic in place to make it so that you’re not just losing out on stats when it rounds down, maybe some sort of temporary growth increase to make up for that?)

Of course there is also a much simpler alternative, which is just… Not reflecting the exponential growth of power in the game mechanics, and leaving that up to the story to imply. Maybe that would be better from a game design perspective; it would certainly be easier for a player to wrap their head around anyway

This is not the first post I’ve made like this and it certainly will not be the last, I have a lot of really weird ideas for Fire Emblem-type games

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I don’t even want to think about what happens when a boss pops that 1st 50x multiplier on you and then when you can’t do damage he says “Get yo bases up son”. :skull:

So, the first thing I’m doing is removing the double attack thresholds. There’s no point. Using a 50x multiplier as an example again, a unit with a base spd of 4 has 200spd after transforming and a unit with base spd of 5 has 250. Even with just 1 point of spd difference at base, their stats post transformation decimate whatever system is trying to calculate stuff.

I’m predicting at some point characters will have crit rates of exactly 0 or 100 with no inbetween once numbers separate hard enough, same with hit rates. I wouldn’t know how to begin making weapons relevant unless they scale up with the wielder.

This is a fun, but TERRIBLE idea. Dragonball just can’t be simulated without BROAD generalizations. Your best bet is to divide things into power tiers that represent different levels of power while still fitting into the game’s normal(ish) parameters to sell the feel of big power gains without trying to literally convert Dragonball into raw math :sweat_smile:

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My thoughts exactly. It’s been a very fun thought experiment for me and I thought the forums might get some entertainment from considering the idea as well

Lmao yeah. Maybe it’d be possible if we kept it a bit more reasonable at like 2-3x like the pre-Namek Kaio-ken (even though that’s not technically a transformation but you get the idea)

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On the topic of lower multipliers, you could also make the transformation mechanic work similarly to Engage’s namesake mechanic :thinking:

Say every once in a while you get a support/story event that can unlock a new form for a character, and then it becomes a meter you need to build up before they can use it, and then after it only lasts for a short time, making it good for clearing out tough enemies or taking out the boss at the end of the map

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Rather than massively inflating stats, I’d implement a tiers system.

Each unit has a tier, and there’s a method for progressing through these tiers.

Something like:
Bronze → Iron → Steel → Silver → Gold → Platinum (maybe more)

Each tier above you takes half damage from the tier directly below it. This makes them relevant, keeps the math simple, and makes it possible to kill units of higher tiers.

2 tiers difference could be 1/3rd or 1/4th dmg, depending on preference and game design.

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That’s sort of similar to something I was thinking of for a One Punch Man-inspired concept actually, funny that I didn’t even consider it for this idea too. And the tier names are almost identical to the ones I was thinking of too lol (I was thinking Bronze > Silver > Gold > Platinum > Diamond)

I think, depending on preference, you could also have more stuff be affected, like the doubling threshold between tiers: say someone is on the same tier, you need +4 SPD to double them and they need +4 to double you just like normal, but then if theyre a tier higher, maybe you need +6 and they only need +2, and if they’re two tiers higher you need +8 and they can actually get away with doubling at equal speed

Lowkey I was thinking of seeing in my future hacks if it’d be possible to give promoted units a different doubling threshold (even if I had to pay someone to make it happen), it’s an idea I’ve been fond of ever since I started working on my FE-based TTRPG a few years back

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“It’s over 9000!-”

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If we were flavoring it over Dragon Ball, I’d probably put seven ranks- one for each dragon ball.

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Probably with PoR’s Laguz bar and vaguely similar stat increases. The show had nutty number scaling through Z but they were pretty meaningless in practice. (HSD Kenichi mentions something similar in the early episodes when one of the characters tries to boil down power/combat strength to a single number.)

Similarly FE already has units from little to great value within single digits worth of difference (usually speed), so considering how crazy Laguz could get in an normal/average stat cap FE game (I.E not Awakening or Engage) when transformed from a complete liability, a more normal unit could effectively be top tier for a few turns or combats with a similar boost.