Ideas for new/obscure classlines/classes?

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One thing I think new fire emblem games could use are new classes. Similar to how a character can have appeal, a lot of appeal can also come from seeing new playable classes. Of course this could be done with an alternative setting, such as making the next fire emblem game more roman or more modern. But I do think new classes should be added to make sure that new units can have something that is more them.

One Idea I have is a new weapon type: Commands, the physical side of staffs. Commands to improve attack/defense/avoid/crit similar to how the FE7 rings did it. A command that challenges an enemy to a duel where the enemies has the first strike but they are put next to the commander. Using a command to have all player units within an area march a few spaces ahead. I could imagine this being similar to staffs support utility for physical units and I could imagine this being great for leading characters/classes. Kinda expanding upon Rally and Leadership stars into a whole new weapon type.

Well, this is just one idea. what are yours? They don’t have to be a whole new weapon type.

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Honestly? You don’t even really need new weapon types. Could they be nice? Certainly. However, I am of the opinion that, in order for new, additional weapon types to truly matter, you would need to alter the core systems of Fire Emblem to make them feel like they aren’t just yet another option of similar “beatstickyness” for attackers to use. The existing weapon types that we already have should have more degrees of uniqueness brought to them (especially in the face of the weapon triangle mattering less and less) as it is, and I would much rather have that effort devoted to them than to making an entirely new weapon type before that.

However, I think one very unexplored aspect of typical Fire Emblem experiences is that most project leads don’t “shake up” the formula enough when it comes to the identities of classes, let alone what they promote into. Most projects will introduce branched promotions for every class or will add new classes wholesale to what the vanilla experience offers (including very interesting and, sometimes outlandish, ones - cursed swords, Rune-users, monsters, etc.), but, at their core, you still get Axe Cavaliers which promote to Great Knights/Paladins, Mercenaries which promote to Heroes, etc.

Even within the typical scope of sticking to the core FE class progression system, there is plenty of variance that could be undertaken to provide a fresh experience: Cavalry who have high strength stats and high movement, but are otherwise slow to attack, Myrmidons/Swordmasters who, as masters of the blade, have supreme skill and defense with them, Sages who are astute in all types of magic but not masters of any, Bishops who, with the authority of the church, are wielders of immense magical power and act as judge and jury with their rule, pirates who are able to weather the elements (Def/Res) because of their time at sea, Gladiators/Heroes who strike with quick reflexes, and so on.

Traditionally, one would not expect a Hero to have a 30 Speed cap or a Swordmaster to have a 28 Def cap. Maybe you change up weapons and make all Pegasus Knights use magic or bows instead of lances before gaining that tool as a Falcoknight. There are lots of things that can be done, even while sticking to a traditional “classline” as Fire Emblem is known for. But, this could also be expanded to truly shake conventions and foundations while still falling within FE’s traditional scope.

For example, Archers becoming Bow/(Sword or Dagger) Assassins. Fighters becoming Axe/Anima “Mountain Druids”, Pirates gaining Wyvern mounts to become Sky Pirates, Monks becoming walls of armor, using Light Magic and Spears as divine retribution… Even just within the animation sets that the community has crafted, there are endless possibilities for new territories of expansion to delve into, and, honestly, I think it would be nice to see that creep into more and more projects over time.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been a fan for close to 2 decades now and the “novelty” of more of the same has worn off on me, but it’s hard to get excited about something when I’ve seen it all before. When I was new to the series, sure, just feed me more of what wowed me and thrilled me, but I’ve come to find that I need new, fresh experiences and approaches to things to really get excited about what’s being offered.

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Puppeteer is an inherently awesome idea for a class whether they use Daggers, Daggers and Bows, or anything else. But because FE Fates lets you keep Class Skills when Reclassing, anyone else with Replicate is better than a Puppeteer with Replicate. A skill that powerful really should have been class-locked. I would love to see more Puppet and Puppeteer-type classes designed to play into the class fantasy of being a living puppet like that guy from One Piece or a puppet user like that girl from Touhou.

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I agree. I think it’s mostly because such stat lines and role of those classes are so cemented and useful as the basis of fe game design. Like it takes a lot to make a new class, balance it, make it unique in the mix of the meta.

in my hack I made custom monster classes that you play ass and one of the most complicated parts of that is figuring out their weapons

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I personally think refresher units could use more variety. Give us the ballerinas, the flamenco dancers, can-can dancers, flappers who do the Charleston, sultry chanteuses, violin bards, you name it. Hell, give us a lady bard or a guy who breaks it down like Partitio here.

Also hear me out: Chrysaor Knights. Now the boys can fly around on a winged hog and have damn good RES at the same time! (the Dark Flier equivalent has a bat-winged entelodont for a mount because it’s cool)

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If you want MY opinion, while I like playable dark magic classes as the next guy, I do like the Kaga style use of it, being pure evil and unusable to the player. So if I were to add a new class line, it would be one that would use evil magic like those times: Powerful, but dangerous to the wielder.

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Just more hybrid units, that’s all we need.

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Shoutouts to Salem on Naga furreal furreal

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When it comes to making unique classes, your best bet is probably to focus on utility over combat. Taking a little inspiration from Advance Wars, having some kind of transport unit that can carry infantry across long distances comes to mind. It wouldn’t really work in a game with universal rescuing, but I could see it’s use as a gimmick in one or two maps.

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Oh yes I agree. I’d especially love to see classes that mix magic with weapons. I think that would expand opportunity for variation alot. Of course, I love all the new classes we’ve gotten out of rom hacks :}

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Lowkey I was thinking about dancers too. FF has them so why not whole class branches on dancers and bards. That be cool

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Or even in canto games you could make them have the best canto. Maybe even a “pick up & drop in the same turn and the rescued unit keeps their turn” rescue. Then make their promotion flying and tada! Something new.

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New dance types would be great. Maybe if you were to introduce dancer as a reclass type having different units perform different dances would be great fun. Just have refreshers unable to refresh fellow refreshers and you can go wild.

Or if you want dancers reinterpreted you could maybe have something like people with an S Support can refresh each other. (Once per turn, of course.)

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I understand some of what this is coming from, but this feels like a bit of a miss on what classes are for. In games without very much reclassing (like the GBA ones), classes primarily exist as archetypes for the player to be able to quickly understand units without having to constantly focus on their stats much; “This is a swordmaster so it is fast but not strong, this is a cavalier so it is balanced all around”, etc. There is no meaningful difference between a slow, defensive class being an armor knight or a pirate except the latter bucks convention. I don’t see much upside in throwing off convention just because you think it’s boring that a particular set of animations is associated with a certain stat spread. I can see the logic if it actually leads to different gameplay flow (such as if you have to face a large amount of bow pegasus knights), but “ha we switched heroes and swordmasters’ stat spreads, bet you didn’t expect that” doesn’t appeal to me.

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When I was a kid, I had an idea for a juggler/jester class that made people laugh. Maybe nowadays they’d use daggers to defend themselves?

Anyway, here’s some ideas I had in my back-pocket for awhile. Some are used in my own project.

Field Medic-6 Mov Tier 1 Healers that can open chests without a key. They can promote to Merchant or Trickster.
Spiderskin-Spider-shape shifters that use an Arachenstone to transform. They can lay web traps to increase the MOV penalty cost for units that travel across them or really sticky webs to create tiles that “freeze” the enemy.
Tribalist-For lack of a better name, a nature-based 6 mov class that uses lances and dark magic. Promotes from Freelancer.
Oliphantier-Promoted ballisticians that ride atop Oliphants, Tolkien style. They use Ballistae at range and longspears when close. They also have a class skill that allows their mount to do a stomping attack.
Scallywag-Water-walking pirate thieves. They use daggers and have High HP and Skill, low Res.
Swashbuckler-Sword pirates, but they promote to Commadore.
Commadore-Sword/Gun class. The gun functions similiar to the Bow but targets Res.

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Everyone’s put in some good points. Obviously you want to lure in new and old players with new classes that change up the way that one plays. Hybrid offense fighters, armor mages, cavalry dragon riders, etc. We all love that kind of stuff. But sometimes you have to make sure that bloat doesn’t consume the game. I know people really loved Mortal Savant in 3H for being a successor to Dread Fighter, but nowadays, good look finding anyone who remembers it even exists (to the point they made it an advertising point for Brave Felix that he is a Mortal Savant).
Another thing to talk about is class skills; we all freaked out when discovering the Mechanist’s Duplicate, so you can bet that we passed out when realizing that it’s also usable on other classes. What’s really odd is that Fates already has true class-exclusive skills beyond typical crit-modifiers: the skills exclusive to Ballisticians.
knabepicer made a good point about how simply bucking the trend for the sake of novelty doesn’t always work. It worked for Fates (Apothecary and Merchant being support versions of Archer and Spear Fighter, Mounted Troubadour becoming a footlocked Butler/Maid, etc.) because it was necessary to establish the identities of the two nations. Notice how the only cavalry unit in Hoshido is the Mechanist?
To me, a new class shouldn’t just buck the trend but also add new ways to interact with enemies, allies, and the environment. For an existing example, we have Mage Cannoneers in Engage. They use Skill as their attacking stat and have their accuracy decrease by range, just like in titles like 3H. One original class idea I’ve thought about is armored sea divers to replace pirates. They appear to be as slow as standard armored units, but upon reaching bodies of water like rivers, their movement cost is drastically decreased.

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Master Of Arms, but it can use Swords, Lances, Axes, and Bows, but it’s a foot-locked glass cannon and each weapon is capped at B-Rank. Call it whatever you want if you don’t like Master Of Arms, but Champion sounds cool to me.

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Personally i would love to see a crossbow focused archer tree (complete with flashy shoot and reload). They were a major part of warfare - at least for defence.

Depending on where the hack wants to go, you could also upgrade them to muskets or such.

Heck, if you pull from the Steampunk genre, you could come up with all sorts of wacky stuff both for classes or to improve your hack’s ideas.

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Maybe it could be an always 1-2 (maybe 3+) range attacker but since the crossbow user only reloads at the start of their turn they will only have 1 shot per turn, thus still keeping the idea of making archers defenseless against a lot of attacks but instead of that defenseless nature coming from the lack of 1 range it could be limited by there being only one attack per turn. Maybe doubling could be replaced with a reload to still give that mechanic an use.