Low Percent Crits/Funee RNG go brrrrrr

Design
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I saw some posts about RNG stuff in another thread, and brain started cooking. Sorry if this turns out a bit unorganized.

So, low percent crits. They kinda suck. But what if they didn’t? Or more specifically, how would you balance crit so that getting hit with a low percent crit doesn’t feel as bad?

Fire Emblem is generally an RPG with low numbers, so you can typically just do all the math in your head with no problems, except for hit and avoid. In a game like this, damage multipliers are extremely strong; even just outspeeding an opponent to get a double attack is huge. Crits in most FE games deal triple damage, which is pretty insane; though, its typically balanced by its rarity. Getting even 30-40% crit is really, really hard in most FEs. However, even if its 1%, it can and will happen. Just like how sometimes you’ll get a lucky 1% crit, the enemy can also sometimes hit you with a 1% crit. Considering you can just randomly get hit with triple damage in a game with low numbers… yeah, its not super great. I can understand why it was kept like this, though; it fits pretty well especially with what FEs1-5 were going for in the sense that yes, you did get unlucky and lose one unit, but you still have another 20 that can take their place. They might not be as good or take up the same role, but that’s something for you to strategize around now. It can be very interesting in its own way. However, it can also be very frustrating to lose a unit to random chance like that in a way that you seemingly couldn’t have avoided (or in some games, you really couldn’t avoid).
One idea I had was “what if you could strategize around crit?” There are a few ways I thought of going about this. One was to make crit avoid (or dodge, in some FEs) an actual thing. Have it be a real stat that you can stack with certain equippable items and/or weapons. Hell, just give me an Iron Rune or 2 earlier on in the game! It would make dealing with those killing edge myrmidon recruitables so much easier… basically, just give the player ways to deal with crit instead of it just being a thing you have to deal with. Give me ways to strategize in my strategy game.
Another idea I had was to nerf the damage multiplier from x3 to x2; the idea being that it would allow you to potentially tank crits easier and play around it that way, similar to how Pokemon nuzlockers would play around crit damage.

I think that’s about everything, though here’s some other random thoughts I had.
I like being able to stack stuff like crit and avoid super high. I think its pretty cool. Obviously it shouldn’t be super easy to do, but I think it would be fun to have a game where you can stack those stats pretty high if you work for it, but also have ways to prevent the enemy from doing the same and vice versa, to an extent.

That’s all, I think. What about yall in the community? How would you deal with these kinds of RNG things?

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You could be particularly evil and just make everyone have at least a bit of critical, if every single thing can critical it’ll become the expected thing instead of just ‘one randomly scary enemy’.

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—Kaga, when making FE1.

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I like to set the Support Bonus Critical avoidance high.
This means that as long as you have them act with their partners, they will not be subject to enemy criticals.

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I’m with you on critical hits being x2 instead of x3. It’s pretty insulting to the strategic aspect of the game when a random crit often beats other, more determinate or prestigious offensive tools.

But I think another thing to reconsider is how crit is calculated. One idea I had for improving the Skill stat touches on it… first, by default Skill only grants 1 Hit and Speed grants 1 Avoid. But for every point of Skill more than your foe you’d gain +1 Hit/Avoid/Crit in combat, up to 20 max. It would also reduce your foe’s Dodge from Luck to Luck/2, and speaking of Luck, each point would rotate between granting Hit, Crit and Avoid in whatever order you see fit.

This doesn’t completely eliminate low% crits, but if you have higher Skill then your opponent then you should barely see them. Also makes crit chances more controlled in general, even in a crit welfare game where enemies all have 0 Luck.

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This has already been done in games like Fates and the GBAFE trilogy, it’s just that enemies with high crit aren’t prevalent enough for it to matter. It’s invariably a better strategy to stack defence or use a high-defence unit. The only time it matters is when you have units like Arthur who have Dodge penalties which make crit chances non-zero which interferes with strategizing in a bad way.

I think getting crit ratios right is just really hard, which is why it always feels so busted. You have to have enemy crits be either low enough that they’re a non-factor, or high enough that they’re dangerous and need to be strategised around. On the player side, crit needs to be high enough that it might just occasionally save them, but not so high that it’s proccing all the time unless the player has specifically built around it.

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Crit is healthy in Pokemon because it manages the game pacing and prevents it from becoming “let’s get every stat to 5th stage”. It feels like crap in FE because every unit you get is an actual character and making enough actual characters to make just going “lmao nice” when a crit happens viable is like. potentially an extra hundred hours of dev time for each one

Sometimes the player just gets attached, too.
If it feels bad to go “omg noo my strategy didn’t work out” that’s because you’re primed to believe that if you’re not executing it perfectly you’re failing as opposed to just doing it normally

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Reduce default critical damage and increase bulk such that units don’t die to single criticals. If you’re concerned that this makes certain units irrelevant, add weapons that increase critical damage.
This is the most sound way because it’s the easiest to comprehend, since it changes one number (the critical bonus), and it’s a number that isn’t often super relevant.

You could solve this other ways, like giving units that have a “can’t be killed from full” effect or other conditional damage resistance; but this can cause other issues and requires more presence of mind.

So, to me, this doesn’t reaaally make sense because this is already a thing. Just like how Hit and Critical are built from a character’s Dexterity, Critical Avoid is built from the unit’s Luck.

If you want to get more critical avoid, feed your units some Goddess Icons? The problem in this regard is going to be the Killer weapons, since those will basically always outpace Luck scores.

Fire Emblem’s equip systems have always been relatively basic, classically sword-and-board - and usually just the sword; with Valentia making use of a shield be instead of a real weapon. I don’t think complicating that is necessary or beneficial.

I do think the default triple damage critical is a problem, since it makes units without a certain floor of Luck or Defense inflict great levels of dread every time they see combat, since they run those chances of simply vanishing. It’s something I realized I absolutely hated a while back - the thing about Killers is that they’re rather interesting to engage into because they make you play with risk management or properly answer the opponent with an armor knight or analogue, or by taking it out in ranged battle.

I think I agree with 7743 in making Supports give more critical avoid is a better solution than giving early iron runes, but I also just don’t think the hoplon guard / iron rune is an item that should exist. Having to manage enemy criticals is, in my opinion, a very important part of strategy, just like having action economy redundancy to account for your own unit missing.

… I really need to ramble less.

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A solution I like (incredibly boring) is simply not have low luck units and 5-10 crit weapons.

Makes crits still feel good in player hands when you can control the crits with killers or skills or whatever.

Alternatively, Dragz made the “battle crit threshold” that reduces crit below a certain number (presumably something like 10) to 0. Also a pretty clean solution in my opinion.

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Let’s see.

Dodge: Is the most general way to prevent crits. Basically a direct counter.
The Lord is often the unit with highest luck early and them being balanced means they can tank a little if it’s too risky for others.

Outranging. Units with low dodge can fight enemies out of range to avoid the risk entirely. Often needs specialization (bows) or risk (missing with a Javalin or Hand Axe) yet, this is likely the most common way to handle “Killer” weapons.

Tanking: Zero times three is zero.
A place where this matters a lot is Sacae in FE6. All Nomads use Short Bows, just as strong as Iron Bows and they aren’t too strong. The Generals tend to have enough defense to completely walk them and the few Mirmidons there.
In Fates there aren’t plenty Killers but thise that exist, are as strong as Irons.

The power of friendship: supports often give Dodge, so a nice way to plan for future maps, is building them. Though my favorite iteration is Fates, where all Pair-ups give at least 5 Dodge.

Bronze ftw: 10 Dodge, can be forged, a lot of hit. Why it took so long to have these?

Engage’s … Everything. Luck is OP, growing dodge twice as fast as crit does. There’s Emblem Rings with Luck and Engravings pretty much fix any issue possible, including dodge.

Luck Tonic.

I believe that’s it…So yeah, unless you’re paying FE1, you have options.

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Clubs best weapons

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Honestly a way I always thought would be cool to implement (with no understanding of how to do so) would be to make it that set crit intervals give more bonus damage with higher crit % rates, so say <=10-15% crit rate does 1.5x damage, <= 25% does 2x, <= 50% does 3x and say anything greater than 50% could even possibly do 3.5-4x damage if feeling spicy. I feel like this nerfs low% crits while also letting swordmasters keep their niche high crit damage due to the lower general damage from low str and weapon type being swords.

Of course in terms of this ever actually working or game balance I have no idea, but this was an idea I had been racking around my brain for a long time

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