I find these 2 weapon types to be extremely interesting. As a whole fe’s double triangle that is the 3 physical weapons and the 3 magic weapons is a pretty solid and permanent part of the series. While there are fluctuations in the way they interact with each other it’s not as volatile as these 2 weapon types
Daggers are prominent in fe9, fates and engage but in each part they function and act differently
Fists are prominent in 3h and engage, they again function differently
so the question is, do these 2 weapon types have a real possibility of being mainstays in the series and or hacks and what should their niches be if so? or are the volitility of their effects a symptomps of not really having a niche available for them in the triangle? as a contrast, Bows are outside of the triangle like these 2 types are usually, but they’re pretty much been the same for a very long time, the anti flier weapon.
fist > bow > knife > fist
idk, i think knives could be interesting as a debuffer but fists are like… odd, their niche in 3houses was cool, but only works because 3houses isn’t balanced very well in the late game
I think there are two viable approaches to knives/daggers:
Make them part of Swords, giving some different options for weapons and effects (maybe give one knife the “Can’t Counter” property so that it could be implied that, when initiating combat, you’re being stealthy and jumping the opponent while, when defending, because it’s a short dagger, you don’t have the requisite range to counterattack, etc.), as well as opening knives up as a way to give Swords a ranged option that isn’t something like FE10’s Wind Edge. You could even set these to be Weapon Triangle neutral too, despite being part of Swords, should you want to.
Make them their own type of weapon as FE9+ have, possibly even combining them with Brawling/Strikes/Arts as a unified “Close Combat” weapon type which is outside of the Weapon Triangle. Strikes can inflict Break against non-Armor units and can get “Desperation” like “combos” (as opposed to Auto-Brave), Daggers could be effective versus Armored units (stabbing between the plates), can inflict statuses (Poison, Stun, Bleeding, etc.), and could even have something like the ability to Capture foes by forcing them to surrender. Knives would mainly be a ranged option for this attack style, though once again Swords would be in the position it is currently in with no real ranged option.
In terms of Strikes outside of combining them with Daggers into a Close Combat “supertype”, I could see it being used as something of a “parry” niche, giving increased Defense or granting effectiveness/Triangle Advantage against Swords/Axes for a master of martial arts being able to block or stop a blade. Instead of different degrees of weapons (Iron/Steel/Silver), each weapon could represent a different discipline or style (karate, judo, etc.), allowing the weapons to fill different roles other than just being “stat checks” with increasing power? This is kinda similar to what Engage did with the Arts scrolls, but realistically, most of them were bad in terms of their added effects (Steel/Silver/Flashing were the only good ones), so sprucing those up would be the next course of action, I suppose.
I don’t think making Knives/Daggers separate from Swords is a good idea when weapon types are as broad as they are(sword/lance/axe), sure you use daggers pretty differently from long swords, but the same applies to hand axes and longer dane axes as well. Just wrap the blade up with the blade.
Gauntlets/Unarmed as an “I don’t want to deal with the Weapon Triangle right now” melee-only option seems like it could work, though. I liked that they were in 3h, them all being brave made them fairly unique, but I wasn’t fond of how few casting classes got access to them.
I also don’t think combining Daggers and Unarmed is a particularly good idea, one’s not using anything, or using a thing to enhance what you’d be doing anyway if you didn’t have anything, the other’s a type of blade. Daggers seem more similar to Swords to me.
As much as I liked throwing weapons in Fates, I think part of what made them work so well is that they were part of a single weapon triangle alongside classic melee weapons, bows and magic. My overall preference is having a single weapon triangle and a couple of weapons that are just neutral tools, like magic and bows often have been.
While I do think both daggers and gauntlets look really cool in motion, based on my somewhat limited experience I don’t think they bring anything particularly interesting to the table.
One thing I would definitely like is having broader weapon categories, like having more kinds of hammers, halberds and ranged weaponry. I also believe expanding shields and equippable items could be cool.
I think daggers and fists could work in a triangle if you can shift magic into 1 slot, lets see, lets say fists beat magic because they hit faster than mages casts and daggers beat fist because extra range
Idk having a triangle with two 1-2+ range weapon types and a 1 range locked weapon type feels kinda weird to me
Fists won’t benefit much from their triangle advantage when magic can just outrange them, it feels like they lose to both weapons
I never liked how daggers and fists were integrated into the “weapon triangle” in Engage. Although, I DO like how fists were martial art scrolls rather than gauntlets. It fits a lot more, IMO.
Anyway, here’s my proposal for a new secondary weapon triangle:
Daggers beat Fists
Fists beat Tomes
Tomes beat Daggers
So. Whats the logic behind it?
You brought a knife to a fistfight. You have the advantage.
The bully punches the nerds.
How are you gonna defend against a fireball with a knife?
i quite like the modern incarnations of both of these weapons. i think keeping daggers/shurikens/hidden weapons as a 1-2 range, low damage weapon that applies debuffs is a very discrete niche that’s not filled by much other stuff. in engage poison scaled really poorly, if i were to re-introduce daggers i’d prolly make them scale based on how lategame the daggers are. there’s a case to be made that daggers don’t need to be 1-2 range, just because they really don’t need it? like, there’s no weapon type that already debuffs foes, 1-2 range might buff them unfairly given how many benefits they already have. i don’t have much to comment on this, but i thought i’d bring it up.
fists are a little more interesting. engage and 3h had them as pp braves, but engage made them usually on like… really stupid low str low bulk healers and utility? giving a healer a weapon i believe is already an interesting design decision, as it makes it so on a turn to turn basis, you have to sacrifice bulk for more damage, or sacrifice damage for heals. i think this philosophy works when your healer is a competent attacker or a middling attacker, but engage monks are so goddamn weak that it isn’t interesting. you Just Heal. i imagine this flaw extends to daggers on sages in the tellius games, but i haven’t played them.
in 3h their design suffers from an entirely different issue. with no class weapons, you’re always free to swap off of gauntlets in EP to a unit’s prefered EP weapon. gauntlets being brave on PP is supposed to be a weakness when you overextend and get dogpiled by enemies on your weaker turn, but if you can equip another weapon, it’s no good. i think the design space for a mono-fists class is ripe for the taking for this exact reason.
in terms of where they exist on the weapon triangle… i really don’t know? in my mind, the design purpose of WT should be to polarize class matchups more than they would without WT. i think this encourages players to diversify their roster, and makes it less likely that a “dominant” weapon type rises above the rest. if you were to put me on the spot with my first thoughts, knives should prolly be very seperate from wt since it shouldn’t be the killing blow, only for chipping down enemies. for gauntlets, it depends on how the average statspread for a puncher is in your game, but i imagine they’d be superior to swordies (bypassing the natural speed of them with guaranteed follow ups) and weak to lancies (too weak to bypass the sky high def of knights). or… tradition out the window, give them wta on pp and wtd on ep.
also… between you and me… aren’t fists supposed to be like, a self defense tool? they should double on ep. rant over.
Well for me, Daggers are the best if they are like in Fates, where they can be used to inflict a debuff upon the enemy. This gives them a unique trait that doesn’t just make them “weak 1-2 range Sword”. As for Fists, I only played 3 Houses, didn’t play Engage, so I can’t really give my opinion on it, though I suppose giving the Fist some unique effect could make them stand out.
Personally I would split Daggers into 2 categories: Knives and Daggers. Knives work similar to Fates, where they have low might, 1-2 range and inflict a different debuff depending on the weapon. Daggers on the other hand are 1 range only, can’t crit and have higher weight, but also higher might and negate enemy defenses. They would both be exclusively wielded by Thieves and their promotions, as Thieves are often rather weak by just being a worse Myrmidon in exchange for Thief utility, which isn’t useful at all times. This gives them a way of helping in combat via debuffs or easy kills, which would certainly make them a lot more useful.
I like the thought process, but as a personal change, I would swap tomes with bows, since it keeps all the physical classes together, with the magic being the neutral option. Or better yet, leaving tomes to their own magic triangle again, even if it’s often less impactful than the normal triangle.
To the original question, I agree with some people that engage did fists slightly more interestingly (if a little weaker generally) but need some more flavor. I think give them a gauge system, wherein after every 4 hits they deal to enemies, they can do a high might 2-range attack (disable the doubling for it though) as a command, and with the shielding arts add on a defense gauge where after every 2-3 hits they take from enemies, they automatically block the next hit. Better yet, have these two skills tied to a stance, two fist classes, each gets one of the two functions, but they promote into a class that can switch between the two stances.
For daggers I think the fates way was best, as it finally made the low might justifiable with the debuffs, whereas engage knives exist I guess but the effect is almost never that useful. Instead, I think use the fates stat reductions but slightly reduced, and add more specific status effects to apply. Say a knife with 0 might but applies guaranteed silence for three turns, and wears off if the enemy is attacked. Knives that excel in reducing a specific stat better than their counterparts. Or a 1-range dagger that guarantees 100-200 gold on killing or doubling the enemy, since FE thieves never really embraced pickpocketing in gameplay, despoil being on axe-based classes for some reason.
I think using “ki” and the like for 2-range attacks on unarmed would limit the potential thematics for classes and units that use unarmed too much. It’s just a little too mystical to be tied to a weapon that could be entirely mundane(as opposed to magic tomes, which. yeah. magic tomes.).
Yeah I do understand that thought as well, maybe we just give the unarmed classes a heavy as hell shotput to chuck at enemies but can’t easily double, just so they have… anything to work with for 2-range. Don’t want to run into the sword issue with another class where they just get locked out of a range that every other weapon type has some representation in. Also, sidenote, just bring back the wind-sword family from Tellius, IS I’m begging, magic swords still aren’t cutting it to this day
There’s always the levin sword / bolt axe fallback. I guess Ki-type attacks could work for magic ranged gauntlets, while physical ranged gauntlets throw something. Possibly something depending on the individual weapon.
True but swords don’t benefit from levin sword really since their magic is 9 out of 10 times non-existent, while axes already have multiple, notably physical, range options. Plus, bolt axes always have good enough might to negate low user stats, and axe classes usually end up with extra crit and extra damage skills that fix that even further. (I’ll never forget the poor 1-range shockstick in awakening though, RIP, done dirty).
Do agree on the magic gauntlets for sure, since every class has something vaguely similar. Levin weapons / Flame lance / Shining bow / Flame shuriken
For Daggers, I like how they worked in Fates, where they were relatively weak weapons with low Mt but the ability to debuff enemies. Admittedly, they didn’t end up working out too well because it was a bit too easy to abuse their 1-2 range, but I do like that in theory. Engage kind of did the same, but poison felt less satisfying in my opinion, and the effects barely mattered.
Brawling is a weapon type I am overall just not a big fan of. I prefer having Gauntlets over punching with fists, as it feels more fitting for a traditional FE setting (though the way Engage did it kind of fits with its own setting which feels noticeably less “mideval fantasy europe” than most FE games). I also like the idea of a weak weapon that has a brave effect in theory. If they were to come back, I think they should maybe make their benefits over ranged weapons more pronounced, and maybe also make them dual phase brave as opposed to the Brave Weapons, which I prefer to be player phase brave.
Overall, though, I don’t get the haha funny meme, punching to me feels much less satisfying than using a weapon in FE.
Edit:
Also, this kind of just feeds into a general issue in FE where weapons don’t feel super distinct.
I’m no fan of either as a cardinal weapon type, and I fundamentally dislike mounted daggers. But if you took the FE10 template and attached Engage’s poison effect, I’d be fine with that. I like them conceptually as thieves’ gimmick to give them “good bad” combat, and splitting them between melee and 1-2 throwers is a good call. I don’t think throwing knives should be going over single-digit Might save for a legendary, and while they should be more accurate than javelins they don’t deserve to be freaking aimbots like in Fates/Engage. Save the better stats and the tech options for the melee daggers so that you have incentive to use them.
Another crack idea: give them weapon disadvantage against the entire weapon triangle… but only at 1-range. Plays on how knives were rarely if ever a first resort in warfare and creates a mechanical tradeoff for unmitigated 1-2 range. You could do the same against bows at 2-range and keep their advantage against magic if you want, too. Just as long as a mainline 1-2 weapon isn’t getting advantage against a 1- or 2-locked weapon… no thanks.
Brawling feels out of place as a cardinal weapon type and we already have beast units for bear-handed combat. Best I can reason is LordGlenn’s dual knives/brawling subset, both are compact, unorthodox fighting methods more aligned with criminals than soldiers. I can also see Unarmed Combat as a gimmick skill for infantry, combined with stance and strike-type Arts to offer unique utility. It should be hot garbage without any sort of technique behind it though.
I’m seeing some interesting ideas for em, I’d also like to ask a question. Thieves getting knives are pretty common these days, outside of the fists and daggers themselves what kinda class do yall think should have them? For daggers we have more reference, mostly fates with ninjas and maids, the question here would ofc be, would yall put these classes in yall’s hack? a dagger healer and sword/dagger for master ninja? or what kinda class do yall think should have daggers outside of the usual thieves ofc.
For fists the playing field is very open, the only fist classes I know are those guys from 3h and the healer/fist classes in engage, should fist units specialise on it alone or are fists better as a secondary weapon type like promoted alear.