Hello FEU, today I come here to discuss a very interesting topic. A lot of people have thought of how to solve the sword-locked classes problem of don’t having a ranged option, yes, magic swords exists, but it also doesn’t make too much sense that a Myrmidon or a Mercenary are using some sort of magic blade. There has been some solutions implemented by Intelligent Systems, like Daggers/Throwing Knives, but these weapons usually are locked to Rogues/Thieves/Assassins which it makes sense.
So I come for a more general solution: Boomerangs!
You may ask: What are you talking about? Boomerangs?
Well my dear reader, Nintendo already came up with that idea and was executed pretty well, the BoTW Lizal Boomerangs work as both swords and also throwing weapons.
And they can be design in different ways, depending of the class that uses it. So I, with the help of a dear friend of mine, will work on a project to implement Boomerangs for all sword-locked classes so y’all gonna be able to use them in your own hacks, or maybe even you can make them yourself, now that you have a clear idea of how to fix this problem.
That’s all for today folks, if you have any other interesting ideas for ranged swords, then bring them here too!
Those concepts are certainly interesting, but what would the possible stats be? would the be accurate but low in power, high in power but lower hit rates or balanced all around? And more over, would they have unique qualities, like being effective against something or have a special skill/crit rate boost? The discussion of possible non-personal 1-2 range swords in fire emblem is always in interesting topic to see
Well we can use the sword as base, they aren’t that strong, but they lighter and have nice hit rates. Let’s compare the vanilla Hand Axe with an Iron Axe for example.
Iron Axe
8 Mt | 10 Wt | 75 Hit | Rank E
Hand Axe
7 Mt | 12 Wt | 60 Hit | Rank E
Stat wise, the Hand axe is a bit weaker, heavier and it has less accuracy than the its close-quarters counterpart. We could apply the same logic with Boomerangs and Iron Swords:
Iron Sword:
5 Mt | 5 Wt | 90 Hit | Rank E
Hypothetical Boomerang:
4 Mt | 7 Wt | 75 Hit | Rank E
Obviously this is just a bland example, we can do some other changes like maybe make Boomerangs have 5 Crit as a base, compensating their low Mt besides having 1-2 range.
I like that, maybe something like a Giant Boomerang of sort.
Don’t know who they are, but if you say so.
Yes, you are right. I’m giving a Physical option for those who decide to do a Mag/Str split and have units that barely have Mag (like a Merc or Myrm) a way to do ranged damage. You could give a Mag value to them, yes, but it feels like the class/unit is depending of a Stat that they don’t really use that much.
I don’t see why dagger wouldn’t just work for swordies tbh, I mean making dagger anims for every sword class would be a pain but if you theoretically had them they are just a small throwable sword which is pretty much what a hand axe or javelin are anyway. Would make sense for a mercenary or myrm to throw them. Also just more grounded/generic than something like a boomerang like javelin/hand axe.
Another option for physical ranged weapons could be chakrams and shurikens (ninja stars). It looks like those Lizolfos weapons are based on the ‘mambele’ or the ‘mbanja’.
BotW’s boomerang swords inspired my hack to have Boomerangs serving as the sword equivalent of Javelin and Hand Axe. They’re also E rank compared to the others being D rank.
For the tier 2 ranged sword, I made a second boomerang called the Q-Merang, which is short for “Quick Boomerang” (Mega Man moment). It has low Mt but has the brave effect.
For their animations, I just used units’ regular sword anims but with the hand axe anim for the ranged projectile. It works well considering BotW boomerangs can be used as melee weapons.
The coolest ranged sword for me would be chained sword, it’s not very realistic but after all we already had FE8 general using it in their design ! So why not having a throwable sword that characters would bring back to themselves with a chain after using it
Yes boomerangs or daggers (then again daggers are already a thing in newer fire emblems and they are different weapon class) should be nice. In fact i literally saw boomerans in one fire emblem hack as ranged swords and it fits like a glove.
I think the reason ranged swords werent in Fire emblem initially because there isnt any obvious historical parrarel for throwable swords. You either go dagger (which isnt really a sword… but you can stretch the definition i guess) or change the weapon type. Trust me, if there was a good way to make ranged swords, japanese samurai would be using ranged katanas all the time, they loved having range in combat (its why their main weapon was a bow).
I guess what developers found as compromise is to add magical swords, since in GBA only swords can be either magical or psychical - no magical axe or lance in sight as far as i remember.
Dude
Mercenaries are mercenaries
They use what they have at hand
They use swords heavier than normal ones with a single hand
If they got a cursed or magic sword that worth a lot and it’s like a war reward they will take care of them with their life
Also myrms are more like japanese swordsman, there are a lot of lore about magical katanas with spirits inside. Just look at Ryoma Raijinto a magical katana
Or even Xander Siegfried a cursed sword
They are completely justified to me.
Also. Those boomerangs are cool yes … But they are just like the same weapons that the thieves uses. I can’t imagine a myrm or a merc using them. Maybe the merc but for me a merc uses what deals more damage and I can’t figure how that little knife could be better than a zwihander.
Just look at Dante and Vergil from DMC they matches with merc and myrm concept
And what’s the ranged weapon for Vergil ?? Yes, spiritual swords ._.
If you wanna make a hack with that concept go ahead it would be really cool tbh
But please, do not say that magical blades do not make sense for myrms or mercenaries because that’s not true
This is entirely correct, i believe japan had more guns per person than any other country due to samurais liking guns that much, but before they switched to guns they used bows.
My point is that Samurai really loved ranged weaponry and if ranged sword would be feasible, they would invented it already.
Put powder on the hole, shoot the blade, then reel it back.
Probably one of the potential main issues considering that its a down-grade from a standard gun is that due to only having one blade (mainly), you’re probably going to have a hardly usable weapon for a slight amount of time.
At that point, I’d consider having such hook-blades or similar be ‘experimental’ weapons that only a certain character gets.
Although this is mainly as limited as it is with sprite-works, we’ve gotten things such as Lance heroes, Axe mercenaries, and other alternate weapon types on some classes that wouldn’t be usually be considered ‘standard’. Hell, there are axe pegasi somewhere. Just because a general conception of the class ‘wouldn’t’ use a determinate weapon, it doesn’t mean an individual of such collective making use of it.
