tbf couldn’t you have an MP bar esque skill charge bar underneath the health bar to keep easy track of charge skills.
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The MMB already has a module for displaying skill charge when used with the skill system. Don’t ask me if charge/charge skills are actually functional, though. The (HP) bar drawing function was purposely made to be as generic as possible to allow for bars of different types, like skill charge.
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Combat Arts aren’t my personal preference for a number of reasons, but that’s not to say they’re unworkable. Because they’re so spammable- you can pretty much use them every turn- they’re much harder to balance. Wrath Strike, for instance, is incredibly boring to use and its bonuses so mild, while on the other end of the spectrum Edelgard is galeforcing her way across the map by spamming Raging Storm. When Combat Arts are so readily available, it’s hard to make them actually do anything cool without being broken. If my archers can just decide to double every turn, why wouldn’t they? I’ve personally found both Echoes’ HP costs and Three Houses’ durability costs to be far too forgiving to ever really factor in to whether or not I’m going to use a Combat Art. Hiking up the costs might make a more effective deterrent, and if you’re going that route I’d choose HP costs over durability. If you’re already using weapon durability as a mechanic, then creating another system where powerful weapons/attacks are limited by durability it just becomes redundant. Why Wrath Strike with an iron sword when I could just upgrade to steel instead?
The other big thing I don’t like about Combat Arts is that they are player phase-only. It makes enemy phase incredibly boring in comparison. This is only compounded by enemies not being able to use Combat Arts in any of the games they’re featured in. Fire Emblem is pretty unique in terms of just how much you get to do when it’s not your turn. Sure, being too enemy phase-centric isn’t good either, but neutering your game’s enemy phase is missing out on one of Fire Emblem’s more unique aspects. Defend chapters are some of the most fun in the franchise, and most of those maps require you to carefully plan for and make the most of each enemy phase. Combat Arts are far from the only reason, but in both games they’ve appeared in, I’ve personally found enemy phase far less engaging than player phase, which is a shame when half your time playing is spent there.
Really glad to hear everyone’s 2 cents on the matter. I actually haven’t considered the whole combat arts as skill perspective since it appears to be non functional in skills systems, but I think it would certainly spice things up a bit.
I still haven’t worked up the effort to play Berwick, but its manually activated player skills with cool downs seems pretty fun.
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My viewpoint is fairly simple and straightforward, especially since Fates was my first Fire Emblem game and, while I dislike too many design choices for it to be a good game, I think the gameplay is a lot of fun, and I feel the ability to customize the skillsets of the unit to counter enemies’ skills is an integral part of that experience.
Every good RPG knows you need to start small then show your growth towards the end with more complex movements. At the logical extreme, I feel player and enemy units should have 1-2 skills at the beginning, but grow to all have 5-6 towards the end. Not every class needs a class skill, and generic foes don’t need personal skills, but everyone should get 4 learned skills to help make gameplay more complex.
But Zoi, isn’t that bad and a dumb and not good game design? Why would you want the player and enemy to have broken tools at their disposal? Simple. Skills, especially proc skills like Sol, Aether, Luna, Impale, and, of course, Lethality, can quickly turn the tide of battle. A smart or lucky player can turn them wildly in their favor. Consequently, a poor or luckless player should succumb to the enemy AI who just has tools available to them that can instantly dismantle a precious unit, right? Absolutely incorrect. Unit placement is key to good Fire Emblem map design. Generic enemy assassins can be very fun to take on if you have the means by which to safely dismantle them, perhaps with 1-2 range or you can OHKO them in your phase. Them simply having those skills instantly makes them threats without relying on stats or high movement, thus creating diversity amongst types of enemies you can encounter. The number of ways one can appropriately respond to generic assassins is generally underestimated. If a unit has great defense and the nihil skill, they would make a good candidate to distract the assassins for a bit.
Combat arts are also neat, but costing HP is honestly a really awful idea, since that basically translates into every combat art having poor defensive application. The only fun combat art in Echoes was Scendscale because it was 1-3 range. Just use a separate MP system like every other RPG has. Not to mention I don’t think I’ve ever seen the AI use command arts, so unless we buff the hell out of enemies, its going to just be tools for us to obliterate a map without any inherent challenge. That’s cool for some people, like those who warpskip chapters, but abusing combat arts would be viable the entire game, so… basically, we’d need to update the AI before I feel comfortable with what some people above are suggesting.
My final point is that every skill should contribute something to making a certain class choice stand out further from others, as well as emphasizing the class’s strengths while not going overboard. If the player knew what skills were in their future, they could plan around them. Synergize skills of units with those of skills on the rest of the team, while still being unique. If the General class gets armored blow, give the Great Knight warding blow. Not necessarily exactly like that, but draw some parallels, of course. If you’re using Master Knights with every skill type and high stat caps, give them really weak skills to compensate, or powerful but hard to utilize skills. Or perhaps skills that are exclusively supportive, like Reposition or Charm. (Edit: I forgot Combat Arts also does stuff like forces you into doing only one hit and a lot of them are just kinda bad. Frankly, most of them would be better off as “techniques” that can trade off effective attack or speed to do things not within the skillset of units, perhaps debuffing the speed of a wide range of enemies with a “sweep”, or using a poison item in the unit’s inventory to coat one of their weapons in poison to make the next couple attacks with the weapon inflict poison on a foe for the next few turns. How this would work in practice, I’m not sure, but I do know that Three Houses is really just a mess of interesting but unfun design choices. It’s like the anti-Fates.)
Ultimately, skills depend entirely on if you’re willing to put in the time and effort to make them work, and if you honestly really want them. You can simply choose to forgo them and that’ll be OK. If you ask me, however, I quite enjoy the chaos, and I feel I should be punished if I lose a unit to a critting vantage swordmaster. The guy doesn’t even have 1-2 range, and I had the tools available to me to defeat him. It can be infuriating if some fool OHKOs you and you had no chance to respond; lethality assassins in a Fog of War map is the antithesis of fun. Yet, when I take out a foe I know could rip my team to shreds, I feel satisfied for having done so, and I also take pride in my teams if I have a team consisting of units with a great deal of synergy between each other.
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Skills really depend on what you want to do in regards to difficulty and how “fair” the game is to the player. I prefer skills when they’re used sparingly in order to give characters and classes differentiation, but more than that makes a kind of wacky time for the player. It adds another level of unpredictability or just extra math for the player to do, and there isn’t a particularly easy way in GBA format to communicate enemy skills in a clean and obvious way. Some people might prefer skill emblem, but for the most part I’ve found that people like them used sparingly to enhance the base gameplay or just not used at all.
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I’d say refer to berwick saga to get a good idea of what skills should be:
Proc skills can be replaced by:
Chargable skills which can be used upon command- Astra, doubleshot
Op or really good skills that require the user to not move- Aim, windsweep, overwatch etc
Skills that can only be used if the enemy can retaliate - deathmatch or desperation
Passives which distinguish units from another unit of a similar function -
Like Ruby has axebreaker, paragon , gets throw and adept eventually
Her father Clifford gets provoke to lure enemies, shieldfaire to increase his bulk.
Some units may have utilty skills that improve every one else’s performance:
Eg: Reese’s commander gives +10 hit for all allies within three tiles
Ward,Sherpa or Marcel, Guard: Intercept a selected unit and take damage in their place until they move or attack.
Generally you don’t want to give enemies too many skills or none at all, with the exception of bosses to make them more challenging if you choose to go that route, The number of skills you put on a playable unit doesn’t really matter depending upon how you design the game and what skill you give a unit.