Overclasses Stupid Bullshit
If you’ve read this far into this chaotic orgy of class design dissertations, you will have likely understood a truth by now: there is really nothing objective to say about class design. Anyone who says “you should or must do things this way” is full of shit, and you’ve likely played at least one enjoyable game that runs counter to any such assertion made. However, there is plenty of subjective information to glean. Ultimately, as both player and developer, you take a look at what people are doing, you say “oh, that idea sounds fun, this idea sounds dogshit”, and you develop your own personal sensibilities based on the sensibilities of those that have come before you.
Overclasses are way more fun if you do not do this.
Tellius
This document will not cover Tellius T3s at all. I do not believe there is anything sufficiently interesting to say about them that is not part of a broader and more boring conversation about overall game advancement pacing. They’re just glorified T2s.
wow so different
Three Houses
“I’ve always wanted to train in lances to get my magic unit a horse.” - some idiot
Shadows of Valentia
This section of the article will cost an additional $14.99 to unlock.
worth it baby
Blazing Blade
Athos is a cool guy. He’s got a custom animation. He uses all magic. He’s old. But from a mechanical class design standpoint, what does the archsage have to tell us?
Absolutely nothing, which is the point.
bro has high stats, awesome
The archsage is some cool guy who’s hyped up in story and eventually joins you and starts wrecking shit. Many a story does this. However, he does not have to be an archsage. Final Fantasy Tactics, for example, has Thunder God Cid, who is just a ridiculously powerful swordsman. The true utility of archsages, and “cool guy” classes overall, is that they’re a free space for introducing whatever cool guy you want to your setting without respecting any existing class restraints. Whatever unit you put into this class, the class can be fully tailored, gameplay, aesthetics, narrative, whatever, to this unit and their role in the story. Let’s look at some examples, which you should *not* blindly copy because did you read the thesis statement of this post?
Massive spoilers inbound. Like, seriously, think about what you’re reading for a second.
Unrestrained Narcissism
Student: How does one define an Archsage?
Plato: Well, according to Intelligent Systems, an Archsage is a unit that has mastered all four magical weapon types.
Diogenes:
Plato: Uh, Archsages also have good stats.
Diogenes:
Plato: Good enough.
In the first image, you see an Archsage. You may notice that the stats are a little low. This is intentional, as Laguna has been wounded in successive cutscene battles and as a result has to take medical leave from being a baller. What do you envision when you think of someone who is top 5 in continental powerscaling but got severely injured? In my mind, they would still have their S ranks and skill (and luck), but their other stats would be significantly lowered, in particular HP. The idea of a weaker unit with massive ranks could really be applied to anyone, to be honest, and because of its unusual nature, its design inherently free from class constraints. This person could be an Archknight, or an Archbishop, or even an Archer in your game. Just happens to be an Archsage here. Why? I wanted someone who could justifiably warp away in cutscenes. That’s it, really.
In the second image, you see an Archsage. You may notice that she is a younger woman and that she’s also a flying unit. You’ll also note that she has stats more traditionally befitting what one would consider an Archsage. A final little point of interest is that, unlike Athos, this unit is unavailable in the final map of the game, and in fact joins only for the penultimate map. She’s an Archsage because that’s literally the title of her office, as established by the story via her predecessor, the character in the first image.
When you examine these two characters, you will note that they have very little in common. One is a midgame joiner whose utility comes from access to powerful items that other units are less likely to be using yet, as well as being level 1 (hint hint). The other is much more similar to Athos, with dynamics differing more narratively than anything, as her younger age gives her less wizened and more peer-like interactions with the other characters in the player army. Notably, the first unit is actually the typical archsage in plot role, just not starting stats.
However, they’re still both Archsages. This is because, like every other class, Archsage is a class name that has no intrinsic value outside of what you wish to imbue it with. You, or your player, may intuitively think “this has to be an old guy/really strong/late-game/blah blah” but literally none of that is mandatory. You can do what you want with your special one-unit-per-class favorites as long as you have some reason to be doing so, more so than any other class category in this thread.
Cerulean Crescent
Rivian truly does not believe that classes mean anything, and as such every playable unit in this godforsaken hack has a bespoke class line. I just wanted to take some time to point out two specific examples that I particularly liked.
This starchball stole my swag, I can’t believe this shit. (The presence of powerstaff along with not having insane Est-style growths makes Nerysa a significantly different unit from Laguna in basically every way other than having all magic S-ranks, but nuance is for the dogs.)
You can have a chicken be your lategame god-unit if you give her a funny class name like Sovereign. You can give your chicken a funny class name like Sovereign because you can literally do whatever the hell you want; it’s your hack. You can do literally whatever the hell you want and have someone still think it’s cool as long as you’re swag enough because Cerulean Crescent exists. There’s really nothing more to my thesis; the rest of this post is just an excuse to show off funny lategame ballers.
Dream of Five
User Luminescent Blade wanted a lategame sword unit with a special class that has a 1-2 ranged prf sword and a fist that’s literally a lancereaver. Relative to many other members in your army at this point in Dream of Five, Thyra is basically just dragged into the shit circumstantially and has no reason to be this baller. Despite being on a surface level only one step divorced from being a “my OC who showed up to kick ass” character, she’s still a well-regarded character because of insane gameplay presence and looking crispy as fuck with custom animations. The moral of this story is that if you show love to your units, other people will love them too, and spending your “cool guy unique class name/animations” currency goes a long way towards that.
Iron Emblem Gaiden
Your lategame cool guy can be a fucking boat if you want just put water everywhere it’s that easy. Having a dedicated siege unit be your final stretch reinforcement is also a pretty novel idea for a project that is otherwise not super siege oriented (unlike Lords of the Seas and Temple of Ardesia, which are both highly siege-focused after certain breakpoints in the game). Seriously the fleet is so hype when you get it this is the joy of the one-off custom class you can make people feel hype over a boat it’s awesome. As you can tell I have nothing intelligible to say because I really like boat units.
Hag In White
There are many mysteries present in Hag In White. Who is the traitor? What’s Apate really up to? Is Edward a pirate? Where are my pants? One such mystery, which does not present itself immediately as such, is “who’s going to be the final unit that joins?” One answer, which I think many people would not expect, is “the consort of one of the main antagonists who secretly kicks ass (including his) despite the fact that she’s hiding behind a sacred stones NPC map sprite”.
Even the class description doesn’t give up the game. If you want, you can totally spend your late game cool guy class genuinely concealing your late game cool guy behind player preconceptions.
fuck you ATHATH at least i had one example in the bag that you couldn’t steal from me
Search for Seiso
In terms of pure player hype, “cool enemy that joins you” is near the very top of tools you can pull out. In a very Super Robot Wars way, Search For Seiso does this one Yabaillion times, but Kronii is the pinnacle, being just an insane juggernaut who you’ve already seen as an enemy throughout the entire game that greatly relieves pressure in the final maps. Being given a unique T3 class and animation definitely helps sell her as both threat and reward, although admittedly what you’re really here for is the 10 leadership stars.
All this to say that Galzus is even cooler if given a bespoke class and turned into a vtuber.
S4S also has more normal T3s, which are.
Shackled Power
The Dread Knights in Shackled Power are a pair of powerful foes that support the main antagonist of the game, and honestly having “one of a set of two” defect and become playable can be far more intriguing than getting a fully unique unit, if only because there’s tons of classes where only one unit has that class, and exceedingly few where exactly two do. It’s also an efficient character dynamic in using just two units to show a division of loyalties and beliefs in the enemy upper ranks, and is a good example of utilizing T3s for narrative purposes.
honorable mention, sibyl isn’t an exclusive class
but, like, it could’ve been
Temple of Ardesia
You can have an earlygame unit go “I’m going to lock in” and just randomly promote to a T3 class on the last chapter if you want. If nothing else, it’s really funny.
I did say you shouldn’t copy these lmao.
The Morrow’s Golden Country
Of course, normally, you’ll give it a bit more story panache, and the units involved will be something like “lord’s bestie and possible lover” and “guy who’s been on the home team since frame 1”. TMGC is also a good exercise in the radical freedom of T3s; Druid to Druider is boring. Sorc to Baron? Heat. Trickster to Apex Valkyrie? Borderline insane.
Shoutouts to Kenneth having +1 Move just to not lose movement from his T2. Nobody likes losing movement on promotion.
Dies Emblem
I’ve pointedly omitted Dies Emblem from being an example of unrestrained narcissism because, though it be my project, it is largely about other people.
there may be favoritism involved here
Dies has two units that can promote to T3 classes when holding a specific item. What might that item be? How are these two units related? I have no idea.
This guy barely even promotes into a T3; the class name is the same, but he gets +1 to most stats, a cooler animation, and an updated portrait. This is because user Luminescent Blade gave me the requisite assets and I had no reason to say no. This is honestly all the reason you need to make a T3.
Uh, see above.
Play Infinite Kings by BobbyAsaka.
Olivia is a mod in FE Universe. Her stats may not seem like much, but you do have the option of imbuing power into a T3 by using skills.
Camdar is the admin of FE Universe. His stats may not seem like much, but you do have the option of imbuing power into a T3 by using skills.
UltraxBlade is some guy who posts in FE Universe. His stats may not seem like much, but you do have the option of imbuing power into a T3 by using skills.
If you put yourself in a game and don’t give yourself a custom class, are you even living? My stats may not seem like much, but I did have the option of imbuing power into a T3 by using skills.
I just didn’t.
Conclusion
Earlier, I said that overclasses are more fun if you don’t leverage the sensibilities of those that have come before you. This is still true! Everything I’ve shown is an example of cool things other people have done. However, as you may have noticed, most of these examples don’t really intersect with each other. The overclass examples listed here are largely interesting because they’re whatever the developer thought was coolest, with essentially minimal regard for what other people are doing. The untrodden territory for “crazy unique unit you get” is near boundless. The only full overlaps are created by user Rivian Rice who, again, just gave every unit a bespoke class and is in itself a novel approach. I encourage all of you to get out there and print your wackiest favorite cool guy OC units and give them cool guy classes.