I actually like Byleth as a unique example for a lord. He starts off stronger than all the students but quite litterally helps them grow much stronger than himself. Perfect flavor for a teacher character. Plus he has a unique weapon which gives him a niche regardless and battalions and flexible skills mean you always have plenty of options for adding more support abilities.
@@deadlypandaghost Mechanically I have no problems with Byleth. I like that they found a balance of making them strong while also not making them feel like the game revolves around them. It's not quite "Lord as Jagen" because Byleth is both not as outclassing your other units early and not falling impossibly far behind late as a "True Jagen," but it manages to have the important aspects of that without being too extreme. And yeah, sharing the exp boost is a cool aura ability, doubly so giving Byleth a rechargeable strong 1-2 range weapon to provide flexibility in placement.
I like Professor Bopper's take on this: the ideal Lord is the support lord like Leif from Thracia 776. Alear probably would have qualified as well if Engage was out at the time. Micaiah ALMOST works as this IMO, but her extreme frailness can feel like a liability at times.
@@EnigmaticMrL Support lords that are good *enough* to contribute in combat but whose real contributions are in helping the rest of your army feel great, because they're always on the field ANYWAY, so you might as well get some use out of them instead of hiding them in the back or in someone's pair up or rescue.
In this way, I think alear is the best designed lord mechanically in the series. They're always deployed, and they have a skill that is always useful even if they're not seeing combat. They tried doing this with Byleth too, with the exp boost (which is similarly useful, and a flavor win for them being a professor to their students to learn from), i just think adjacency bonuses that are immediate effects are a more well designed, less rng dependent mechanic. Sure the exp boost could make your students stronger long term, but that's dependent on how those added level ups roll.
Starting out on a more positive and standard note, Lords are a fascinating aspect of unit design. While I have some disagreements with the general sentiments given in the video, I'll save that for later. In my experience designing campaigns, studying unit usage and design, and discussing these ideas, Lords want to fill one of 3 roles. A balanced all arounder (Marth, Ike, Ephraim, Celica, Eliwood, etc), Juggernauts (Sigurd, Seliph, Hector, Dimitri, Edelgard), or Supporters (Alear, Byleth, Micaiah). These roles have some overlap in some Lords, but these are the things all Lords hope to achieve, and I think designing or understanding Lords has to start with defining what role they intend to play. Though I think another fairly important part of Lords, and where I feel the GBA Lords fail the most, is feeling powerful late in the game, with only really Hector and Ephraim managing that in the GBA era, but with most lords outside of it managing to usually reach that point well before the late game. Lords are a unit that has to be integrated properly into the design, and when they aren't, the player will feel it. Now, to complain a little. This is more in reference to the community as a whole than the actual video. I think this video does a great job of communicating things, but I think what is being communicated is a little corrupted by the incorrect sentiments within the FE community. To start, I want to make a point that LTC, Speedrunning, Ranked Runs, and Optimization are not the interest of the average player, and sadly the Fire Emblem community is kinda ruined by these ideas being treated as universal when they're a tiny minority of the people who play these games. Lord discussion is a great example of how these ideas have damaged discussion. Lords throughout the series are Good to Great, and that's just factual. Roy, Lyn, and FE11 Marth are the only Lords I'd ever argue are truly bad. Roy promotes way too late to do anything with it, and is reliant on the Binding Blade's very limited uses. Lyn has an opportunity cost to promote her first and get access to her promotion, so she ends up promoting super late. FE11 Marth feels like an actual design oversight of bad remakes. These 3 lords are exceptions, not the rule, as every other Lord in the series is at least decent. I think the unit that suffers from this the most is Eliwood, and he's a bit of an odd case, but as most discussion around FE7 is referencing Hector Mode, we'll use Hector Mode for this discussion as well. Eliwood will often promote as you're wrapping up the last promotions for your main cast in my experience. So he's a bit weaker than other units, but assuming you didn't get stat screwed he's going to be more than usable. He gains access to a Mount, Lances, and a buff to his Sword Rank, allowing him to be a rather powerful unit if you proceed to train him from there. He'll never be your best unit, but anyone saying he's a waste of experience is just wrong and too focused on optimization to realize that this idea doesn't apply to the majority of players. While I have plenty of gripes with how Eliwood is handled as a unit, he's not useless by any stretch. PoR Ike is a victim of this GBA Centric idea of Lords being bad, and likely the biggest victim of it. He's a unit that serves the player well as a solid all around combat unit, and promotes around the same time you're starting to get a lot of promotions on a normal playthrough. Even without BEXP he's hitting Level 20 rather consistently between Chapters 14 and 16, right on schedule for his promotion at the end of Ch17. In a normal playthrough, the player isn't going to be throwing Titania or Marcia at every problem with Forged 1-2 Range and power leveling Marcia with BEXP as soon as they get her. Though often, online discussion acts as though lacking access to 1-2 range is a death sentence, when in FE9 it's really an inconvenience at worst in a normal playthrough. Lords suffer a lot from the idea that Optimized play is the standard, when in reality it just isn't. That's something I adore about your content, is that you show an understanding that most players are going to be what we would call pretty casual players. Lords are only worth ditching in very optimized, and in my opinion, boring gameplay that's focused on speed and nothing else. Though even Speedrunners care less about how fast they are than Heroes Units.
Damn dude I gotta give you props this is really well articulated and I mirror you're sentiments about how the optimization way of playing is seen as the standard when it really isn't
Yeah, I love using Eliwood myself. Since he has access to a mount and lances upon promotion, it just makes him the best lord. Assuming Hector mode and not completely bad stats, and of course, not caring about funds rank (or using some arena), he is pretty competent. Yeah he only has 7 movement compared to paladin's 8, but having a forced deployed cav does have some benefits. Upon promotion, I usually just give him 3 javs and an iron lance and get through the rest of the game with little difficulty when I need him. He still gets slack from being worse than Hector and sometimes Lyn, but I think being foot locked, and in Hector's case, armour locked is not really a good thing. Sure he can do the fighting, but you normally want to ferry Hector around as an opportunity cost. Though depending on playstyle, Hector does better in early game, Eliwood is better late game. Both are unspectacular but people dislike Eliwood kind of unfairly. The mount is really good and lances are the best physical weapon type.
I take issue with exactly one thing being said here -- Lyn being bad only really applies if we assume Lyn mode was skipped. If you play Lyn mode, you have quite a bit of space to level her up, and some spare stat boosters that wouldn't otherwise exist, including an energy ring. She's not strictly optimal, but unless you heavily overvalue mindlessly enemy-phasing everything at 1-2 range, she's no worse than Eliwood at combat in my experience. Where she actually falls notably behind is if you skip her training arc mode.
@@jemolk8945 Lyn's big issue is having a middling promotion in comparison to the other two, more than lacking performance if you did Lyn mode. Even if you did Lyn Mode, Hector is likely to have significantly better combat stats by the first Heaven Seal so promoting him is a no-brainer for most players, meanwhile in Hector Mode there's no competition, she can't stack up at all against Eliwood getting a Horse and Lances. Lyn Mode used Lyn is a very solid unit, the annoying promotion mechanics of Fe7 just really mess with her. Though I absolutely should have mentioned Lyn Mode before because it does fix most of her problems otherwise.
I find Three Houses interesting with its lords mostly because, as it's such an open ended class system for everyone, lords included, they're largely treated no different than the other students, and faculty, that Byleth gets to instruct; as anyone can use the special unique weapons (albeit most cause damage if not used with the crest present for the character), the big thing the lords get is their special classes (Byleth's Enlightened One, the three lord's Lord, Dimitri's High and Great Lords, Edlegard's Armored Lord and Emperor, and Claude's Wyvern Master and Barbarossa), which highlight the strengths of each of the lords -- Byleth as a sword lord with healing/support (Faith) magic, Dimitri's lances and speed as more "what if classic lord was lance instead of sword?", Edlegard's strong defensive armored lord options as a manifestation of her "I will see this through" determination, and Claude's more aloof-feeling (but also just as much "seeing more of the battlefield than what's directly around him" tactical thinking) flying archer lord classes.
3H was tricky to talk about so I didn't really single it out in this video, but they do some interesting things with the lords that I think warrant further discussion and research. Maybe for a future follow-up.
Just gotta say I love Micaiah as a lord. Having tome access is really unique and her visual design is my favorite out of all of them, the red and black is so slick. And her weaker stars help her and her team contrast with Ike's, although that seems to have damaged her reputation.
Micaiah has three different designs in the game but her original is just the best. And I also don't mind having her and her team be so much weaker for both narrative reasons and gameplay variety, though I understand that since a lot of people love their units being powerful it's kind of a hard sell going back and forth between them.
Its really cool how lords can differ from each other so much and yet still feel "right" in the context of their game. Micaiah, Leif, and Sigurd all play very different roles but still feel like they belong in their games. Not every lord has to be the best unit at all times like Sigurd or Seliph, nor do they have to be the frail royal you stress about the whole game. In a weird way they kind of follow less rules. As long as the other units you are given and the maps you play are built with the lord choices in mind you can make a really fun game that feels like it makes sense for its respective main character.
@@ElutPesto Yeah, there are few examples of lords that don't at least play how they feel they should. Ike being a prime example of how he starts pretty weak but competent, and ends being one of the strongest fighters in the series.
Lords are interesting because they are effectively your King piece if you were to play chess, but so many lords have such different levels of variety that what makes it special is that it’s not rigid. Alear is a phenomenal example of a supportive unit that has serviceable stats but can support the team with his personal alone alongside class changes like Martial Master which give them chain guard protection. And by the same token Chrom in higher difficulties works best as a pair up backpack rather than a full fledged combat unit, him being able to grant +4 speed to a unit is vital when most pair-ups can only provide +1 in the early game. This is important especially in chapter 1 when that +4 speed is the difference between Frederick killing everyone or him getting overwhelmed. Though I’d say out of all of them Marth might be my favorite specifically cause of how unique he is. He’s the only lord that doesn’t have a promotion or an insane power spike late into the game, in fact he’s remarkably pitiful in Shadow Dragon as his bases are moderate at best and he will most likely die to every hit in the game that isn’t from an axe fighter or a pirate. But that is why I find him unique as you have to protect him while also making sure he doesn’t get put into harms way, it really does feel like you’re guiding royalty through a war zone with him. In my run of Hard 5 my Marth was incredibly blessed but despite him getting +5 strength from levels 1-7, he still was frail enough to not trivialize the game. He can still very easily get overwhelmed even with some favoritism and it incentivizes the player to utilize the army and the reclassing options the games provides you for non-special units. He never feels homogenous with the rest of the cast, and I appreciate that about it.
One draft of this video was just going through every lord in the series and talking about how they were similar to or different from this weird perceived notion of the "standard Lord," but halfway through I realized that concept of a "standard Lord" doesn't really exist in the same way people talk about it because there are so many fundamental or underlying differences between all of them, even the ones that look and feel similar. Character-wise, there may be more meat on those bones, but unit-wise if you take away "sword-locked infantry" there's not a whole lot else binding them all together.
I'd love a video about shops and armouries. The availability of different weapons and consumables, limited time availability items vs items you can get at any time, and shop placement on maps vs shops in the prep screen.
I love that only Marth can visit villages in his games because then each map with villages feels a bit more like an escort mission, requiring us to safely guide him through the route. I wish he was better in FE11, but endgame Marth in FE12 is solid enough.
one thing that's unexplored I feel is a dancer type lord, or overall a support unit type lord that really lean into the "bad unit you have to protect" direction, while also providing powerful benefits for your army encouraging you to use their abilities and making you think through how to maximize their efficiency. It's easy to just rescue a lord with awkward combat and bring them to the end, but if they are your dancer you probably want them to actually be able to act and them missing their turn is a far more painful sacrifice. This sound like a great way to make a very powerful unit that also doesn't overshadow other units. On the other hand it means it's probably easier to softlock yourself. Though that can be alleviated with another more traditional lord or a very late promotion roy style that give access to a unique powerful weapon that suddenly makes it a great combat unit (assuming it makes sense for the narrative of the game).
@@Laezar1 not something the main FE series has tried much but I would be surprised if there weren't more romhacks or fan projects that had that style of main character. People love their dancers, after all, and the best way to convince people to give them a shot and learn how to be careful with them is to force players to with the main character treatment. I know that WAY back in the ancient days of romhacks "The Last Promise" had a combo light mage / dancer lord, but I'm not deep enough in the modern FE hack community to know how many other projects have done that.
@@MythrilZenith I have played the last promise (it's very edgy but it's enjoyable) and yeah that worked pretty well though the unit was a bit too good in combat to really feel like an actual support unit to be protected. A proffessional quality game designed from the ground up with a lord that's only a commander not a fighter and with a story centered around that would be so interesting though.
I love lords that support and provide unique contributions. I know there is a large flavour preference for sword-based-lords, but I really do love the mix-ups thrown in that defy the trend. I'm going to miss the unit 101 videos and unit types are finished. I know that you've covered map design, but I don't recall if you've covered map interactions specifically. What I mean is mechanics like dragon veins or potential barriers/gates/bridges/traps interacting with specific units or unit types. I would love to hear about the potential applications of map-specific mechanics/interactions in regards to strategy and creating interesting player choices. If you have covered this already, then I apologize in advance.
@@Devmon52 there's plenty of meat in map design to cover! I've only done a tiny fraction of the possible videos there. And with Unit Design 101, while I can't promise anything yet, I've been debating on getting into the weeds of more specifics of units and dynamics. Not sure what that looks like yet, but there's ground to cover in a "Unit Design 201" or the like. Keep 101 for the broad strokes, and then expand into more detail.
@@MythrilZenith I love the idea of Unit Design 201. That feels like a wonderful way to approach the more focused topics. If you're looking to cover any specific aspects, I would love an in-depth conversation about unit presentation in regards to their join time, pre/during/post chapter join times, and dynamics about introducing several units at once (including the Red/Green dynamic). Unit feel is an important consideration for game designers and exploring it as a philosophical discussion rather than a tutorial might be nice.
My mind has been hovering the potential of a Staff lord. You are guaranteed someone that can heal but that "Rapier" type of damage is lost. Going full support in their personal weapons would be interesting though,like giving the player a rudimentary warp with like 4 spaces max or going defensive with things like early barrier and the defence staff from TRS I personally would like to see that type of thing as it completely curcumvents the whole" lord juggernaut" problem and recontextualizes the lords role as your armie's core They would probably also get like Charm or authority stars as they would probably spend most of the game surrounded on all fronts by your other units
Dedicated support lord could be pretty interesting to see. Maybe give them a rally? TLP did a dancer lord WAY back in the day but they also made him your only light mage too, which ended up feeling really awkward.
I actually really like this idea. Staff lord that gains an attacking weapon (with a reasonable weapon rank to be able to use later game stuff if it's story based) on promotion. Maybe justify the high weapon rank on promotion as they have been formally trained but have been a pacifist until a certain point in the story where they see the neccessity of defending one's self or something like that.
@@deltatkg5380 in the matter of weapon rank,you could just go with static ranks like genealogy or engage, although what would be even funnier is that they do have tome rank but its light and you just dont get any light tomes until chapter 12 or something. The whole pacifist idea does lose abit of ground when commanding a continent conquering force although it would be interesting if things like bonus exp or specific items are obtained if you spare enemies,like bringing back thracia capture and giving you shit if you capture but dont release certain bosses
3:00 I would argue Celica's Seraphim spell functions similar to a rapier, just against monsters rather than cavs/armors. It's a stretch, especially considering many other characters have access to the spell but she's has exclusive access among her army in the earlygame.
@@dragonarrow5525 fair point. Having to level her up first to unlock it makes it feel a bit different, but it definitely plays a similar role in terms of taking down certain enemies that the rest of your party will have a hard time overcoming.
I really like how Alear works as a lord. She is designed to be a supportive unit, using the interesting dragon type bonuses from Emblems. But, you can honestly do whatever you want with her. She can become a good combat unit through wyvern lord, while still not being the absolute best combat unit. She can become a really good wolf knight with Lucina. Unlike someone like Robin, who is best just nostanking, Alear doesn't have some best class or use. It really just comes down to player preference. Corrin is also an interesting lord. The player has to decide what they want to do with her before starting the game. But, because she can friendship seal into the classes of any units of the same gender, she can still be incredibly versatile. (That, or I'm just not sufficiently familiar with the Fates meta)
I can’t believe that it took me nearly three minutes to realize “Kourend the Magnificent” is playing in the background. I feel like most of my slayer tasks have me showing up to this area one way or another.
@@seliphgaming8662 Catacombs of Kourend are a great place for it! I'm still grinding out ancient shards to max my Arclight so I can upgrade it to Emberlight.
Another solution to the complaints of sword lords is to boost their magic a little and increase Levin Sword availability. This will give the lords a unique niche as decent Levin Sword user. It is similar to the Trickster class in most Fire Emblem games except he will get access to different weapons upon promotion.
I would love to hear you talk about thieves, and especially the balance of their combat versus their utility. You could more broadly include discussion of how to spread out chests and stealable items, as well as the use of enemy thieves to put time pressure on the player. There's so much to cover that you could get multiple videos out of it. Thieves in games are in general some of my favorite character types, because I have an obsessive desire with accumulating resources. There have been so many different approaches to them across gaming, and yet I wouldn't be able to put all of my feelings on them into words.
FE has had a wide variety of versions of the Thief class, something that's definitely worthy of its own deep dive. I'm not sure FE really knows what it's doing with the class, or if just their specific needs change so drastically over time.
@@MythrilZenith In my own hack I'm thinking of just merging Thief and Myrmidon, but I feel like it's going to take a lot of playtesting to get the balance of side objectives vs main front combat right
One thing fire emblem is really bad at doing I find is telegraphing ennemy thief behaviour. And brigands/pirates going for villages to a lesser extent. It's often very unclear where they'll escape or if they'll ignore the player or attempt to fight them which can really change how you approach intercepting them. Of course once you know you know, but it's one of those things where the game would really gain from having like, straight up an indicator of what the ennemy will do.
A lot of people are already talking about this but I have to agree that Byleth is a good example on how to make the protagonist be on equal grounds with the other units while still having their own niche thanks to their specialty weapon. Thanks to how Three Houses work, you quite literally can train up units that can be stronger than the main character themselves (I would know, because I've witnessed this before), which fits into the narrative of Byleth being a teacher. I also really like Corrin as a lord mainly for their customizability, but they're like a whole different class of a lord especially with how Fates class system works and I feel like them alongside Robin and Kris can have a group of their own because of their customizability.
Byleth is a good example because while they are definitely strong early-on and can still remain competitive into the late game, the sheer brokenness that your other units can perform drastically makes Byleth's late game performance pale in comparison, though using Byleth properly helps them reach their potential so much better. I try not to say *too* much on Fates because to be honest the Fates community scares me but Corrin's relative strength and versatility among the cast definitely feels quite solid.
What I love about Corrin is that not only can they be customized to play any class you want, they can also help open up classes to any other unit, gaining access to skills and classlines from the other route.
Will there be a unit design 101 for units like Robin and Kris? Personally ik ppl seem to hate self inserts a lot but honestly I like them a lot mainly for a customization aspect. Like getting to choose Kris's starting class is so fun and changes up the game sm for me.
I’ve been saying this for a while now, we need a dancer lord or avatar, they bring the uniqueness without making them stronger or weaker than other units, because they’re only as good as the unit your dancing for.
@@grauenritter9220 FE6 or FE7 Marcus? Having tried fe7 Marcus solo yeah that would work but in a funny way feels similar to Gaiden Alm, where you blow through the early game and eventually slow down just enough to necessitate other units by late game.
@@MythrilZenith FE7 marcus would be too obvious but FE 6 Marcus is good. Carries the early game, seizes easier with 8 mov, late game has to be guarded but can still rescue drop the ests.
In theory, my favourite Lord is probably Micaiah. Too bad Tellius sucks for mages. But I like the idea of a lord you have to keep away from enemies while still having things to do.
@@LunarBoo Squishy mage lord provides an interesting dynamic, and her support abilities make sure she's at least useful on the field even if you don't fight with her. Also manages to bypass a lot of the Radiant Dawn mage problems of bad tomes and high rank requirements via Thani, though one good spell does not a unit make.
Roy is a bit like that, but has nothing to do on the map. During my first playthrough of FE6 I called him the backpack baby due to how often he was just rescue carried around
I don't think "sword lords" are bad necessarily. You could argue that having swords to start is a blessing from FE1 to FE6. In those games, swords are probably the best weapon type. It's just that in FE7 to FE9 and FE11, swords are shafted hard while axes and lances got buffed. This isn't taking in account the units actual stats. Eliwood is unfortunate case since his promotion is actually good on paper. He gets a mount and lance access but in practice Knight Lord is a gimped paladin and there are plenty of paladins to choose from in FE7. Durandel is way too heavy for him in Endgame. He can still be good but tier-listers aren't going to cut him any slack. Lyn gets bows, which got a terrible effectiveness nerf (from 3x to 2x) and she's an enemy phase favored game. Good speed and skill caps but she's a Swordmaster without the crit bonus and only got bows to compensate. Also, the Sol Katti is very disappointing for Endgame. She does fine in combat honestly, but she's outclassed. Erika's promotion is Swordmaster on a horse but no crit bonus. It's ok but only her high speed and skill caps stand out. At least her legendary weapon is very strong. FE11 Marth is a game with lots of lance wielding cavaliers and armor knights. His stats are also disappointing. He just doesn't do much even with rapier access so he's very underwhelming. Heck even his performance against the final boss is poor. He gets doubled on the higher difficulties and will get one-rounded. Nagi/Tiki do way better against Medeus. FE12 Marth got buffed quite a bit at least. Support lords are fine but remember that they play differently based on their game. Leif might work fine in FE5 where there is 20-max caps and weak enemies, but he'd get slaughtered in a game like Awakening where enemies are really strong, unless he was stuck as a pair-up bot. It would be too risky to send him on the front line, so he'd hang back. Likewise, Micaiah is support lord by necessity, her stats just don't work for combat (Thani aside) and Tellius hates mages anyways. Staff utility makes her the most useful mage by default since she's forced. I feel that lords should be combat ready to start, not necessarily Sigurd levels but enough to contribute without getting one-shoted. FE romhack The Last Promise had a "dancer" lord that also had light magic access (plus staves on promotion). Cool idea honestly, he was very useful. I'd make a staff lord that had access to a Prf status staff with a ton of uses that could select between sleep, silence, and berserk (only once per map for that last one). Might be a broken but fun idea.
I feel like Micaiah would've been much better if she wasn't so damn frail. Always getting doubled, and her supporting ability, while very useful, puts her on the verge of death. Such a difficult unit to make any good use of, especially when Laura shows up and I immediately put Micaiah in perma-timeout. Meanwhile, units like Hector, Sigurd, and Seliph are a blast to use. I enjoy having a lord that has utility in front-line combat. Sue me!
@@AustinRBa That's fair! Different lords and heck, different unit types in general, appeal to different players. That's part of the fun of Fire Emblem, being able to use units that you like and whose playstyle suits you best.
That is a possible option. I don't know if mainline FE is ever going to do a story-based promotion again (I'd love to be proven wrong) considering the whole reclassing and open promotion thing is so formulaic at this point, but it's an interesting idea to try and pursue.
@@victorhundred8621 Yup, that's the short list. I could also subdivide and talk about more specific units, or zoom into specific promotions more like what I did with Great Knights, but those main classes are ones I wanted to talk on. "Running out" but not quite out yet, giving myself some lead time to get new ideas.
@@MythrilZenith You could also make videos about the more specific classes like ones that use daggers/shuriken or the ones that use gauntlets/arts, or maybe you could even do a video about S-Rank weapons or just the mechanic of weapon ranks in general, I think those could make for good videos
I've talked Cavalier, Great Knight and Wyvern and in those I bring up Paladins a fair bit so I feel like it would be treading old ground, but if I can come up with a more unique way of presenting Paladins specifically then that might be on the list. I've also debated the specific niche of "Early Game Paladin / "Jagen" but I'm hesitant to do a UD101 on that specifically because archetype lines run deep and are a bit too broadly painted across other units in the series for my purposes.
I came to the conclusion that i'd rather see lords being overpowered. If i have to use someone, make me want to use that unit. Otherwise i'd just stop wanting to play the game altogether. Escort missions are hated for a reason and making the entire game one don't fix that. Especially considering half of the times they are incredibly strong lorewise. Like, Lyn utterly destroy her uncle in the manga adaptation and is absolutely how things are supposed to go in canon, so it's quite silly that in order to do that in game you need a combination of a lot of lucky levels, dumping all the boosters on her, or playijg the japanese version(the effectiveness nerf is a comical "fuck you in particular" moment). Not Sigurd Level overpowered, but that is more the endemic inability at balancing Jeigans. The "overshadow argument" to me is something that should just be solved by making games where lowmanning and juggernsuting are not effective strategies.
@@noukan42 I often wonder about how you would design a game where "Lowmanning and juggernauting" aren't effective. Like, you could introduce multiple split objectives on massive maps that require splitting your army, but if those objectives aren't mandatory then you'll always have players that find ways to succeed without them. As for juggernauting, honestly having generally weaker units with lower caps is the only way to do this effectively in the FE engine. If you try to just make enemies stronger and stronger to combat juggernauting then you wind up in a situation like Engage or 3 Houses where only the strongest of your units are even viable to field, and only they can either take any hits at all or 1-round enemies so they never hit you. It's a hard balance to find. Might try to piece it out for a future video.
@@MythrilZenith the big problem is countering. In those games action economy is king, so on paper you always want to field as many as you can because every character is 1 more action. The way countering work in Fire Emblem break this because you can get multiple "actions" on your strongest unit on a relatively easy condition. Making countering more limited would increase the value of a larger army by far.
@@MythrilZenith The way fire emblem stats work, defense/resistance in particular, really encourages juggernauts so that's one issue. Another is high quality weapons are more efficient when wielded by a very strong unit because they'll make the most out of it. And as mentioned above, counterattacks really mean you want one really strong unit to take all the heat. Actually I feel like a way to make that less of a thing could be to really split the defensive and offensive roles in your army, having tanks that really struggle dealing damage efficienctly and damage dealers that can't tank a bunch of attacks even at high level. Maybe with 1-2 range also being limited to tanks. That would be an interesting way to limit the amount of damage you can do on ennemy phase. Nerfing mounted units to be really weak in combat is also probably a way to do that because if a unit with massive mobility can also just go in the middle of ennemy lines and murder everything the other units just end up left behind. Also probably a bit more intrusive, but a fatigue system, one that's actually noticeable, to make it so you can't always bring your strongest units out and have to do a rotation of units can be a way to encourage playing with more units. Xp distribution is also another factor. If for exemple a significant sum of xp was attributed to all units that were deployed in a chapter, reducing that when they're at higher level,, while also reducing xp gained from combat overall. This would encourage deploying weaker units and using everyone in combat rather than worrying about funneling all the XP to one unit. Current xp system has a major snowball effect where a unit that is your strongest will also get the most xp because it'll see the most combat leading to it becoming even stronger compounding the effect. this just creates juggernauts naturally. Forcing a more even distribution of the experience means you reduce the premium for already being a strong unit encouraging using more units.
I actually like Byleth as a unique example for a lord. He starts off stronger than all the students but quite litterally helps them grow much stronger than himself. Perfect flavor for a teacher character. Plus he has a unique weapon which gives him a niche regardless and battalions and flexible skills mean you always have plenty of options for adding more support abilities.
@@deadlypandaghost Mechanically I have no problems with Byleth. I like that they found a balance of making them strong while also not making them feel like the game revolves around them. It's not quite "Lord as Jagen" because Byleth is both not as outclassing your other units early and not falling impossibly far behind late as a "True Jagen," but it manages to have the important aspects of that without being too extreme.
And yeah, sharing the exp boost is a cool aura ability, doubly so giving Byleth a rechargeable strong 1-2 range weapon to provide flexibility in placement.
I like Professor Bopper's take on this: the ideal Lord is the support lord like Leif from Thracia 776. Alear probably would have qualified as well if Engage was out at the time. Micaiah ALMOST works as this IMO, but her extreme frailness can feel like a liability at times.
@@EnigmaticMrL Support lords that are good *enough* to contribute in combat but whose real contributions are in helping the rest of your army feel great, because they're always on the field ANYWAY, so you might as well get some use out of them instead of hiding them in the back or in someone's pair up or rescue.
In this way, I think alear is the best designed lord mechanically in the series. They're always deployed, and they have a skill that is always useful even if they're not seeing combat. They tried doing this with Byleth too, with the exp boost (which is similarly useful, and a flavor win for them being a professor to their students to learn from), i just think adjacency bonuses that are immediate effects are a more well designed, less rng dependent mechanic. Sure the exp boost could make your students stronger long term, but that's dependent on how those added level ups roll.
Starting out on a more positive and standard note, Lords are a fascinating aspect of unit design. While I have some disagreements with the general sentiments given in the video, I'll save that for later. In my experience designing campaigns, studying unit usage and design, and discussing these ideas, Lords want to fill one of 3 roles. A balanced all arounder (Marth, Ike, Ephraim, Celica, Eliwood, etc), Juggernauts (Sigurd, Seliph, Hector, Dimitri, Edelgard), or Supporters (Alear, Byleth, Micaiah). These roles have some overlap in some Lords, but these are the things all Lords hope to achieve, and I think designing or understanding Lords has to start with defining what role they intend to play. Though I think another fairly important part of Lords, and where I feel the GBA Lords fail the most, is feeling powerful late in the game, with only really Hector and Ephraim managing that in the GBA era, but with most lords outside of it managing to usually reach that point well before the late game. Lords are a unit that has to be integrated properly into the design, and when they aren't, the player will feel it.
Now, to complain a little. This is more in reference to the community as a whole than the actual video. I think this video does a great job of communicating things, but I think what is being communicated is a little corrupted by the incorrect sentiments within the FE community. To start, I want to make a point that LTC, Speedrunning, Ranked Runs, and Optimization are not the interest of the average player, and sadly the Fire Emblem community is kinda ruined by these ideas being treated as universal when they're a tiny minority of the people who play these games.
Lord discussion is a great example of how these ideas have damaged discussion. Lords throughout the series are Good to Great, and that's just factual. Roy, Lyn, and FE11 Marth are the only Lords I'd ever argue are truly bad. Roy promotes way too late to do anything with it, and is reliant on the Binding Blade's very limited uses. Lyn has an opportunity cost to promote her first and get access to her promotion, so she ends up promoting super late. FE11 Marth feels like an actual design oversight of bad remakes. These 3 lords are exceptions, not the rule, as every other Lord in the series is at least decent.
I think the unit that suffers from this the most is Eliwood, and he's a bit of an odd case, but as most discussion around FE7 is referencing Hector Mode, we'll use Hector Mode for this discussion as well. Eliwood will often promote as you're wrapping up the last promotions for your main cast in my experience. So he's a bit weaker than other units, but assuming you didn't get stat screwed he's going to be more than usable. He gains access to a Mount, Lances, and a buff to his Sword Rank, allowing him to be a rather powerful unit if you proceed to train him from there. He'll never be your best unit, but anyone saying he's a waste of experience is just wrong and too focused on optimization to realize that this idea doesn't apply to the majority of players. While I have plenty of gripes with how Eliwood is handled as a unit, he's not useless by any stretch.
PoR Ike is a victim of this GBA Centric idea of Lords being bad, and likely the biggest victim of it. He's a unit that serves the player well as a solid all around combat unit, and promotes around the same time you're starting to get a lot of promotions on a normal playthrough. Even without BEXP he's hitting Level 20 rather consistently between Chapters 14 and 16, right on schedule for his promotion at the end of Ch17. In a normal playthrough, the player isn't going to be throwing Titania or Marcia at every problem with Forged 1-2 Range and power leveling Marcia with BEXP as soon as they get her. Though often, online discussion acts as though lacking access to 1-2 range is a death sentence, when in FE9 it's really an inconvenience at worst in a normal playthrough.
Lords suffer a lot from the idea that Optimized play is the standard, when in reality it just isn't. That's something I adore about your content, is that you show an understanding that most players are going to be what we would call pretty casual players. Lords are only worth ditching in very optimized, and in my opinion, boring gameplay that's focused on speed and nothing else. Though even Speedrunners care less about how fast they are than Heroes Units.
Damn dude I gotta give you props this is really well articulated and I mirror you're sentiments about how the optimization way of playing is seen as the standard when it really isn't
God THANK YOU sometimes I feel like I’m the only FE player who isn’t always trying to sprint over the finish line
Yeah, I love using Eliwood myself. Since he has access to a mount and lances upon promotion, it just makes him the best lord. Assuming Hector mode and not completely bad stats, and of course, not caring about funds rank (or using some arena), he is pretty competent. Yeah he only has 7 movement compared to paladin's 8, but having a forced deployed cav does have some benefits. Upon promotion, I usually just give him 3 javs and an iron lance and get through the rest of the game with little difficulty when I need him.
He still gets slack from being worse than Hector and sometimes Lyn, but I think being foot locked, and in Hector's case, armour locked is not really a good thing. Sure he can do the fighting, but you normally want to ferry Hector around as an opportunity cost. Though depending on playstyle, Hector does better in early game, Eliwood is better late game. Both are unspectacular but people dislike Eliwood kind of unfairly. The mount is really good and lances are the best physical weapon type.
I take issue with exactly one thing being said here -- Lyn being bad only really applies if we assume Lyn mode was skipped. If you play Lyn mode, you have quite a bit of space to level her up, and some spare stat boosters that wouldn't otherwise exist, including an energy ring. She's not strictly optimal, but unless you heavily overvalue mindlessly enemy-phasing everything at 1-2 range, she's no worse than Eliwood at combat in my experience. Where she actually falls notably behind is if you skip her training arc mode.
@@jemolk8945 Lyn's big issue is having a middling promotion in comparison to the other two, more than lacking performance if you did Lyn mode. Even if you did Lyn Mode, Hector is likely to have significantly better combat stats by the first Heaven Seal so promoting him is a no-brainer for most players, meanwhile in Hector Mode there's no competition, she can't stack up at all against Eliwood getting a Horse and Lances. Lyn Mode used Lyn is a very solid unit, the annoying promotion mechanics of Fe7 just really mess with her. Though I absolutely should have mentioned Lyn Mode before because it does fix most of her problems otherwise.
I find Three Houses interesting with its lords mostly because, as it's such an open ended class system for everyone, lords included, they're largely treated no different than the other students, and faculty, that Byleth gets to instruct; as anyone can use the special unique weapons (albeit most cause damage if not used with the crest present for the character), the big thing the lords get is their special classes (Byleth's Enlightened One, the three lord's Lord, Dimitri's High and Great Lords, Edlegard's Armored Lord and Emperor, and Claude's Wyvern Master and Barbarossa), which highlight the strengths of each of the lords -- Byleth as a sword lord with healing/support (Faith) magic, Dimitri's lances and speed as more "what if classic lord was lance instead of sword?", Edlegard's strong defensive armored lord options as a manifestation of her "I will see this through" determination, and Claude's more aloof-feeling (but also just as much "seeing more of the battlefield than what's directly around him" tactical thinking) flying archer lord classes.
3H was tricky to talk about so I didn't really single it out in this video, but they do some interesting things with the lords that I think warrant further discussion and research. Maybe for a future follow-up.
Just gotta say I love Micaiah as a lord. Having tome access is really unique and her visual design is my favorite out of all of them, the red and black is so slick. And her weaker stars help her and her team contrast with Ike's, although that seems to have damaged her reputation.
Micaiah has three different designs in the game but her original is just the best. And I also don't mind having her and her team be so much weaker for both narrative reasons and gameplay variety, though I understand that since a lot of people love their units being powerful it's kind of a hard sell going back and forth between them.
Its really cool how lords can differ from each other so much and yet still feel "right" in the context of their game. Micaiah, Leif, and Sigurd all play very different roles but still feel like they belong in their games. Not every lord has to be the best unit at all times like Sigurd or Seliph, nor do they have to be the frail royal you stress about the whole game. In a weird way they kind of follow less rules. As long as the other units you are given and the maps you play are built with the lord choices in mind you can make a really fun game that feels like it makes sense for its respective main character.
@@ElutPesto Yeah, there are few examples of lords that don't at least play how they feel they should. Ike being a prime example of how he starts pretty weak but competent, and ends being one of the strongest fighters in the series.
Lords are interesting because they are effectively your King piece if you were to play chess, but so many lords have such different levels of variety that what makes it special is that it’s not rigid.
Alear is a phenomenal example of a supportive unit that has serviceable stats but can support the team with his personal alone alongside class changes like Martial Master which give them chain guard protection. And by the same token Chrom in higher difficulties works best as a pair up backpack rather than a full fledged combat unit, him being able to grant +4 speed to a unit is vital when most pair-ups can only provide +1 in the early game. This is important especially in chapter 1 when that +4 speed is the difference between Frederick killing everyone or him getting overwhelmed.
Though I’d say out of all of them Marth might be my favorite specifically cause of how unique he is. He’s the only lord that doesn’t have a promotion or an insane power spike late into the game, in fact he’s remarkably pitiful in Shadow Dragon as his bases are moderate at best and he will most likely die to every hit in the game that isn’t from an axe fighter or a pirate. But that is why I find him unique as you have to protect him while also making sure he doesn’t get put into harms way, it really does feel like you’re guiding royalty through a war zone with him. In my run of Hard 5 my Marth was incredibly blessed but despite him getting +5 strength from levels 1-7, he still was frail enough to not trivialize the game. He can still very easily get overwhelmed even with some favoritism and it incentivizes the player to utilize the army and the reclassing options the games provides you for non-special units. He never feels homogenous with the rest of the cast, and I appreciate that about it.
One draft of this video was just going through every lord in the series and talking about how they were similar to or different from this weird perceived notion of the "standard Lord," but halfway through I realized that concept of a "standard Lord" doesn't really exist in the same way people talk about it because there are so many fundamental or underlying differences between all of them, even the ones that look and feel similar. Character-wise, there may be more meat on those bones, but unit-wise if you take away "sword-locked infantry" there's not a whole lot else binding them all together.
I'd love a video about shops and armouries. The availability of different weapons and consumables, limited time availability items vs items you can get at any time, and shop placement on maps vs shops in the prep screen.
@@NolenJacobson Another great idea! I'll be sure to put it into my list for consideration.
I love that only Marth can visit villages in his games because then each map with villages feels a bit more like an escort mission, requiring us to safely guide him through the route. I wish he was better in FE11, but endgame Marth in FE12 is solid enough.
one thing that's unexplored I feel is a dancer type lord, or overall a support unit type lord that really lean into the "bad unit you have to protect" direction, while also providing powerful benefits for your army encouraging you to use their abilities and making you think through how to maximize their efficiency. It's easy to just rescue a lord with awkward combat and bring them to the end, but if they are your dancer you probably want them to actually be able to act and them missing their turn is a far more painful sacrifice.
This sound like a great way to make a very powerful unit that also doesn't overshadow other units. On the other hand it means it's probably easier to softlock yourself. Though that can be alleviated with another more traditional lord or a very late promotion roy style that give access to a unique powerful weapon that suddenly makes it a great combat unit (assuming it makes sense for the narrative of the game).
@@Laezar1 not something the main FE series has tried much but I would be surprised if there weren't more romhacks or fan projects that had that style of main character. People love their dancers, after all, and the best way to convince people to give them a shot and learn how to be careful with them is to force players to with the main character treatment.
I know that WAY back in the ancient days of romhacks "The Last Promise" had a combo light mage / dancer lord, but I'm not deep enough in the modern FE hack community to know how many other projects have done that.
@@MythrilZenith I have played the last promise (it's very edgy but it's enjoyable) and yeah that worked pretty well though the unit was a bit too good in combat to really feel like an actual support unit to be protected.
A proffessional quality game designed from the ground up with a lord that's only a commander not a fighter and with a story centered around that would be so interesting though.
yet another way azura was shafted
I love lords that support and provide unique contributions. I know there is a large flavour preference for sword-based-lords, but I really do love the mix-ups thrown in that defy the trend. I'm going to miss the unit 101 videos and unit types are finished. I know that you've covered map design, but I don't recall if you've covered map interactions specifically. What I mean is mechanics like dragon veins or potential barriers/gates/bridges/traps interacting with specific units or unit types. I would love to hear about the potential applications of map-specific mechanics/interactions in regards to strategy and creating interesting player choices. If you have covered this already, then I apologize in advance.
@@Devmon52 there's plenty of meat in map design to cover! I've only done a tiny fraction of the possible videos there.
And with Unit Design 101, while I can't promise anything yet, I've been debating on getting into the weeds of more specifics of units and dynamics. Not sure what that looks like yet, but there's ground to cover in a "Unit Design 201" or the like. Keep 101 for the broad strokes, and then expand into more detail.
@@MythrilZenith I love the idea of Unit Design 201. That feels like a wonderful way to approach the more focused topics. If you're looking to cover any specific aspects, I would love an in-depth conversation about unit presentation in regards to their join time, pre/during/post chapter join times, and dynamics about introducing several units at once (including the Red/Green dynamic). Unit feel is an important consideration for game designers and exploring it as a philosophical discussion rather than a tutorial might be nice.
My mind has been hovering the potential of a Staff lord. You are guaranteed someone that can heal but that "Rapier" type of damage is lost. Going full support in their personal weapons would be interesting though,like giving the player a rudimentary warp with like 4 spaces max or going defensive with things like early barrier and the defence staff from TRS
I personally would like to see that type of thing as it completely curcumvents the whole" lord juggernaut" problem and recontextualizes the lords role as your armie's core
They would probably also get like Charm or authority stars as they would probably spend most of the game surrounded on all fronts by your other units
Also they could get the thief staff,as a treat
Dedicated support lord could be pretty interesting to see. Maybe give them a rally? TLP did a dancer lord WAY back in the day but they also made him your only light mage too, which ended up feeling really awkward.
I actually really like this idea. Staff lord that gains an attacking weapon (with a reasonable weapon rank to be able to use later game stuff if it's story based) on promotion. Maybe justify the high weapon rank on promotion as they have been formally trained but have been a pacifist until a certain point in the story where they see the neccessity of defending one's self or something like that.
@@deltatkg5380 in the matter of weapon rank,you could just go with static ranks like genealogy or engage, although what would be even funnier is that they do have tome rank but its light and you just dont get any light tomes until chapter 12 or something.
The whole pacifist idea does lose abit of ground when commanding a continent conquering force although it would be interesting if things like bonus exp or specific items are obtained if you spare enemies,like bringing back thracia capture and giving you shit if you capture but dont release certain bosses
3:00 I would argue Celica's Seraphim spell functions similar to a rapier, just against monsters rather than cavs/armors. It's a stretch, especially considering many other characters have access to the spell but she's has exclusive access among her army in the earlygame.
@@dragonarrow5525 fair point. Having to level her up first to unlock it makes it feel a bit different, but it definitely plays a similar role in terms of taking down certain enemies that the rest of your party will have a hard time overcoming.
I really like how Alear works as a lord. She is designed to be a supportive unit, using the interesting dragon type bonuses from Emblems. But, you can honestly do whatever you want with her. She can become a good combat unit through wyvern lord, while still not being the absolute best combat unit. She can become a really good wolf knight with Lucina.
Unlike someone like Robin, who is best just nostanking, Alear doesn't have some best class or use. It really just comes down to player preference.
Corrin is also an interesting lord. The player has to decide what they want to do with her before starting the game. But, because she can friendship seal into the classes of any units of the same gender, she can still be incredibly versatile. (That, or I'm just not sufficiently familiar with the Fates meta)
I can’t believe that it took me nearly three minutes to realize “Kourend the Magnificent” is playing in the background. I feel like most of my slayer tasks have me showing up to this area one way or another.
@@seliphgaming8662 Catacombs of Kourend are a great place for it! I'm still grinding out ancient shards to max my Arclight so I can upgrade it to Emberlight.
Another solution to the complaints of sword lords is to boost their magic a little and increase Levin Sword availability. This will give the lords a unique niche as decent Levin Sword user. It is similar to the Trickster class in most Fire Emblem games except he will get access to different weapons upon promotion.
I would love to hear you talk about thieves, and especially the balance of their combat versus their utility. You could more broadly include discussion of how to spread out chests and stealable items, as well as the use of enemy thieves to put time pressure on the player. There's so much to cover that you could get multiple videos out of it.
Thieves in games are in general some of my favorite character types, because I have an obsessive desire with accumulating resources. There have been so many different approaches to them across gaming, and yet I wouldn't be able to put all of my feelings on them into words.
FE has had a wide variety of versions of the Thief class, something that's definitely worthy of its own deep dive. I'm not sure FE really knows what it's doing with the class, or if just their specific needs change so drastically over time.
@@MythrilZenith In my own hack I'm thinking of just merging Thief and Myrmidon, but I feel like it's going to take a lot of playtesting to get the balance of side objectives vs main front combat right
One thing fire emblem is really bad at doing I find is telegraphing ennemy thief behaviour. And brigands/pirates going for villages to a lesser extent. It's often very unclear where they'll escape or if they'll ignore the player or attempt to fight them which can really change how you approach intercepting them. Of course once you know you know, but it's one of those things where the game would really gain from having like, straight up an indicator of what the ennemy will do.
A lot of people are already talking about this but I have to agree that Byleth is a good example on how to make the protagonist be on equal grounds with the other units while still having their own niche thanks to their specialty weapon. Thanks to how Three Houses work, you quite literally can train up units that can be stronger than the main character themselves (I would know, because I've witnessed this before), which fits into the narrative of Byleth being a teacher.
I also really like Corrin as a lord mainly for their customizability, but they're like a whole different class of a lord especially with how Fates class system works and I feel like them alongside Robin and Kris can have a group of their own because of their customizability.
Byleth is a good example because while they are definitely strong early-on and can still remain competitive into the late game, the sheer brokenness that your other units can perform drastically makes Byleth's late game performance pale in comparison, though using Byleth properly helps them reach their potential so much better.
I try not to say *too* much on Fates because to be honest the Fates community scares me but Corrin's relative strength and versatility among the cast definitely feels quite solid.
What I love about Corrin is that not only can they be customized to play any class you want, they can also help open up classes to any other unit, gaining access to skills and classlines from the other route.
Lowkey I've been waiting for the Pegasus Knight video since the start of the series, if you need a suggestion for future classes.
@@juliannesl it's one of the handful I know I have left!
Will there be a unit design 101 for units like Robin and Kris? Personally ik ppl seem to hate self inserts a lot but honestly I like them a lot mainly for a customization aspect. Like getting to choose Kris's starting class is so fun and changes up the game sm for me.
@@something1558 I've considered it. Might be interesting to do a sort of " how to make an interesting avatar / reclass focused unit"
I’ve been saying this for a while now, we need a dancer lord or avatar, they bring the uniqueness without making them stronger or weaker than other units, because they’re only as good as the unit your dancing for.
It would also help the people who say "I would rather just deploy another combat unit" because your dancer is MANDATORY.
@@MythrilZenith you can help stupidity, but not using dancers is advanced stupidity and you can’t help that XD
I love ALL MythrilZenith videos!!!! ❤
as an experiment, try making Marcus the Lord.
Literally Sigurd.
@@grauenritter9220 FE6 or FE7 Marcus? Having tried fe7 Marcus solo yeah that would work but in a funny way feels similar to Gaiden Alm, where you blow through the early game and eventually slow down just enough to necessitate other units by late game.
@@MythrilZenith FE7 marcus would be too obvious but FE 6 Marcus is good. Carries the early game, seizes easier with 8 mov, late game has to be guarded but can still rescue drop the ests.
In theory, my favourite Lord is probably Micaiah. Too bad Tellius sucks for mages.
But I like the idea of a lord you have to keep away from enemies while still having things to do.
@@LunarBoo Squishy mage lord provides an interesting dynamic, and her support abilities make sure she's at least useful on the field even if you don't fight with her.
Also manages to bypass a lot of the Radiant Dawn mage problems of bad tomes and high rank requirements via Thani, though one good spell does not a unit make.
Roy is a bit like that, but has nothing to do on the map. During my first playthrough of FE6 I called him the backpack baby due to how often he was just rescue carried around
You gotta cover armor knights!!! They're my favorite unit type despite how bad they are
@@mediocreboi I already have! ruclips.net/video/yrzqWzWcFco/видео.htmlsi=AobM6eD0jCa7fTxW
I don't think "sword lords" are bad necessarily. You could argue that having swords to start is a blessing from FE1 to FE6. In those games, swords are probably the best weapon type. It's just that in FE7 to FE9 and FE11, swords are shafted hard while axes and lances got buffed. This isn't taking in account the units actual stats.
Eliwood is unfortunate case since his promotion is actually good on paper. He gets a mount and lance access but in practice Knight Lord is a gimped paladin and there are plenty of paladins to choose from in FE7. Durandel is way too heavy for him in Endgame. He can still be good but tier-listers aren't going to cut him any slack.
Lyn gets bows, which got a terrible effectiveness nerf (from 3x to 2x) and she's an enemy phase favored game. Good speed and skill caps but she's a Swordmaster without the crit bonus and only got bows to compensate. Also, the Sol Katti is very disappointing for Endgame. She does fine in combat honestly, but she's outclassed.
Erika's promotion is Swordmaster on a horse but no crit bonus. It's ok but only her high speed and skill caps stand out. At least her legendary weapon is very strong.
FE11 Marth is a game with lots of lance wielding cavaliers and armor knights. His stats are also disappointing. He just doesn't do much even with rapier access so he's very underwhelming. Heck even his performance against the final boss is poor. He gets doubled on the higher difficulties and will get one-rounded. Nagi/Tiki do way better against Medeus. FE12 Marth got buffed quite a bit at least.
Support lords are fine but remember that they play differently based on their game. Leif might work fine in FE5 where there is 20-max caps and weak enemies, but he'd get slaughtered in a game like Awakening where enemies are really strong, unless he was stuck as a pair-up bot. It would be too risky to send him on the front line, so he'd hang back. Likewise, Micaiah is support lord by necessity, her stats just don't work for combat (Thani aside) and Tellius hates mages anyways. Staff utility makes her the most useful mage by default since she's forced. I feel that lords should be combat ready to start, not necessarily Sigurd levels but enough to contribute without getting one-shoted.
FE romhack The Last Promise had a "dancer" lord that also had light magic access (plus staves on promotion). Cool idea honestly, he was very useful. I'd make a staff lord that had access to a Prf status staff with a ton of uses that could select between sleep, silence, and berserk (only once per map for that last one). Might be a broken but fun idea.
I feel like Micaiah would've been much better if she wasn't so damn frail. Always getting doubled, and her supporting ability, while very useful, puts her on the verge of death. Such a difficult unit to make any good use of, especially when Laura shows up and I immediately put Micaiah in perma-timeout.
Meanwhile, units like Hector, Sigurd, and Seliph are a blast to use. I enjoy having a lord that has utility in front-line combat. Sue me!
@@AustinRBa That's fair! Different lords and heck, different unit types in general, appeal to different players. That's part of the fun of Fire Emblem, being able to use units that you like and whose playstyle suits you best.
what if they just made your lord your jagen and had them start strong early and fall off mid to late then promote super late for the last boss
That is a possible option. I don't know if mainline FE is ever going to do a story-based promotion again (I'd love to be proven wrong) considering the whole reclassing and open promotion thing is so formulaic at this point, but it's an interesting idea to try and pursue.
You still have yet to make videos about thieves, pegasus knights, healers and dancers
@@victorhundred8621 Yup, that's the short list. I could also subdivide and talk about more specific units, or zoom into specific promotions more like what I did with Great Knights, but those main classes are ones I wanted to talk on.
"Running out" but not quite out yet, giving myself some lead time to get new ideas.
@@MythrilZenith You could also make videos about the more specific classes like ones that use daggers/shuriken or the ones that use gauntlets/arts, or maybe you could even do a video about S-Rank weapons or just the mechanic of weapon ranks in general, I think those could make for good videos
how about paladin?
I've talked Cavalier, Great Knight and Wyvern and in those I bring up Paladins a fair bit so I feel like it would be treading old ground, but if I can come up with a more unique way of presenting Paladins specifically then that might be on the list.
I've also debated the specific niche of "Early Game Paladin / "Jagen" but I'm hesitant to do a UD101 on that specifically because archetype lines run deep and are a bit too broadly painted across other units in the series for my purposes.
I came to the conclusion that i'd rather see lords being overpowered. If i have to use someone, make me want to use that unit. Otherwise i'd just stop wanting to play the game altogether. Escort missions are hated for a reason and making the entire game one don't fix that. Especially considering half of the times they are incredibly strong lorewise. Like, Lyn utterly destroy her uncle in the manga adaptation and is absolutely how things are supposed to go in canon, so it's quite silly that in order to do that in game you need a combination of a lot of lucky levels, dumping all the boosters on her, or playijg the japanese version(the effectiveness nerf is a comical "fuck you in particular" moment). Not Sigurd Level overpowered, but that is more the endemic inability at balancing Jeigans.
The "overshadow argument" to me is something that should just be solved by making games where lowmanning and juggernsuting are not effective strategies.
@@noukan42 I often wonder about how you would design a game where "Lowmanning and juggernauting" aren't effective. Like, you could introduce multiple split objectives on massive maps that require splitting your army, but if those objectives aren't mandatory then you'll always have players that find ways to succeed without them.
As for juggernauting, honestly having generally weaker units with lower caps is the only way to do this effectively in the FE engine. If you try to just make enemies stronger and stronger to combat juggernauting then you wind up in a situation like Engage or 3 Houses where only the strongest of your units are even viable to field, and only they can either take any hits at all or 1-round enemies so they never hit you.
It's a hard balance to find. Might try to piece it out for a future video.
@@MythrilZenith the big problem is countering.
In those games action economy is king, so on paper you always want to field as many as you can because every character is 1 more action. The way countering work in Fire Emblem break this because you can get multiple "actions" on your strongest unit on a relatively easy condition.
Making countering more limited would increase the value of a larger army by far.
@@MythrilZenith The way fire emblem stats work, defense/resistance in particular, really encourages juggernauts so that's one issue.
Another is high quality weapons are more efficient when wielded by a very strong unit because they'll make the most out of it.
And as mentioned above, counterattacks really mean you want one really strong unit to take all the heat.
Actually I feel like a way to make that less of a thing could be to really split the defensive and offensive roles in your army, having tanks that really struggle dealing damage efficienctly and damage dealers that can't tank a bunch of attacks even at high level. Maybe with 1-2 range also being limited to tanks. That would be an interesting way to limit the amount of damage you can do on ennemy phase.
Nerfing mounted units to be really weak in combat is also probably a way to do that because if a unit with massive mobility can also just go in the middle of ennemy lines and murder everything the other units just end up left behind.
Also probably a bit more intrusive, but a fatigue system, one that's actually noticeable, to make it so you can't always bring your strongest units out and have to do a rotation of units can be a way to encourage playing with more units.
Xp distribution is also another factor. If for exemple a significant sum of xp was attributed to all units that were deployed in a chapter, reducing that when they're at higher level,, while also reducing xp gained from combat overall. This would encourage deploying weaker units and using everyone in combat rather than worrying about funneling all the XP to one unit. Current xp system has a major snowball effect where a unit that is your strongest will also get the most xp because it'll see the most combat leading to it becoming even stronger compounding the effect. this just creates juggernauts naturally. Forcing a more even distribution of the experience means you reduce the premium for already being a strong unit encouraging using more units.