So, I'll be doing some character rankings. I'll do them based off of limited Seth use (what people generally do) and Seth-skip, which is a relatively new idea where you basically just bum-rush everything with Seth with a few people helping here and there, especially later on in the game. And then I'll also do a balancing for the limited Seth use. I've already done a couple over at SF which I'll copy over here once it starts working again. But, in the mean time:
Franz
Franz is pretty ridiculous. The first few chapters are great news for him since he has swords, but, unlike Eirika, he continues to have WTC. In Chapter 1, when he joins, he can cleanly ORKO all the enemy soldiers with an iron sword even with WTD. The only way for Eirika to reach 2HKO status is to use Seth's steel sword, which, if she can even use it yet, will seriously slow her down so she still 2RKOs. Gilliam can't double, and it would take him 15 STR to OHKO them. This leaves Seth, who, as we all know, is ridiculous and ORKOs everything for a long time.

In chapters 2&3, he comes the closest to ORKOing besides Seth, and is probably the most durable, again, besides Seth. He's 3HKOd at 17.11 True Hit while on a forest. Gilliam's 4HKOd, but can't reliably dodge. Vanessa's 2HKOd and can't reliably dodge. lolRoss, and Garcia's 3HKOd with worse avoid. That leaves Eirika, who's 2HKOd but has better avoid. The same thing holds true in chapter 3, where he can potentially grab a javelin as well as maintain WTA against the swordies.

Franz ORKOs just about everything in chapter 4 with no problems and is still more durable than most people.

This continues, and, with his good growths and great performance, he continues to grow very quickly. He can promote to GK, probably the best class in the game, and become even better. He'll continue to double just about everything and 2HKO just about everything, especially when he has access to special swords/lances/axes. Full WTC just lets him do even more damage and take even less. Franz is really a pretty ridiculous unit.

9.5/10

rest to come

I agree with that... Mostly. I must just have weird luck, but Forde always turns out a bit better for me.

That's probably just luck. At 20/0, Forde only wins HP, SKL, LUK, and RES, and all only by a little bit. Franz hits harder, is faster, and has more DEF. And then there growths are like 5% away, so it doesn't change much over time.

Still figuring out how to balance Franz. For now, I'm thinking of just nerfing his speed. Suddenly, 2-3HKOing means 2-3RKOing.

Full Seth, Eirika, and Franz:

Seth:
Seth is, well, Seth. He's arguably the best unit in any American FE. He's by far your best unit earlygame and remains one of your best by endgame. There's never a point where he shouldn't be deployed unless you've starved him of EXP early on. Which you won't, since I'm assuming you're playing efficiently. Not much else to say about him. Oh, yeah, he's got 8 MOV, the ability to easily S rank either swords or lances, and anima, too. And he supports Eirika, who's guaranteed to be deployed and wants his anima affinity.

10/10

Balancing ideas:
First we'll move his base stats from...
HP: 30->24
STR: 14->11
SKL: 13->10
SPD: 12->10
LUK: 13->6
DEF: 11->8
RES: 8->3

And growths...
HP: 90->45
STR: 50->25
SKL: 45->20
SPD: 45->20
LUK: 25->10
DEF: 40->20
RES: 30->15

So, now, although the first few chapters are very similar, his bases stop being adequate much faster, his durability isn't all that good, and his growths, especially with his low EXP gain, mean he's going nowhere fast.

Sethskip:
Well, it's called Sethskip for a reason. For most of the game, we're literally just charging Seth to the goal and taking crap out on the way. Occasionally a few people will help with routes and such.
654165168473248916532165344186534781/10

Eirika
Eirika is only slightly above average combat-wise. Statwise, she's pretty much the definition of mediocrity. However she does have a few things going for her. She's around for 95.4545...% of the game on her route and 72.7272...% of the time on Ephraim's route. And every chapter she's in, she's forced. That gives her a lot of time to build up positives, even if she isn't doing very much. And her earlygame is pretty important, too. She's got pretty good offense(similar to Franz's, better than Gill/Vanessa thanks to hit rates), especially thanks to her rapier. It means that she's one of your best units for knights and cavaliers, although there her dodge-reliant durability can fall apart. Plus it allows for a 1-turn of the prologue. So she probably saves us a fair number of turns early on. In her own route, she also gets a second rapier, making for 80 total uses. And, once those finally start to run out, she gets Sieglinde, her own prf monster-effective sword. This is especially nice since there's some tough competition for Audhulma. She's also got a nice support with Seth for full ATK/DEF, which just so happen to be her two worst stats. She's also got reasonable supports with Ephraim, Tana, and Forde for full attack and half defense, although I doubt any are getting past C.
Eir. Route: 9/10
Eph. Route: 7/10

Balancing: She is not forced deployment.
But really, I'm gonna cut her down 3 base speed, but boost her growth to 82%. This way, her start isn't so good, but by level 15, she's back on track, meaning it doesn't affect her Ephraim route too much, but slows her down for a big chunk of her own. And afterwards, she still doubles everything. I'm not sure if this does everything, though. I may have to mess with her prf swords, and might just give her Dark instead of Light...

Sethskip:
Eirika doesn't do a whole lot here besides seizing, but she still has her rapier as well as being fairly important in her first few chapters, saving maybe 2-3 turns. Later, Sieglinde lets her maybe save a few turns, and at least do some self-improvement. She's forced deployment, but does almost nothing with it, really. So, this puts her at almost exactly neutral (5.5). But since she's just above neutral here: 6/10

Franz
Franz is pretty ridiculous. The first few chapters are great news for him since he has swords, but, unlike Eirika, he continues to have WTC. In Chapter 1, when he joins, he can cleanly ORKO all the enemy soldiers with an iron sword even with WTD. The only way for Eirika to reach 2HKO status is to use Seth's steel sword, which, if she can even use it yet, will seriously slow her down so she still 2RKOs. Gilliam can't double, and it would take him 15 STR to OHKO them. This leaves Seth, who, as we all know, is ridiculous and ORKOs everything for a long time.

In chapters 2&3, he comes the closest to ORKOing besides Seth, and is probably the most durable, again, besides Seth. He's 3HKOd at 17.11 True Hit while on a forest. Gilliam's 4HKOd, but can't reliably dodge. Vanessa's 2HKOd and can't reliably dodge. lolRoss, and Garcia's 3HKOd with worse avoid. That leaves Eirika, who's 2HKOd but has better avoid. The same thing holds true in chapter 3, where he can potentially grab a javelin as well as maintain WTA against the swordies.

Franz ORKOs just about everything in chapter 4 with no problems and is still more durable than most people.

This continues, and, with his good growths and great performance, he continues to grow very quickly. He can promote to GK, probably the best class in the game, and become even better. He'll continue to double just about everything and 2HKO just about everything, especially when he has access to special swords/lances/axes. Full WTC just lets him do even more damage and take even less. Franz is really a pretty ridiculous unit.
9.5/10

Balancing
4 base speed, 30% growth. So, he shouldn't be getting doubled, but he's suddenly killing things much more slowly. Also dropping his STR growth to 30. So, while he's got the whole game and rescue utility, he's not nearly the huge offense machine he was before.

Sethskip
Franz has the unique ability of having a lot of time to build up his stats as well as being better at it than most. This means that, down the line, he's not a huge combat failure, and he's got a lovely 8 MOV for rescue utility as a Paladin. Sethskip's pretty new, so this is about as much as I've figured out. I wouldn't mind a comment from dondon on what more he found he was able to do.
8.5/10

Eirika a 9/10? That's questionable. She doesn't promote until pretty late in the game, and you constantly have to worry about her getting killed with her low defense and HP. That doesn't help effiency at all, for the rapier, the knights would deal huge damage to her/ kill her. If you want a good lord, you should probably pick Ephraim. I suggest she should only be 8 at the absolute very most.

For Seth, he's not worthy of a 10/10, he's not perfect despte him being good. He has the great danger of stealing a lot of your EXP and the other units won't catch up to him until at least chapter 10.

Eirika doesn't do much, but, since she starts at neutral (5.5) what with being forced, what she does adds up. Doing a little bit for 95% of the game eventually ends up as enough to make up for those 3.5 points. Although I could see her dropping a half point.

If your units are catching up to him by chapter 10, you're doing something wrong. Seth saves more turns than just about any unit ever. Who cares if he's taking up EXP? You're still taking fewer turns in the long run.

She does not start at a 5.5. Do you seriously think she makes a good fighting unit when you constantly worry if she's going to die or not? You can't put her on the front lines or anything, so that hurts your effiency, unfortubatley, that doesn't change as you go throughout the game.

For Seth, having him hog the beginning EXP is not a good tactic, every decent FE player knows that. If you do all of your other units will deeply fall behind and your only usable unit left is Seth. He's going to get overwhelmed by enemies, resulting in him dying and have too much land to cover by himself. So in the end you end up using more turns then you would've with raising other units in the beginning.

Eirika starts at 5.5 because she's forced. And since she isn't worse than an empty slot, she's perfectly neutral. But, then, she actually does some things, like save us a turn in the prologue 16% of the time, save a few turns other places early on, rapier cavs/knights, Sieglinde later. And at other times, her combat is still decent.


Uh, no, it isn't. In fact, that's why there's a Sethskip idea going now. Seth saves so many turns in the beginning, and still clears later chapters efficiently later that raising others actually isn't worth it.

My main ratings assume limited Seth use. He's not getting ALL of the EXP, but you can't pull him out of combat altogether because he doesn't get as much EXP as others.

^I agree with Seth and Eirika. Eirika is just slightly above average. She's not useless, she is forced, but she can handle herself fine for the most part, and in the process of not having to baby Eirika all the time Eirika can take down some enemies (especially early on bandits). So IMO she is deserving of a 5.5, maybe even a 6 or 6.5. 5 minimum, 7 highest.

Err, 5.5 would mean she does absolutely nothing. I don't see how everything she does adds up to nothing.

Nice to see my Paladin comment actually got taken into consideration.

He's not the beastly god you think he is if you look at his stats. Level */10:
HP: 38.1
Str: 18.5
Skl: 17.05
Spd: 16.05
Lck: 15.25
Def: 14.6
Res: 10.7

He's only probably only going to gain 3 levels in the first 10 chapters, and will not probably reach level 10 until at the very best, trying to kill every enemy, chapter 14. By that time enemies will end up overwhelming him and he's going to repeatedly die. What about the double boss sand chapter? That's going to take many, many turns to finish that chapter since you don't have any flying units. And what about him being forced to protect the lord 24/7? Since there isn't Savior in this game, you can't rescue the lor without having major stat consequences.

He's not reaching 10 by chapter 14? Well, if he's not reaching close to level 10 by then, Franz very well might not be promoting by then, and if Franz isn't promoting by then, you're probably using a team that's too large and/or playing inefficiently.

If you go to Sethskip, he IS basically soloing most early chapters, and by then you also have other units helping him since he ISN'T so ridiculous any more.

You can protect Eirika/Ephraim with random dummies and phantoms. It's not like we really care if they die in efficient play.


And regarding that, that's 32.5 ATK with a silver lance and 16 AS. In comparison, 11/3 Cormag has 31.2 ATK and 15 AS, and Cormag's a pretty awesome unit with an early promotion. After all, an enemy with 12 AS and 36 HP and 14 DEF is guaranteed to be ORKOd, and a unit with 38 HP and 14 DEF has a good chance at being ORKOd. That's not at all bad for this point in the game.