Spear Fighter/Spear Master: Repainted Soldier/Halberdier, or new classes?

[Topaz Light]

This is something I've sorta been pondering for a while. On the one hand, Spear Fighters and Spear Masters, like Tellius Soldiers and Halberdiers, are balanced, Lance-using footsoldiers associated with the militaries of their home countries. However, Spear Fighter also has some skills which are associated with it that the Tellius Soldier line does not have, although skills work very differently in 3DSFE compared to Jugdral/Tellius, so I wouldn't really consider the skills each 3DSFE class learns to be quite equivalent to having them as built-in "class skills" in a Jugdral/Tellius-style setup. Also worth considering is that the option for Spear Fighters to promote into a mixed physical/magical class in Basara would almost certainly not be mirrored in a theoretical second promotion option for Tellius Soldiers.

What are everybody's thoughts on this? I'm having trouble coming to a conclusion, myself.

Edited March 1, 2017 by Topaz Light

[Slumber]

Yes, they're functionally the same. There's some tweaking, but it's a balanced melee class that can either go on the offense or stay on defense and do a good job at either. Whereas the one thing the Tellius soldiers had in common was a very high skill growth, in RD, every single soldier filled a different role. Nephenee was basically a myrmidon with a spear, Aran was a tanky hard-hitting mother fucker, and Danved, of all people, had high magic growth as a melee unit(He, of all people, might have been the inspiration for the Basara being hybrid). The spear fighter basically rolls all of this into one class that focuses equally on HP, strength, skill, speed, and with defense not far behind, and it can promote to a physical/magic hybrid class. The only big difference is that the skill growth for Spear Fighters isn't super prominent like it would have been in PoR/RD.

Yeah, the skills work differently, but that's basically every class in the 3DS games.

Edited March 1, 2017 by Slumber

[Extrasolar]

I'd go with rolling them into a single class, as they're similar enough to do so, preferably called Halberdier so long as the setting allows it. Personally, I prefer the Tellius-style Halberdiers as off-tanks with middling speed (faster than Generals, but slower than myrmidons), with decently high strength and skill growths. I'd love for them to be a more common class in upcoming FE games, as opposed to being enemy-only in the GBA games. Give us more than one or two, since they're meant to be the generic footsoldier of the country military.

Spear Fighter was good too, and Oboro was pretty beastly in Birthright. But in the end, I like the idea of having stat variations within various Halberdiers like Radiant Dawn gave us.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

They're definitely different interpretations. The Halberdier/Sentinel follows the same skill theme as other weapon locked classes in tellius. Critical boost, and an activation skill for more damage. The spear fighter line has more of a utility focus when compared against Fates myrmidons. Even excluding the separate Basara promotion with useful skills, Seal Defense and Seal Speed are pretty excellent for setting up a tough enemy to be killed as well as tanking on enemy phase. The myrmidon line of units are designed to finish the fight in a single round with an astra proc, can equip life and death, and enjoy a high avoid rate when initiating the fight. 

[BANRYU]

IMO skill builds are largely irrelevant and yes, they are essentially the same class set adapted for Hoshido, much like how the Samurai is functionally identical to the Myrmidon and the Archer/Peg Knight trees are (albeit without a name change; also worth noting is the fact that the Hoshidan versions of those two trees also get atypical promotions, so Spearfighters -> Basaras doesn't really mean anything when it comes to Spearfighters/masters IMO). There's the argument that 'Soldiers ARE in Fates already, so how can they be the same??' but in terms of their niche as playable units, I consider them to be essentially the same, just with a nihon-flavored skin.