Is it necessary to have children in fates

[That_Tj]

Since i am new to this whole series i have wondered this. Do you really need to have kids in these games. I am trying to learn more about the meta of the game so this would help me out alot. 

[shadowofchaos]

No, you can literally get through the hardest difficulty of Conquest (Lunatic) without children.

The story doesn't change.

It just helps you get more units with more potential.

[Interdimensional Observer]

In terms of maxed out potential, the kids will exceed their parents. If you're into min-maxing and the rather minor multiplayer experience Fates has, then you'll be focusing on the kids.

Sans grinding your way to the Moon and back (which isn't necessary to beat the game), they will be inferior to their parents, unless their parents are mediocre already. There was a recent topic about this. That said, many of them can still be useful if recruited late (when they get an Offspring Seal), even if they are worse than parents.

Children only first appeared in FE4, where you absolutely had to use them. Children reappeared in Awakening, and then due to their popularity, Fates. In neither Fates nor Awakening are kids needed, they're totally optional. In fact I only once bothered to recruit any kids in Awakening, and in Fates I make due without them most of the time.

[Thinks Their Own Way]

Not really for main story campaign, but it doesn't hurt to have the child of Camilla on your team or Mozu's with Aptitude or Kana's sibling if they have one or a Rhajat with a magical mother. The completionist in me won't allow me to do play through without getting the children.

[Rex Glacies]

It is not necessary, no. However, it might depend on which version you are playing. I played Conquest on Normal difficulty and Classic mode without children, and it was quite difficult without the extra units and experience. I ended up having to switch to Casual mode in order to keep all my units alive.

If you're talking about if they are needed in the story, then no, they have no relevance.

[Ertrick36]

Absolutely not.  Neither gameplay-wise nor story-wise.

Gameplay-wise, they're more or less just replacements for units that might have turned out sour due to RNG screwage (that is, they turned out to have crappy stats for some reason).  You can totally get through with the main cast; in fact, in both routes, there are plenty of units who'll do quite well without you having to baby them at all.  You just need to make sure you spread the experience out evenly to folks.

They might be useful if you are doing an Iron Man run; you might be familiar with the term if you've played X-COM or some other strategy game, but if not, it's essentially a playstyle where you go through without ever resetting, which means that if a unit dies they're dead for good.  Given that, I'm sure you could imagine maybe needing to recruit some extra hands.

Generally, the "meta" for this game is "use the royals" (especially Camilla or Xander).  There's some other stuff regarding the meta (especially with other entries in the series), but I'll leave that to you to solve, since telling you outright might ruin the fun of figuring everything out on your own.  But I do recommend trying out everyone as much as you can.

And story-wise... well, that's for another discussion entirely.

In Awakening, there's a specific story event that happens which forces you to get one child.  However, in Fates, you can go through the entire game without ever recruiting a single 2nd gen unit.  I will say no more in this regard.

[ashlyn]

No, you don't have to have children to get through the game. It might make things easier in Conquest though, as most have already said, depending on what difficulty you are playing under. I ended up benching some of my characters like Peri and Odin very early on, because let's be honest they're pretty mediocre, at best. I replaced them with some of the child units I had and it worked out much better. If you don't really want to rely on child units, I would still say to try to marry most of your people, at least the ones you're currently using so that they can get better pair up stat boosters. 

[Ertrick36]

On 5/26/2017 at 6:18 AM, ashlyn said:

I ended up benching some of my characters like Peri and Odin very early on, because let's be honest they're pretty mediocre, at best.

It almost feels like Odin exists solely to produce Ophelia.  Barring the obvious fanservice, of course.  And Peri is just an unfortunate situation.  You've got, like, nine units who are either default Cavaliers or could become Cavaliers right from the getgo (without any planning prior), and the only one really worth a damn is Xander because he gets an edgy boomstick and defense and strength stats that only see competition from Camilla and the natural Armor Knights.

[ashlyn]

On 5/27/2017 at 2:06 PM, Ertrick36 said:

It almost feels like Odin exists solely to produce Ophelia.  Barring the obvious fanservice, of course.  And Peri is just an unfortunate situation.  You've got, like, nine units who are either default Cavaliers or could become Cavaliers right from the getgo (without any planning prior), and the only one really worth a damn is Xander because he gets an edgy boomstick and defense and strength stats that only see competition from Camilla and the natural Armor Knights.

I agree. The best part of having Odin is being able to get Ophelia because so far for me, she has performed much better than her dad. I married Odin to Nyx, and with Nyx and Ophelia paired up Ophelia works wonders. Yeah, I think there are far too many Cavaliers, as well as Heroes. It seemed like most units could reclass into either pretty easily, and to me it seemed like they were pretty much meant to go into those classes, since most of them won't work well in magic classes. 

[Frenzify]

I played through all the routes without really bothering with the children. I recruited them in Conquest and Birthright, for sure, and I can't remember if I did in Revelation, or if I just didn't have the patience to do it all again, but I definitely only used like one or two. Ignatius in Conquest was one of the only children I used in any of the routues, because I liked having another tank. Besides him, I really just didn't care about them as units, as they served literally no purpose, I didn't much care for grinding, and I preferred my already established party.

[sirmola]

Unlike awakening, where children are almost always more usefull than parrents, it varies heavily in fates.

.I FOund the following children to be especialy Usefull in conquest, but none of them are required at all:

Ophelia is really usefull. She has really good stats (she is the only mage in conquest without a glaring flaw of some sort in her stat spread), a good personal weapon, the best avalability, and a paralog that gives great weapons. Get her asap.

Percy is pretty much arthur, only whithout arthur's crippling flaw (always having close to zero crit evade), due to his exelent personal skill. Percy makes a great beserker.

[Shadow Mir]

On June 6, 2017 at 4:47 PM, Not_The_NSA said:

Sounds you like have a bias for Ophelia. She has a lot of flaws: growths are dependent on mom so her bulk is bad if Odin marries Felicia or Elise, doesn't pair well, and she's not always going to exist. The Horse Spirit and Calamity Gate from Ophelia's paralogue is actually more valuable. Only notable thing about Ophelia is that she can go Malig Knight if her mom is Camilla or Beruka, which gives her a niche over Leo.

And making Percy a Berserker is bad when Wyvern Lord is literally Berserker with flight, eight movement, and good bulk.

I honestly fail to see what "niche" would be worth wasting Camilla or Beruka on when Malig Knight is hardly fantastic imho (sure, it has wings and 8 move, but as far as I'm concerned, that's where the good points end). . . And what's with this "doesn't pair well" stuff?

On June 6, 2017 at 0:33 PM, sirmola said:

Unlike awakening, where children are almost always more usefull than parrents, it varies heavily in fates.

.I FOund the following children to be especialy Usefull in conquest, but none of them are required at all:

Ophelia is really usefull. She has really good stats (she is the only mage in conquest without a glaring flaw of some sort in her stat spread), a good personal weapon, the best avalability, and a paralog that gives great weapons. Get her asap.

Percy is pretty much arthur, only whithout arthur's crippling flaw (always having close to zero crit evade), due to his exelent personal skill. Percy makes a great beserker.

I dunno about Percy as a Berserker - even with his personal negating the crit evade penalty, he might STILL face crit chances because aside from said class tying for the lowest luck cap in the game, he's bound to have a negative luck modifier no thanks to Arthur. 

[Jotari]

I found Percy to be a useful rally bot since he naturally learns Rally Defence very soon after promotion and you've likely passed down Rally attack to him.

[Augestein]

On 6/6/2017 at 5:47 PM, Not_The_NSA said:

Sounds you like have a bias for Ophelia. She has a lot of flaws: growths are dependent on mom so her bulk is bad if Odin marries Felicia or Elise, doesn't pair well, and she's not always going to exist. The Horse Spirit and Calamity Gate from Ophelia's paralogue is actually more valuable. Only notable thing about Ophelia is that she can go Malig Knight if her mom is Camilla or Beruka, which gives her a niche over Leo.

And making Percy a Berserker is bad when Wyvern Lord is literally Berserker with flight, eight movement, and good bulk.

She's still bulky even with those two as her parents as she can just opt to be a dark knight. 32 % defense growth is pretty high for a mage. You literally can't mess Ophelia up because of how Dark Mage promotion class growths are. As for her not always going to exists? She sure can if I use Odin. Which if I want Ophelia, I am going to use Odin obviously, so I don't know what you mean by "not always going to exist." 

Berserker can get darn near 100 critical (and actually reach that sometimes), and because of Percy's personal, he doesn't have the Berserker C.ev penalty. I know he has a negative modifier, but that growth is so high...

 

13 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I found Percy to be a useful rally bot since he naturally learns Rally Defence very soon after promotion and you've likely passed down Rally attack to him.

Bonus points if you have Azura or Beruka marry Arthur. You can have Arthur grab Rally strength, promote him for Rally Defense, and then turn him into a Sky Knight for Rally Speed. 

Edited June 8, 2017 by Augestein

[Jotari]

40 minutes ago, Augestein said:

She's still bulky even with those two as her parents as she can just opt to be a dark knight. 32 % defense growth is pretty high for a mage. You literally can't mess Ophelia up because of how Dark Mage promotion class growths are. As for her not always going to exists? She sure can if I use Odin. Which if I want Ophelia, I am going to use Odin obviously, so I don't know what you mean by "not always going to exist." 

Berserker can get darn near 100 critical (and actually reach that sometimes), and because of Percy's personal, he doesn't have the Berserker C.ev penalty. I know he has a negative modifier, but that growth is so high...

 

Bonus points if you have Azura or Beruka marry Arthur. You can have Arthur grab Rally strength, promote him for Rally Defense, and then turn him into a Sky Knight for Rally Speed. 

Yep, I did something along those lines. If you have DLC, making him a Grandmaster for a while for Rally Spectrum doesn't hurt. The high flying movement he naturally gets from Wyvern lord (or Skyknight) is also useful on a rallybot.

Edited June 8, 2017 by Jotari

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, Augestein said:

Berserker can get darn near 100 critical (and actually reach that sometimes), and because of Percy's personal, he doesn't have the Berserker C.ev penalty. I know he has a negative modifier, but that growth is so high...

Not without a weapon that, in addition to being unobtainable in Conquest, is outright unusable because it's drearily inaccurate. . .

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

I found Percy to be a useful rally bot since he naturally learns Rally Defence very soon after promotion and you've likely passed down Rally attack to him.

 

1 hour ago, Augestein said:

Bonus points if you have Azura or Beruka marry Arthur. You can have Arthur grab Rally strength, promote him for Rally Defense, and then turn him into a Sky Knight for Rally Speed. 

 

39 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Yep, I did something along those lines. If you have DLC, making him a Grandmaster for a while for Rally Spectrum doesn't hurt. The high flying movement he naturally gets from Wyvern lord (or Skyknight) is also useful on a rallybot.

I never really found rallybots worth the setup, personally - also, Rally Spectrum is hardly worth dipping into a class that is more trouble to obtain than it's worth imho, considering that it got nerfed (and let's jot forget it's learned at level 35).

[Jotari]

12 minutes ago, Not_The_NSA said:

Lol, 32% defense growth isn't high. You also don't represent every player, not everyone bothers to pair Odin because it isn't worth it most of the time, especially on higher difficulties. Child Seal bonuses aren't enough to carry Ophelia or any child unit. 

Also, have you actually played these games in question? Berserker Percy can't get his "100% critical" without MyCastle rewards or weapon DLC for Great Club. Never mind the fact his hit rate will be abysmal, I'm talking 30-60% without Certain Blow. And if Percy is using an Iron Axe +1, he might as well be a Wyvern Lord.

You're saying Ophelia is a bad unit because you might decide not to recruit her. Unless you're talking about LTC that logic doesn't hold.

Not without a weapon that, in addition to being unobtainable in Conquest, is outright unusable because it's drearily inaccurate. . .

 

 

I never really found rallybots worth the setup, personally - also, Rally Spectrum is hardly worth dipping into a class that is more trouble to obtain than it's worth imho, considering that it got nerfed (and let's jot forget it's learned at level 35).

Well that's why I said Purcy's a good rallybot. Because he doesn't take as much set up as most units to become one.

Edited June 8, 2017 by Jotari

[Jotari]

Double post.

Edited June 8, 2017 by Jotari

[Jotari]

50 minutes ago, Not_The_NSA said:

Instead of harassing and falsely accusing me, go read my original reply. User sirmola said Ophelia has no flaws or to use his words "she is the only mage in conquest without a glaring flaw of some sort in her stat spread." He literally thinks Ophelia has no flaws, when the reality is that Ophelia has a lot of flaws. With that said, yes not being recruitable on demand (Ophelia requires around eight maps of Odin fighting adjacent to a female) is in fact a flaw. But me pointing out flaws has no indication on my position on Ophelia being a good or bad unit.

I'm not arguing about Ophelia being a good or bad unit. I literally said nothing that indicates whether Ophelia is a good or bad unit. I'm pointing out that the user sirmola is biased for Ophelia and people should know that. All his replies show he has a bias for Ophelia, even saying 32% defense growth is high for a Dark Knight Elise!Ophelia when it isn't.

Instead of double posting and using a straw man argument, you're free to read my posts carefully. It's all there on your screen.

It's still the same logic. Being an optional unit is not a flaw.

[Augestein]

4 hours ago, Not_The_NSA said:

Lol, 32% defense growth isn't high. You also don't represent every player, not everyone bothers to pair Odin because it isn't worth it most of the time, especially on higher difficulties. Child Seal bonuses aren't enough to carry Ophelia or any child unit. 

Also, have you actually played these games in question? Berserker Percy can't get his "100% critical" without MyCastle rewards or weapon DLC for Great Club. Never mind the fact his hit rate will be abysmal, I'm talking 30-60% without Certain Blow. And if Percy is using an Iron Axe +1, he might as well be a Wyvern Lord.

For a mage? 32% defense growth is high. Especially when coupled with To put it into perspective, Camilla only has 45% defense growth as a Malig Knight. A unit that instant promotes as a Dark Knight will get stats tweaked as if they leveled as a Dark Knight. And that's wrong about Child Seal bonuses. It's a free promotion for a unit, not all children are worse than their parents. Ophelia being one of them. And not everyone pairs up Odin? What's your point? If you use him, you have her. So this is a really awful argument. I may not represent the player, but no player is going to say "man, I want to use Ophelia this playthrough, let me NOT use Odin." 

So use MyCastle rewards. Why the hell wouldn't you use a resource that you have? Are we just playing a game where MyCastle doesn't exist? That makes no sense. And there are enough high movement units that you can pair up to help with movement bonuses. So this is rather unneeded. And archers really hurt in Conquest, so having the ability to not have a bow weakness on yet another unit is nice. What you're saying is like "oh, I just picked up a stat booster, let me not use it or sell it because... It's not guaranteed to be on a unit." That makes no sense. What kind of nonsensical arguments are these? 

4 hours ago, Not_The_NSA said:

Instead of harassing and falsely accusing me, go read my original reply. User sirmola said Ophelia has no flaws or to use his words "she is the only mage in conquest without a glaring flaw of some sort in her stat spread." He literally thinks Ophelia has no flaws, when the reality is that Ophelia has a lot of flaws. With that said, yes not being recruitable on demand (Ophelia requires around eight maps of Odin fighting adjacent to a female) is in fact a flaw. But me pointing out flaws has no indication on my position on Ophelia being a good or bad unit.

I'm not arguing about Ophelia being a good or bad unit. I literally said nothing that indicates whether Ophelia is a good or bad unit. I'm pointing out that the user sirmola is biased for Ophelia and people should know that. All his replies show he has a bias for Ophelia, even saying 32% defense growth is high for a Dark Knight Elise!Ophelia when it isn't.

Instead of double posting and using a straw man argument, you're free to read my posts carefully. It's all there on your screen.

She is darn near the only one. The only other one that can have this argument is Forest.  Leo is bulky but has shaky speed-- you have to do something about it, whether that be change his class or give him some sort of stat booster, cook, something. Felicia needs to switch to the strategist class and has terrible hp and defense which can result in literal OHKOs, She could use her plate, but its damage plummets later on when stronger spells can be used. Flame Shuriken can be used, but avoid tanks if you do. Elise needs to promote first and has horrid accuracy and needs to build up her weapon rank (you can get around that with arms scrolls however), and like Felicia, is OHKOed by a lot of enemies, Camilla has shaky base magic, and even turning her into a Sorcerer doesn't completely remove that problem hence people turning her into a Wyvern Lord instead for the extra physical attributes over magic. Forest is the only other mage that can be reliably used , but because his father is Leo, he gets a speed penalty, which can cause him to basically be a less bulky version of his dad that's faster but not fast enough to double. Dwyer has the same problems as Forest, and even with a +1 modifier, the growth spread isn't high enough to maintain enough speed depending on the mother. Ophelia can simply decide to not be a Sorcerer to fix hers. Furthermore, that is the weakest argument I've ever seen for a flaw. "You have to use Odin." Well Odin is certainly usable so this isn't even a real flaw. It's Odin's flaw. Especially because Ophelia always levels up to the the same or higher as any unit on your team. So Odin's level becomes completely pointless. I honestly do this all the time with children. Hit Ch. 19, and start recruiting them because it's free promotions for units and sub out units that are not doing so hot or just suck and replace them with the child. It's not likely that both parents have it rough, so it's easily doable. 

That *is* high for a mage. Let's turn Niles into a Sorcerer. He has 35% defense growth. 3% in a growth makes almost no difference. Camilla as a Sorcerer is 40%, so about every 10 levels, I can expect her to gain... 1 extra point of defense. Yeah, it's actually not that bad in conjunction. She's - 2 defense, which sucks, but it's not even remotely close to Elise levels of defense. And yeah, it is arguing about whether she's a bad or good unit, because your statements essentially say "she has flaws in her growths depending on her mother," which implies that she has problems depending on her parent. The only one that can screw her over is Orochi. And that's largely because you either go for nonexistent defense to get speed, or you get some extra defense and have no speed-- which leaves her in actual positions to be doubled by enemies. She has a crazy magical stat though, but it's largely overkill. 

[Shadow Mir]

6 hours ago, Jotari said:

Well that's why I said Purcy's a good rallybot. Because he doesn't take as much set up as most units to become one.

Except part of this setup involves passing down a skill from the worst class in the game, to which I only have two words - H-e-two hockey sticks no. 

Also, I can't help but think you must've run into the doublepost glitch.

45 minutes ago, Augestein said:

So use MyCastle rewards. Why the hell wouldn't you use a resource that you have? Are we just playing a game where MyCastle doesn't exist? That makes no sense. And there are enough high movement units that you can pair up to help with movement bonuses. So this is rather unneeded. And archers really hurt in Conquest, so having the ability to not have a bow weakness on yet another unit is nice. What you're saying is like "oh, I just picked up a stat booster, let me not use it or sell it because... It's not guaranteed to be on a unit." That makes no sense. What kind of nonsensical arguments are these?

Even then, we're still talking about a weapon that is so drearily inaccurate that anything even remotely evasive laughs at your hit rates - having sky-high crit chances doesn't mean anything if you can't hit worth a damn. Also, a bow weakness is annoying, but a vulnerability to critical hits is even worse, so heart sealing Percy to Berserker, as far as I'm concerned, is a flat out losing trade.

Edited June 8, 2017 by Levant Mir Celestia

[Augestein]

50 minutes ago, Levant Mir Celestia said:

Even then, we're still talking about a weapon that is so drearily inaccurate that anything even remotely evasive laughs at your hit rates - having sky-high crit chances doesn't mean anything if you can't hit worth a damn. Also, a bow weakness is annoying, but a vulnerability to critical hits is even worse, so heart sealing Percy to Berserker, as far as I'm concerned, is a flat out losing trade.

I can see that, because at this point, I understand your playstyle. I like doing stuff like hitting people with rallies and the like, so I have a better chance and the like, but it's clear that your style is a very safe one (nothing wrong with that either). You're the type of guy that would rather hit with 100% 10 damage with 0 critical than a guy that has 70-80% with 8 with 50% critical. 

[Shadow Mir]

21 minutes ago, Augestein said:

I can see that, because at this point, I understand your playstyle. I like doing stuff like hitting people with rallies and the like, so I have a better chance and the like, but it's clear that your style is a very safe one (nothing wrong with that either). You're the type of guy that would rather hit with 100% 10 damage with 0 critical than a guy that has 70-80% with 8 with 50% critical. 

As far as I'm concerned, some risks might be worth taking, but risks related to Berserkers are never worth it due to how much more valuable and potent crits are for the enemy than they are for you - and the fact that you automatically lose if you get unlucky. The Not-So-Great Club also has a crit evade penalty, in addition to its severe lack of accuracy.

[Augestein]

Yeah, which is why I can understand why you don't like it in this case. Criticals are scary beasts in Fire Emblem, and I understand not wanting to lose a unit to it. 

[Augestein]

18 minutes ago, Not_The_NSA said:

It isn't, stop falsely accusing me.

Because MyCastles rewards aren't easy to obtain and thus are irrelevant to most gameplay discussions. If you have it, great, not everyone grinded MyCastle points to pick up a terrible weapon like Great Club.

This isn't about MyCastle rewards, this is about Berserker Percy being a terrible recommendation and your answer was "use DLC/MyCastle Great Club."

Anyone, your bias is still showing. Ophelia isn't always bulky, she still isn't always going to exist, and I'm surprised you're willing to look at Leo's flaws while ignoring the things that hold Ophelia back. Comparing Ophelia to Camilla means nothing to me; you're just comparing the best unit in Conquest to a unit that won't possibly exist if Odin is benched after Ch 10.

Anyway, feel free to strawman about Sorcerer Niles (what?) and how Leo is such a terrible unit when he's one of the better units in Conquest, if not top 10. I'm still walking away from this with the idea you're biased for Ophelia and you like to strawman or make weak arguments for her sake.

Oh yes they are. 

Place and empty lot of people in your Castle change the castle name to "Support" be done. Once you have it, you always have it. It carries over from other games. This is no different from people mentioning that Renown exists in Awakening. If you have it, you can use it. If you don't, it's not like you still can't make use of Gamble, Percy's natural skill, and Zerker innate critical. For added insurance, keep using Arthur, and enemies have more critical displayed on them. Don't act like it's just me talking about the Great Club. 

Berserker Percy isn't bad. Having access to Rally Strength and Rally Defense = Good. His passive covers the Critical penalty he has making him only have the bonus of a Berserker, and Percy has one of the best luck growths in the game, so getting hit by a critical is practically nonexistent. And you missed the "use someone as a pair up to cover his movement problems" which there wouldn't be movement problems either-- because he moves at a normal speed. People seriously overrate fliers when Berserkers have some good bases nowadays. And Axefaire isn't exactly a bad skill to get either if you can reach level 15 with him. Conquest maps are generally closer spaced than the wide open fields of birthright. 

When you compare that to people like Elise that have an outstanding -3 defense modifier and 15% natural growth? Yes. Yes she is when the bulkiest you can get her is to A+ Camilla and get Dark Mage, which still isn't giving her the defense gains she wants until promotion. Or you'd have to turn her into a Wyvern unit ASAP to get anything remotely decent off of her, but good luck using axes with Elise. She's pretty bulky for a mage because you can get the levels straight off the bat. Like I said, breed her with Beruka? Go Sorcerer. Breed her with Elise? Go Dark Knight. You literally can't mess her up, and you can get her with 32% defense. And in the event that Odin isn't benched, she exists. This is a really dumb argument that you're trying. "She might not exist." Oh what's that? Camilla might not exist because I let her get hit by an arrow and didn't reset. The same applies to every unit in Fire Emblem outside of your lord. 

You have no idea what a straw man is. Please stop abusing the poor phrase. Especially when you are having a hard time reading. I never said Leo was a bad unit. I just said that he has speed problems. He won't double without assistance. You have to do something to fix that. Whether that be cooking for him, giving him speed wings, or changing his class to a Dark Flier, he needs something to get him to be able to double or else he's just the tankiest mage you'll have. The reason I brought up Niles was to demonstrate that a Niles as a Sorcerer would have the same defense as a Ophelia with Dark Knight as her class. And it's not bad. If I leave him as an adventurer or bow knight, get this: he has even less defense growths than Ophelia with Elise as a mother-- the worst defense she can get from a parent. You're missing why I'm even saying this: "she's bulky for a mage." This is true. But unlike Leo, she's a bit faster than he is, so she doesn't need as much help to double-- the only real flaw that Leo has. You trade bulk for some extra power.