How could Laguz (and other strike units) work?

[Jotari]

So, many people have voiced their desire to see the Laguz or transforming units be included in the game. But I don't think I've seen a dedicated thread speculating how they could work. So let's hear your ideas. All I can think of is the following.

*Colourless Melee units. We only have one unit that is colourless Melee and that's female Grima, and she's magical by default. Colourless Melee units is a niche that doesn't exist and the Laguz's lack of weapons means colourlessness would suit them.

*Transforming every other turn. Mimicking their transformation bar, I could see them being units that are powerhouses on one turn but powerless on another. Or maybe even more extreme, every other phase. So like beast units are pure enemy phase units while bird units are pure player phase.

Other that I don't really have any ideas. I think they would be completely segregated from inheriting weapons even from each other given how they attack with their physical claws or talons etc. It's also kind of curious how they haven't implemented any dragon laguz as breath units, which might suggest dragon laguz and regular old dragons will be different unit types. If strike units do happen though, I think it'd be great if we can get Fomortiis as a strike unit.

[Johann]

Pretty sure we've had a few threads on how Laguz would work, but anyway--

All they need is a new weapon category, and possibly something related to movement type for the beast Laguz, unless they just wanna make them infantry and call it good. The effects on their weapons should be enough to differentiate them from existing melee weapons, in the same way that breaths do from sword/lance/axe, even if you disregard the Def/Res targeting.

[Ice Dragon]

We've done this several times before, though all of the threads are probably long dead.

 

Transformation the same as dragons. The Heroes implementation of dragonstones is similar to some games in the series, but very different from other games. For example, Mystery of the Emblem had dragonstones as a consumable item that transformed the user into a dragon of a specific type for a set number of turns, which is more similar to how Laguz work.

Weapons colored like breath weapons. Making all Laguz colorless is problematic in several ways. First, there would be a complete lack of variety other than stat distributions. Second, colorless units suffer from significant problems due to never having weapon triangle advantage, namely that they have difficulty taking defensive roles.

Finally, weapon and skill inheritance would be a mess to indicate restrictions. If all strikes were colorless, you'd need to be able to indicate a difference between claws/fangs and beaks/talons to avoid allowing, say, cats to equip beaks. Alternatively, you could name all strikes as "Strike", but that would be exceptionally boring.

My preferred system would be to leverage the Tellius magic effectiveness system to assign each tribe its own color. The Dragon Tribe as red (weak to thunder), Bird Tribe as blue (weak to wind), and Beast Tribe as green (weak to fire). Herons could be the analogue of staves as colorless, having offensive Galldr skills as their weapons and Sing as their assist.

Splitting them by color also makes Skill Inheritance restrictions extremely simple. All claw and fang weapons would simply be green strikes as it isn't really an issue if cats get fangs or lions get claws. All beak and talon weapons would simply be blue strikes with the same justification. This would even allow for the implementation of tribe-specific skills like Maelstrom or Quickclaw if they so choose.

Movement type as their human form. If they're transforming in the same was as dragons in Heroes, that means they'll always be in their human form on the map. Beasts and dragons would be infantry (or armor) and birds would be flying. Rafiel is infantry.

Weapons are purely physical. Maybe Nasir gets a weapon that specifically targets Res, though I'd personally be expecting the entire dragon tribe to have uninheritable weapons due to how few of them there actually are in each sub-type (one red dragon, one pink dragon, one white dragon, two black dragons). Ena gets Pink Breath with adaptive damage.

To differentiate strikes from standard melee physical weapons, they should be given less-standard effects. Things like Giga Excalibur's effect, Great Flame's effect, or area status debuffs.

Edited September 4, 2018 by Ice Dragon

[Humanoid]

I used to think they they should come in various colours, but after the advent of coloured bows and daggers, I've changed my mind. They should be all grey because that's the only niche that remains. It's also the only place available to implement them where they wouldn't need to have some special effect on their "weapon" to carve out a meaningful role. I don't think the lack of variety particularly matters because I don't expect there to me more than say, a dozen of them added to the game altogether. How many infantry swords do we have again? Besides, you can give them differing move types, so you have maybe half a dozen infantry, a few fliers, a few "cavalry" and one or two armoured ones. That's plenty of variety even if all of them were grey.

The alternative is that a red Laguz would simply be a sword with a different icon, unless you gave their weapon class an arbitrary addition like applying debuffs like daggers, or being effective against a certain move type like bows. I don't particularly like that approach, because then you might as well implement them as swords, just that they come with an uninheritable weapon. There's not even good reason to block a theoretical red Laguz from inheriting a generic sword like a Wo Dao anyway, or a green one from getting a Slaying Axe.

Hell, consider daggers and bows in the first place. They're essentially the same weapon type, with the only difference being convention in the design of the specific weapons as opposed to anything inherent in the weapon type. If you give Poison Dagger effectiveness against fliers, it becomes functionally a bow. In effect, bows are simply daggers that are effective against fliers - i.e. a subset of daggers. There is just one real difference between them - one is vulnerable against Bowbreaker, and the other against Daggerbreaker. I don't think that alone is sufficient justification for them to be different classes.

If they ended up as various colours, then I think that'd be a sure sign that grey units should be abolished altogether and all existing units redistributed into the RGB triangle.

Edited September 4, 2018 by Humanoid

[Jotari]

44 minutes ago, Johann said:

Pretty sure we've had a few threads on how Laguz would work, but anyway--

All they need is a new weapon category, and possibly something related to movement type for the beast Laguz, unless they just wanna make them infantry and call it good. The effects on their weapons should be enough to differentiate them from existing melee weapons, in the same way that breaths do from sword/lance/axe, even if you disregard the Def/Res targeting.

 

29 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

We've done this several times before, though all of the threads are probably long dead.

I'm not surprised to hear that there's been previous threads, though I personally haven't seen them. Still, I think there's merit in discussing it further. The Heroes forum is very highly active and there's probably a few people out there that haven't voiced or read opinions on the matter.

29 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

 

Weapons colored like breath weapons. Making all Laguz colorless is problematic in several ways. First, there would be a complete lack of variety other than stat distributions. 

This point in particular I'm not so sure would really be a problem. After all, there isn't actually that many strike units that are likely to get in. A tentative list of major units (discounting dragon laguz as I could see them getting breath weapons even if they have laguz weakness/buffs) would be

Spoiler

 

Beast

Ranulf

Muarim

Lethe

Mordecai

Caineghis

Skirmir

Volug

Nailah

Panne

Yarne

Kaden

Selkie

Keaton

Velouria

Birds

Tibarn

Janaff

Ulki

Naesala

Reyson

Rafiel

Leanne

Other

Formortiis

 

 

 

That's 22 units assuming every single one of them gets in (which is far from a given, Fomortiis in particularly is probably just a pipe dream of mine). Given we have like ~40-60 characters in each physical weapon colour that are mostly distinguishable from each other, I don't think it's completely unreasonable to believe you can make less than two dozen units distinct from one another. Especially when three of them are refreshers. Splitting them up by colour is still certainly possible (and you give decent enough justification, even though that will mean all flying laguz would be the same and there are way more beast laguz than any other type), I just don't think having them all colourless would be quite as boring as you suggest.

Another option could be to invent a new colour, maybe something like black, which is wta against colourless enemies on player phase but weak to clourless on enemy phase. There's basically no justification for something like that from their source game, but *shrug* it came to me so thought I'd mention it. I remember people were speculating that's how Bows would work in Fates when we first seen them with a WTA symbol in the trailer. I still think colourless melee units is the best option given the complete lack of them currently, but there are other possibilities to consider.

Edited September 4, 2018 by Jotari

[Mercakete]

To quote myself, I think it'd be cool if this was how herons worked:

"but I also really want herons in the game. I think it'd be cool if they were transforming flying units with two assist skills and no attack skill. I mean, it'd suck if one of them was your last unit, but hey, it's canon. Unless Reyson's Heron Punch is included, but it'd be akin to Struggle from Pokémon, where he'd hurt himself more than he hurts the enemy. Maybe it could just do 0-1pt of damage, while he takes 5. Stack him with Fury and Vengence for maximum lol-age."

As for transformation, I imagine they'd work the same way as manaketes, being transformed in combat only. Same with all the other laguz/taguel/etc. Colorless defense-hitting melee units is a cool idea, and one I think makes sense for these particular units. As for weapons, they'd work the same as breaths, but they'd be claw/beak/etc; whatever's canon. Basically, give them beaststones/laguzstones. As I'd hope is obvious, Ravens, Herons, and Hawks would be flying units, and Tigers, Cats, Wolves, Taguel, and the fates beasts would be infantry units. Hawks and Tigers would have good HP, Cats and Ravens would be speedy, and Wolves and Taguel would be well-rounded. Herons would be...support. (I never played Fates, so I don't know what their beasts are generally like in combat.)

Edit: As for dragon laguz, they're indistinguishable from manaketes to me. Could simply be a case of "we call these things by a different name here, even though they're basically the same thing." That and dragonstones/beaststones are probably made of different materials than laguzstones, coming from different lands which probably have different enough properties that the minerals in the area that form these things aren't quite the same. (Or if they're made, then maybe they're just made differently, and so get different effects.) Anyway, red dragonstone Dheginsea GHB would be cool.

Edited September 4, 2018 by Mercakete

[Ice Dragon]

11 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Another option could be to invent a new colour, maybe something like black, which is wta against colourless enemies on player phase but weak to clourless on enemy phase.

That sounds way too unnecessarily complex. I get tripped up enough every time I go to play Fate/Grand Order and need to remember that swords are effective against lances there. I don't need a color that switches back and forth between having advantage and disadvantage every since phase change.

That particular suggestion also make the problem of colorless even worse than it already is. Colorless units have decent player phases due to dealing neutral damage to almost everything (a good thing), but poor enemy phases due to receiving neutral from almost everything (a bad thing because dealing neutral damage is a good thing, and that's what the opponent has in this situation). Making them have advantage on player phase and disadvantage on enemy phase widens the gap even further.

 

4 minutes ago, Mercakete said:

but I also really want herons in the game. I think it'd be cool if they were transforming flying units with two assist skills and no attack skill. I mean, it'd suck if one of them was your last unit, but hey, it's canon. Unless Reyson's Heron Punch is included, but it'd be akin to Struggle from Pokémon, where he'd hurt himself more than he hurts the enemy. Maybe it could just do 0-1pt of damage, while he takes 5. Stack him with Fury and Vengence for maximum lol-age.

The Sorrow skill is also canon from Radiant Dawn and is an offensive debuff, lowering an opponent's biorhythm to minimum.

[Jotari]

21 minutes ago, Mercakete said:

To quote myself, I think it'd be cool if this was how herons worked:

"but I also really want herons in the game. I think it'd be cool if they were transforming flying units with two assist skills and no attack skill. I mean, it'd suck if one of them was your last unit, but hey, it's canon. Unless Reyson's Heron Punch is included, but it'd be akin to Struggle from Pokémon, where he'd hurt himself more than he hurts the enemy. Maybe it could just do 0-1pt of damage, while he takes 5. Stack him with Fury and Vengence for maximum lol-age."

As for transformation, I imagine they'd work the same way as manaketes, being transformed in combat only. Same with all the other laguz/taguel/etc. Colorless defense-hitting melee units is a cool idea, and one I think makes sense for these particular units. As for weapons, they'd work the same as breaths, but they'd be claw/beak/etc; whatever's canon. Basically, give them beaststones/laguzstones. As I'd hope is obvious, Ravens, Herons, and Hawks would be flying units, and Tigers, Cats, Wolves, Taguel, and the fates beasts would be infantry units. Hawks and Tigers would have good HP, Cats and Ravens would be speedy, and Wolves and Taguel would be well-rounded. Herons would be...support. (I never played Fates, so I don't know what their beasts are generally like in combat.)

I can't really see how two assists would work under the current UI. Heroes is pretty simple, you'd need to have a drop down menu or something to choose one of two assist skills. Unless it was a case where if the unit your using on has moved or not. Maybe buff unused units and refresh used units? That could work.

14 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

That sounds way too unnecessarily complex. I get tripped up enough every time I go to play Fate/Grand Order and need to remember that swords are effective against lances there. I don't need a color that switches back and forth between having advantage and disadvantage every since phase change.

That particular suggestion also make the problem of colorless even worse than it already is. Colorless units have decent player phases due to dealing neutral damage to almost everything (a good thing), but poor enemy phases due to receiving neutral from almost everything (a bad thing because dealing neutral damage is a good thing, and that's what the opponent has in this situation). Making them have advantage on player phase and disadvantage on enemy phase widens the gap even further.

 

The Sorrow skill is also canon from Radiant Dawn and is an offensive debuff, lowering an opponent's biorhythm to minimum.

Your Fate/Grand Order example worked much better when we were talking about reaver weapons, not so much here. It really wouldn't be that complex at all. It'd just be good player phase, bad enemy phase. Hell that's how like half the units in the game function now any way. And it wouldn't necessarily make coloured units any worse, just more extreme in their strengths and weakness. Although it would devolve any battle between Strike and Colourless units down to a game of cat and mouse to see who can be lured into attack first which might not really be all that fun (though that is how a tonne of maps go regardless now anyway).

[Michelaar]

I don't particularly care how they implement them as long as they're not colored based on weakness. First of all, that'd be boring af, but I also doubt dragon laguz get a new type, they'd most likely be integrated in the breath weapon type. That would leave red empty. So anything but coloring based on weakness (it's stupid)

[Ice Dragon]

12 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Your Fate/Grand Order example worked much better when we were talking about reaver weapons, not so much here. It really wouldn't be that complex at all. It'd just be good player phase, bad enemy phase. Hell that's how like half the units in the game function now any way. And it wouldn't necessarily make coloured units any worse, just more extreme in their strengths and weakness. Although it would devolve any battle between Strike and Colourless units down to a game of cat and mouse to see who can be lured into attack first which might not really be all that fun (though that is how a tonne of maps go regardless now anyway).

That doesn't change the fact that an entire color being nearly irredeemably horrible at enemy phase is terrible design at its finest.

Colorless already has a good player phase (in the control of the AI where surviving the counterattack doesn't matter) and access to ranged weapons. Being weak to colorless on their player phase is a death sentence.

 

7 minutes ago, Michelaar said:

I don't particularly care how they implement them as long as they're not colored based on weakness. First of all, that'd be boring af, but I also doubt dragon laguz get a new type, they'd most likely be integrated in the breath weapon type. That would leave red empty. So anything but coloring based on weakness (it's stupid)

It's still more elegant than the only ways to make your alternative work with Skill Inheritance:

1. Have six different strike weapon types (red beast, blue beast, green beast, red bird, blue bird, green bird) instead of three (red strike (dragon), blue strike (bird), green strike (beast)).
2. Make all strike weapons uninheritable.
3. Name all of your strike weapons generic "strikes" ("Long Strike", "Sharp Strike", etc.) instead of their associated body part ("Long Claw", "Sharp Talon", etc.).

Edited September 4, 2018 by Ice Dragon

[Mercakete]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

I can't really see how two assists would work under the current UI. Heroes is pretty simple, you'd need to have a drop down menu or something to choose one of two assist skills. Unless it was a case where if the unit your using on has moved or not. Maybe buff unused units and refresh used units? That could work.

Good point. I was thinking in terms of making them dancing staffers. Like, having a healing assist skill and a sing assist skill. But maybe having 2 specials would work better, provided they confined it to staff specials. (I.e., balm skills.)

Edit: Hmm I guess certain galdrs (I know I'm not saying the plural of that right) could be used as attacks, but they should be more focused as debuffs than as damage-dealing attacks if that's the case, I think.

Edited September 4, 2018 by Mercakete

[Jotari]

Regarding the weapon inheritance, they could use beast stones as their base weapon. I know Laguz didn't transfrom using Beast Stones, but Celica or Mae didn't use tomes either. Laguz Stones and Gems also were used to fill the gauge, so I don't think it'd be all that strange. Using that method, the weapons could be distinguishable and still interesting. Consider how the Beast Stone and Beast Rune alone in Fates manage to differentiate themselves by focusing on either offense or defense. Furthering that idea, Beast Stones could be more widespread in what they buff than just attack. Like maybe stones that have low mt, but bigger boosts in speed or defense than the +3 some weapons give.

Edited September 4, 2018 by Jotari

[Ice Dragon]

15 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I know Laguz didn't transfrom using Beast Stones, but Celica or Mae didn't use tomes either.

Laguz severely outnumber post-Laguz beasts in the same way that tomes severely outnumber Valentian magic. And the same way that dragonstone-using dragons severely outnumber dragonstoneless Grima.

 

12 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Laguz Stones and Gems also were used to fill the gauge, so I don't think it'd be all that strange.

Equip everyone with Olivi Grass and send them all off into the corner for a smoke.

[Jotari]

8 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Laguz severely outnumber post-Laguz beasts in the same way that tomes severely outnumber Valentian magic. And the same way that dragonstone-using dragons severely outnumber dragonstoneless Grima.

 

Equip everyone with Olivi Grass and send them all off into the corner for a smoke.

I'm saying laguz can be thought of as using stones to transform and inconsistencies have appeared in the series already without issue. It could especially work if laguz were still able to attack even without a weapon...It wouldn't particularly be very useful, but it would convey the idea that they're using these stones to boost their combat potential as they effectively do in Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn. Olivi Grass even could be there as like the useless tier 1 weapon that is basically never used under any circumstances.

[Michelaar]

5 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

That doesn't change the fact that an entire color being nearly irredeemably horrible at enemy phase is terrible design at its finest.

Colorless already has a good player phase (in the control of the AI where surviving the counterattack doesn't matter) and access to ranged weapons. Being weak to colorless on their player phase is a death sentence.

 

It's still more elegant than the only ways to make your alternative work with Skill Inheritance:

1. Have six different strike weapon types (red beast, blue beast, green beast, red bird, blue bird, green bird) instead of three (red strike (dragon), blue strike (bird), green strike (beast)).
2. Make all strike weapons uninheritable.
3. Name all of your strike weapons generic "strikes" ("Long Strike", "Sharp Strike", etc.) instead of their associated body part ("Long Claw", "Sharp Talon", etc.).

The thing is, I feel like there are too little dragon laguz (and they don't even have anything standout from manaketes) that justifies them being in their own little class. I don't think it'll be very difficult to work around with SE. And them making laguz based of weaknesses is... a little stupid? In my opinion. From an objective standpoint it made no sense to make manaketes into 3 different colors but they did it anyway, so I don't see why they wouldn't do it the same with beast units.

And don't forget other beasts like Panne and Kaden. They are not weak to fire in their own games, should we make them all green? Even without them adding to the green pool we have an oversaturated green pool compared to blue pool and red pool. 

[Anacybele]

I still believe it'd be simplest to divide them up into colors based on their weaknesses. Beasts would be green because they're weak to fire, birds would be blue because they're weak to wind, and dragons would be red because they're weak to thunder. And red is lacking in breath users right now because all it has are Tikis, so that problem would be fixed as well. It might be a bit odd to see someone like Nasir as a red unit, but this game's done weirder things imo.

[Ice Dragon]

28 minutes ago, Michelaar said:

The thing is, I feel like there are too little dragon laguz (and they don't even have anything standout from manaketes) that justifies them being in their own little class.

We had only one green dragon in the game for 8 days shy of a whole year (Fae released February 2 at launch, Myrrh January 25). Tiki is still the only red dragon in the game, even if there are three of her.

There is only one blue dagger, one green dagger, one blue bow, one green bow, and one colorless dragon in the game.

I don't think it matters all that much if dragon laguz get their own little exclusive corner of the game.

 

33 minutes ago, Michelaar said:

And them making laguz based of weaknesses is... a little stupid? In my opinion. From an objective standpoint it made no sense to make manaketes into 3 different colors but they did it anyway, so I don't see why they wouldn't do it the same with beast units.

If anything, using the canonical magic weaknesses from Tellius makes more sense than the current division of dragons (which was actually perfectly reasonable until female Kana was added as green instead of blue).

 

35 minutes ago, Michelaar said:

And don't forget other beasts like Panne and Kaden. They are not weak to fire in their own games, should we make them all green?

In no game outside of Heroes are swords weak to thunder magic. That didn't stop them from making swords weak to thunder magic to make the weapon triangle the simplest it has ever been (excluding games where it didn't exist).

 

37 minutes ago, Michelaar said:

Even without them adding to the green pool we have an oversaturated green pool compared to blue pool and red pool.

Green could use some filling out anyways, considering it has fewer members than either of the other two colors with an even wider gap if you only count characters in the normal summoning pool.

It's a good way to balance the colors just a bit as it's an amazing coincidence that there are the fewest dragon Laguz (red being the largest color currently) and the most beast Laguz (green being the smallest color currently).

[Corrobin]

I don't care, just give me Ranulf and Mordecai and Lethe and Muarim and Naesala and so on and so forth.

Oh, and Keaton and Kaden.

[Othin]

I'm still opposed to "elemental weakness" distinctions. Leave dragons with the other dragons, introduce beasts with three colors, and if/when birds ever show up, give them their own three colors. They clearly don't care about keeping number of weapon types low.

Or make them uninheritable. Shifters so far have been manaketes, which use dragonstones that make sense to swap around, but laguz don't have that option. Dragon laguz would have to count as traditional breath units if added, which would imply dragonstones, which is fucking weird but the alternative (don't count them as breath units and screw up all the current ways of grouping dragons) is horrendous.

[Ice Dragon]

2 hours ago, Othin said:

Leave dragons with the other dragons, introduce beasts with three colors, and if/when birds ever show up, give them their own three colors.

Except with the single exception of female Kana, all of the colored breaths, bows, and daggers have made some semblance of sense relative to the tome colors.

I don't really see any way of assigning multiple colors to a single tribe without it either being completely arbitrary or having colors determined by the type of animal they transform into (but there are too many types of beasts and not enough types of birds if you make herons colorless).

 

2 hours ago, Othin said:

but the alternative (don't count them as breath units and screw up all the current ways of grouping dragons) is horrendous.

• Red breath is fire dragons (you can't convince me Tiki is not a fire dragon until she uses her Book 2 divine dragon sprite).
• Blue breath is ice, water, and thunder dragons (my hypothesis is that Nowi had her color determined after they chose her default weapon).
• Green breath is "high" dragons, which matches with Naga's and Divine Naga's color. Plus female Kana, who is the only one that doesn't work.
• Red strike is Laguz dragons.

I don't see anything wrong with this split.

[Othin]

3 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Except with the single exception of female Kana, all of the colored breaths, bows, and daggers have made some semblance of sense relative to the tome colors.

I don't really see any way of assigning multiple colors to a single tribe without it either being completely arbitrary or having colors determined by the type of animal they transform into (but there are too many types of beasts and not enough types of birds if you make herons colorless).

 

• Red breath is fire dragons (you can't convince me Tiki is not a fire dragon until she uses her Book 2 divine dragon sprite).
• Blue breath is ice, water, and thunder dragons (my hypothesis is that Nowi had her color determined after they chose her default weapon).
• Green breath is "high" dragons, which matches with Naga's and Divine Naga's color. Plus female Kana, who is the only one that doesn't work.
• Red strike is Laguz dragons.

I don't see anything wrong with this split.

I don't see a problem with dividing beasts by type. Counting the 3DS ones, there are 7, which means a 3/2/2 split. Not perfectly even, but not too big of an imbalance either, and it's certainly more even than all 7 beast types vs all 3 dragon laguz types vs all 2 combat bird types.

Combat birds are messier, but I don't think they're a priority. I'd rather introduce beasts the sensible way now and worry about birds later, while fitting dragons into the infrastructure that already exists. There's even the perfect number of them to divide among the main breath colors.

When I said "grouping dragons", I didn't mean that classification of different dragon types. I meant establishing criteria for what counts as a dragon, for the purposes of skills like Falchion and Fortify Dragons. We've been over this before, remember? If I'm remembering things right, you suggested just having dragon laguz not count as dragons, and I said that was way too unintuitive and inelegant, and you said it was better than my ideas, and I said it wasn't, and at some point it became clear that neither of us was going to convince the other and we both stopped responding.

[Johann]

12 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

It's still more elegant than the only ways to make your alternative work with Skill Inheritance:

1. Have six different strike weapon types (red beast, blue beast, green beast, red bird, blue bird, green bird) instead of three (red strike (dragon), blue strike (bird), green strike (beast)).
2. Make all strike weapons uninheritable.
3. Name all of your strike weapons generic "strikes" ("Long Strike", "Sharp Strike", etc.) instead of their associated body part ("Long Claw", "Sharp Talon", etc.).

I'm with @Michelaar on this, I really hope they spread the colors out instead of locking Bird/Beast/Dragon into individual colors. For one, the mechanics don't have to transfer directly from Tellius games, and two, those bonuses were effective damage, not triangle advantage. If cavalry weaponry works on beasts, then sure, great.

I'd wager they'd end up doing #3 on your list there, since you wouldn't be replacing their actual body parts, just the way they strike. This would probably be shown through the flashy animation stuff, not unlike how dragon breaths are interchangeable. Talon/Beak/Claw/whatever is pretty much exclusive royalty stuff anyway.

[Ice Dragon]

27 minutes ago, Othin said:

I don't see a problem with dividing beasts by type. Counting the 3DS ones, there are 7, which means a 3/2/2 split. Not perfectly even, but not too big of an imbalance either, and it's certainly more even than all 7 beast types vs all 3 dragon laguz types vs all 2 combat bird types.

Why is there a need to keep the number of characters in each strike color even with each other?

If anything, I'd prefer the groupings to make sense more than to keep the colors even, and even if we want to keep the colors even, I'd rather that the color as a whole (not just strikes) be even instead of just the color of strikes being even.

In that case, it makes plenty of sense to put the biggest group (beasts) as green, which is the smallest of the colors, and the smallest group (dragons) as red, which is the largest of the colors.

 

29 minutes ago, Othin said:

There's even the perfect number of them to divide among the main breath colors.

There are 5 dragon Laguz: Gareth (red), Ena (pink), Nasir (white), Kurthnaga (black), and Dheginhansea (black).

I see no reason to shoehorn them into the colors evenly when a more sensible way to organize them exists (all 5 red).

 

31 minutes ago, Othin said:

I'd rather introduce beasts the sensible way now

The sensible way is to use the Tellius magic weaknesses to split Laguz. It is, in fact, the only canonical way to place them into Heroes's weapon triangle.

And since we have a system already there to make use of and not-so-coincidentally fits the pattern from the original material, what reason is there to not use it?

 

1 minute ago, Johann said:

For one, the mechanics don't have to transfer directly from Tellius games, and two, those bonuses were effective damage, not triangle advantage. If cavalry weaponry works on beasts, then sure, great.

Why does it matter what the mechanical implementation of the weakness was when the high-level effect was simply "beasts are weak to fire, birds are weak to wind, and dragons are weak to thunder"? I see no reason to throw that completely out the window just because it was effective damage and not weapon triangle effectiveness when they both achieve a similar effect. In fact, I'd argue that using weapon triangle effectiveness in Heroes is a better solution than using effective damage because effective damage is crippling in Heroes, whereas the weapon triangle is a far more balanced means of creating strength and weakness.

 

In fact, dragons had an effective damage... triangle... thing... certainly not circular.... of sorts, too, once upon a time when there were actually enough types of dragons to matter. Fire dragons dealt effective damage against ice dragons. Ice dragons dealt effective damage against fire dragons. Divine dragons dealt effective damage to everything.

This triangle was somewhat similar to the original magic triangle (if you take anima as a whole instead of split) with light and dark magic being neutral to each other and both strong against all of anima that was eventually changed to make light strong against dark, dark strong against anima, and anima strong against light. What we see now in Heroes is---loosely---that ice dragons are strong against fire dragons, fire dragons are strong against divine dragons, and divine dragons are strong against ice dragons, which is a similar development.

 

As for people complaining about how putting each tribe into one color would be boring, how is it that you can stomach the fact that every sword in the game is red? What is it about swords (all weak to lances) that makes it make sense to all be one color, but for claws and fangs (all weak to fire) to be split among three?

I've literally seen no argument against using the Tellius magic effectiveness other than "it's boring and unimaginative", and certainly no compelling argument with gameplay mechanics, gameplay design, or lore to back it up.

[Interdimensional Observer]

Colorless or color varied amongst within the species. I've always been against ID's argument, and at this point have become so embittered with it, that to see it implemented might lead me to just delete the good for nothing game. I ain't budging here.

[Silver-Haired Maiden]

Ice Dragon's suggestion does make the most sense in terms of Heroes and Tellius. Honestly I think people are just overthinking it.

 

Personally though I would make Kurth and Dheg colorless to make them more special xD