FE8 mod concept for weapon balance - drain sword, negating def axes, bonus def lances.

[mangasdeouf]

Hi,

Sorry for posting nearly the same topic as yesterday but I think it wasn't in the good section and I have taken my concept further and am currently testing the results.

Yesterday I came with an idea to balance weapons. I was wondering if anyone would enjoy a FE 8 mod with swords draining hp, 1 range axes ignoring def, and what you would give to lances and bows (currently lances give +4 lck, +2 def and +1 res), while bows have 3 more might, light is effective against monsters (no need to wait for promotion anymore), anima is buffed (+1 might), dark didn't change much, and tomes' weight has been adjusted to fit their users' constitution.

The idea is that most sword users aren't very tanky but very fast. If they could drain hp, be they tanky or not, they would be much more usable and wouldn't need access to 1-2 range weapons to be useful. Fast units would drain 2x per fight but take damage if they don't dodge, while slow units would heal back some damage but only once per fight. I intend on balancing the classes and making the ennemies more of what they should be (like in Awakening I guess, they fit much more their roles than in TSS IMHO, especially knights, axemen and mages/dark mages). Lances' bonus stats make them able to reduce crit chance, to take easier the swords' hits so the drain isn't OP, while +1 res helps a little without being gamechanging. Bows don't hit at 1 range so I gave them more poke damage to make archery more useful for what they're supposed to do (the counterpart for 3 MT is 15 hit, a little like Yumi).

I gave 30 weight to 1-2 range physical weapons so you only use them situationally (if I give them a speed penalty it would affect more the already slow units than the fast ones, + negative stats tend to bug and show max stat instead so it's the opposite of what I want). It's a good point for me so general Gilliam is as fast as Paladin Franz with a javelin (0-5 spd hoho).

Special weapons weren't modified (rapier doesn't drain, don't expect to get back to full hp in one hit on a sword-wielding cavalier, neither does hammer deal true damage, I think it deals enough already). Trainee axe is 1 range, low MT, high accuracy and unbreakable, like short sword and lance, short bow is 2 range, low MT, high acc and unbreakable. These weapons apply the weapon balance treatment so your 8 damage lv 1 Ross will have 8 true damage on any ennemy axcept lance users (9 damage) and sword users (7 damage). Thin lance comes with the tank buff (enjoy your finally able pegasi, including ennemies) and thin sword drains hp. No crit bonus for short weapons.

This means trainees can pull their weight even if they can't attack from 1-2 range before D rank (throwing weapons are D rank like in FE13, steel axe is also fixed to D rank, I don't see the reason for making a steel weapon E rank and not the other ones, might as well put everyone to D at base) because their weapons are better and their class stats have been improved a bit (not their growths though).

Tana is a Wyvern Rider (female, yes they exist in the code, and unlike female mercenaries, they have custom animations, just like female shamans and sorcerers), Syrene has a little more base stats and completely different growths (tank falcon knight FTW! Palla is back even better than the original!) and weapon ranks on 2nd tier and some stat caps have been made more logical according to their roles in FE8.

Magic classes, sages trade mag for spd, sorcerer is better, mage knight and valkyries are more similar in stats to paladins, magic classes base stats have been twisted to fit more their goal.

Manakete is less cheated but lasts the whole game when you finally get Myrrh (unbreakable nerfed Dragonstone, again more like Awakening but 1 range only), she has base stats close to Seth's so it won't be an all in fiesta like it used to be at level 1 against cavaliers with Myrrh in chapter 16 but she has more HP (also this means she can take an axe hit from a promoted unit without dying), growths more spread but less OP (very few >100%, most are between 70 and 90, be careful, 12 spd 40% growth! you might keep a speedwing if you want her to double promoted ennemies!) and stat caps are the same as Necromancer (25 spd, 30 everything else) not OP since axe go through def, so does necrodragon's breath and dragonstone has 8 MT (with capped str it means 43 damage, less than regular silver weapons, only some ennemies not wielding axes will not deal much damage to maxed 35 def but it's not like she will cap it at all times in 19 level ups...right? Myrrh should be very close to cap def though if you max her level, but rarely doubles, doesn't necessarily OHKO, and true damage is abundant in axe maps).

 Great knight has 7 move, , archers have more skl to make up for usual shitty archers, mercenaries are closer to heroes in stat spread (less spd, more def and str) or you could say they are closer to cavaliers with actual skl, female lord has more def, 1 con bonus, male lord was nerfed a little in the speed department cuz Ephraim before promotion was a little too OP compared with Eirika at the same level, and Great lords have better con and stat caps because you wait 16 chapters to make them promote and they're both forced into the endgame chapters. Wyverns lords and knights are more distinct (I took their archetypes from FE13 wyvern lords and griffon lords, because I thought it suited well to the FE8 wyvern concepts), mounted/flying females and males have equal con because it's more the mount's weight than the person's that it taken into count, con overall is more fit to the class it's linked to. Swordmasters trade defensive stats for offensive, assassins have more str than swordmasters but thei def/res cp is still 20 (promotion bonus more offensive for assassins while more defensive as it used to be for swordmasters) and assassins have rogue's exp gain.

200 gold for unreakable weapons, 220 for unbreakable tomes, 10 per use for iron weapons, 20 for steel, 50 for silver, 45 for killer, shamshir is the exception at 60 or 65 because it's killer+drain with lower MT, add 2 gold to these to get the tomes' price per use, staves are globally cheaper.

Low rank gems are worth more than they used to, because there's a special surprise in the preparations' armoury and it costs much (even if I lowered the price, being in preparations' armoury automatically makes it cost more gold). Because I didn't like the absence of choice with this point, I made you able to choose if you want to spend that amount of gold for this or if you're patient. It's also a way for farmers to get what they want without waiting to have cleared 70% of the game to have their full team able (and the ones drawn back by this can finally be played in the main story).

Would it be funny to play? Would axes having a real utility make you use axemen? (-1 mt +5 hit for axes BTW)

Do the effects I gave to lances, bows, magic types appeal to you?

Tell me if something would be funnier than what I wrote. I'm open to discussion and I don't think I did the best I could do, there's always room for improvements. After all, it's been 2 years at least that I began to make Nightmare mods and I'm still not perfectly satisfied, maybe I have too many different concepts in mind so I will never stop making new mods and spending hours on Nightmare. Other people learned to use better programs but I'm not a fan of the difficulty to learn these programs although they seem to allow many nice things like skills, randomizing, modifying or creating characters, creating maps and stories etc.

If you want to try it and see, here's the link (Lunar IPS patch, apply it to a clean ROM, I used the (U) Trash Man ROM to patch):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6nfofzdikxkxqop/FE 8 drain sword true damage axes version.ips?dl=0