Fire Emblem inspired RPG: base systems?

[Avoraciopoctules]

I've been playing a bunch of Fire Emblem lately and was wondering about trying a tabletop thing at least partially based on it. Most wargames I'm familiar with felt a little overcomplicated for emulating FE gameplay, and didn't allow for absurd hours scheming over strategic boosts to character power either.

Math needs to be simpler when you don't have a computer doing it for you, so I figured a dice pool RNG would be easy to track while keeping chances for extraordinary success or failure on the table. Combat stats would be something like the following.

Skill: number of dice you roll for determining success of attack or defense (could be split into substats, might include rules for critical success if your margin of success is higher than opposing roll or flat DC by enough)
Might: base damage inflicted with a successful attack (could split into magic/nonmagic)
Defense: subtracted from damage of successful hits on you (could split into magic/nonmagic)
HP: if you run out of these, you dead
Speed: how many spaces/inches you can move a unit per turn.

Every PC gets handed like 4 characters to start with, and probably accumulates more as the campaign progresses. There have been good FE games without permadeath, so that doesn't necessarily have to be on the table. There's also a possibility that combat scenarios could involve more expendable one-off characters.

There probably ought to be character advancement, but tracking XP would likely be a terrible idea. Some kind of randomized draw for advancement tokens between battles feels appealing, but I'm not sure where I'd start right now.

The above systems plus equippable items that modify stats would be sufficient to run a couple of fights, but the big appeal of doing a tabletop RPG is that people can get more creative than that. There should be be rules for doing stuff out of combat, without letting things get too complicated to fit multiple functional characters on one sheet of paper.

Balance between characters should be less of a concern when everyone has several going at once, some of which are scary Great Knights and others more underwhelming Soldiers or Archers. But combat stats are less significant when players are trying to figure out who can put together disguises for sneaking into town or win the cooking contest.

Perhaps I could get away with just giving everyone a handful of aspects, which can be tagged for rolls in relevant situations? It would still be nice to have a way to generate sane and consistent target numbers, and I don't want to run into some of the ridiculous problems of Unknown Armies or Apocalypse World.

[spongeknight]

It's been done before, and quite a few times at that. Google is your friend. Try searching "Fire Emblem pen and paper" or "Fire Emblem tabletop."

[Avoraciopoctules]

Yeah, I just looked up 3 of them and all of the games were hyper-focused on detailed emulations of the tactical combat. I don't want to roll dozens of percentiles every game to determine exact unit stats. I also want some rules to supplement MTP out of battle, which none of them provided. Is there some project in particular you recommend?

[darkmaster]

Soldiers rock all the face in Fire Emblem and your implication that they do not confuses me.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Soldiers rock all the face in Fire Emblem and your implication that they do not confuses me.

Aren't they the pike guys Ike hacks through by the dozen in Path of Radiance? Sure, maybe a few are good but I'm fairly sure that a promoted unit is even better.

[darkmaster]

Nephenee is one of the best characters in both path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn she is a soldier, she upgrades into a Halberdier and in Radiant dawn into a Sentinal, and she is great. Unfortunately you don't get to play as soldiers often because tradition, since they didn't show up till the third game they're less ingrained in the series but they tend to be pretty dangerous enemies all considered for unprompted units especially.

[Parthenon]

Yeah, but you try telling me that Aran and Danved are awesome...

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This sounds like an interesting idea, but what sort of power level are we talking about? Do you grow the same amount of power over a campaign as Path of Radiance, or do you only grow a bit?

And then are you thinking about grid combat or movement in inches, or aren't you sure?

I think you definitely need to add Avoid to that list of stats. Otherwise characters like swordmasters with low defence but high avoid are shat upon. Not sure how you would use it, whether it would be opposing rolls, the Avoid stat is removed from Skill successes or what.

---

One thing that would be cool is siege weapons and magic that can change the landscape. You already have ballista in the game, but you really need rules or guidelines to push along a ramp to ignore the main entrance or cut down a tree to make a new bridge in order to avoid the heavily guarded main one. Or to set up traps yourself before a defence mission.

Actually, that could be interesting. If you have a thief/assassin in your party you automatically get warning before defence missions so that you can set up traps, while an axeman gets bonuses to creating temporary bridges with trees and a pegasus rider gets a reduced warning before defence missions.

[name_here]

Soldiers use lances, so they have Weapon Triangle advantage against myrmadions and lords. They really aren't too interesting statwise. In Nephene's case that translates to being decent at everything. She also starts with Wrath, which is pretty sweet if her defense turns out well enough you can safely leave her at half health.

If you're doing a Fire Emblem inspired game, you really need to bring along the doubling mechanic.It's pretty central to the game. The rule is that you get to attack twice if your attack speed (formula varies, I'd just make it a stat) is at least four points higher than your target.

[Surgo]

Fire Emblem's strength lies not in its system, which is very simplistic, but its characters, who rightly get the focus on them and not the simple system that enables this. It doesn't seem appropriate for a tabletop RPG for this reason.

[darkmaster]

Arron and Danved are not bad, let's get this straight, they have their uses and they can serve all the way up to the end game. But when compared to the powerhouses of their games, of which there are many, they stop looking so useful. They're not bad they just have the misfortune to be compared to much better units. I have a feeling they would have fit in to a few earlier games I can think of, certainly they would have pulled their weight in, say, Marth's army.

[Archmage]

All random discussion about which FE characters are good aside:

Which elements exactly of FE games are trying to emulate? I'm not totally clear what your goals are. Small, squad-based combat? It sounds like you want to carry over some FE-sounding mechanics like names of stats, and you want players to run multiple PCs?

What makes a game "feel like Fire Emblem" to you?

[RadiantPhoenix]

What makes a game "feel like Fire Emblem" to you?

• Weapon durability
• Permadeath
• Very few abilities that aren't plain old damage

[darkmaster]

Wyvern riders have to be evil accept for the one or two that join you.

[Aryxbez]

What makes a game "feel like Fire Emblem" to you?

The formula seems to be:
1.) Fighting off bandits from weak, to Soldiers/war, and culminating in more supernatural less-human-like threats, wielding Artifact-weapons against them.
2.) Acquire more soldiers at regular intervals, so might want campaign events to allow for PC's to "upgrade" or get new PC's for their personal roster? Alternatively, the roster is a "pool" that the Players can choose from to put into theirs
3.) Low-level group gets a higher level pre-mote Paladin or like, to help them through the early game and maybe defeat the boss (usually a Heavily Armored guy).
3b) Oh, and later on, at times get a powerful legendary NPC of that FE's setting, that can be decent, or used a crutch for #6.
4.) Minimalistic Backstory of 1-3 lines, that of which I'd expect an RPG of the game to utilize and expand about in an interesting manner.
5.) Back-Spawns....
6.) Hard End-game, unless you properly trained the right characters (Arena abuse or otherwise), even then, expect some heavy damage, if not losses.
7.) Weapon Triangle, & Counter/Double, Attacking
8.) Vague in-game term for "something" that's the "Fire Emblem" (always felt they had to come up with such a justification last minute)
9.) Permadeath

[Avoraciopoctules]

All random discussion about which FE characters are good aside:

Which elements exactly of FE games are trying to emulate? I'm not totally clear what your goals are. Small, squad-based combat? It sounds like you want to carry over some FE-sounding mechanics like names of stats, and you want players to run multiple PCs?

What makes a game "feel like Fire Emblem" to you?

- Fast-paced tactical combat with small squads of named units
- Get absurd power-ups from setting up shipping charts for your tiny men in addition to more conventional character advancement
- "Dude with a sword" can scale up to be as effective in combat as "demon lord" or "apocalypse dragon"

Optional:
- Permadeath, since some plot-relevant units "retreat", and some players use Casual mode or frequently reset.
- A progression from difficult to easy as the player has the chance to build up a handful of mega-units that can solo the second half of the campaign
- Specific rules elements like weapon triangles, durability, counter attacks, etc.

The game I am envisioning would let you do a simplified version of FE combat, and also have some rules beyond MTP for stuff outside the combat grid. I'm tempted to rip off FATE and just give every named unit a handful of Aspects, which they can tag in MTP to do stuff. Maybe units with a Support with each other can access each other's Aspects in MTP.

[Whipstitch]

Arron and Danved are not bad, let's get this straight,

Aran in particular gets a bad rap although I'd argue that Nephenee is also pretty overrated and thus soldiers average out to "Meh." His speed isn't great but it's competitive and his strength and def growths make him one of the easier guys in the DB to stick right into the front lines. It makes him pretty nice for the harder difficulties or for people who don't want to break out a spreadsheet or look up spoilers their first playthrough--he's tanky enough that you can plug him where you need him without being handcuffed to a defensive support.

[Avoraciopoctules]

OK, here's a tentative idea for what a stat sheet might look like:

Stahl, Cavalier
Stats
Hit Points: 20/20
Strength: 8
Defense: 8
Magic: 0
Resistance: 1
Skill: 4D
Evasion: 4D
Move: 7'
Inventory
Iron Sword (Weapon: Strength +5, Skill +3D)
Vulnerary (Expend to heal 10HP)
Aspects
- Enthusiastic eater
- Consistently average
- Calm and easygoing
- Family runs an apothecary
- Loves helping others
Supports
C: Sully, Cavalier
C: Miriel, Mage
B: Kellam, Knight

Character skills / actual standardized class features aren't really a thing here, but the game might benefit from changing that so "Cavalier" is more than a bit of flavor text. Definitely going to make leveling way different from the games, though.

[darkmaster]

I'd argue that Nephenee is also pretty overrated.

I've really got to disagree, seriously, she's competitive on her own, assuming you train her up from her slow start in PoR. But give her resolve and she will go from solid front lines unit to just rofflstomping everything. I'm not even kidding it's kind of absurd how well she synergizes with that skill.


Now, as for that character sheet. It looks fine, I guess, but if you want to make a simple system with as few fists of dice thrown as possible then honestly a percentile roll under system would probably be best. Like, as it is now Stahl rolls 7 dice each time he attacks with his iron sword and then his opponent rolls a fist full of dice to avoid. Instead you could just use a simple formula Weapon hit+skill-enemy avoid, roll percentile, done. If you want to be closer to how the later games do it roll 2 percentile and take the average more complex but it wouldn't be too unreasonable to run a script on your computer or something.

On to the topic of skills. I can only assume you mean unit special abilities to which I reply. Are you sure you want to make a FE table top rpg? They're kind of a staple and they create quite a bit of depth especially in the games where you assign skills to the units you want them on it makes your battle preparations more important.

[spongeknight]

Alright, if we're doing this for real then I'll drop in my two cents.

NO permadeth. In the video games you can just reload if you die so it's not a huge deal, but there are plenty of people who would hate the idea of just losing units on a semi regular basis, which brings me to the next point:

Don't display enemy stats. While the video game requires you to align every turn just right so that your vulnerable units are protected and your tanks are healed and yadda yadda, that shit would be real tedious in a cooperative tabletop game. Comparing the chances to hit and how much damage you would take from every unit on the field is something that would slow the game down to a crawl while not being fun for anyone. Eliminate the desire to do that by making it impossible.

Percentile system. This is exactly what a percentile system is good for; a static chance to accomplish something over and over again, and it's also a good fit flavor-wise because the source material uses percentiles to generate hits. Just use a d100+skill versus 50+avoid of the opponent. Or what darkmaster suggested.

Speed really matters in this system or else you're screwing a bunch of classes. Seriously there's not much of the game formula that you can take out if you don't want to unbalance the classes to unusability.

Weapon triangle and magic triangle need to exist for it to feel like Fire Emblem.

Each player should have a Lord who is that player's personality. Running four characters with personality simultaneously is impossible, so just have them roleplay one and the rest of their dudes are just retainers and stuff. The Lord class is really versatile anyway; you've got your tanky axe guy Hector, nimble swordsman Lyn and your "why do I suck at everything" Roy, among others, so players can basically make whatever Lord they want and it'll be lore friendly.

[Avoraciopoctules]

NO permadeth. In the video games you can just reload if you die so it's not a huge deal, but there are plenty of people who would hate the idea of just losing units on a semi regular basis, which brings me to the next point:

Agreed. I was waffling between just having units retreat automatically or letting you spend Fate points to let a unit avoid death/crippling when they are dropped.

Don't display enemy stats. While the video game requires you to align every turn just right so that your vulnerable units are protected and your tanks are healed and yadda yadda, that shit would be real tedious in a cooperative tabletop game. Comparing the chances to hit and how much damage you would take from every unit on the field is something that would slow the game down to a crawl while not being fun for anyone. Eliminate the desire to do that by making it impossible.

That's probably a good idea. I want the combats to flow about as fast as a fight in Normal Casual, and the more operations involved the slower things get.

Percentile system. This is exactly what a percentile system is good for; a static chance to accomplish something over and over again, and it's also a good fit flavor-wise because the source material uses percentiles to generate hits. Just use a d100+skill versus 50+avoid of the opponent. Or what darkmaster suggested.

OK, I was using dice pools for 3 reasons:
- I thought that could model a constant chance of dramatic success or failure, and 3% crits out of nowhere are memorable in FE
- Counting the number of hits is pretty easy for me to explain even when everyone is drunk
- Rolling fistfuls of dice is pretty fun

But if both of you think a percentile system would be better, I'll listen. And I hadn't thought of just using 50+avoid for the defender instead of rolling, that would definitely be better than opposed rolls.

Speed really matters in this system or else you're screwing a bunch of classes. Seriously there's not much of the game formula that you can take out if you don't want to unbalance the classes to unusability.

If people can't see enemy stats, then you never know whether somebody's going to get 2 attacks to the other fighter's 1. That could be a problem. Would it be better to just make a new set of classes?

Weapon triangle and magic triangle need to exist for it to feel like Fire Emblem.

When I was playing Awakening, weapon type seemed to become less relevant the further I progressed. Magic/Physical was a much more significant divide, and the extra operation might slow things down. How would I add type advantage without complicating things too much?

Each player should have a Lord who is that player's personality. Running four characters with personality simultaneously is impossible, so just have them roleplay one and the rest of their dudes are just retainers and stuff. The Lord class is really versatile anyway; you've got your tanky axe guy Hector, nimble swordsman Lyn and your "why do I suck at everything" Roy, among others, so players can basically make whatever Lord they want and it'll be lore friendly.

So how would I go about setting a framework for players to generate their own units?

[Avoraciopoctules]

Now, as for that character sheet. It looks fine, I guess, but if you want to make a simple system with as few fists of dice thrown as possible then honestly a percentile roll under system would probably be best. Like, as it is now Stahl rolls 7 dice each time he attacks with his iron sword and then his opponent rolls a fist full of dice to avoid. Instead you could just use a simple formula Weapon hit+skill-enemy avoid, roll percentile, done. If you want to be closer to how the later games do it roll 2 percentile and take the average more complex but it wouldn't be too unreasonable to run a script on your computer or something.

Yeah, I could probably set up a computer to churn out averaged percentiles, and it would moderate the chances of iterative probability messing up the PC's day. There is some appeal to physically rolling dice, though, I'll have to ask the prospective players which they'd prefer.

On to the topic of skills. I can only assume you mean unit special abilities to which I reply. Are you sure you want to make a FE table top rpg? They're kind of a staple and they create quite a bit of depth especially in the games where you assign skills to the units you want them on it makes your battle preparations more important.

Given that I just said that classes and their skills are something I should probably add and make meaningful, yes? Though I'm not necessarily opposed to making the classes and their skills different fro what you see in the actual games.

[spongeknight]

Well, to be fair to you and your system there's nothing actually wrong with switching to a dice pool system, it's just another step away from the source material. If you think it would make for a superior experience, go for it.

Generating characters could be quite simple but you have to figure out how you want to do growths first. Do you want a percentage based chance to increase each stat on level up? That's the most true to the game's way to do it, but could cause a lot of problems and take a long ass time to do in the middle of a map. Static bonuses on level up can feel really flat and underwhelming though, so pick your poison I guess.

[darkmaster]

Oh, I did not read that right, sorry, It was kind of late. Anyway. If you're not going to show enemy stats then it would perhaps be better to replace speed as a number with speed as a rating and with classes like the sword master at the top and classes like the knight at the bottom then the difference between the determines at what level a given class can double another. So if you have a sword master Speed Rating 1 and a knight speed rating... 5 or whatever you take 1-5=-4 so any given sword master can double a knight so long as they are no more than four levels lower the target knight.

This has the disadvantage of meaning two sword master's can't ever double each other, but it's static and reliable so the players can have little q-cards with the values for every class on them so they can still take it into account when planning their turns.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Make doubling based on your level + your speed rating instead, with higher being better. Simpler math.

[Archmage]

OK, I was using dice pools for 3 reasons:
- I thought that could model a constant chance of dramatic success or failure, and 3% crits out of nowhere are memorable in FE
- Counting the number of hits is pretty easy for me to explain even when everyone is drunk
- Rolling fistfuls of dice is pretty fun

I know you (and others) are talking about using percentile dice here because FE numbers get expressed to the player that way, but FE uses a two-roll system where you get to keep the better result (it's just hidden from the player). Consequently, the RNG isn't flat; average results are more common than extreme ones. Dice pools accomplish this, but I think they do so in a clunky fashion.

http://anydice.com/

From that angle (and to keep numbers small and manageable) I really think you want to use a system like 3d6 + modifiers. Set your TN based on how often you want people to succeed against opposition with tied stats. A nice side consequence of this is that the +1 you get from having weapon triangle advantage alters your chance of success more when you're approximately tied with your enemy statwise and becomes less relevant when you've already got a huge stat disparity. Crits (for triple damage!) can happen only on an 18 or whatever for most classes/weapons, which means they'll come up infrequently enough that PCs shouldn't die to a lucky mook crit (<1% of rolls); class features/killing edges might let you crit on a 15+ (10% of attacks) or even 13+ or something silly like that when stacked (which is 25% of your attacks).

I like RadiantPhoenix's idea as to how to deal with doubling.