Golden Sun: The Lost Emblem

[Aile~♥]

YES I went there.

Things carried over from FE:

Level cap (40), stats, Weapon Durability, Skills.

Player Character stats:

Jenna's base stats:

HP: 14
SP (skill points, used to unleash Skills, since I've no way of giving them a trigger rate): 5
Str: 4
Mag: 3 (I add it in to the spells themselves)
Def: 1
Spd: 8
Luck: 3

Jenna's stat growths:

HP: 80%
SP: 45%
Str: 35%
Mag: 55%
Def: 25%
Spd: 65%
Luck: 35%

Jenna has fairly balanced stats. Her Speed is something to be feared, but her Magic is lower than Sheba's, meaning her Flare spells aren't quite so scary. Her Fume spell, however, IS worth fearing, since it's roughly the equivalent of a Rapier. Try to save it for when you really need it, as most enemies will go down easily from her more basic spells. Really, her use is the fact that unlike Sheba, Jenna can almost take hits.
She can get a Blaze Rush tome ("Burning Sword") later on as her strongest weapon.

Felix's base stats:

HP: 17
SP: 3
Str: 6
Mag: N/A
Def: 2
Spd: 7
Luck: 2

Felix's stat growths:

HP: 95%
SP: 15%
Str: 50%
Mag: N/A
Def: 35%
Spd: 45%
Luck: 15%

Felix has great HP growths along with some decent Strength. He will end up with some SP problems, as he learns Cure naturally. He and Isaac are among the few characters to naturally learn something other than their Master Skill. He's really quite similar to Isaac, but he's got higher HP growths and less Strength, along with higher Defence, but less Luck and Speed. He has a higher Base SP than Isaac, but less SP Growth.

Sheba's base stats:

HP: 12
SP: 7
Str: 2
Mag: 4
Def: 0
Spd: 10
Luck: 4

Sheba's stat growths:

HP: 15%
SP: 140%
Str: 20%
Mag: 65%
Def: 15%
Spd: 75%
Luck: 40%

Take a look at that massive HP growth! A whole 15%! /sarcasm

...Yeah, Sheba's gonna be deadly once she reaches level 21 and learns Void Beam, her and Ivan's Master Skill, what with her incredibly high SP. Until then, not so much. Her high Magic makes her Whirlwind spells something to be feared early on, but she really can't take a hit, so be careful of that.

Piers' base stats:

HP: 20
SP: 2
Str: 8
Mag: N/A
Def: 5
Spd: 4
Luck: 0

Piers' stat growths:

HP: 140%
SP: 5%
Str: 30%
Mag: N/A
Def: 55%
Spd: 20%
Luck: 10%

Yeah, Piers can't use skills for the life of him, what with that 5% growth rate. Fortunately, he has better base SP than Garet. He's a tank, but slightly faster and more able to dodge than Garet.

Isaac's base stats:

HP: 18
SP: 2
Str: 5
Mag: N/A
Def: 2
Spd: 7
Luck: 1

Isaac's stat growths:

HP: 90%
SP: 20%
Str: 55%
Mag: N/A
Def: 30%
Spd: 50%
Luck: 25%

Isaac's kinda just your garden-variety Eliwood, but stronger. He does have some Skill problems, but that shouldn't get in your way too much.

Garet's base stats:

HP: 19
SP: 1
Str: 7
Mag: N/A
Def: 8
Spd: 4
Luck: 0

Garet's stat growths:

HP: 145%
SP: 5%
Str: 35%
Mag: N/A
Def: 60%
Spd: 10%
Luck: 5%

Yeah... Garet's a tank. He can't use skills for the life of him, he's incredibly slow, can't dodge for the life of him, and isn't really all that strong. But, good luck hurting him, what with that 145% HP growth and 60% defence growth.

Ivan's base stats:

HP: 15
SP: 4
Str: 5
Mag: 3
Def: 0
Spd: 9
Luck: 4

Ivan's stat growths:

HP: 85%
SP: 45%
Str: 35%
Mag: 50%
Def: 20%
Spd: 70%
Luck: 40%

Ivan has better HP growth than Jenna, despite having a lower base HP. His lower Magic and SP are offset by his great Speed and high Luck. His Strength is exactly the same as Jenna's, but he's got lower Defence. If you can get him a Kikuichimonji Tome, he'll be able to do some serious damage.

Mia's base stats:

HP: 13
SP: 8
Str: 1
Mag: 1
Def: 0
Spd: 3
Luck: 5

Mia's stat growths:

HP: 20%
SP: 130%
Str: 15%
Mag: 20%
Def: 5%
Spd: 15%
Luck: 110%

The first thing you'll notice about Mia is her low Magic. She's a healer, and wields almost exclusively healing staves. She's also got crazy-high SP, almost as high as Sheba, as well as the highest Luck anywhere. Despite her low Speed, she'll be able to dodge many enemy attacks. Which is good, because her Defence stat is nonexistent, as is her HP.

Now that the stats are over with, things you'll want to watch out for:

Random Durability: Weapons are just set to "breaks when used", and so may break after any number of uses. This is precisely why I gave Jenna three Fume tomes ("Wooden Sticks") in her inventory at the start, Sheba two Whirlwind tomes ("Maces"), as well as an item in Felix's inventory that is worth 9000 coins when sold. Sell it, it doesn't do anything else.

The Fume tome ("Shaman's Rod"): This is a tome that's basically just there to make the beginning of the game that much easier. You won't want to use it later on, as it WILL become outclassed by later spells that are available, simply because we don't have a real Magic stat, and so it's still Base Damage.

There's also a problem I'm having with weapons: I can't manage to find a way to make it so you have to equip the weapon in order to use it. As such, you can have things like Jenna casting Whirlwind and, especially gamebreaking, characters using high-level weapons without equipping them. Why is this gamebreaking, you ask? Because higher-level weapons are heavier, and thus I've made it so equipping them nerfs your Agility and Luck.

And yeah, massive post is massive.

[Tetsuya the Azure Blade]

So.... Is this gonna be a FE style GS game or another lameass difficulty hack?
Will you change the storyline, characters and item/weapon/armor names to those of a FE game once the editor lets us do those kinds of things?

[Rolina]

No, it doesn't look like a difficulty hack, he's trying to do something totally different with the mechanics.  Difficulty hacks work by amping up all the stats on the foes and swapping around some skills to try and add some 'variety', but essentially it's nothing more than making the game harder.  This, on the other hand, is just plain making the game play DIFFERENT.

The MAG stat worries me, though.  The reason we're looking at tying spell damage to the Max PP stat is because there's really not much else we can do.  This unfortunately means you can't use PP as a sort of 'skill fuel' without making them a powerful mage as well, and seriously hinders a lot of options available to you (TNS and I had to completely redo Freya because of this - if we find a solution, though, we may fix her back).

More than anything else, however..

The game seems to HATE giving out certain growths...

DEF is either 1 or 2 - Garet will never, EVER, have as much defense as he should have because of this.  His target defense is five higher than PERFECT defense growth!
AGL is stuck between 3 and 5, it seems - Garet will never, EVER, be as slow as he's supposed to be.  His target agility is WAY lower than his minimum possible growth.

After finding this out, I've become seriously worried about our ability to manipulate growth rates.  We need to do a lot of testing to make sure that we can do this correctly, because when we look at how you've got it, there's a serious chance that the game won't let you do it without a patch.

[Aile~♥]

I've not had any trouble with growth rates so far, aside from the RNG getting abnormally low numbers, like Jenna getting 2 levels with no stat growths in a row. (Yeah, there was a level 3 level 1 Jenna.)

My guess is it's because of the RNG's sheer predictability.

[Rolina]

Hmm, odd...  I wonder why Garet's stat growths are so off then?

Anywho, I've got a suggestion.  Make weapons bestow psynergy - you can't use psynergy unless they're equipped then.  However, you can't do that and have them break, too, so it's gonna be one or the other.

[Aile~♥]

Garet's growths are PROBABLY off because of what I call the RNG curse. Like, in FE, it's possible to end up with a mage with crazy-high defence.

But I really don't know how GS's RNG works.

[Rolina]

No, it seems different.  Garet can get boosts of 3 or 4 in agility per level... there's just one... PROBLEM with that...

He should be getting 2 or 3 if he's gonna be staying as low as he's supposed to be.