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Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones

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Question about character elements

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EdeaCreamer
Posted 6/18/2012 11:35:11 PM
I know the role a character's Element affinity plays with regards to the Support conversation mechanics; that's covered thoroughly by the FAQs. However, I was wondering...are there any other effects a character's Element has on their battle performance?

I ask this mainly because I noticed enemy units also possess Element affinities. Since enemy units obviously never get involved in support conversations, I assumed there must be some other mechanical effect they provide. I looked through the Game Mechanics FAQ, but didn't find anything about Element affinities beyond the Support section.

Forgive me if this has an obvious answer; I only started playing Sacred Stones yesterday, so I might require a little slack.
PokeAMon
Posted 6/19/2012 12:04:34 AM
In this game, character affinities only affect the Support bonuses they gain with other units. Some other games have extra things, like the Tactician's Bonus in FE7, where units with the same affinity as the Tactician (if one is created) gain Hit and Avd.
EdeaCreamer
(Topic Creator)
Posted 6/19/2012 12:17:03 AM
Hmm, alright. Thanks for the reply!

I guess I was concerned about Ewan, specifically. Since his affinity is Light, I was unsure if promoting him into classes which use Dark magic (i.e. the Shaman/Druid path that frequently gets recommended) would negatively affect his individual battle performance (above and beyond the usual 'magic triangle').

Now I'm wondering why enemy units have Element affinities. Perhaps it's a holdover from something the programmers were going to put in that got cancelled? I...don't -believe- enemy units ever make use of the Support system...
PokeAMon
Posted 6/19/2012 12:44:14 AM
In some games there are enemy Supports (eg. Linus and Lloyd from FE7). However, most bosses have affinities because they are semi-important characters, so the devs probably thought it would be cool to give them random affinities to make them seem less generic.

Also, a lot of generic enemies use the same character data, so giving them all the same affinity looks weird, when they can just give them all no affinity.