I read a great idea in a post a while back about ENEMY thieves. all the stuff they steal from chests? instead of running away to a staircase/gate with it, they should run to the boss and give it to them. occaisonally this'll involve you having to chase them down before they give the boss a good weapon. that'd be fun
FE5 does this a tiny bit, but the only real example I can think of is chapter 3 where the enemy grabbing the chests is a bishop, and the first chest is a meteor tome that he can use on you if you don’t stop him in time. It definitely wasn’t explored very much in that game though, that would be really cool
I love Thief Jagen, it makes sense for an experienced thief to be a distraction and backstab weaker enemies at the start, and when they lose combat utility they stay helpful on utility. It also just fits Sothe's whole position in the story.
Sothe doesn't really have much thief utility after his combat falls off though. In the chapters where Sothe is available after part 1, there aren't any major stealable items and there is exactly 1 chest. There are some hidden items that he can pick up, but overall he has more thief utility in part 1 than the rest of the game.
@@jimjimson6208There are two romhacks I can think of that have a Valkyrie Jagen: Souls of the Forest with Rakel and I think Staff of Ages with Oona(?) Four Kings has a Thief Jagen as well
Closest I think would be jakob/felicia in fates. Though felicia is more like a normal unit I guess. It is a good idea though (and felicia still stays useful with staff and tome for the whole game)
Zelkov is viable, but his issue is that, unlike Yunaka who feels perfectly fit for Thief, Zelkov really wants to reclass into something else, which is hard since he starts at Level 17.
15:31 Say it louder for the developers in the back. Thracia Thief sounds like it would be my favorite iteration of the class. Screwing multiple enemies over in one go without partaking in a single combat is peak Thief/Rogue/etc fantasy to me. Since they clearly want Thieves to hold their own in combat nowadays, I wonder how having an effective weapon for every unit type in exchange for weaker Strength and Mt would work. Thief/Ninja etc are supposed to "fight dirty" and aside from debuffs, carrying specialized weapons to counterpick any opponent sounds like the closest things. So while the other physical weapons would have one or two effective weapons each (ex: Swords get Wyrmslayer + Zanbato, Lance gets Horseslayer, Axe gets Hammer + Dragon Axe) Dagger gets Hunter's Knife (Cavalry + Pegasus) + Stilleto (Armor) + Poison Dagger (Infantry) (YUP, I'm bringing this in from Heroes) + ...i dunno, bring back Baselard and give it (Wyvern), I guess. After that, further lean into Assassin being a better fighter and Trickster being better utility. Of course a lot of this hinges on other mechanics and enemy quality to make it all matter, but that's starting another conversation.
Thracia Thieves are hilarious, I was lucky enough to get a few con levels on Lifis and it led to some insane shenanigans. I was on chapter 15 and there was a hunter with an Iron bow, (6 weight) I had Lifis steal it which then rendered the hunter Harmless. But on enemy phase the hunter then went up to the boss and traded with him. The hunter took the venin bow from the boss to use as a replacement, but since the venin bow is just an Iron bow I just had Lifis steal that too. Since the boss no longer had a 2 range weapon I just killed him without retaliation. The Hunter then ran off the map. What other game do you get this kind of interaction from? These kinds of interactions is what I play this series for.
it's really weird that Engage handled thieves the way it did. The reason thieves didn't promote in previous games is because they weren't combat units so their stats didn't really matter, and they were unlikely to gain a lot of experience anyway. In Engage, other than their niche ability to open doors without having to attack them, they are purely combat units.
I think maybe it was done this way on purpose as a nod to how they never really "promoted" till Genealogy but then Thief Fighter never felt lie a PROMOTION and might as well have let them max to Level 40....like they are in Engage funny enough. Then they went back to being Thief on in Binding Blade before Blazing Sword finally let them promote again and MEAN IT with Assassin and the rest is history (Last time I THINK they never let you promote a Thief was Sothe back in POR who had good UTILITY game as unlike Volke he didn't CHARGE YOU for opening Doors and Locks in exchange for the game REALLY discouraging you from using him in combat! Maybe if you want to take advantage of Blossoms "Prototype Aptitude" function with BEXP in preparations for Radiant Dawn as he'll be a MUCH better equipped Jagan for that game (to the point of being a FAR better OIFEY for Micaiah then if he DIDN'T where he is STILL alright for Part 1 and can at LEAST keep up somewhat in Part 3 and 4, though will STRUGGLE) Note how in a funny way the only two NATURAL Thieves Yunaka and Zelkov are former Assassins and their look fits ASSASSINS then it does "Thief" (Like you see with the standard outfit for all Thieves in the game) I use to be like "then why can't they be tricksters" since Yunaka has the look and stats that would fit the class and made me think what was the POINT of having a MAGIC stat with NO magical Daggers in the game (there is one, but since it's Velye's personal that ONLY SHE CAN USE, it doesn't count) and then I had to REMEMBER how she was INTRODUCED using Micaiah to show how she lets anyone who equips her use Staffs and even TOMES when Engaged. And then I realized Celica and Micaiah make Trickster irrelevant.....up until I remember that you LOSE them both till the TALE END portion of the mid game! Then I'm back to saying WHY they were a promotion choice! Well maybe next FE Assassin & Trickster will go back to being one of two choices for the Thief class. As swell as I do like (and loathe in the case of ENEMY THIEVES) them in Engage!! I hope they go back to how they were MEANT to function! Good thing ABOUT Knives now and I hope it stays is the Poison mechanic being a DEFENSE/RESISTANCE debuffer! I kind of like that function on Daggers then how they were in Fates, where when YOUR using them, those Stat debuffers are great, but when the enemy uses them and REMINDER that they STILL apply as long as an attack HITS so even 0 Damaging them won't stop it! Means Ninja Hell was a BIG problem in Fates...especially in Conquest Late game referring to Ryoma's final battle where there were NINJAS the eye can see! Same with Kotaro's fight in all three routes! Conquest being the better or worse of it with his fights! But I would like them to be Door AND Chest openers again! Likely this was done with the Chests because tell me, have YOU forgotten to equip locktouch when you needed them! And Fates SPECIFICALLY Revelations had a NASTY habit especially in the Late Game maps to NOT EVEN put keys on enemies near the chests, causing you to have to forfeit the contents or restart and remember to put it on one character! I really hated that and the NASTY surprise I found out when. Hell Engage NOT telling me that everyone can open them made me MISS OUT . But then they started REALLY being stingy on rewards from chests or special objectives in Engage which I wasn't too much of a FAN of! It would be one thing if they were MASTER SEALS which I think the LIMIT on them early on was a good move as you had to THINK OUT your choices. But I think they should have given the Thieves at least their ability to STEAL GOLD from Genealogy back at least! Though that would have made Anna Personal irreverent (or BETTER if you changed her to Thief HAD they kept it, I mean by the time you can get her, You'd just have to get her to Bond 6 with Micaiah and BAM, Instant Thief) but hey in the Fire Emblem where Money is at it's TIGHTEST (Something I actually liked as It made me have to THINK on what I'll buy and need! I love budgeting in games that aren't ABOUT that! Not being sarcastic! Dead Space and Resident Evil 4 and even the EARLY Fire Emblem's WITHOUT effective Gold Grinding made me LOVE finite amount of Money to manage!
I honestly thought he was about to launch into a sponsored segment. "But what about thieves in the real world? With Incogni, you don't have to worry about a thief lockpicking your computer and stealing your online information!"
Speaking of Thief promotion, I'd say bringing back the Rogue is also an option, but setting them apart by letting them equip Martial Scrolls as well as Daggers, letting them Break archers, magi and other Dagger-users and giving them some pretty scary close-combat power when it's needed.
Honestly Rogue would be redudant! You got TWO pure choices for a Thief now in that you can make them an ASSASSIN which is basically the Rogue with one hit KILL capability if Lethality activates when you REALLY want it too! And there's no need to take away their Thief utility either or Trickster if you want to mix MAGIC and more dodging! Hell Trickster IS the Rogue/Thief Fighter Class in that your SACRIFICING pure DAMAGE AND INSTANT DEATH CHANCE to aid MORE defense (better EVASION) and Magical ability (Heal, obstruct-annoy, and even take advantage of LOW Res enemies) I mean look at Yunaka and Zelkov! Despite BOTH their origins being Assassins if Engage HAD the class! They kind of FUNCTION as them in the Thief Class! Yunaka has bits of it with her Personal making her a Crit monster if you get her into Cover. Zelkov has even BETTER avoid because of his Personal (Making Corrin VERY good on BOTH of them when it comes to ENEMY Phase! Just give Yunaka Chrom's "Brute Force" skill and have her use Dragon Pulse to cover herself in Smoke and on enemy phase, she's KILLING archers while DODGING them because Covert Battle Style DOUBLES the Avoid Bonus from the Smoke AND her Personal activates when on Covert inducing Terrain! and the same applies to Zelkov, cept his Personal DECREASES enemy hit rate by -10 if they initiate combat with him. The smoke being cover and his COVERT battle style as a Thief INCREASES his AVO even more that I LAUGH on Hard Mode watching enemies try and fail to hit him! Taking into mind he hits HARDER then Yunaka means his counter attacks do GREAT Chip damage on High Defense enemies, where Yunaka is not doing ANY) and Yunaka Magic make her a Trickster IF you put Celica/Micaiah/Soren/HELL even CAMILLA & Chrom-Robin on her as it lets her do decent damage with their Tomes/Magic Weapons and heal effective with Celica Recover which will heal alot ANYWAYS and Micaiah gives her STAFF access which a reminder, Staves are MORE then the heal and restore staves! You got REWARP (A C RANK STAFF SO MICAIAH at BASE CAN LET YOU USE IT) she has a good chance to land a Freeze. And Obstruct is why even the ROYAL KNIGHT can be a good utility along with ANY low level staff user class! I mean the whole POINT of Rogue/Trickster is to IMPROVE Thief Utility over just KILLING the enemy! Rogue was only made to be BETTER Thieves, likely so they can SURVIVE battles better IF they are caught in them, where Assassins were MEANT to run STRAIGHT into combat more! Trickster fills the niche of Rogue better because they aren't competing with Assassin by being "the same class!" You either get BATTLE THIEF (Assassin) or All Arounder Thief (who can use MAGIC) You're idea is nice and I think would fit well even IF you make it TRICKSTER still (Since the point of them is to BE hinderances to the enemy after all)
@@Nehfarius I know, I was just giving an idea is all! I liked the Rogue too (Started with Blazing Sword, and bought EACH FE as they first came out, so Rogue INTERESTED me when I saw them in Sacred Stones), which is WHY Trickster confused the HELL out of me when they first appeared in Awakening! I'll admit I never found them APPEALING in that game and ignored them for Assassin.....then Fates changed my mind on them (Thank you Niles, Nina and Anna LOL) and looking at it! It does make some sense I do feel Switching out of Classes should be ABIT more limiting (I'm NEVER making a glassy Mage a GREAT KNIGHT OR GENERAL! Nor am I making a TANKY Armor Knight a DRUID/SAGE! Fun for Challenge runs, but how many will DO that type of Challenge run?!) and Promotions should be as it is, except you get THREE choices! If so I could see the Rogue in the Thief case being the MIDDLE option between Assassin (Pure Damage) and Trickster (Magical Utility). Maybe take Lucky 7 and put it on the Rogue! (Honestly in games with Promotions I do LIKE when you get Two to THREE choices as they make it FEEL like you're STILL remaining that class you started in, but your choosing WHAT direction your going down! Rogue would be like how "Sword/Axe/Lance Fighter going Swordmaster/Berserker/Halberdier" is just them being UPGRADED version of their former BASE class! Note how the alternative is Hero, basically a Sword Fighter with an ADDITIONAL weapon type and more DEFENSIVE, Warrior, ALSO different weapon type option option and abit less squishy, and Royal Knight which is Horse Mounted with Staff for healing/support! Rogue would be BETTER Thief with MUCH better dodging! Which is why I said Trickster will LOSE Lucky 7 or such and so thier AVOID TANK capability to give Rogue an additional niche! Assassins and Trickster can still Avoid GOOD! But Rogues do it THE BEST and all those EXTRA functions you mentioned! Felt like making Bows/Daggers/Tomes BREAK against Arts was to give Brawl a Niche! But I really wished they gave them a PROPER Weapon Triangle as well, since Magic Triangle sure as hell ain't coming BACK!)
Thief jagen makes a lot of sense if you want to make the jagen an actual unit that falls off, a sworldlocked unit with mediocre stats is just perfect for that. I'd also like to see a thief lord and lean into the idea of your lord being a whimpy unit to defend but that has unique skills that means you have to use them to finish the map. Like, they could be the only one able to seize not because having blue blood apparently means when you sit on a throne everyone gives up, but because they can uniquely activate some mechanisms that would make progress otherwise impossible.
It's pretty significant that thieves have gone from being the weak, annoying little rats that steal your stuff to priority targets/ actual threats because Engage did the impossible and made the Poison status condition actually good.
Having not played Thracia, I'd say PoR has my favorite incarnation of the thief. I like how there's a lot of different items to steal throughout the game (particularly staves), and while Volke isn't a great combat unit, he can still get the job done and you're rewarded for taking the time to train him up with a unique promotion. Three Houses thieves are disappointing to me because outside of one paralogue in VW and the trade secrets, there isn't a whole lot that's worth stealing. Also this video does make me really want to play Thracia.
According to an initial google search, production for this game finished in 2021, and the assassination was in 2022? With the release being Jan 20 in 2023, that does leave enough time for last second changes. I could see them going back and quickly scrubbing the “assassin” class in post of Shinzo’s death. From what I understand, the invasion of Poland delayed the release of Advanced Wars on Switch, which seems like a similar style move. I find your potential theory fascinating. Gonna have to keep an ear out for details of engage’s development lol
One of my favorite things in general for GBA FE is that VERY few classes actually have abilities aside from like, canto or a crit increase. Thieves and Assassins being the major exceptions. Makes using them a lot more interesting and rewarding even if they’re still pretty bad units overall. There’s a broader move in fantasy settings to make rogues both a utility and glass cannon class but I genuinely think we need more non-combat utility classes in RPGs that encourage players to make interesting decisions.
Yeah, definitely need more utility based classes that can do unique things that nobody else can do. Stuff like summoner's phantoms, Xane transforming in the archanea games or laguz like Janaff/Ulki being able to shove units and fly. Support classes doing things besides healing is cool too (when they aren't using status staves or teleporting). The Corrin ring in Engage was fun to use and setup different terrain effects.
One aspect of Thieves not mentioned in this video (since it was more about player Thieves) is earlier FE games gave enemy thieves a high exp yield (in Thracia it's tied to anything with the Steal skill), meaning they also serve a mild "Metal Slime" role: you might want to save the killing blow for a unit you want to train. Even the GBA games did this, but it's mostly stopped since. GBA FE had a good compromise between QoL and urgency when it came to enemy thieves. If you kill a thief, it only drops the last item it stole. This means you can be a LITTLE late in getting to the thief, but if you let it loot 2 or more chests you'll lose at least one item. The thing with buying keys is... yes TECHNICALLY you can do this, but it doesn't come naturally to me, and it's usually more convenient just deploying a lockpicker. It's hard to keep track of which units I gave keys to, and it takes up space for weapons or other useful items on combat units. Wait, you don't need equal or higher Speed to steal in FE6?! And here I kept training my Thieves before Narcian to make sure to outspeed him... 19:32 I forgot Locktouch was transferable... but you mentioning it reminded of my Lockpicking Death Bunnies in Awakening. (I often put Panne through Assassin) Thracia Thieves are very fun, but it's clear they felt neutering Mages by swiping their tomes was too much, since later games either block stealing weapons or at least equipped ones. It's really only been since Fates they've pivoted the class towards combat, but both Outlaw and Ninja had the interesting trait of high Res for a non-magic, non-Pegasus unit, and combined with their range they had a cool unit identity as mage-slayers. I like Engage Thieves (personally I like stacking Poison via Lucina's Dual Assist) but agree that stat debuffs are more broadly useful. Maybe make them more uniform, Fates had too many to keep track of.
Concerning promotions, Thief's are interesting since they're are a dual purpose unit, having both utility and(sometimes questionable) combat utility. So there's a few ways IS can go about with their promotions. There's the combat focus route, where they're made to kill. To that end, and thanks to being sneaky, their skills and abilities can focus on either dealing a lot of damage. Have higher mobility, like being able to move through units, having Canto so they can retreat after combat, or just plain move more space than average. Or actual stealth where enemies can't attack them without being revealed first, and makes enemies just walk past them, letting you, for example, kill ballista or Siege Tome Mages without exposing your army. Then there's the Utility focused route, where they're more focused on the map itself than the units that are in them. For that, you can keep the regular thief utility of opening doors and chest, as well as debuffing the enemy with their attacks like with poison or stat reductions, but you can get a bit creative and give them caltrops they can place on the floor that damages everyone that walks over it and increase movement cost. Mines that interrupt turns of anything that triggers it. Various bombs like smoke and flash bombs that debuff enemies or makes units inside it harder to hit or just removes that units turns. Like just really lean into this trickster/vigilante archetype with a utilitybelt full of tools for all kinds of situations. ++ Or they could just have regular Theif^2 for their promotions. Boring perhaps but not every promotions needs a new ability.
Thieves in Berwick Saga have limited combat, which gives them something to do after they're done opening chests and searching houses. You almost always want to deploy one, but it's never going to be your best unit. There's the slow, inaccurate axe-wielding pirate. But he can do decent damage and survive a couple rounds of combat. He has the robbery skill, which gives 25% chance to loot an item from enemies he kills. There's the thief with daggers and mug, which has a low proc chance to steal an equipped item on hit. She gets a mount on promotion. The other thief has daggers and steal, which you can click to steal an unequipped item instead of attacking. He can also provoke an enemy to tunnel vision attacking him and then hide in the forest. Daggers only do ~2 damage but they have an increased chance to injure the enemy, which unequips all their stuff for the turn and can lead to subsequent crippling and capture. Without this capturing mechanic it would be very hard for the thief to gain exp. Still risky against enemies that can counterattack.
This was a really good video. Giving thief a 1-2 range attack is good, also the speed been higher and able to steal some weapons if they have speed and strength would be great.
Thracia and Tellius Thieves are my favorite, but I love trickster and assassin as promotions. While I get what you mean with the keys kind of invalidating thief utility, I usually find getting thieves to chests to not be that dangerous, and (this might be because I like most thief characters) depending upon the amount of deployment slots are available, I don't find including them over another unit to be that big of a trade off.
Two small notes: Steal is also a Thief class skill in 3H so you can just class someone into a Thief for the couple of maps with good Stealables. Also, in Engage you can reclass units to Thief from a base class it’s just Thieves can’t reclass to promoted classes until 21, very sad for Zelkov and Yunaka.
man something i would love to see from thieves is them having multiple daggers , like poison , paralyze and stall daggers , thath would give them a lot of utility and they could even keep themselves alive , of course they would be like 1-2 use daggers so they can keep somehow safe from harm without reallying on the mages to paralyze another mages and so
@@actuallizard Btw, in the German translation, they localized Yunaka's Hiya-Papaya to "Hallihallöchen", which is just so much less charming - at least Holy Broccoli got a faithful translation in "Heiliger Brokkoli!" Zappy on the other hand I don't remember right now.....
Not specifically a thief, but gotta give a shout out to my homie, Jaffar in FE:BB. He single-handedly kept Nino alive with nothing but an elixir and like 3 Killing Edges. Shout out to Silencer. You the real MVP.
The removal of thief fighter and the failure to add assassin for fe 6 is one of the worst things that happened to Cath. Look how they massacred my girl
I really like the idea of utility classes that aren't good at combat. Having a weak thief class to steal and open tbings is fun. I want that back. Absolutely despised stat debuffs and poison. Those should be given to another class like a mage maybe
I think it's really interesting if you put dual assist + on a thief or a wolf knight in fire emblem engage, they can get their poison stacks off before your unit even attacks on the back line and makes getting three stacks of poison on a boss a sinch because all you need is one round of doubling and one proc of the passive. Now if you have multiple, you can get more stacks on even the common enemies with luck, but that's unpractical because there's probably another skill you would want to use and by the time you could get it, it's probably the latter chapter where the game likes to split up your army a lot anyways.
The only thing worth bringing Steal for Three Houses is, in my opinion: Chapter 16 Ladislava's Aurora shield(+3 prt negates flier effective) and that's it.
The first time I played Shadow Dragon, on Normal of course, I completely missed that Thieves can unlock drawbridges. Meaning, on Chapter 14, I literally sent all my units trudging around the damn castle and through the trees. All of them. Ogma's axe bros did absolutely nothing to speed it up. And I was training Julian up too, so he was in zero danger of immediate death. God I am such an idiot. 😂
I still think engage would have really benfitted from making thief a base class and introducing 2 promotions for it. 1. Trickster (Knife+Staff, maybe go from Covert to backup even?) This would fit well with Yunaka, especially since she already starts out with micaia giving newer players the idea to maybe stick thise 2 together. Although you could also argue that this might be the reason why this class does not exist I guess? 2. Assassin (Knife +Sword, or maybe Bow, sticks to covert type) could feel like a fitting promotion or starting class for zelkov, but I think it would also be pretty nice to have a covert with access to swords. In my head those 2 classes would have given the game a lot ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I've always loved the thief/assassin classes in games, so I hope they keep them going forward in Fire Emblem. I'd like them to stay with daggers instead of going back to swords, but I hope they can give the weapons some variety. Give them some unique ones instead of just the iron/steel/silver line.
20:18 I would like to mention that Thief is a good combet class in 3H, at least at the point where your units are intermediate class. It's not the best, but when it has a lot of base Speed and speed modifier at a point where you can double even on Maddening, it definitelyhas a spot as a combet class, albeit the class mastery isn’t good for combet. Even if a unit doesn't want to stay in thief, simply certifying to Thief boosts the unit's speed all the way up to 11, letting units like even Raphael avoid doubling around that point. This is particularly worth it for units who want to get Vantage since Mercenary and Thief requires the same certification requirements. So 3H Thief definitely has place outside of Thief utility stuff.
I definitely think the debuff effects are useful in maddening if you need to make enemies weaker, although I do prefer using the magic cannoner to debuff enemies rather than the thief
I mostly played the GBA games before Engage. They just seemed like sword masters with a couple extra tricks. Then they promote to assassin and lose the ability to use lockpicks and just become swordmasters with a chance at insta kill. I love how they're used in engage in a completely different way
small little correction, Lara can promote 3 times since she can promote to thief fighter/rouge after becoming a dancer as well You lose the ability to dance but it is funny so I say it's worth it
Thieves should be a support class, not a combat class. I wish they delved deeper into their map oriented utility; not just letting them pick locks, but also letting them place things like caltrops and generally being able to mess with enemy units without directly engaging them in combat.
Waiting for FE4 Remake news sucks but good thing there are people like who create FE contents. I guess I am going to get my fix for the upcoming Metaphor Refantazio and DA Veilguard for now.
Wait, so in one of the FE games we can have thieves steal some poor nerd’s book then have our friends bully said nerd to death? Are we sure we’re the good guys?
Honestly I much prefer poison as a debuff than the stat debuffs from Fates. Ninjas were *obnoxious* to fight, and Fates was way too debuff-happy imo (also the reason I never used silver weapons). Poison is much better to work against, and simpler to work with. It's good for bosses, it's good for armors if a mage isn't close by. I agree it's not the most impactful, but when it's helpful it's fun to see the damage rolling in. And when it's applied to the player, it's manageable to deal with until you get a restore staff to the victim.
Don't forget theif extra vision on fog maps. I definitely prefer my utility thieves(lets go Matthew). Thus far I haven't really found any of the combat thieves very engaging. Debuff on hit sounds promising until you realize that you can generally one round everything at the very least with any 2 people. Also having to attack with the rogue first is always unpleasant since they will always thematically be more dodgy than bulky. Always thought they should have Backup in engage so they provide some chip and poison before others do the main damage. But I guess that's what rings are for. If they did it going forward could reflavor as backstab.
Awakening thieves could become assassins much like the thieves in Fire Emblem GBA, however, their alternative promotion in Trickster is neat because it doubles as a healer! Meaning you can steal things and heal, expanding their utility to where they don't need to see much combat at all. They also have a higher magic growth, making them friends with the Levin sword. c: Tricksters can also traverse mountains and ignore terrain penalties like flying units (but can't go through walls) so it's a pretty fun class. Huff huff~! Real fun promotion there! Promise! I forget, was the ones in Fate the ones that became mrechants or were they the clay doll guys... or was that ninjas. I confuse the outlaws and ninjas.. uu.
IMO stealing wouldn’t work in engage that well since there’s no durability, like it feels kinda too good to be able to steal most things when those things don’t break + you have access to emblem weapons I think promotions should’ve been available though! Assassin and Trickster would’ve been good, and fit perfectly with Zelkov and Yunaka respectively
I'm not really a fan of having lockpicking being locked to certain units/classes. It's extremely underwhelming having a thief be deployed *just* so they can grab a chest. I'm just glad that there's more attempts to give them more to do in combat, whether it be through Engage Poison, Fates stat debuffs, or just plain good stats.
I would like for thieves in the future to get 2 different promotions. Dancer and Kidnapper. Dancer works as usual with the added bonus of using throwing knives to debuff and lockpicks, but lose steal as a tradeoff. Kidnappers have a bit more combat-fitting stats and replace the ability to steal with Subdue. Subdue works similar to Capture, you defeat a unit and then it turns into a tied-up unit, lying on the floor, blocking enemy paths and force the enemy AI to untie them. You also then can trade their items to another unit. Just a thought.
That would be interesting, but my first thought is that dancer doesn't feel like it should be here. Not only is it a bit of a jump aesthetically, but dancer is a really good class. There'd have to be insane value in order to make kidnapper worth it. I think instead of dancer, the trickster class would be a good counterpart. Gives them utility on maps where there aren't stealables and pretty much turns the question into "chests and utility vs inventories and combat'
Fire emblem games tend to have bewteen 1 or 3 thieves on average (usually 2), so imagine having 2 or 3 dancers allowing one singular unit to attack like 3 times in one turn
@@MercuryA2000 Fair point. Since Lizard mentioned the one female thief in Thracia who could become a dancer, i put it as an option. It is just me hating Dancer as a "unit" (since there is no difference between a lvl 1 and lvl 20 dancer, the refreshing effect could literally be given to an item and nothing would change.), so i wanted people to at least put some work into getting the ability.
@@aureliodeprimus8018 They could make it a skill you get for mastering/leveling in the class, but the entire POINT of the dancer class is to dance. Doing that would be like taking away a cleric's staff use. I personally like dancers. You trade a unit slot for a weak, squishy unit you have to protect, who has the ability to make anyone in range move twice. It's a very, very strong class and putting it on an item would be broken because the only 'downside' would be negated. I think if you want to add more depth to dancers the rings from FE7 are great. Each one pretty much replaces refreshing with a buff. If they gave those back to dancers, the stat buff could scale with the dancer's level/stats (making a level 1 and a level 20 dancer very different) and actually dial back the power of a dancer in early game. The refresh skill would probably be the silver weapon equivalent, and if they wanted to add an s rank weapon there could even be an fe4 AOE version.
I was just thinking about this but while I am a supporter of thieves getting their own weapon type I feel like engage could've added more of them, like if you're running a thief their inventory will typically just be a 1-2 dagger and maybe the crit melee dagger and that's kind off it for most of the game, eventually you get the funny smash knife wich sucks because why are you using a smash weapon on a thief, the legendary 1-2 range dagger wich is actually really good, for the final chapter because you get it so late, then if you for whatever reason made veyle a thief she can also use her magic dagger, but that's everything and for a class locked to 1 weapon type it doesn't give you a lot to choose from, other classes locked to 1 weapon type get to choose between standard weapons, 1-2 range, killer, brave, smash, effective and even magic ones, in the end this is more of a nitpick since this only bothers me because I've looked so much into weird ways to build units but I feel either adding more knife weapons or maybe having the choice between assassin(gains C bows or something) or trickster(gains C staff or something) as promotions could've solved the issue of thieves having too much inventory space
I'm with you that is not right that the final boss is outright immune to Silencer. At the very least, Silencer should chip one-fifth of the final boss' health.
STR/CON based stealing never felt fun as well as the speed requirement which never really mattered until it does (RNG). I'd rather stealing unequipped stuff be free while stealing equipped stuff require the foe to be near death (10 or less HP?). Also, locktouch should be innate and not take a skill slot (give them high vision in fog too, but dont bring fog back if the AI not cheating and the hiding mechanics aren't added from advance wars) Combat wise, they're just discount myrmidons who are just discount mercenaries. I'd roll the latter 2 into swordfighter who promotes to swordmaster (they should get more followup strikes as a class trait instead of a crit boost imo), hero or bow knight (triple branching promotion options???) while thieves have daggers in exchange which apply debuffs or special effective knives that bypass defenses (while keeping their low STR + MGT). For promotions, Trickster gains staves (and better magic based stats), Assassins have lethality and/or crit bonus (and better combat stats) and Wolf Rider (mounted mobility). Jugdral and Berwick Saga made thieves feel fun to use
thieves should be weak at combat and excel at niche things that anyone else can do (chests, finding treasure gold management in fe4 etc) but RPGs aren’t about thematics anymore
I kind of like the sacred stones approach. Thief base class able to pick locks with good speed and skill, but questionable health and power. Split Evo into 1 range combat focus vs 1/2 range combat. To improve on this, id make a set of thief class only weapons that have effects over raw strength such as effectiveness. The idea would be both paths keep lockpicking and stealing so it can be integrated more into the map design. Then the Evo is split between high crit, effective damage, dodge tank and high crit, good hp and avoid, 1/2 range unit. Like a rogue using skill and special weapons or an assassin getting bow kills to charge a lethality meter. Lots to play around with, but the problem with many thief ideas is that it takes away their class character or limits them too thoroughly. They should have utility and high output but risky combat
I think it's really interesting if you put dual assist + on a thief or a wolf knight in fire emblem engage, they can get their poison stacks off before your unit even attacks on the back line and makes getting three stacks of poison on a boss a sinch because all you need is one round of doubling and one proc of the passive. Now if you have multiple, you can get more stacks on even the common enemies with luck, but that's unpractical because there's probably another skill you would want to use and by the time you could get it, it's probably the latter chapter where the game likes to split up your army a lot anyways.
Just a small correction about engage poison, it's 1 bonus damage at one stack, 3 at 2 stack and 5 at 3 stacks
Pinning because this is correct, thanks!
Ah, like Stockpile from Pokemon
Technically it’s 0 0 and 0 because a good combat build should usually one round anyway and you can’t poison a corpse
I read a great idea in a post a while back about ENEMY thieves. all the stuff they steal from chests? instead of running away to a staircase/gate with it, they should run to the boss and give it to them. occaisonally this'll involve you having to chase them down before they give the boss a good weapon. that'd be fun
FE5 does this a tiny bit, but the only real example I can think of is chapter 3 where the enemy grabbing the chests is a bishop, and the first chest is a meteor tome that he can use on you if you don’t stop him in time. It definitely wasn’t explored very much in that game though, that would be really cool
I love Thief Jagen, it makes sense for an experienced thief to be a distraction and backstab weaker enemies at the start, and when they lose combat utility they stay helpful on utility. It also just fits Sothe's whole position in the story.
I'd love to see a valkyrie jagen, I think it would sick to have a strong early game mage that transitions to staff utility as their combat falls off
Sothe doesn't really have much thief utility after his combat falls off though. In the chapters where Sothe is available after part 1, there aren't any major stealable items and there is exactly 1 chest. There are some hidden items that he can pick up, but overall he has more thief utility in part 1 than the rest of the game.
@@jimjimson6208There are two romhacks I can think of that have a Valkyrie Jagen: Souls of the Forest with Rakel and I think Staff of Ages with Oona(?)
Four Kings has a Thief Jagen as well
Closest I think would be jakob/felicia in fates. Though felicia is more like a normal unit I guess.
It is a good idea though (and felicia still stays useful with staff and tome for the whole game)
Are you and MythrilZenith planning a heist?
@@megaherky3294 Okay, so it's not just me.
Who's gonna make a thief history video next?
Older games: protect me im squishy
Engage:(chad voice) get behind me. I'll handle this
chad: (older games voice) protect me i'm squishy
*Gets killed by back ups*
Pair Up moment @@marcoasturias8520
@@wrongmeteor This hits hard as I’m playing fe6 now
This is the second video I see on this topic today wtf
MythrilZenith?
It's an interesting class to talk about!
@@actuallizard yeah, they're definitely one of the more interesting class lines in the series
@@17Master indeed, it was funny that I almost just finished that video and inmediatly was one of the first to notice this one in my feed
I'm designing a theif lord for my project, this is interesting to look back on for ideas!
Everyone talks about Yunaka, but isn't there *someone* they're forgetting?
Zelkov is viable, but his issue is that, unlike Yunaka who feels perfectly fit for Thief, Zelkov really wants to reclass into something else, which is hard since he starts at Level 17.
@@DSaC_ at least if you want to reclass him you dont have to wait more than 10 levels like you have to with yunaka
15:31 Say it louder for the developers in the back.
Thracia Thief sounds like it would be my favorite iteration of the class. Screwing multiple enemies over in one go without partaking in a single combat is peak Thief/Rogue/etc fantasy to me.
Since they clearly want Thieves to hold their own in combat nowadays, I wonder how having an effective weapon for every unit type in exchange for weaker Strength and Mt would work. Thief/Ninja etc are supposed to "fight dirty" and aside from debuffs, carrying specialized weapons to counterpick any opponent sounds like the closest things. So while the other physical weapons would have one or two effective weapons each (ex: Swords get Wyrmslayer + Zanbato, Lance gets Horseslayer, Axe gets Hammer + Dragon Axe) Dagger gets Hunter's Knife (Cavalry + Pegasus) + Stilleto (Armor) + Poison Dagger (Infantry) (YUP, I'm bringing this in from Heroes) + ...i dunno, bring back Baselard and give it (Wyvern), I guess. After that, further lean into Assassin being a better fighter and Trickster being better utility. Of course a lot of this hinges on other mechanics and enemy quality to make it all matter, but that's starting another conversation.
Thracia Thieves are hilarious, I was lucky enough to get a few con levels on Lifis and it led to some insane shenanigans.
I was on chapter 15 and there was a hunter with an Iron bow, (6 weight) I had Lifis steal it which then rendered the hunter Harmless. But on enemy phase the hunter then went up to the boss and traded with him.
The hunter took the venin bow from the boss to use as a replacement, but since the venin bow is just an Iron bow I just had Lifis steal that too. Since the boss no longer had a 2 range weapon I just killed him without retaliation. The Hunter then ran off the map.
What other game do you get this kind of interaction from? These kinds of interactions is what I play this series for.
it's really weird that Engage handled thieves the way it did. The reason thieves didn't promote in previous games is because they weren't combat units so their stats didn't really matter, and they were unlikely to gain a lot of experience anyway. In Engage, other than their niche ability to open doors without having to attack them, they are purely combat units.
I think maybe it was done this way on purpose as a nod to how they never really "promoted" till Genealogy but then Thief Fighter never felt lie a PROMOTION and might as well have let them max to Level 40....like they are in Engage funny enough. Then they went back to being Thief on in Binding Blade before Blazing Sword finally let them promote again and MEAN IT with Assassin and the rest is history (Last time I THINK they never let you promote a Thief was Sothe back in POR who had good UTILITY game as unlike Volke he didn't CHARGE YOU for opening Doors and Locks in exchange for the game REALLY discouraging you from using him in combat! Maybe if you want to take advantage of Blossoms "Prototype Aptitude" function with BEXP in preparations for Radiant Dawn as he'll be a MUCH better equipped Jagan for that game (to the point of being a FAR better OIFEY for Micaiah then if he DIDN'T where he is STILL alright for Part 1 and can at LEAST keep up somewhat in Part 3 and 4, though will STRUGGLE)
Note how in a funny way the only two NATURAL Thieves Yunaka and Zelkov are former Assassins and their look fits ASSASSINS then it does "Thief" (Like you see with the standard outfit for all Thieves in the game) I use to be like "then why can't they be tricksters" since Yunaka has the look and stats that would fit the class and made me think what was the POINT of having a MAGIC stat with NO magical Daggers in the game (there is one, but since it's Velye's personal that ONLY SHE CAN USE, it doesn't count) and then I had to REMEMBER how she was INTRODUCED using Micaiah to show how she lets anyone who equips her use Staffs and even TOMES when Engaged. And then I realized Celica and Micaiah make Trickster irrelevant.....up until I remember that you LOSE them both till the TALE END portion of the mid game! Then I'm back to saying WHY they were a promotion choice! Well maybe next FE Assassin & Trickster will go back to being one of two choices for the Thief class.
As swell as I do like (and loathe in the case of ENEMY THIEVES) them in Engage!! I hope they go back to how they were MEANT to function! Good thing ABOUT Knives now and I hope it stays is the Poison mechanic being a DEFENSE/RESISTANCE debuffer! I kind of like that function on Daggers then how they were in Fates, where when YOUR using them, those Stat debuffers are great, but when the enemy uses them and REMINDER that they STILL apply as long as an attack HITS so even 0 Damaging them won't stop it! Means Ninja Hell was a BIG problem in Fates...especially in Conquest Late game referring to Ryoma's final battle where there were NINJAS the eye can see! Same with Kotaro's fight in all three routes! Conquest being the better or worse of it with his fights! But I would like them to be Door AND Chest openers again! Likely this was done with the Chests because tell me, have YOU forgotten to equip locktouch when you needed them! And Fates SPECIFICALLY Revelations had a NASTY habit especially in the Late Game maps to NOT EVEN put keys on enemies near the chests, causing you to have to forfeit the contents or restart and remember to put it on one character! I really hated that and the NASTY surprise I found out when. Hell Engage NOT telling me that everyone can open them made me MISS OUT . But then they started REALLY being stingy on rewards from chests or special objectives in Engage which I wasn't too much of a FAN of! It would be one thing if they were MASTER SEALS which I think the LIMIT on them early on was a good move as you had to THINK OUT your choices. But I think they should have given the Thieves at least their ability to STEAL GOLD from Genealogy back at least! Though that would have made Anna Personal irreverent (or BETTER if you changed her to Thief HAD they kept it, I mean by the time you can get her, You'd just have to get her to Bond 6 with Micaiah and BAM, Instant Thief) but hey in the Fire Emblem where Money is at it's TIGHTEST (Something I actually liked as It made me have to THINK on what I'll buy and need! I love budgeting in games that aren't ABOUT that! Not being sarcastic! Dead Space and Resident Evil 4 and even the EARLY Fire Emblem's WITHOUT effective Gold Grinding made me LOVE finite amount of Money to manage!
Ooooh that key change at 13:26
I had to rerecord that line like a week after the initial recording haha
I honestly thought he was about to launch into a sponsored segment. "But what about thieves in the real world? With Incogni, you don't have to worry about a thief lockpicking your computer and stealing your online information!"
MythrilZenith and ActualLizard are part of the DoubleName cinematic universe I guess
Speaking of Thief promotion, I'd say bringing back the Rogue is also an option, but setting them apart by letting them equip Martial Scrolls as well as Daggers, letting them Break archers, magi and other Dagger-users and giving them some pretty scary close-combat power when it's needed.
Honestly Rogue would be redudant! You got TWO pure choices for a Thief now in that you can make them an ASSASSIN which is basically the Rogue with one hit KILL capability if Lethality activates when you REALLY want it too! And there's no need to take away their Thief utility either or Trickster if you want to mix MAGIC and more dodging! Hell Trickster IS the Rogue/Thief Fighter Class in that your SACRIFICING pure DAMAGE AND INSTANT DEATH CHANCE to aid MORE defense (better EVASION) and Magical ability (Heal, obstruct-annoy, and even take advantage of LOW Res enemies)
I mean look at Yunaka and Zelkov! Despite BOTH their origins being Assassins if Engage HAD the class! They kind of FUNCTION as them in the Thief Class! Yunaka has bits of it with her Personal making her a Crit monster if you get her into Cover. Zelkov has even BETTER avoid because of his Personal (Making Corrin VERY good on BOTH of them when it comes to ENEMY Phase! Just give Yunaka Chrom's "Brute Force" skill and have her use Dragon Pulse to cover herself in Smoke and on enemy phase, she's KILLING archers while DODGING them because Covert Battle Style DOUBLES the Avoid Bonus from the Smoke AND her Personal activates when on Covert inducing Terrain! and the same applies to Zelkov, cept his Personal DECREASES enemy hit rate by -10 if they initiate combat with him. The smoke being cover and his COVERT battle style as a Thief INCREASES his AVO even more that I LAUGH on Hard Mode watching enemies try and fail to hit him! Taking into mind he hits HARDER then Yunaka means his counter attacks do GREAT Chip damage on High Defense enemies, where Yunaka is not doing ANY) and Yunaka Magic make her a Trickster IF you put Celica/Micaiah/Soren/HELL even CAMILLA & Chrom-Robin on her as it lets her do decent damage with their Tomes/Magic Weapons and heal effective with Celica Recover which will heal alot ANYWAYS and Micaiah gives her STAFF access which a reminder, Staves are MORE then the heal and restore staves! You got REWARP (A C RANK STAFF SO MICAIAH at BASE CAN LET YOU USE IT) she has a good chance to land a Freeze. And Obstruct is why even the ROYAL KNIGHT can be a good utility along with ANY low level staff user class!
I mean the whole POINT of Rogue/Trickster is to IMPROVE Thief Utility over just KILLING the enemy! Rogue was only made to be BETTER Thieves, likely so they can SURVIVE battles better IF they are caught in them, where Assassins were MEANT to run STRAIGHT into combat more! Trickster fills the niche of Rogue better because they aren't competing with Assassin by being "the same class!" You either get BATTLE THIEF (Assassin) or All Arounder Thief (who can use MAGIC) You're idea is nice and I think would fit well even IF you make it TRICKSTER still (Since the point of them is to BE hinderances to the enemy after all)
@@paulman34340 I know what Rogue and Trickster do. I'm just offering another choice, which also makes more use of the Martial weapon type.
@@Nehfarius I know, I was just giving an idea is all! I liked the Rogue too (Started with Blazing Sword, and bought EACH FE as they first came out, so Rogue INTERESTED me when I saw them in Sacred Stones), which is WHY Trickster confused the HELL out of me when they first appeared in Awakening! I'll admit I never found them APPEALING in that game and ignored them for Assassin.....then Fates changed my mind on them (Thank you Niles, Nina and Anna LOL) and looking at it! It does make some sense
I do feel Switching out of Classes should be ABIT more limiting (I'm NEVER making a glassy Mage a GREAT KNIGHT OR GENERAL! Nor am I making a TANKY Armor Knight a DRUID/SAGE! Fun for Challenge runs, but how many will DO that type of Challenge run?!) and Promotions should be as it is, except you get THREE choices! If so I could see the Rogue in the Thief case being the MIDDLE option between Assassin (Pure Damage) and Trickster (Magical Utility). Maybe take Lucky 7 and put it on the Rogue! (Honestly in games with Promotions I do LIKE when you get Two to THREE choices as they make it FEEL like you're STILL remaining that class you started in, but your choosing WHAT direction your going down! Rogue would be like how "Sword/Axe/Lance Fighter going Swordmaster/Berserker/Halberdier" is just them being UPGRADED version of their former BASE class! Note how the alternative is Hero, basically a Sword Fighter with an ADDITIONAL weapon type and more DEFENSIVE, Warrior, ALSO different weapon type option option and abit less squishy, and Royal Knight which is Horse Mounted with Staff for healing/support! Rogue would be BETTER Thief with MUCH better dodging! Which is why I said Trickster will LOSE Lucky 7 or such and so thier AVOID TANK capability to give Rogue an additional niche! Assassins and Trickster can still Avoid GOOD! But Rogues do it THE BEST and all those EXTRA functions you mentioned! Felt like making Bows/Daggers/Tomes BREAK against Arts was to give Brawl a Niche! But I really wished they gave them a PROPER Weapon Triangle as well, since Magic Triangle sure as hell ain't coming BACK!)
Thief jagen makes a lot of sense if you want to make the jagen an actual unit that falls off, a sworldlocked unit with mediocre stats is just perfect for that.
I'd also like to see a thief lord and lean into the idea of your lord being a whimpy unit to defend but that has unique skills that means you have to use them to finish the map. Like, they could be the only one able to seize not because having blue blood apparently means when you sit on a throne everyone gives up, but because they can uniquely activate some mechanisms that would make progress otherwise impossible.
It's pretty significant that thieves have gone from being the weak, annoying little rats that steal your stuff to priority targets/ actual threats because Engage did the impossible and made the Poison status condition actually good.
Thracia is my favorite version because stealing makes them useful and contribute more to their class. But engage gigachad thieves are so fun lmao
Having not played Thracia, I'd say PoR has my favorite incarnation of the thief. I like how there's a lot of different items to steal throughout the game (particularly staves), and while Volke isn't a great combat unit, he can still get the job done and you're rewarded for taking the time to train him up with a unique promotion.
Three Houses thieves are disappointing to me because outside of one paralogue in VW and the trade secrets, there isn't a whole lot that's worth stealing.
Also this video does make me really want to play Thracia.
This may be a conspiracy theory, but I'm borderline CERTAIN assassins were going to be in Engage, but then the whole Shinzo Abe thing happened...
According to an initial google search, production for this game finished in 2021, and the assassination was in 2022? With the release being Jan 20 in 2023, that does leave enough time for last second changes.
I could see them going back and quickly scrubbing the “assassin” class in post of Shinzo’s death. From what I understand, the invasion of Poland delayed the release of Advanced Wars on Switch, which seems like a similar style move.
I find your potential theory fascinating. Gonna have to keep an ear out for details of engage’s development lol
@@johnadams8385 "the invase of poland" my brother in christ i think you mixed up Ukraine and Poland
Alright grandpa let's get yo-
....actually wait....this does make sense...
One of my favorite things in general for GBA FE is that VERY few classes actually have abilities aside from like, canto or a crit increase. Thieves and Assassins being the major exceptions. Makes using them a lot more interesting and rewarding even if they’re still pretty bad units overall.
There’s a broader move in fantasy settings to make rogues both a utility and glass cannon class but I genuinely think we need more non-combat utility classes in RPGs that encourage players to make interesting decisions.
Yeah, definitely need more utility based classes that can do unique things that nobody else can do. Stuff like summoner's phantoms, Xane transforming in the archanea games or laguz like Janaff/Ulki being able to shove units and fly.
Support classes doing things besides healing is cool too (when they aren't using status staves or teleporting). The Corrin ring in Engage was fun to use and setup different terrain effects.
One aspect of Thieves not mentioned in this video (since it was more about player Thieves) is earlier FE games gave enemy thieves a high exp yield (in Thracia it's tied to anything with the Steal skill), meaning they also serve a mild "Metal Slime" role: you might want to save the killing blow for a unit you want to train. Even the GBA games did this, but it's mostly stopped since.
GBA FE had a good compromise between QoL and urgency when it came to enemy thieves. If you kill a thief, it only drops the last item it stole. This means you can be a LITTLE late in getting to the thief, but if you let it loot 2 or more chests you'll lose at least one item.
The thing with buying keys is... yes TECHNICALLY you can do this, but it doesn't come naturally to me, and it's usually more convenient just deploying a lockpicker. It's hard to keep track of which units I gave keys to, and it takes up space for weapons or other useful items on combat units.
Wait, you don't need equal or higher Speed to steal in FE6?! And here I kept training my Thieves before Narcian to make sure to outspeed him...
19:32 I forgot Locktouch was transferable... but you mentioning it reminded of my Lockpicking Death Bunnies in Awakening. (I often put Panne through Assassin)
Thracia Thieves are very fun, but it's clear they felt neutering Mages by swiping their tomes was too much, since later games either block stealing weapons or at least equipped ones. It's really only been since Fates they've pivoted the class towards combat, but both Outlaw and Ninja had the interesting trait of high Res for a non-magic, non-Pegasus unit, and combined with their range they had a cool unit identity as mage-slayers. I like Engage Thieves (personally I like stacking Poison via Lucina's Dual Assist) but agree that stat debuffs are more broadly useful. Maybe make them more uniform, Fates had too many to keep track of.
Concerning promotions, Thief's are interesting since they're are a dual purpose unit, having both utility and(sometimes questionable) combat utility. So there's a few ways IS can go about with their promotions.
There's the combat focus route, where they're made to kill. To that end, and thanks to being sneaky, their skills and abilities can focus on either dealing a lot of damage. Have higher mobility, like being able to move through units, having Canto so they can retreat after combat, or just plain move more space than average. Or actual stealth where enemies can't attack them without being revealed first, and makes enemies just walk past them, letting you, for example, kill ballista or Siege Tome Mages without exposing your army.
Then there's the Utility focused route, where they're more focused on the map itself than the units that are in them. For that, you can keep the regular thief utility of opening doors and chest, as well as debuffing the enemy with their attacks like with poison or stat reductions, but you can get a bit creative and give them caltrops they can place on the floor that damages everyone that walks over it and increase movement cost. Mines that interrupt turns of anything that triggers it. Various bombs like smoke and flash bombs that debuff enemies or makes units inside it harder to hit or just removes that units turns. Like just really lean into this trickster/vigilante archetype with a utilitybelt full of tools for all kinds of situations.
++
Or they could just have regular Theif^2 for their promotions. Boring perhaps but not every promotions needs a new ability.
Legaults one of my favorite characters in FE, loved his supports
Thieves in Berwick Saga have limited combat, which gives them something to do after they're done opening chests and searching houses. You almost always want to deploy one, but it's never going to be your best unit.
There's the slow, inaccurate axe-wielding pirate. But he can do decent damage and survive a couple rounds of combat. He has the robbery skill, which gives 25% chance to loot an item from enemies he kills.
There's the thief with daggers and mug, which has a low proc chance to steal an equipped item on hit. She gets a mount on promotion.
The other thief has daggers and steal, which you can click to steal an unequipped item instead of attacking. He can also provoke an enemy to tunnel vision attacking him and then hide in the forest.
Daggers only do ~2 damage but they have an increased chance to injure the enemy, which unequips all their stuff for the turn and can lead to subsequent crippling and capture. Without this capturing mechanic it would be very hard for the thief to gain exp. Still risky against enemies that can counterattack.
Hope you're having a good day
This was a really good video. Giving thief a 1-2 range attack is good, also the speed been higher and able to steal some weapons if they have speed and strength would be great.
Thracia and Tellius Thieves are my favorite, but I love trickster and assassin as promotions.
While I get what you mean with the keys kind of invalidating thief utility, I usually find getting thieves to chests to not be that dangerous, and (this might be because I like most thief characters) depending upon the amount of deployment slots are available, I don't find including them over another unit to be that big of a trade off.
I love ALL ActualLizard videos!!!! ❤
Hi Lizard!
I love your evolution videos!
trickerster yunaka is something i didn't know i needed until now
FE10 Sothe is iconic IMO, a Thief Jagen is so unique and he was fun to use.
Two small notes: Steal is also a Thief class skill in 3H so you can just class someone into a Thief for the couple of maps with good Stealables. Also, in Engage you can reclass units to Thief from a base class it’s just Thieves can’t reclass to promoted classes until 21, very sad for Zelkov and Yunaka.
man something i would love to see from thieves is them having multiple daggers , like poison , paralyze and stall daggers , thath would give them a lot of utility and they could even keep themselves alive , of course they would be like 1-2 use daggers so they can keep somehow safe from harm without reallying on the mages to paralyze another mages and so
Also they are just cool
Hiya-Papaya👋👋👋
Holy Broccoli!
@@actuallizard Btw, in the German translation, they localized Yunaka's Hiya-Papaya to "Hallihallöchen", which is just so much less charming - at least Holy Broccoli got a faithful translation in "Heiliger Brokkoli!" Zappy on the other hand I don't remember right now.....
Not specifically a thief, but gotta give a shout out to my homie, Jaffar in FE:BB. He single-handedly kept Nino alive with nothing but an elixir and like 3 Killing Edges. Shout out to Silencer. You the real MVP.
The removal of thief fighter and the failure to add assassin for fe 6 is one of the worst things that happened to Cath. Look how they massacred my girl
I really like the idea of utility classes that aren't good at combat. Having a weak thief class to steal and open tbings is fun. I want that back. Absolutely despised stat debuffs and poison. Those should be given to another class like a mage maybe
I think it's really interesting if you put dual assist + on a thief or a wolf knight in fire emblem engage, they can get their poison stacks off before your unit even attacks on the back line and makes getting three stacks of poison on a boss a sinch because all you need is one round of doubling and one proc of the passive. Now if you have multiple, you can get more stacks on even the common enemies with luck, but that's unpractical because there's probably another skill you would want to use and by the time you could get it, it's probably the latter chapter where the game likes to split up your army a lot anyways.
The only thing worth bringing Steal for Three Houses is, in my opinion: Chapter 16 Ladislava's Aurora shield(+3 prt negates flier effective) and that's it.
The first time I played Shadow Dragon, on Normal of course, I completely missed that Thieves can unlock drawbridges. Meaning, on Chapter 14, I literally sent all my units trudging around the damn castle and through the trees. All of them. Ogma's axe bros did absolutely nothing to speed it up.
And I was training Julian up too, so he was in zero danger of immediate death.
God I am such an idiot. 😂
any day with a new Lizard video is a great day!
I still think engage would have really benfitted from making thief a base class and introducing 2 promotions for it.
1. Trickster (Knife+Staff, maybe go from Covert to backup even?) This would fit well with Yunaka, especially since she already starts out with micaia giving newer players the idea to maybe stick thise 2 together. Although you could also argue that this might be the reason why this class does not exist I guess?
2. Assassin (Knife +Sword, or maybe Bow, sticks to covert type) could feel like a fitting promotion or starting class for zelkov, but I think it would also be pretty nice to have a covert with access to swords.
In my head those 2 classes would have given the game a lot ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
No mention on how thieves can open doors in Engage? It's like the one thing they kept from the classic thieves.
Instant like for Legault on the thumbnial
From what little I've watched of maddening mode gameplay the poison seems pretty much necessary especially for the bosses
I've always loved the thief/assassin classes in games, so I hope they keep them going forward in Fire Emblem. I'd like them to stay with daggers instead of going back to swords, but I hope they can give the weapons some variety. Give them some unique ones instead of just the iron/steel/silver line.
Shout outs to TheNoodleDoodler
Goated name
I liked Volke in FE9 because of stealing physic staves off enemies. The odd lethality proc is fun too.
Great vid as always! My favorite iteration is Fates but that’s because I have a huge crush on Saizo lol
20:18 I would like to mention that Thief is a good combet class in 3H, at least at the point where your units are intermediate class. It's not the best, but when it has a lot of base Speed and speed modifier at a point where you can double even on Maddening, it definitelyhas a spot as a combet class, albeit the class mastery isn’t good for combet. Even if a unit doesn't want to stay in thief, simply certifying to Thief boosts the unit's speed all the way up to 11, letting units like even Raphael avoid doubling around that point. This is particularly worth it for units who want to get Vantage since Mercenary and Thief requires the same certification requirements.
So 3H Thief definitely has place outside of Thief utility stuff.
I do miss steal except for when thieves would pinch your vulneraries lol
I definitely think the debuff effects are useful in maddening if you need to make enemies weaker, although I do prefer using the magic cannoner to debuff enemies rather than the thief
You can reclass into engage thief before promoting.
Doing a thief Jean run rn
I just want the ability to capture enemies and convince them to join your army like in Fate. That way it feels like you're building an army
You: ... engage. I've spent a lot of time on this.
Me: Is someone forcing you...?
Marth to Caeda: “they call me sticky fingers”
Rifis/Lifis from FE5 is the best thief in the series. Top tier unit in that game.
I mostly played the GBA games before Engage. They just seemed like sword masters with a couple extra tricks. Then they promote to assassin and lose the ability to use lockpicks and just become swordmasters with a chance at insta kill. I love how they're used in engage in a completely different way
small little correction, Lara can promote 3 times since she can promote to thief fighter/rouge after becoming a dancer as well
You lose the ability to dance but it is funny so I say it's worth it
Thieves should be a support class, not a combat class. I wish they delved deeper into their map oriented utility; not just letting them pick locks, but also letting them place things like caltrops and generally being able to mess with enemy units without directly engaging them in combat.
Assassin Yunaka would have been too Zappy. It was a nerf so we couldn't have too much fun with her in Engage.
It's not just sothe in fe 10 really, all thieves can get crazy strong if you choose to invest in them, they're basically more extreme swordmasters
Waiting for FE4 Remake news sucks but good thing there are people like who create FE contents. I guess I am going to get my fix for the upcoming Metaphor Refantazio and DA Veilguard for now.
Wait, so in one of the FE games we can have thieves steal some poor nerd’s book then have our friends bully said nerd to death?
Are we sure we’re the good guys?
Honestly I much prefer poison as a debuff than the stat debuffs from Fates. Ninjas were *obnoxious* to fight, and Fates was way too debuff-happy imo (also the reason I never used silver weapons). Poison is much better to work against, and simpler to work with. It's good for bosses, it's good for armors if a mage isn't close by. I agree it's not the most impactful, but when it's helpful it's fun to see the damage rolling in. And when it's applied to the player, it's manageable to deal with until you get a restore staff to the victim.
Don't forget theif extra vision on fog maps. I definitely prefer my utility thieves(lets go Matthew). Thus far I haven't really found any of the combat thieves very engaging. Debuff on hit sounds promising until you realize that you can generally one round everything at the very least with any 2 people. Also having to attack with the rogue first is always unpleasant since they will always thematically be more dodgy than bulky. Always thought they should have Backup in engage so they provide some chip and poison before others do the main damage. But I guess that's what rings are for. If they did it going forward could reflavor as backstab.
Yunaka my beloved ♥️
Awakening thieves could become assassins much like the thieves in Fire Emblem GBA, however, their alternative promotion in Trickster is neat because it doubles as a healer! Meaning you can steal things and heal, expanding their utility to where they don't need to see much combat at all. They also have a higher magic growth, making them friends with the Levin sword. c:
Tricksters can also traverse mountains and ignore terrain penalties like flying units (but can't go through walls) so it's a pretty fun class. Huff huff~! Real fun promotion there! Promise!
I forget, was the ones in Fate the ones that became mrechants or were they the clay doll guys... or was that ninjas. I confuse the outlaws and ninjas.. uu.
I think Keys being cheap is a good thing in mainline FE, they're kinda meant to be foolproof in the event that all your thieves are dead.
Julian joins with Dani Doyle?!
8:45 yo can dew it
IMO stealing wouldn’t work in engage that well since there’s no durability, like it feels kinda too good to be able to steal most things when those things don’t break + you have access to emblem weapons
I think promotions should’ve been available though! Assassin and Trickster would’ve been good, and fit perfectly with Zelkov and Yunaka respectively
I'm not really a fan of having lockpicking being locked to certain units/classes. It's extremely underwhelming having a thief be deployed *just* so they can grab a chest. I'm just glad that there's more attempts to give them more to do in combat, whether it be through Engage Poison, Fates stat debuffs, or just plain good stats.
I would like for thieves in the future to get 2 different promotions. Dancer and Kidnapper.
Dancer works as usual with the added bonus of using throwing knives to debuff and lockpicks, but lose steal as a tradeoff.
Kidnappers have a bit more combat-fitting stats and replace the ability to steal with Subdue. Subdue works similar to Capture, you defeat a unit and then it turns into a tied-up unit, lying on the floor, blocking enemy paths and force the enemy AI to untie them. You also then can trade their items to another unit.
Just a thought.
That would be interesting, but my first thought is that dancer doesn't feel like it should be here. Not only is it a bit of a jump aesthetically, but dancer is a really good class. There'd have to be insane value in order to make kidnapper worth it.
I think instead of dancer, the trickster class would be a good counterpart. Gives them utility on maps where there aren't stealables and pretty much turns the question into "chests and utility vs inventories and combat'
Fire emblem games tend to have bewteen 1 or 3 thieves on average (usually 2), so imagine having 2 or 3 dancers allowing one singular unit to attack like 3 times in one turn
@@dylanzlol7293 I mean, you can make a clause that a unit can only be refreshed once per turn.
@@MercuryA2000 Fair point. Since Lizard mentioned the one female thief in Thracia who could become a dancer, i put it as an option.
It is just me hating Dancer as a "unit" (since there is no difference between a lvl 1 and lvl 20 dancer, the refreshing effect could literally be given to an item and nothing would change.), so i wanted people to at least put some work into getting the ability.
@@aureliodeprimus8018 They could make it a skill you get for mastering/leveling in the class, but the entire POINT of the dancer class is to dance. Doing that would be like taking away a cleric's staff use.
I personally like dancers. You trade a unit slot for a weak, squishy unit you have to protect, who has the ability to make anyone in range move twice. It's a very, very strong class and putting it on an item would be broken because the only 'downside' would be negated.
I think if you want to add more depth to dancers the rings from FE7 are great. Each one pretty much replaces refreshing with a buff. If they gave those back to dancers, the stat buff could scale with the dancer's level/stats (making a level 1 and a level 20 dancer very different) and actually dial back the power of a dancer in early game. The refresh skill would probably be the silver weapon equivalent, and if they wanted to add an s rank weapon there could even be an fe4 AOE version.
I was just thinking about this but while I am a supporter of thieves getting their own weapon type I feel like engage could've added more of them, like if you're running a thief their inventory will typically just be a 1-2 dagger and maybe the crit melee dagger and that's kind off it for most of the game, eventually you get the funny smash knife wich sucks because why are you using a smash weapon on a thief, the legendary 1-2 range dagger wich is actually really good, for the final chapter because you get it so late, then if you for whatever reason made veyle a thief she can also use her magic dagger, but that's everything and for a class locked to 1 weapon type it doesn't give you a lot to choose from, other classes locked to 1 weapon type get to choose between standard weapons, 1-2 range, killer, brave, smash, effective and even magic ones, in the end this is more of a nitpick since this only bothers me because I've looked so much into weird ways to build units but I feel either adding more knife weapons or maybe having the choice between assassin(gains C bows or something) or trickster(gains C staff or something) as promotions could've solved the issue of thieves having too much inventory space
I'm with you that is not right that the final boss is outright immune to Silencer. At the very least, Silencer should chip one-fifth of the final boss' health.
Non player here, i forgot DQ and FE are different
21:57 Engage poison isn't +1 per stack, it scales as +1/3/5.
Yunaka becoming one of the best tanks in the game made me laugh.
Now I’m craving sweets…
Yunaka gaming 🤣
Sothe
zappy
STR/CON based stealing never felt fun as well as the speed requirement which never really mattered until it does (RNG).
I'd rather stealing unequipped stuff be free while stealing equipped stuff require the foe to be near death (10 or less HP?).
Also, locktouch should be innate and not take a skill slot (give them high vision in fog too, but dont bring fog back if the AI not cheating and the hiding mechanics aren't added from advance wars)
Combat wise, they're just discount myrmidons who are just discount mercenaries. I'd roll the latter 2 into swordfighter who promotes to swordmaster (they should get more followup strikes as a class trait instead of a crit boost imo), hero or bow knight (triple branching promotion options???) while thieves have daggers in exchange which apply debuffs or special effective knives that bypass defenses (while keeping their low STR + MGT). For promotions, Trickster gains staves (and better magic based stats), Assassins have lethality and/or crit bonus (and better combat stats) and Wolf Rider (mounted mobility).
Jugdral and Berwick Saga made thieves feel fun to use
FE fans still think that FE10 sothe falls off......
Ayyy I'm early
Wow. Engage looks so off-putting
thieves should be weak at combat and excel at niche things that anyone else can do (chests, finding treasure gold management in fe4 etc) but RPGs aren’t about thematics anymore
I kind of like the sacred stones approach.
Thief base class able to pick locks with good speed and skill, but questionable health and power.
Split Evo into 1 range combat focus vs 1/2 range combat.
To improve on this, id make a set of thief class only weapons that have effects over raw strength such as effectiveness.
The idea would be both paths keep lockpicking and stealing so it can be integrated more into the map design. Then the Evo is split between high crit, effective damage, dodge tank and high crit, good hp and avoid, 1/2 range unit. Like a rogue using skill and special weapons or an assassin getting bow kills to charge a lethality meter.
Lots to play around with, but the problem with many thief ideas is that it takes away their class character or limits them too thoroughly. They should have utility and high output but risky combat
sacred stones rogues are gods at combat. have you tried it? gosh dang darnit
I think it's really interesting if you put dual assist + on a thief or a wolf knight in fire emblem engage, they can get their poison stacks off before your unit even attacks on the back line and makes getting three stacks of poison on a boss a sinch because all you need is one round of doubling and one proc of the passive. Now if you have multiple, you can get more stacks on even the common enemies with luck, but that's unpractical because there's probably another skill you would want to use and by the time you could get it, it's probably the latter chapter where the game likes to split up your army a lot anyways.
Dual Assist doesn't work on non-backup classes. Giving them Lucina is the only way to get this effect.
@@123christianac there goes my fun im currently doing a run rn and i see why this dont work