Main Characters and Affinity

[maxoverload91]

Is there any reason why multiple main characters were given affinity that do not match their starting class? Having Jules with water, decreasing his ability to get Warbow earlier and Barnabas with water, decreasing his overall skill as a knight, does not make much sense.

Sybil I understand tho - giving her fire makes a lot of sense both for how her character acts and who she wants to be. But Jules would probably be better off with something like lightning (as I see that as an analog for air in how we talk about "affinity" with the zodiac), and Barnabas would be better off with Earth (I mean, I'd prefer he had Fire or Dark, but those don't really fit his character).

An interesting alternative would be adding some new classes that mix magic into both bow users and male melee cav. It is kinda odd that male conscripts can't go for a temple route at all.

[Rock]

You can certainly have your own opinion for which element best fits their personality. I think Lightning is a horrible fit for Jules' personality. I think they both work perfectly well with the Water element from a story/personality perspective.

maxoverload91 a écrit :

Optimal would mean best.

Exactly, optimal means best. There are 6 elements. One of those is going to be the best element for the build you want. So that element will be the optimal. There is always going to be one optimal element from a build perspective. You are asking for optimal builds. But I think that would be dumb design. I don't see any reason the characters all need to be carbon copies with optimal affinity assignments.

[maxoverload91]

Rock a écrit :

You can certainly have your own opinion for which element best fits their personality. I think Lightning is a horrible fit for Jules' personality. I think they both work perfectly well with the Water element from a story/personality perspective.

maxoverload91 a écrit :

Optimal would mean best.

Exactly, optimal means best. There are 6 elements. One of those is going to be the best element for the build you want. So that element will be the optimal. There is always going to be one optimal element from a build perspective. You are asking for optimal builds. But I think that would be dumb design. I don't see any reason the characters all need to be carbon copies with optimal affinity assignments.

my exasperation at this point is legendary. I don't want carbon copy characters either. And I don't think the affinities that I've suggested are necessarily the absolute best affinity for either of those characters. I feel like I've said this to you at least 10 times but for some reason you keep on taking my use of the word "better" and changing that to "best".

Also I'm repeating myself again here, but Abigayle's affinity is lightning - she's also a go with the flow, easy-going character, like her brother. It would be perfectly within character for both Jules and Abigayle to have lightning affinity, because it's not a fit for violence of personality, that's what fire element is, that's what Sibyl is. Speaking of which, if I were going to complain about an affinity in the early game, I'd be complaining about Sibyl, but I'm not because A) it DOES fit her character, and B) it also fits her narrative arc. Sure she suffers from being a really bad healer in the early game/midgame. But the payoff narratively is worth it. Jules and Barnabas do not have commensurate narrative payoff for their combat suffering. Let me express something besides - neither Jules nor Barnabas is supposed to be bad at what they do narratively, these are squad leaders in a hyper-successful rebel army that nearly forced the empire to it's knees and that's before they gained divine sanction. Sibyl IS supposed to be bad at what she does because she has a lot of frustration surrounding being forced to be a priestess. If there were a narrative reason for Jules or Barnabas losing competency in the early game/midgame transition, I would not have a problem with it.

[Rock]

I don't see any reason why we would expect Jules or Barnabas to be good at what they do. Barnabas is a protector. Water is fine for protectors. Sure Earth would be optimal, but Water is fine. I'm only ~chapter 15, but from the early game, I assume Jules is a lost prince. Again why do we think he should be a super archer? Jules and Barnabas are good leaders and they can command larger squads. That's a good enough strength for me. Personally I haven't even noticed if they are performing poorly in battle because the only thing that matters is what their units can do.

Barnabas also does have a narrative reason to know grow quickly. He is an old man. An established veteran past his prime. In reality he shouldn't be growing in skills at all.

Jules is some a lost noble. Why do we think he should be a super strong warrior? He looks kind of wimpy in his portrait, and I think the slower strength growth fits him fine.

Abigayle is a little crazy. Like Game of Thrones plays with Dragons crazy. I don't really see her as go with the flow so much as shy and crazy. Seems fine with lightning. I think Fire is more about passion than violence. Fire fits Sybil because she is passionate. We can argue which element fits which character all day from a narrative perspective. I would tend to trust the authors in that regard.

[maxoverload91]

Rock a écrit :

Personally I haven't even noticed if they are performing poorly in battle because the only thing that matters is what their units can do.

Alright, I'm much later in the game at this point, but just to demonstrate how much individual skills and stats matter, let's compare Jules and Narima. Jules is nowhere near the warrior that Narima is (63 STR vs 100 STR currently), and certainly shouldn't be from a narrative perspective (his growth curve bounced back in the midgame and he's above average at this point, but nowhere close to Narima). However while his party has 6 Warbows of average 58.33 strength or so (besides him) and Narima's has 5 Warbows of average 49.5 strength (besides her), Narima's party does significantly more damage to a squad (tested against the same squad multiple times) than Jules'. Like Jules' party will kill maybe one or two units in a volley, Narima's typically kills 4-5 units. Given that Narima's party is smaller, weaker, and this was tested over the course of several instances, you'd expect her party to do less. (I've also considered crits but Narima's party has a lower average SKL by about 8-10 points) My conclusion? Narima's insane 100 STR pulls a lot of weight, enough that considering leaders' stats is more important than you're making it out to be.

[Rock]

Sounds like Narima is over powered. Kind of stupid she is twice as strong as everyone else. I'd rather the leaders were normal. Regardless I don't really care for every unit to be overpowered. I enjoy using characters/units for their strengths and purpose. Even if Jules unit can only kill a couple characters, its fine with me. I don't see any reason to make him more optimal by changing his affinity. Besides, they are beefing Jules STR growth rate up in the next patch.

[Drakilian]

I don't mind them having suboptimal affinities, I have problems with the fact that we're not allowed to change them using the affinity changing mechanic available to every other unit in the game

[durandin2000]

Honestly the only named character that you shouldnt be able to change affinity for is the MC.

[2chuu4u]

I'm kind of also on the page that these main characters shouldn't have the worst possible trait. It doesn't need to be optimal, just I'd rather it not be the exact opposite of what they mainly rely on.

I also guess Sybil makes sense for hers? I hope something happens later on that makes it fit her better. I'm only on Chapter 5 right now heh. I am hoping I can turn her into a Paladin one day :')
I see it's actually barred from her re-class options.

[Rhapsodos]

I'm of the mind that we should be able to change their affinity as well, except for the MC of course. Start them off on their current affinities and make us use our items on them.

I laugh at the argument that water is good for Barnbus's tankiness considering how much strength it takes away and strength is listed as offering physical resistance. Your added water HP doesn't mean anything for tanking if your resistance is too low to mitigate damage. But nah, let's just keep things the way they are because it fits their personalities. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just a lazy player who wants to be spoonfed, apparently.

[IronHat]

Rock a écrit :

I don't get why everyone assumes all characters should have the optimal affinities for their class... How boring.

not necessarily at the start, but there should be reclass opportunity like Sybil

Rock a écrit :

You can certainly have your own opinion for which element best fits their personality. I think Lightning is a horrible fit for Jules' personality. I think they both work perfectly well with the Water element from a story/personality perspective.

maxoverload91 a écrit :

Optimal would mean best.

Exactly, optimal means best. There are 6 elements. One of those is going to be the best element for the build you want. So that element will be the optimal. There is always going to be one optimal element from a build perspective. You are asking for optimal builds. But I think that would be dumb design. I don't see any reason the characters all need to be carbon copies with optimal affinity assignments.

Except for Jules, Sybil, and Barnabas they are pretty much locked into their starting class. (Jule can take horsebow but it's not much different). There's not "other build" for those character.

at least Sybil is acknowledged in story to be a weird fit for healer and you can change her into a paladin late game.

Lysander is also a weird fit, but he starts out with so much LDR his dark affinity doesn't really hurt him.

[maxoverload91]

2chuu4u a écrit :

I'm kind of also on the page that these main characters shouldn't have the worst possible trait. It doesn't need to be optimal, just I'd rather it not be the exact opposite of what they mainly rely on.

I also guess Sybil makes sense for hers? I hope something happens later on that makes it fit her better. I'm only on Chapter 5 right now heh. I am hoping I can turn her into a Paladin one day :')
I see it's actually barred from her re-class options.

This is exactly what i've been saying idk why Rock thinks i want them to be perfectly optimal. Also don't worry about Sybil, I don't want to spoil it but she has some neat narrative stuff that makes everything fit well together.

[maxoverload91]

Rock a écrit :

Sounds like Narima is over powered. Kind of stupid she is twice as strong as everyone else. I'd rather the leaders were normal. Regardless I don't really care for every unit to be overpowered. I enjoy using characters/units for their strengths and purpose. Even if Jules unit can only kill a couple characters, its fine with me. I don't see any reason to make him more optimal by changing his affinity. Besides, they are beefing Jules STR growth rate up in the next patch.

It's not that Narima is overpowered tho lol, compared to MC, Diana, Beatrix, Lysander (his high stat is his ridiculous leadership), Raskuja, Stefan, etc, she's about average or slightly below average (one or two boosted stats) for a unique character. Well technically the MC has a boost to all stats. It's just that Jules and Barnabas are laughably a bit weaker than your generic characters with the same class path. Barnabas it kinda makes sense for, the whole old soldier thing, but Jules being a graduate of the academy it does not make sense for.

If you wanted realistic, grimdark, low magic fantasy combat where you take average characters to incredible heights through tactics alone, this game isn't for that, try Battle Brothers.

[Rock]

Because you keep spouting garbage about no affinity being optimal. There are 6 affinities. One of those will ALWAYS be the best for what you want, and that affinity WILL be optimal. If you want to come across more sincere, then tell us the element you don't want them to be but that you think would be optimal over the element you wish they were.

Just play the game and accept the characters for who they are. I really hate people who can't accept people for who they are in real-life, and super annoying that it carries over into games.

Battle Brothers is a great game. But I'm not the one trying to change this game here. You are the one complaining that its too hard with the current affinities.

Personally only at chapter 16, but Barnabas and Jules are still a couple of my heaviest hitters. Jules can be particularly annoying because he completely wipes every unit he counter attacks, and he is a juicy target, so he just sucks up all of the kills. At character level 23 his strength isn't that much less than most of my other archers. He would be a Warbow if I could manage to find some more iron. Those guys cost an arm and a leg metal-wise. I won't stress if they start to tail off as I get lot and lots of other useful units.

And Water definitely isn't the worst trait for Barnabus. Only for people who are stuck on the stereotype that knights must always be powerhouse attackers. Knights didn't wear armor to improve their offensive capability. Historically heavy units were never your best offense, they exist for defense. Armor was mostly just to keep "important" people from dying, while the "disposable" people take down the enemy with farming equipment.

[Throwaway Name]

I don’t see how Barnabas isn’t earth. He’s a farmer, animal handler, and protector. That sounds earthy to me.