I'm starting to work on creating my own Fire Emblem game as of recently, and I thought it would be a great idea to ask you all what kind of character you would like to see.
For those who don't know already, Fire Emblem is a fantasy setting. I should definetly be able to add humans and dragons (manaketes) to the game, though anything beyond that isn't guarenteed.
If you have any ideas, please put them in the comments. A submission (sounds way too formal but idk what other word to use) should have a name, species (human or dragon/manakete), a gender (or specify agender), race, and a class. If you want to, get creative with the classes, as long as I understand what you mean, I should be able to get them to work within established FE classes. If you want to get really creative, come up with a physical description, and/or even a personality!
I'll turn on upvotes temporarily once post traction slows down, and whichever character has the most upvotes will be added. This means that, even if you don't want to design a character, you can support your fellow hexbears who created characters that you like. If there's a lot of submissions, I can pick the top few and do a recount, and then add the winner of the recount. If I have the space in the ROM, I could possibly even add multiple characters.
If you end up submitting, thank you, and I look forward to seeing what you all come up with. 
I forgot to add, if you are interested in any established details about the game/story, feel free to ask. I would honestly love to talk about it!
Any characters with the duo dynamic of Don Quixote/Sancho Panza is top tier imo
Privileged fancylad whose delusional mode of existence is born from his alienated life but paradoxically is also what allows him to connect with people in a way that is free of judgement, alongside a devoted pragmatist born of poverty who discovers the vocabulary for a kind of imaginative happiness through being unable to deny his instinct to care for the ridiculous person he is forced by circumstance to travel with
This could actually work really well, especially since one of the countries suffers from extreme income inequality. Maybe the child of a regional representative (yes the country is modeled after a liberal capitalist nation) could flee home and hire an impoverished sell-sword as the child tries to explore the world they have been sheltered from. I do like dynamics like these, as these kinds of characters play off of each other really well.
I feel like I have seen this done but still miss the point, you know? Like there's the classic duo of sheltered princess and gritty merc, but in my experience it usually it winds up being about the sheltered person proving they are actually very "with it" in their own way and the gritty guy learning that royals are actually cool and fine.
To really capture the literary significance of a Quixotic figure, I think they must be in many ways pitiable and ridiculous to the point of frustration, with the pragmatist coming off as a bit of a user since Sancho at first is planning to just let this rich weirdo self-destruct as long as he gets paid along the way. This could still be done with the sort of beautified anime style, but in a sense I almost feel like it's a dynamic that works best with people who are maybe a little bit uglier.
I don't think it's a shortcut to being compelling but it breaks the mold of the usual "opposites who learn to like each other" buddy dynamic.
(Also don't let me deflate any ideas of yours I'm just discovering with these posts how much I apparently care about a book from the 16th century)
Oh no I wouldn't do it like that, this game is going to be shitting on the nobles/capitalist class, as the main character is from a recently-liberated people's republic. I think I would have the noble would realize that they are the exception, not the rule, and see that most others in their position would do anything to maintain/gain power. Kind of like a class traitor kind of thing.
Who doesn't love a bit of class betrayal?
I often think of Quixote and Sancho being an example of two people becoming "proletarians" (for lack of a better term) from opposite directions. Quixote's madness makes him become more of a genuine person who takes part in the world around him for a change while Sancho's exposure to such madness carves away at his more selfish lumpen tendencies as he realizes how the madness of his companion reflects upon him in the eyes of others. See also: Julian and Ricky from trailer park boys
I get whatever the character creator version of writer's block is
I'm trying to think of a neat idea for a manakete that isn't a child or maybe some kind of cool pegasus knight or something!
Yeah I get this too, I just got past my initial spur of character creation, and while I still have some ideas I wanted to see if other people might be able to help in diversifying the cast so they all aren't my brain children. An adult manakete would be pretty cool, I don't think I've seen someone do that before!
This project sounds cool, I haven't played a fire emblem game so no idea what they're about but I see you mentioned it's going on a rom is this like a rom hack or making it for an old console from scratch?
Idk what would be a sensible character suggestion since I've never played a fire emblem game. Would any silly idea do or does it have to fit certain rules.
I haven't played a fire emblem game so no idea what they're about
Fire Emblem does combat with units on a grid. It's kind of like chess, but also different in many ways.
you mentioned it's going on a rom is this like a rom hack
This is a rom hack, I can do some things but I am by no means capable of making a game from scratch.
Would any silly idea do or does it have to fit certain rules
Any idea works! I would probably prefer something more in-tone with the setting (fantasy army/militia), but if you have a really good idea just go for it
, I could probably find a way to fit it in, or eventually create a seperate ROM with entirely hexbear characters if people wanted that.I have no idea what would be a good idea but one I've been thinking about for a fantasy setting is a mage who really really hates magic and magicians. Like will go on a really long diatribe about why magic is the worst thing every created and magicians have their heads in the clouds and that most aren't qualified to be near a staff.
Mostly because its just me but swap out magic and mage for programming and programmer hehe. Idk if thats what you're looking for unfortunately i have not a single creative bone in my body my brother got all of the art talent instead.
I would like to hear about the story and what you're putting into the game though!
This idea would actually work really well in the story of the game due to how I plan on making magic work, and I would love to see what you could come up with. I don't want to say too much about the magic system, because it might stifle what you have in mind, but in short there are three different variations of magic: Light, Anima (elemental, specifically Fire, Wind, Thunder), and Dark.
I'll have to create a post about what I'm planning on doing, I've just started but I've had a good amount in my mind already. Most of my progress so far is in writing, so maybe it can go in the writing comm. I would love to be able to get feedback on what I have so far; the main reason I wanted to do this in the first place is because I love writing, fantasy, and Fire Emblem, so I'm excited to see what I can create.
More gameplay mechanics than character design:
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Giant characters that are actual giant characters as in they take up more than one square on the map. So you can have a giant character that takes up a 2x2 square and who can travel twice as far as normal 1x1 square characters per turn. To balance this out, they have 0% dodge (and can't critically dodge) and can't fit in narrow 1 square pathways. They also take cumulative damage for each square hit by an aoe spell, so if an aoe covers the entire 2x2 square, they take 4x the damage as a normal character would.
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Characters that affect terrain. So like a sapper character that tunnels through impassible mountains, engineer character that builds a bridge/raft on bodies of water, a pyromancer that turns a forest tile to a plains tile (lore explanation is them casting a fire spell to burn the forest), geomancer that spawns a mountain to box enemy troops in.
I don't know how feasible this would be for what you're trying to do. If you're talking about creating a ROM hack for a GBA FE, I don't think you could do this. Maybe you could have an aquatic/amphibious class that has massive movement bonuses on water but take massive movement penalties on land. I think the pirate(?) class in one of the GBA FE can walk on water, so maybe you could do something there where you give the character a natural high movement value but give them massive movement penalties on any terrain that's not water. I think having a mermaid character or even a fish character is pretty out there for a FE game since those games mostly take place on land. But you don't necessarily have to have every battle take place in an open plain, a castle, or a cave. You could totally have sea battles in an SRPG.
Pirates are definetly something I could do. There's an archipelago, so I was already planning on at least 1 level with a lot of water.
Believe it or not, I have seen someone make use of Dragon Veins in a GBA ROM, though I have no clue how they got it to work. If I could get it to work, it would be cool to have certain mages eliminate certain terrain, or have physical classes break through pillars and such. If I could work this in, anything could be possible, and I could add dragon vein in like a class effect. I would just have to try to make it so changing certain aspects of the map wouldn't break the ROM.
I thought of some more characters:
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A character that has high movement, high constitution(?), and high defense but low attack and low speed whose basic function is to rescue people and ferry them across the map. Lorewise it could be some golem that's programed by its creator to avoid violence. Maybe they can also get the exp bonus skill so leveling up the character won't be a complete slog.
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Survivors of a naval expedition from a faraway land. The survivors could be scattered across the game. It's also a good way to introduce characters that aren't just Europeans/white passing like the vast majority of FE characters. Real-life example is something like Mansa Musa's predecessor sailing across the Atlantic never to return.
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A pair of characters, one who is a legendary person and one who is a complete fraud pretending to be the legendary character after the legendary character goes missing. The fraud could be heroic in their own right with people confusing the heroic acts of the fraud with the heroic acts of the legend.
I really like these! The idea of a foreign expedition being scattered and lost sounds like a good one.
characters that aren't just Europeans/white passing like the vast majority of FE characters
Yeah I'm not planning on letting this game suffer at the hands of the Cracker Curse.
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