FreezingTurtle's "Blog"

Name

Most FE games do not give their characters a last name. With only a few exceptional individuals, 3H is the only one with character last names (despite how we still call them "[character] (von) FireEmblem"). I went the route of "ParentName-child" because one thing we know Morgan can remember by default is Robin, so even if she doesn't remember what a Plegia or an Yllise are, it still works. And even if it's not her actual family name or whatever, either she or the Church may have chosen it for her to do all the paperwork and such.

Crest

I absolutely had to include the Mark of Grima as a Crest, there's too much overlap to not do so. I don't think she would remember the name Grima by default, though, and obviously no one in Fodlan would have ever heard of it, so I labeled it as "???" It's still called sinister because it's the blood of an Artificial Dragon Satan in her, and I feel like Rhea could maybe sense the rancid vibes that would bring. I elected to make it a minor Crest, just because Robin seems to have more of it, but it's not particularly meaningful in that area. You could make it major and it wouldn't change much, I think. I chose the effect to roughly emulate Grima's Dragonskin, since Rightful God wouldn't really match anything close to what existing Crests do. Plus, reducing incoming damage by 5 feels roughly on-par with Crests like Fraldarius (Felix's) increasing outgoing damage by 5. Something like adaptive damage to emulate Ignis was also considered, but I chose to move that somewhere else. Obviously, real Dragonskin reduces damage by half, but that's not happening.

Proficiencies

I didn't want her to have any area where she grows poorly because I like her I view her versatility to be a defining part of her unit identity. There's also some characters in 3H that have no negatives, so it's not completely unfair. I gave her proficiency in Swords and Reason magic, since those are most analogous to what Tacticians get, and Authority makes sense for much the same reason. The Flying Budding Talent is because of her FEH forms, which are both flying units (and the Future Past evil version, which is the same as one of said FEH forms). Pass just seemed like an appropriate skill to reward here. If I were truly playing into favoritism, it'd be Galeforce, but, no. The only other Budding Talent in Flying belongs to Jeritza, who gets Darting Blow, which Morgan here can get from just reclassing into Pegasus Knight. Pass is often granted for Riding [horse], so it isn't that far off.

Personal Skill

I didn't want to just slap Solidarity in there because I felt like that was boring. Instead, I engineered a skill to try recreating the stat bonuses from Pair Up in a game that does not have Pair Up. I maybe should have added "During Combat" to be more clear that it's temporary, like the Spur skill line in other games, but it fits better on the page this way. This helps her support capabilities, which feels good for a Tactician. It can give her big stat bonuses that one could call "too strong," but the amount of effort required to get more than +4 in a stat that matters is pretty major, so I don't mind it.

Combat Arts

The three A-ranks were chosen because they all deal magic damage, which is close enough to what Ignis does that I made the connection. They don't all use the Magic stat, and I don't know if Strength is included in the damage calculation of these arts, but 3H doesn't really like %-chance activation skills that add big damage, so "True Ignis" doesn't really mesh with the game's design philosophy from that perspective. Hexblade is really close, anyway, that's the most vital one in my eyes. I then decided she would get a 4th character-specific art, and I went with Vengeance to reference the notoriously good Awakening Sorcerers. She can't use it with Nosferatu in this game, but it felt right. You could argue the extra art should be on Swords, given the proficiency, and you could give her something like Haze Slice instead of Vengeance, but this feels more thematic, I guess.

Authority Skills

To get them out of the way, the Battalion skills were chosen because Authority-focused characters usually get two, and Wrath/Desperation felt like a decent combo that wouldn't be counter-intuitive with each other. The B.Wrath + B.Vantage combo is really one of Dimitri's specialties and I didn't want to step on toes there. And given Robin's infamous fire-boat deployment, I felt like their kid might not be the type to get B. Renewal. That feels more like a B.Wrath maneuver. Rally Spectrum was a critical inclusion, despite not existing in 3H. I nerfed it pretty hard to not have it seem overtly better in every way to the single-stat rallies, but I never really use those anyway, so I don't know for sure. Rally Luck and Charm are there because the +2 from Spectrum would feel like nothing. They already have +8 instead of the normal +4 that other stats gets, so, yeah. I put Luck first mainly because the Charm stat doesn't exist in Awakening, so she might need more time to get familiar with it, or something.

Faith Spells

Heal and Nosferatu are universal, everyone gets them. No reason for her not to. Nos is nowhere near as good as it was in Awakening, but hey, it's here. Physic was chosen because it's typically learned at the same rank you can start using it in Awakening and I personally really like having Physic users. To my recollection, Awakening didn't have Seraphim, Restore, or Ward, so none of those neato options would make a ton of sense in my mind. Rescue was chosen as the last option, as Rescue Chaining is a somewhat notable element of high-level Awakening, and is more broadly one of Awakening's more interesting staff options.

Reason Spells

I went with Thunder/Thoron for the basic spell options, since I associate Robin most closely with the Thunder tome that they start with. Technically, magic-using Morgans start with Elfire, so she should have Fire/Bolganone, but I don't care, it barely matters. We then split into Dark Magic, because Grima. I chose Dark Spikes, as Grima's Expiration attack is portrayed as a bunch of spikes, that are dark. Lastly, I added the Awakening dark magic Waste as her final spell. The Brave effect doesn't normally exist for magic in Fodlan, so this is unique, in a way. I tried making it kind of bad in terms of stats to temper the fact that Brave magic is pretty universally insane for damage-dealing, and how it refills after every map, but it's probably still waaaay better than Hades Ω. I picked Π because it wasn't being used by another spell.

Ashen Wolves

While the normal Garreg Mach uniform colors are more similar to Morgan's usual getup, there is absolutely no way that Rhea sees the Crest of Grima and doesn't either throw Morgan into the basement or kill her on sight. 0% chance this kid gets to walk around like everything is normal. There's also a neat detail that all four of the playable Ashen Wolves have these fancy black chains on their uniforms, and while I struggled to draw them, I thought it would be cool to try turning those into Grima eyes, like what would normally go on her sleeves. I didn't put them there on this design, instead putting them more on the neck/chest area, but the idea is similar. The uniform design itself should mostly match with existing GM uniforms. The hood was borrowed from Bernadetta (and Ashe), and the long back is similar to Lorenz's version of the outfit. Add a skirt, throw on a recolored version of Morgan/Robin's normal pants, slap on some appropriate boots, and there you go.