#jeigan

This is the Jeigan Trap, originally named after Jeigan (or Jagen) from Fire Emblem. In my mind, the first character I came across like this was the Red Mage from Final Fantasy 1. These characters start off far stronger than their peers, but as the game goes on and they level up, they don’t get much stronger than they begin, and/or they fall behind other characters as they grow.

Funny enough, these characters have two different ways of making your game difficult or impossible to win. Jeigan comes from a game where each character gets their own experience points from the one-on-one battles they fight rather than everyone getting it equally. If Jeigan quickly defeats early enemies for you, your other characters aren’t leveling up. Jeigan doesn’t get strong enough to keep up with enemies, and no one else gets stronger at all with no experience. Eventually even common enemies will be stronger than your characters, and you won’t be able to advance. The only feasible option is to restart the game from the beginning.

Red Mage doesn’t take experience away from others, but he effectively leaves you with a party of three characters. (Or if you have more than one Red Mage, each Red Mage counts as half a character and you round down. Something like that.) Red Mage starts off as strong or stronger than other characters with access to a bigger variety of attacks (great to have in an RPG) and defeats early enemies with single attacks. By the time you reach late levels though, Red Mage will have about half the damage output and healing output of other characters who specialize in the things Red Mage only dips into. That might not sound bad at first, but in this game it isn’t enough to make a difference. If your Fighter or Black Mage can defeat an enemy in one hit, having Red Mage hit them first to soften them up does nothing. Often times if it takes two hits from them to fell an enemy, Red Mage doesn’t do enough damage to bring that number down. Red Mage doesn’t help you win faster or resist losing any better. He might as well not be there.

Playing a game for hours only to find that you need to go back to the beginning or slog through a much tougher last 75% is one of the worst feelings I’ve ever experienced. So what are some ways we can avoid this?

Don’t punish the strong starter (too much): It’s okay for a character to be stronger than other characters in the early game. This can help players to get through challenges that their other characters might not have been able to survive yet. Once the beginning period is done, should the strong character be on par with the other characters, still be stronger, or become weaker? The answer depends on your game and what role the character is meant to play, and none of those choices is inherently wrong. If the character becomes weaker, they still need to fill a niche so they can contribute. Maybe instead of being the best beater, they end up learning nice buff spells to make the others stronger and cheer them on, for instance.

Remove the Jeigan character: You’d be surprised how much better it feels to have a strong character for a while and then not have them than it does to watch them become useless. If your narrative makes it clear that this character won’t be around for long, then the player knows to enjoy them while they have them and that they’ll need to prepare to continue without them. (In this case, you might reel your challenge level back or keep it about the same when the strong character leaves.)

Replace or retrain: Imagine the strong character you start with is an old wizard with powerful spells who is weakening in his old age. If you can organically remove him from the group and replace him with his granddaughter who has been learning his spells and she goes on to become stronger than he was, then from a strictly gameplay-based perspective the player ends up with an upgrade after hitting a certain point. The player’s power may backpedal a bit in the process, but they’ll be happy to see the spell slinger role getting stronger and stronger after a period of stagnation. And of course, your story can convey whatever emotions you like with both characters. (And if you’re not replacing the character, then that same character should have a chance to become stronger or choose a different specialty so they can stay relevant late on in.)

Faster game completion times: This isn’t the best solution and won’t nearly work for every game, but if your RPG takes 1 hour from start to finish, it won’t leave quite as bad a taste if the player reaches the final boss and has to start over as it would if they felt they just wasted 6 hours with 12 more they would’ve needed to reach the end.