Fire Emblem: Last of the Manakete

Shifting into dragon form might help us clear the Wraiths faster, since we know they don't require specifically Light Magic to harm. But, um. This is a hella stressful situation, and we've got no guarantee Dragonshifted Ryza will end up operating on a comparatively 'stable' emotion.

Might be wise to set the Plan up before we try a dragon shift then. Get the team to see about separating him from the orbs while Ryza goes full dragon.

We already know the Dragon isn't going to harm recognized allies, right?

This problem would be much easier to solve if this world would hurry up and invent duct tape already.

[X] Plan White Dragon's Fury
-[X] Undead don't like white magic, right? Call out to the Mother and the spirits of your ancestors for aid, and hit them with all the white magic you have. Let every shadow be filled with the Mother's light.
-[X] If magic cannot stop this evil, then let your Dragon put it to rest. Call your other half with Righteous Fury.

[X] Plan White Dragon's Fury

[X] Plan Turtle Formation
-[X] Secondary Objectives
--[X] Don't let anyone die or get permanently injured
--[X] Don't let the Lich drain any uncorrupted Stones
--[X] Don't let the Lich summon more Wraiths
--[X] Don't draw (significant) attention from monsters outside the crypts
--[X] Don't let the Lich drain any more Stones, period
-[X] Strategy
--[X] Form up, try to keep the melee fighters between the enemies and the ranged fighters
---[X] Ryza blasts the Wraiths with Mother's Hymm, Axton and Lancel use their bows. If the Wraiths are out of melee range, Kelton and Claire can use their javelins
----[X] If the shield protecting the Lich goes down, make it the priority target and try to take it down before it can get the shield up again
---[X] If someone gets really badly injured, Ryza should prioritize healing them

JAGwin said:

Where? All I'm seeing is a Lich and a bunch of Wraiths.

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Considering how the dragon is referred to as the true form, it'd make more sense to visualize the Lich as an undead dragon. Hence, necrodragon.
[X] Plan Defense of the Ancestors

JAGwin said:

Where? All I'm seeing is a Lich and a bunch of Wraiths.

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The lich has dragon wings, which makes many readers think it probably used to be a manakete.

Ryza would probably insist on calling it a necromanakete.

TaliesinSkye said:

[X] Plan White Dragon's Fury
-[X] Undead don't like white magic, right? Call out to the Mother and the spirits of your ancestors for aid, and hit them with all the white magic you have. Let every shadow be filled with the Mother's light.
-[X] If magic cannot stop this evil, then let your Dragon put it to rest. Call your other half with Righteous Fury.

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Good start, but it doesn't feel complete. Not the least because it leaves out more than 80% of the party.

Sir_Braazmiir said:

Considering how the dragon is referred to as the true form, it'd make more sense to visualize the Lich as an undead dragon. Hence, necrodragon.

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GreatWyrmGold said:

The lich has dragon wings, which makes many readers think it probably used to be a manakete.

Ryza would probably insist on calling it a necromanakete.

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The lich is in the remnants of a manakete's heart form rather than it's dragon form, so it does look like a skeletal human with wings.

Believe me, if you were seeing a dracozombie, I'd have told you that very clearly.

Oh, i am very curious about all this!
But also very concerned: that doesn't look like an easy opponent.

Hmm, personally the way I read it isn't so much that the shield is a direct result of the stone draining but a spell it knows. Basically, it is leeching from the stones to charge its mana gauge. It probably started the encounter pretty low because it's been subsisting on whatever natural regen the stones had but sensed a fresh stone from Ryza and saw a new meal so to speak. Then Kelton and Claire stabbed it which caused it to use whatever mana it had to teleport over to a stone to drain it so it could heal itself (it is described as repairing itself) and since it actually has a magic source it was able to cast a barrier spell to deflect the next attack.

That's a lot of assumptions I know, and not entirely Fire Emblem-y in mechanics but I think it boils down to that if we attack the shield it probably goes down eventually? The bigger problem in my mind is that it seems to know Warp because that's how it got to the stone in the first place. Is there a limit to its ability to that? Will it simply warp to another Stone Shrine if we take down the barrier and damage it again? Is it not literally Warp but some kind of "melt into the shadows" type magic where it might be disrupted/directed if we get rid of the shadows with light?

Technically we've only seen it demonstrate Rewarp, the self-target variant of Warp, but that's still going to make it annoyingly hard to pin down assuming we can't inflict some form of Silence on it, through direct damage or otherwise.
…oh god, this is gonna be like fighting an unholy mashup of Izuka and Jedah, isn't it? And we're still in the early game. What kind of horrors are we going to see in the future?

3-13 Sniper said:

Technically we've only seen it demonstrate Rewarp, the self-target variant of Warp, but that's still going to make it annoyingly hard to pin down assuming we can't inflict some form of Silence on it, through direct damage or otherwise.
…oh god, this is gonna be like fighting an unholy mashup of Izuka and Jedah, isn't it? And we're still in the early game. What kind of horrors are we going to see in the future?

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Something meant to challenge the tacticians of the thread.

I just don't think there's enough information here to make a decent plan, the only real decision we have is 'dragon or no'. (IMO no.) In FE games we can always press a button on new abilities or enemies and have near-perfect info on how things work, and the games lean heavily on things that are already conventional and familiar to long time players.

So, Issue Number One: That is a Level Ten Lich, and the party's highest-level character is level 5 (Belle) followed by two level 4 characters (Ryza and Octavio). Importantly:

Combat Mechanics said:

All player characters, and certain powerful bosses will have skills that allows them to alter dice, re-roll dice, or gain automatic successes in certain circumstances. They will typically have two: a personal skill that is unique to the character, and a class skill based on their class.

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That is almost certainly the case here. We can also expect Tier 2 Magic, if not Tier 3. And our dear friend the lichekete is going to be rolling eleven dice that succeed on rolls of 7+.

Several possibilities come to mind:
1) The party can't win this fight.
2) This is a puzzle boss.
3) This boss is significantly weaker than normal for its level.

I doubt 1 is the case; @SoaringHawk218 specifically said that he wasn't recommending running, only reminding everyone of the option. Possibility 3 is probable, and the whole teleport + shield thing along with recovering HP stinks of some kind of obtuse mechanic that involves switches, levers, or having people stand in certain spots.

So, we know what the lichekete wants: dragonstones. It wants to feed. We also know that the doors were closed when the party got here, and the lichekete was 'starving.' Which suggests a ... possibly desperate gamble to my mind, one that would greatly benefit from save-scumming in case I'm very off the mark.

If the lichekete is desperate enough, it might be willing to be drawn out of the crypt by someone going, 'Hey, here's a dragonstone, come and get it, neener-neener!' And if it does follow that person out, then someone big and strong might be able to reseal the crypt - which might be enough to disable its teleportation.

Problem 1: The party has at most two dragonstones, one of which is damaged, and the whole one would be needed to enable the resealing of the crypt. And the damaged one is Ryza's father's.
Problem 2: Resealing the crypt might not work.
Problem 3: If resealing the crypt does work, the lichekete will probably get more desperate, in which case whoever is holding Ryza's Dad is probably priority #1 or #2 (depending on whether a full-on Dragon-form manakete is considered more of a priority). (Might change depending on whether or not Ryza can do a quick-shift fast enough to get past the lichekete to ram the doors shut before it realizes what happens.)
Problem 4: Communicating the plan to the party quickly, and convincing them.
Problem 5: Surrounding the lichekete and beating it down.


I'm bringing this up because the vicious monster within me says that there is no way this lichekete's Shield+Drain move is a one-off, and the only other way I can think of to disable it would be to go around and break the dragonstones in the shrines. Which might be a form of mercy-killing, but ... would still rather not.

[X] Plan Turtle Formation
-[X] Secondary Objectives
--[X] Don't let anyone die or get permanently injured
--[X] Don't let the Lich drain any uncorrupted Stones
--[X] Don't let the Lich summon more Wraiths
--[X] Don't draw (significant) attention from monsters outside the crypts
--[X] Don't let the Lich drain any more Stones, period
-[X] Strategy
--[X] Form up, try to keep the melee fighters between the enemies and the ranged fighters
---[X] Ryza blasts the Wraiths with Mother's Hymm, Axton and Lancel use their bows. If the Wraiths are out of melee range, Kelton and Claire can use their javelins
----[X] If the shield protecting the Lich goes down, make it the priority target and try to take it down before it can get the shield up again
---[X] If someone gets really badly injured, Ryza should prioritize healing them

[X] Plan Turtle Formation

If nothing else, this plan prioritizes keeping everyone together and in one piece, so if the plan turns out to not work very well, we'll still be capable of pivoting to something else while still being mostly okay.

Shouldn't we try to separate him from the orbs if we can?

Yeah, while I advocated for turtling in the last fight I don't think that's a good strategy here. I was holding out for someone else to come up with a plan but since we're under the 24 hour mark I'll throw one up.

Basic Idea and Assumptions: I'm assuming this Lich has the intelligence/survival instinct to seek out the other stones if we leave him alone. I also assume he'll teleport to them like he did the first time if we don't basically OHKO him. I figure that's probably outside our capability even if we get a clean shot with his barrier down. Maybe Dragon!Ryza could do it but I don't know he's Level 10. So what I want to do is reclaim the other three stones in this room before attacking the Lich in earnest. Now, the battlefield description notes that there are other rooms (and thus likely other stones) in this tomb. For ease of writing the plan I will tentatively assume we can contain the battle to this room. If he teleports to another room, well, I feel like that would call for a break to potentially readjust.

[X] Plan Defense of the Ancestors
-[X]Secondary Objectives
--[X]Prevent the capture and draining of any more dragonstones
--[X]Contain the battlefield to this room
-[X]Strategy
--[X]Ryza, Kelton, Claire, Axton form one group. Belle, Octavio, and Lancel form another.
---[X]Both groups initially set out for separate Stone Shrines to retrieve the dragonstones
----[X]If attacked during this they do their best to repel the assault while continuing on their way
---[X]Whichever group succeeds first then proceeds to the final Stone Shrine while the second group switches its main focus to any remaining Wraiths and the Lich. When the final dragonstone is secured that retrieval team moves to join up with the others in fighting the Wraiths and Lich
--[X]Special: Ryza
---[X]Prioritize use of Mother's Hymn
---[X]Heal if needed
---[X]If circumstances turn against the team or the Lich appears cornered, dragon transformation is permitted. (Exact emotion may be subject to the situation but I'm thinking "A 'Determination to Protect' my friends and my ancestors"

Didn't want to micromanage too much but the details are mostly to split up to more quickly gather the stones in this room to deny the Lich access to them before seriously engaging him. Tried to balance the teams in terms of power/level/skillsets as well as supports/teamwork. Hard to say without a more clear description of the room and everything's location but basically whoever gets to their first stone first goes for the final one while the other group switches to monster extermination. Then once all stones are claimed the teams join together again for the final showdown with the Lich who maybe hopefully has its barrier whittled down by now.

I could micromanage a billion different possibilities but I don't want a plan that has like 8 different contingencies like "What if the Lich warps early" or "what if the entire enemy army tries to jump only one of the groups" or the plan would basically never end. I hope the basic spirit of the plan comes through and I'm willing to leave it up to QM implementation. If something occurs that basically upends the entire thing (like that hypothetical "every enemy swarms one group") then I'd like to hope we get an opportunity to react to that instead of basically auto-losing for splitting the party to accomplish goals.

I do wish I could have been more specific on Ryza's threshold for transforming but I found it pretty hard to come up with concise wording. I don't know if instantly transforming is the best idea because Dragon!Ryza doesn't really do strategy so I don't know how well she could stick to a plan. On the other hand, she shouldn't feel like it has to be avoided - if things start taking a dire turn or she sees an opportunity to make a decisive winning strike she should feel comfortable doing so.

I'm a little worried about splitting the group, but I can see Ryza being so in the moment overwhelmingly protective of the dragon stones she'd take a risk like that.

[X] Plan Defense of the Ancestors

[X] Plan Defense of the Ancestors

[X] Plan Defense of the Ancestors

[X] Plan Defense of the Ancestors

I don't like fanning out either, but the lich will just run around munching on stones and recharging if we don't cut off his snack supply.

[X] Plan White Dragon's Fury