Here's just a few scattered thoughts I had about the mechanics of Crests and Combat Arts in Fire Emblem Three Houses for the Nintendo Switch. These are all my opinions, and are only somewhat organized at the moment, I may try to organize my thoughts a little bit better later on. I do expect readers to have at least some understanding of the game and its mechanics. There are technically spoilers in this piece, though I don't think they're too bad, but you've been warned.
For details about Crests, I would suggest visiting: https://serenesforest.net/three-houses/characters/crests/
The site also contains a great amount of data and information about the game, if you would be interested in learning more about the game's mechanics and such, as well as similar information on all other entries of the Fire Emblem series I would strongly recommend spending some time there, as well.
Activation rates for crests are not made clear in-game
Several crests have the exact same effect, when they don’t have to
List some possible alternatives, like:
- Chance of activating to get a small amount of gold on hit/ defeating an enemy
- Add half of Mag/Str to the other value
- Reduce target's Def/Res by 30% (like what some crests did with the Sol skill, but for Luna)
- Buff allies after an attack/debuff enemies after an attack
- Glacies/Ignis effect (add a percent of unit's Res or Def to damage dealt)
- Conserve Weapon uses (exists for magic, but magic replenishes on start of map anyway, so I don’t see much benefit; meanwhile, conserving weapon uses helps me to use more combat arts, or even just not have to repair as often, which costs gold and other resources)
- Reduce damage when hit by 5 (can split into physical and magical damage to fill in two crests, may infringe on Pavise and Aegis skills a bit?)
- Bonuses when using a Gambit, possibly even saving a use every so often
- Makes it so that sometimes the unit gets a significant boost to their to-hit
Many crests were never really seen or made a significant impact
Blaiddyd (Dimitri’s crest) was noticed when it went off once when I was playing, and almost immediately shattered my semi-rare weapon.
- Fun that I can see that activate with an Atrocity Crit and I get to deal like, 500 damage overkill, but still, I’m more scared of it activating while I’m using it than anything else.
Crests like Goneril that prevent counter attacks when using combat arts are rarely noticed, at least by me, since I only ever really used combat arts to attack from distances so I wouldn’t be hit anyway, or I use combat arts to kill outright, which also prevents counter attacks.
Fraldarius is excellent; activates frequently, simply adds 5 damage to a basic weapon attack, no added cost from anything, it’s just bonus damage.
Daphnel is just worse Fraldarius, it’s the same amount of added damage, but you have to use a combat art for a chance of it activating, which means spending weapon durability and missing out on a follow-up attack (and by extension, another chance to activate the crest on that turn).
Indech is also very good, effectively the Adept skill from previous games, allows units to get an extra hit in, easy to see, very useful.
Crest of Flames does not have a single, consistent effect, it has the small heal like Riegan (though on all forms of attack, not just combat arts), and sometimes it also adds 5 damage and prevents counter attacks. It’s already chance based activation to begin with, now it’s double chance time, wish it wasn’t like that.
Crest of the Beast has the exact same effect of Fraldarius, but it isn’t talked about as much because it only comes on Marianne by default, and she’s not generally got the stat spread for using weapons, she’s much more of a mage, whereas Fraldarius is on Felix, who is very often using a weapon, and usually has enough speed to do a follow-up attack, giving him another chance to activate his crest in a single round of combat.
My best guess for why a lot of these only activate when using combat arts is that it’s a new mechanic, and the designers wanted to incentivize that. They also probably didn’t want to make crests too powerful, so you wouldn’t completely ignore units without them, but in-world, these crests are supposed to be extremely powerful, but a lot of them just don’t feel all that strong, honestly. They’re supposed to be strong enough to where noble children are sometimes disinherited for not being born with a crest, but I don’t think that the majority of crests have abilities that make them feel like a unit is so much stronger for having it.
Crests in 3H are very similar to and are likely inspired by FE4’s Holy Blood; as such, I wish the crests could be seen impacting units’ growth rates in some way.
This could be done in two ways (or both could happen at the same time):
1, actually changing the growth rates of stats. Characters with a Crest of the Beast may get an extra 20% growth chance in strength, but they also suffer a -10% luck growth, since the crest is said to bring bad luck. As a different example, perhaps the crest of Cethleann, who is associated with the Bishop class line, would grant extra growths to Magic and Resistance, two key abilities for that class.
2, the crests could boost the rate at which weapon ranks are gained in battle. As an example, since Cichol is associated with lances and wyverns, units with his crest would would get a few extra points of weapon experience when attacking with a lance.
The first of these ideas could be argued to kind of be in the game already, it’s just baked in to the base growths of the units that have those crests, but that doesn’t feel great to me. Even if there was just a line that mentions how “Bearers of this crest tend to become swift and mighty on the battlefield” to say that these units are more likely to level up strength and speed would be fine.
I believe that this would help people distinguish the original crest-holders from one another a bit better, since in most routes, they don’t play much of an active role, and are associated only with their crest ability (which, as mentioned, can be the same as another crest’s ability) and maybe a relic weapon/ item or two.
Combat arts kind of fall flat for me
Most make it so that you can’t follow-up attack, meaning I can use 5 weapon durability to add 8 damage, or I can use 2 durability to deal double damage, with two chances to crit; unless the chance to hit is low, it’s usually better to just hit twice.
Bow combat arts are easily the most useful, Curved Shot and Deadeye are probably my most used combat arts just because I can attack from further away.
Astra is a near-useless combat art; costs 9 durability to get 5 hits at 30% damage, total of 150% damage. Can crit, but by the point you unlock this combat art, you’re probably already killing most things with a simple 2-hit combo, which is 2 durability for 200% damage. If it’s really needed, you can just use a brave sword to hit twice before the enemy can hit you, possibly even hitting a total of 4 times at full damage, far better than astra. In the past, astra was a skill% or (skill/2)% activation chance on a regular attack, which would then only reduce the damage to 50% for each hit of astra, and in some iterations not reduce damage at all. Another issue with Astra in 3H is that if you leave the swordmaster class, you can’t even take the ability with you if you reclass. Other classic skills like Pavise and Aegis are abilities (not combat arts) that can be taken with you to other classes once you unlock them, but Astra is locked to a single class and is really not worth using in many situations.
Combat arts with effectiveness against certain enemy types are often not as useful as just having an effective weapon, since the amount added to the damage is probably less (combat arts only double mt, while effective weapons triple mt), and again, regular attacks can double, which means higher possible damage in the end.
It’s very possible that on higher difficulties, where it’s much harder to get follow up attacks on enemies, combat arts are more useful, however, as I have not played through on every difficulty, it’s hard for me to be certain.
Fire Emblem Three Houses is made by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo; I do not claim to own the rights to this game, this piece is just me analyzing certain aspects of the game's design.