History GameBreaker / FireEmblem

* Ballisticians were pretty useless in the original NES game (comparable to the later Bow Armor, if not a bit worse). This meant the DS remake of ''Shadow Dragon'' saw little problem with reworking them to be more fitting with the later conception of ballistae--upping their range from the javelin-sized 1-2 to an artillery-sized 3-10. It worked, and then some. Due to the mechanics of the ballista, they can reach out and snipe enemies from frightfully long distances. Some ballista types also include effective weapon varieties (which, as mentioned, is key in ''Shadow Dragon'', and one of them happens to counter ''other ballistas'') and come in both physical and magic varieties, so even on very high difficulties, they can manage some hefty damage--and since the users have little reason to move, they can simply park next to each other and pass their weapons back and forth before shooting, changing things up for the optimal strategy at will. They can be used to focus fire and delete an enemy off the map, soften up targets for your other units, or simply nuke them one by one with effective damage, all while never risking a counter. It's very common in high-level play to see Jake, Beck, and Xane sitting on the backlines, playing hot-potato with their forged weapons and clearing the way for their melee fellows. While the removal of the class in ''New Mystery'' probably had something to do with the original users also changing class in ''Mystery'', its sheer power probably didn't hurt the argument.

* No unit is capable of trivializing the entirety of ''Radiant Dawn'' [[AndNowForSomeoneCompletelyDifferent due to how the game is structured]], but in the context of the game, the most obvious gamebreaker is Haar. Haar has excellent base parameters and growth rates that are well distributed; on top of that, he is in a flying class with some of the best movement in the game. Haar also boasts great availability and enjoys some exclusivity as well, being the only flying unit for a significant portion of the game. This is not to say that Haar doesn't have weaknesses; Haar's [[MightyGlacier speed base and growth]] are somewhat mediocre, and low resistance coupled with weakness to [[ShockAndAwe thunder magic]] make some enemy types extremely dangerous for Haar. Even then, though, thunder mages are rare and the presence of BEXP makes gaining speed a non-problem once Haar has capped a stat or two.

* As a general rule, dancer and bard units (units that give other player units an extra action) are very powerful, and can break the game when used effectively. Their simple ability makes possible a diverse array of quick strategies.

** Wendell is an example in and of himself. Recruited at chapter 5, Wendell comes with insane base stats, including a ridiculously high base speed of 14, and access to every single non-exclusive tome and staff in the game. Defensively, he starts with fairly high HP and Defense stats, which is enough for him to take on a lot of punishment during the enemy phase all the way into the late game. Offensively, due to the mechanics of ''Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light'', Wendell is capable of at worst 2 rounding every single standard enemy in the game, including a notable performance of being able to go toe to toe with Gharnef at base stats. For a Mage to be as good as Wendell, they basically need to promote, something that is only achieved very late into the game due to the availability of the item, and the promotion mechanic of the game. While there are better sages later on in the game (such as Boah (who is essentially Wendell, but with slightly better bases and worse growths and availability) and Gotoh), the combination of his early join time, combat, and utility of Wendell ended up defining the ridiculous standard of prepromote in the entire series, which ended up with him getting nerfed in every single one of his future appearances, with lower base speed, higher enemy stats, changes in the weapon rank mechanic, and the revamp towards promotion mechanic all being done just to make him less of a dominant unit. He's still really good in most of them.
* A glitch in ''Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light'' gives CrutchCharacter, Bantu, 15 defense anytime he uses a promotion item. Keep in mind, Bantu's unbreakable firestone already gives him 15 defense. The promotion item doesn't even get used up when it's used by Bantu, and can be used until Bantu's defense reaches 99, breaking the stat cap. This means Bantu can be rendered invincible to physical attacks, even without his firestone, [[DiscOneNuke as early]] as chapter 10!

* Ballisticians were pretty useless in the original NES game (comparable to the later Bow Armor, if not a bit worse). This meant the DS remake of ''Shadow Dragon'' saw little problem with reworking them to be more fitting with the later conception of ballistae--upping their range from the basic bow-range of 2-2 to an artillery-sized 3-10. It worked, and then some. Due to the mechanics of the ballista, they can reach out and snipe enemies from frightfully long distances. Most ballista types also include effective weapon varieties (which, as mentioned, is key in ''Shadow Dragon'', and one of them happens to counter ''other ballistas'') and come in both physical and magic varieties, so even on very high difficulties, they can manage some hefty damage--and since the users have little reason to move, they can simply park next to each other and pass their weapons back and forth before shooting, changing things up for the optimal strategy at will. They can be used to focus fire and delete an enemy off the map, soften up targets for your other units, or simply nuke them one by one with effective damage, all while never risking a counter. It's very common in high-level play to see Jake, Beck, and Xane sitting on the backlines, playing hot-potato with their forged weapons and clearing the way for their melee fellows. While the removal of the class in ''New Mystery'' probably had something to do with the original users also changing class in ''Mystery'', its sheer power probably didn't hurt the argument.

** Sigurd is the only Lord to start prepromoted, in the Knight Lord class. This is entirely beneficial to him, as he still has 25 levels to grow and does not have his XP gain reduced for being promoted. In exchange, he starts out wielding the best weapon type in swords, with lances for backup if he needs to toss a javelin sometime, capped by 9 Movement that makes him the speediest unit of the first generation. Also, he has Re-Move/Canto, and due to ''Genealogy'''s completely broken take on it, it is possible for Sigurd to seize a castle on the same turn that he kills its boss, which also kills all nearby enemies.

* Although many great weapons and items exist in ''Thracia 776'', the only true gamebreakers in this game are the Warp, Rescue, and Repair staves. Staff range for ranged staves is unlimited in ''Thracia 776'', so for the Warp and Rescue staves, the player is able to move a unit to anywhere else on the map or retrieve a unit from anywhere else on the map, respectively. This allows for gamebreaking strategies that, for example, essentially allow the player to defeat a boss and seize a throne or gate to end a chapter in 1 turn. Warp is useful in maps with a seize objective; Rescue is useful in maps with an escape objective. Repair allows the player to repair any weapon to its original state, which means that the player can exhaust all 5 uses of Repair on a single Warp or Rescue staff to obtain 6 times as many uses out of that staff. By extension, since Safiya is the only unit capable of using the Repair staff, she is also a gamebreaker. The list of units who can reliably be assumed to be able to use Warp and Rescue is larger but still limited: Safiya, Salem, Tina, Linoan, Sleuf, Sara, Saias, and Ced.

* Dagdar, the local early prepromote, is meant as a CrutchCharacter who falls off over time--and in the long tradition of the series, he doesn't. While his growths are genuinely awful, Dagdar's raw starting statline is so high that he can continue one-rounding enemies and surviving their attacks even in very late chapters--in particular, his 43 HP won't be surpassed until well into the endgame, 9 Speed doubles reliably for a while, and when it doesn't, the Brave Axe patches things up. What's more, his massive Build, Charge skill, and very early access to said Brave Axe mean that Dagdar is among your best picks for capturing enemies, crushing them easily before they can even counterattack. And even then, his weakness in low growths can be easily resolved through various Crusader Scrolls that help boost his growths to tolerable levels, meaning that it's entirely possible to hit the game's strength cap at 20, meaning that he will likely hit hard after a few levels. Dagdar's only significant weakness is that Charge makes him vulnerable to long-range magic and ballistae, which can make deploying him a bit dicey on certain maps.

** Rutger can be recruited very early and combines solid bases (which go up significantly on Hard Mode) and growths with a Killing Edge. He will usually be one of the few units with a good hit rate, which is especially important in a game where many enemies have high Avoid. Promote him to [[CriticalHitClass Swordmaster]] and his already high crit rate goes up by ''30%.'' When properly specced and leveled, he will crit on almost every attack, and with a [[FanNickname full Critger setup]] (A support with Clarine, B support with someone else, given the Wo Dao), he can reach [[UpToEleven more than 100% crit]]. In a game where mounted units rule the roost, Rutger stands out for being able to one-round even bosses sitting on thrones, and some consider him arguably the best on-foot combat unit in the entire franchise.

** Melady only joins in the middle of the second act, but combines solid bases and growths with the incredible Wyvern Rider class. Her mobility is rivalled only by Pegasus Knights, and unlike them, she also hits hard and can shrug off arrow fire. With her base lance rank of C, she can wield Killer Lances to crit and one-round basically anything. But what really makes her this is that the game pretty much hands you everything needed to abuse her. You're given multiple Elysian Whips in prior maps and she joins at level 10, meaning she can be promoted immediately, but if you want her to gain some levels first, her joining chapter is a massive bridge level where fliers excel, and contains a Body Ring to help her Constitution a little, a ton of Paladins for her to gank for XP, a shop that sells those broken Killer Lances, and an Arena in case she had a few levels left before promoting. Then the next three maps all involve rough terrain (water, mountains, sand), meaning she can trivialize them, and the one after that contains a stealable Delphi Shield that [[KryptoniteProofSuit removes her one weakness.]] On top of all this, she boasts some of the best Hard Mode bonuses in the game (she's effectively level 20 despite joining at 10), such that she ends up with more Defense than an Armor Knight and can cap most of her stats ''even if promoted early''. And she's the one unit to receive these bonuses that doesn't need any work to recruit! Her brother Zeiss is a little better in some ways, but joins later during a harder section and lacks most of the above strengths, meaning he isn't nearly as broken.
** Niime shows up with a mixture of A-rank Staves and 21 base Magic, right when you start getting powerful staves like Warp. No other character can manage this combination without ''insane'' LevelGrinding. On top of that, she's a Druid with A-rank Tomes, meaning even a little combat will bring her up to S-rank and allow her to wield Apocalypse to boost her magic to an unrivaled 26. Her weakness of poor durability can be fixed by simply giving her an Angelic Robe and maybe a Body Ring or a Speedwings, both of which are fairly common and in low demand, because she can wield the [[LifeDrain Nosferatu]] tome to render herself basically immortal as long as she stays out of one-shot range. She has bad growths and joins severely overleveled, but at that point, who needs either?

** On the Hard difficulty of Lyn Mode, it's possible to feed one of the Cavaliers a bunch of kills, then use Wallace's Knight Crest to promote them upon reaching level 10 or so. This effectively gives you ''two'' Paladins to play with [[DiscOneNuke in the early game]] of Eliwood or Hector, and turns either Kent or Sain into "Marcus but with better growths."

** While most of the late-game prepromotes are fairly strong, with Harken, Hawkeye, Geitz, and Louise all performing well throughout their availability, Pent still stands out. His bases are positively ''bonkers'', with 18 Magic and 17 Speed meaning he already doubles nearly all enemy types and likely one-rounds as well. The mixture of A-rank tomes, an automatic support with Louise, and high Skill gives him near-Swordmaster-like crit rates. But most importantly, he starts with A-rank staves and enough Magic to put them to good use. Whether he's in combat or a SupportPartyMember, Pent excels almost as much as Marcus, if his somewhat later join time can be forgiven. His growths are poor, but when the game's MagikarpPower character only catches up to him upon promoting, that's a very forgivable sin.
** Saving resources up in Lyn Mode (which, as Lyn Mode is pretty easy, can be trivial) yields a Gem when she returns--up to and including a White Gem. This gives enough cash to effectively never worry about money for quite a while.

* As per series tradition, all of the main characters are excellent:

** Rutger can be recruited very early and combines solid bases (which go up significantly on Hard Mode) and growths with a Killing Edge. He will usually be one of the few units with a good hit rate, which is especially important in a game where many enemies have high Avoid. Promote him to [[CriticalHitClass Swordmaster]] and his already high crit rate goes up by ''30%.'' When properly specced and leveled, he will crit on almost every attack. In a game where mounted units rule the roost, Rutger stands out for being able to one-round even bosses sitting on thrones, and some consider him arguably the best on-foot combat unit in the entire franchise.

** Chief among the units rendered ridiculous by Hard Mode is Perceval. On Normal, he's a very standard lategame CrutchCharacter, with good stats that make him an adequate substitute if Lance and Allen turned out badly. On Hard? He outright ''squashes'' them in every stat, even assuming you managed to get one of them to his level and they didn't get stat-screwed. His growths are kinda bad, but that hardly matters when the stats he has are so great that he can get EmptyLevels for the entire rest of the game and still be viable.

* Dagdar, the local early prepromote, is meant as a CrutchCharacter who falls off over time--and in the long tradition of the series, he doesn't. While his growths are genuinely awful, Dagdar's raw starting statline is so high that he can continue one-rounding enemies and surviving their attacks even in very late chapters--in particular, his 43 HP won't be surpassed until well into the endgame, 9 Speed doubles reliably for a while, and when it doesn't, the Brave Axe patches things up. What's more, his massive Build, Charge skill, and very early access to said Brave Axe mean that Dagdar is among your best picks for capturing enemies, crushing them easily before they can even counterattack. Dagdar's only significant weakness is that Charge makes him vulnerable to long-range magic and ballistae, which can make deploying him a bit dicey on certain maps.

** Lysithea. While her GlassCannon nature is there, it's easily forgiven since she has a ridiculous magic growth and incredibly good set of spells. Dark Spikes is essentially an instant "kill cavalry" attack, making her one of the few units capable of taking on the Death Knight long before you're supposed to defeat him, which alone is great; however, her faith line makes it even better by giving her the bane of Demonic Beasts, Seraphim, as well as the ever powerful series GameBreaker Warp. Her personal skill Mastermind only furthers this by allowing Lysithea to master classes at a faster rate than others, allowing some experimentation in other classes to add to her firepower. Lysithea's hypothetical weakness is that she's locked to 2-range spells. But this is not a weakness at all if you give her the Thyrsus staff which gives her an extra ''2 range'', letting her engage foes more safely. She'll even get the boost from having the Crest of Gloucester for some free defensive skills. She's probably the most sought-after Mage in the game.

** Most importantly, Sigurd snowballs ''insanely'' easily. Due to ''Genealogy'''s mechanics, units hold onto items unless you specifically sell them at the pawn shop and buy them back or have them trade with their lover. Because Sigurd is so fast and strong, he will likely be the first person to reach villages and castles, kill the enemies there, and rescue or capture them to reap the rewards. This means that on top of all of the above good points, he's also accumulating whatever rings or weapons the bosses were carrying, which can patch his few weaknesses or make his strengths even more ridiculous, along with tons of gold to buy things he might want from your other characters. Oh, and weapons in ''Genealogy'' gain a unique 'Critical' skill if you kill at least 50 enemies with it, this special skill has a very abusable formula, which can result in the already strong weapons like Elwind, Silver Sword, or the Brave Sword starts critting with every other attack. And with the Inheritance system in mind, you're even encouraged to let Sigurd snowball so Seliph can start out with tons of strong rings and swords. At that point, soloing the game with Sigurd goes from a SelfImposedChallenge to something you do by accident.

* One method to obtain such a character for the endgame involves a specific glitch.[[note]]See "Buy the Balmunk" on [[https://serenesforest.net/genealogy-of-the-holy-war/miscellaneous/hints-and-secrets/ this page]] for details.[[/note]] If Ayra was paired with Holyn, their children will have Major Odo holy blood, and therefore can use the Balmung. Since Larcei, and to a lesser extent, her brother Ulster, have better stats than their cousin Shanan, abusing this glitch can turn Larcei into one of the game's best offensive units.

** Marcus. High base stats allow him to trivialize the early chapters, and his growths, although subpar, are just good enough to allow him to crush enemies all the way until the end of the game (even in Hector Hard Mode), barring perhaps the final map where you'll have access to the likes of Athos anyway. Access to 3 weapon types gives Marcus a weapon for every situation, and high movement allows Marcus to quickly defeat chapters. The only point against Marcus being a gamebreaker is that he isn't as favored on ranked runs due to his effects on your EXP rank, and he is reliant on gaining around 2-3 points of speed throughout the game at a 25% growth, something that he has a non-negligible chance at failing to do; regardless, he is still the best unit in the game even when failing to gain speed.

** The Luna Tome ignores Resistance, is very accurate for a Dark tome at 95 Hit, and has an enhanced crit rate of 20. It's pretty weak for most of the game, as it's quite heavy, has 0 Might, and can only be wielded by Canas, who already has some doubling issues, giving it limited utility outside of killing the very small handful of high-Resistance enemies in the game. However, in the final map, you have a character practically built to use it--namely, Athos. With capped Magic and very high Speed and Skill, Athos boasts a frankly ridiculous crit rate, and with a Body Ring, he'll double almost everything there. The combo of Athos and Luna turns the entire boss rush, FinalBoss included, into a relative cakewalk. There is a ''very'' good reason this spell was nerfed in ''The Sacred Stones'' and ''Three Houses.''
** Ninian and Nils combine the natural strengths of the Bard/Dancer class with the ability to use extra songs to boost up the party even further. Getting one map also requires Nils to hit a certain level, and by the end of that point, they will be pretty much untouchable for the rest of the game.

* ''Sacred Stones'' includes the Tower of Valni, a map full of weak enemies that can be revisited. After one or two visits, your army will probably be far enough ahead of the game's level curve that nothing in the game can challenge them. Most drafts outright ban the Tower, except to grind up Amelia and Ewan out of their trainee class.

* The Japanese version of ''Path of Radiance'' has a [[GoodBadBugs Game Breaking Bug]] (but not a GameBreakingBug) involving forged weapons. Critical hit rates are among the things that can be modified, and if the weapon had an existing critical hit rate, it can be lowered as well as raised. It moves in increments of 3. Slim weapons and Thunder tomes have a natural rate of 5. Lowering this twice...underflows the critical hit rate, making a weapon that ''always crits.''

** On a related note, the Lightsphere negates enemy terrain bonuses. While this doesn't come up often, using it on a particularly tough boss, such as Camus or Michalis, will make your life that much easier.

** Most importantly, Sigurd snowballs ''insanely'' easily. Due to ''Genealogy'''s mechanics, units hold onto items unless you specifically sell them at the pawn shop and buy them back or have them trade with their lover. Because Sigurd is so fast and strong, he will likely be the first person to reach villages and castles, kill the enemies there, and rescue or capture them to reap the rewards. This means that on top of all of the above good points, he's also accumulating whatever rings or weapons the bosses were carrying, which can patch his few weaknesses or make his strengths even more ridiculous, along with tons of gold to buy things he might want from your other characters. Oh, and weapons in ''Genealogy'' gain the Critical skill if you use them a lot, with a very favorable formula, and can be repaired fairly easily, so that Silver Sword or Brave Sword or whatever that was already super-strong starts critting with every other attack. And with the Inheritance system in mind, you're even encouraged to let Sigurd snowball so Seliph can start out with tons of strong rings and swords. At that point, soloing the game with Sigurd goes from a SelfImposedChallenge to something you do by accident.

** However, one of the best examples of broken kids is simply handed to you regardless of pairing: namely, Ares. Eldigan's heir shows up in the second chapter of the generation. As a cavalier, he's one of the most mobile of the second-generation kids, and is easy to train and use, with no problems keeping up with the army. He has very serviceable bases, along with the excellent offensive mix of Pursuit, Adept, and Vantage. With his Hezul blood, he has the game's highest Strength growth at 90%, along with an impressive 40% Defense and a colossal 130% HP, making him into a very tanky unit with great mobility--even his Resistance isn't too shabby. But what defines him above all is his Mystletainn, which provides him with +20 Skill (meaning his 20% Skill growth is utterly irrelevant), +10 Resistance (making him basically immune to mages), and the Critical skill. That last one means that, at his ''base level'', Ares has a 32% crit rate, on a weapon with 30 Might, which he can attack multiple times with, and which will basically never miss. When made a Paladin, Ares is one of the few characters who can [[LordBritishPostulate somewhat reliably defeat]] ''[[SNKBoss Julius]]'' [[FinalBossPreview when you fight him for the first time.]] And on top of it all, as a mounted unit, he is likely the most mobile holy weapon-wielder for three chapters, meaning unlike Faval, Ced, or Shannan, you don't have to slow down for him to put his blade to use.

* Aside from Safiya, the most infamous staff-user in the game is probably Sara. Starting with a B-rank in staves, which turns into an A-rank on promotion, is extremely good. Starting with rather good bases for your level is better. Having 80% growths in multiple stats is better still. Having Wrath, Paragon, and Miracle to ensure you gain XP ridiculously fast, crit anything that looks in your direction, and have a free dodge chance is when you start getting into "silly" territory. And once you add five Movement Stars to give a free 25% shot to take a second turn, one starts wondering if Sara isn't the game's debug mode.

** The humble Curved Shot is learned exceptionally early, but is relevant throughout the entire game. Bows are balanced by eating large accuracy penalties at long range; Curved Shot nicely extends your range +1 while offering +30 Hit. Curved Shot lets you safely chip away at enemies outside of counterattack range and ensure the shot actually hits.

** The Black Eagles are just full of them, and the next one is potentially the best; humble, scared Bernadetta. Why? On the surface, Bernadetta doesn't seem like much; her stats are comparable to Ashe and Ignatz, both of whom are fairly ho-hum units in terms of combat potential, and her Crest of Indech makes it difficult to proc her personal skill without taking a hit. But then you notice the personal skill, her proficiencies, and most of all, her combat arts. Bernadetta is on the fast track to Bow Knight, largely considered one of the best Master Classes in the game due to its absurd range and movement speed, due to her proficiencies meshing ''perfectly'' for getting the class. She even gets Pass in the process, which allows her to run around battlefields with impunity. She has easily the best personal skill in the game; functionally, it's similar to Rinkah's from ''Fates,'' but unlike Rinkah's, it's attached to a character with a decent strength growth and requires very little effort to activate. If Bernadetta so much as stubs her toe, she'll do damage comparable to Byleth or Seteth, and it is ridiculously easy to keep her below her max HP because her entire point is hit-and-run tactics. These are aided by the best combination of combat arts in the game; Curved Shot for a high-accuracy take-down, Encloser to have unmatched aggro-drawing power (meaning Bernadetta can safely draw the attention of enemies more than ''ten squares away''), and the deciding factor, Encloser. Encloser alone makes Bernadetta worth her weight in gold, especially on [[HarderThanHard Maddening,]] where stopping even a single enemy can easily be the difference between life or death. Encloser makes the monster's most powerful niche (being a StoneWall that can't be killed in a single round) utterly pointless, and by the time Bernadetta has it, her Dexterity and various good bows will make her a crit-fiend on par with Petra, Shamir, and anyone with a Relic. Together with Ferdinand and Petra, Bernadetta makes the Black Eagles one of the best potential houses to pick.

** Ingrid, to the surprise of many. On paper, she doesn't seem like she'd be this thanks to her poor Strength growths, something her default Pegasus Knight class doesn't fix. This changes when you recruit her on routes outside Azure Moon thanks to the way the game calculates stat growths for units you recruit; the game uses ''enemy'' stat growths for its calculations, and the Pegasus Knight happens to have excellent growths in this context, including +30% to HP, +15% to Strength, and +25% to both Defence and Resistance. Recruit her late into Part 1, and you will be given a tanky flyer with incredible stats out the gate.

** The Black Eagles are just full of them, and the next one is potentially the best; humble, scared Bernadetta. Why? On the surface, Bernadetta doesn't seem like much; her stats are comparable to Ashe and Ignatz, both of whom are fairly ho-hum units in terms of combat potential, and her Crest of Indech makes it difficult to proc her personal skill without taking a hit. But then you notice the personal skill, her proficiencies, and most of all, her combat arts. Bernadetta is on the fast track to Bow Knight, largely considered one of the best Master Classes in the game due to its absurd range and movement speed, due to her proficiencies meshing ''perfectly'' for getting the class. She even gets Pass in the process, which allows her to run around battlefields with impunity. She has easily the best personal skill in the game; functionally, it's similar to Rinkah's from ''Fates,'' but unlike Rinkah's, it's attached to a character with a decent strength growth and requires very little effort to activate. If Bernadetta so much as stubs her toe, she'll do damage comparable to Byleth or Seteth, and it is ridiculously easy to keep her below her max HP because her entire point is hit-and-run tactics. These are aided by the best combination of combat arts in the game; Curved Shot for a high-accuracy take-down, Encloser to have unmatched aggro-drawing power (meaning Bernadetta can safely draw the attention of enemies more than ''ten squares away''), and the deciding factor, Encloser. Encloser alone makes Bernadetta worth her weight in gold, especially on [[HarderThanHard Maddening,]] where stopping even a single enemy can easily be the difference between life or death. Encloser makes the monster's most powerful niche (being a StoneWall that can't be killed in a single round) utterly pointless, and by the time Bernadetta has it, her Dexterity and various good bows will make her a crit-fiend on par with Petra, Shamir, and anyone with a Relic. Together with Ferdinand and Petra, Bernadetta makes the Black Eagles one of the best potential houses to pick.

* Vanessa lies somewhat below Seth on the tier list, but she stands out for being the game's best flier for a long time. Like a lot of Pegasus knights, she starts out as a FragileSpeedster that doubles a lot, but when promoted into a Wyvern Knight, she gains an added 3 Constitution (greatly increasing the power of the weapons she can wield and still double) along with the Pierce skill, which gives her a decent chance to ignore defense entirely. Put simply, if Vanessa gets in a hit with Pierce, the enemy is going to die, even if they're a boss. And all this is on top of her superb mobility and versatility as a rescuer.

** The Luna Tome ignores Resistance and has an enhanced crit rate. It's pretty weak for most of the game, as it's quite heavy, has 0 Might, and can only be wielded by Canas, who already has some doubling issues, giving it limited utility outside of killing the very small handful of high-Resistance enemies in the game. However, in the final map, you have a character practically built to use it--namely, Athos. With capped Magic and very high Speed and Skill, Athos boasts a frankly ridiculous crit rate, and with a Body Ring, he'll double almost everything there. The combo of Athos and Luna turns the entire boss rush, FinalBoss included, into a relative cakewalk.

** [[AnAxeToGrind Edelgard]] has no low growths, with her lowest being 30% Lck. She's got unusually decent Res growth with high Spd and Dex to boot, making her a bonafide LightningBruiser. Her axe Aymr allows her to use the unique combat art Raging Storm, which is essentially Galeforce ''on command''. As long as it hits, Edelgard will be able to act again. With its low durability cost, Edelgard can perform such nonsensical feats such as soloing entire maps by herself, up to and including [[spoiler:[[https://i.redd.it/drbp2mv4w4f31.png her route's final boss in one turn]]]]. (You probably don't want to bother with her unique class, though, which is weirdly disappointing.)

** Sigurd's bases are such that the vast majority of enemies in the first few chapters barely even threaten him. Quan is the only unit early on that even approaches Sigurd's bases, and he has a much more troublesome start due to being stuck with lances. One might expect Sigurd to have poor growths, but as he has Major Holy Blood, his growths are excellent, with his only somewhat low point being 30% Speed (which is barely a problem, because Sigurd uses the lightest weapon type and starts with high Speed anyway) and 5% Resistance (when most melee units have crap Resistance and Sigurd is so tanky that mages still don't kill him easily).

** Most importantly, Sigurd snowballs ''insanely'' easily. Due to ''Genealogy'''s mechanics, units hold onto items unless you specifically sell them at the pawn shop and buy them back or have them trade with their lover. Because Sigurd is so fast and strong, he will likely be the first person to reach villages and castles, kill the enemies there, and rescue or capture them to reap the rewards. This means that on top of all of the above good points, he's also accumulating whatever rings or weapons the bosses were carrying, which can patch his few weaknesses or make his strengths even more ridiculous, along with tons of gold to buy things he might want from your other characters. Oh, and weapons in ''Genealogy'' gain the Critical skill if you use them a lot and can be repaired fairly easily, so that Silver Sword that was already super-strong starts critting with every other attack. And with the Inheritance system in mind, you're even encouraged to let Sigurd snowball so Seliph can start out with tons of strong rings and swords. At that point, soloing the game with Sigurd goes from a SelfImposedChallenge to something you do by accident.

* Although many great weapons and items exist in ''Thracia 776'', the only true gamebreakers in this game are the Warp, Rescue, and Repair staves. Staff range for ranged staves is unlimited in ''Thracia 776'', so for the Warp and Rescue staves, the player is able to move a unit to anywhere else on the map or retrieve a unit from anywhere else on the map, respectively. This allows for gamebreaking strategies that, for example, essentially allow the player to defeat a boss and seize a throne or gate to end a chapter in 1 turn. Warp is useful in maps with a seize objective; Rescue is useful in maps with an escape objective. Repair allows the player to repair any weapon to its original state, which means that the player can exhaust all 5 uses of Repair on a single Warp or Rescue staff to obtain 6 times as many uses out of that staff. By extension, since Saphy is the only unit capable of using the Repair staff, she is also a gamebreaker. The list of units who can reliably be assumed to be able to use Warp and Rescue is larger but still limited: Saphy, Salem, Tina, Linoan, Sleuf, Sara, Saias, and Ced.

-->-- '''[=BigKlingy=]''', [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDsRJ-jAZSM Haar bio]]

** In ''Thracia 776'' and ''The Binding Blade'', there exist secret shops near the end of the game that have buyable stat-boosting items; in combination with the abusable arenas, the player can purchase a virtually unlimited quantity. The same applies for ''The Sacred Stones'' after the main game has ended.

** Marcus and Zelot are pretty much the same unit, and among the only things making the harder difficulty survivable. [[CrutchCharacter Though they fall off due to their bad growths]] (''Binding Blade'' being one of the very few games where a Jagen-type unit actually does struggle past a certain point), their ability to either one-shot most enemies or soften them up for your trainees guarantees them a high spot in the tier lists. Even once their stats have fallen behind the curve, they remain useful due to their high movement and rescuing capability.

** Niime shows up with a mixture of A-rank Staves and 21 base Magic, right when you start getting powerful staves like Warp. No other character can manage this combination without ''insane'' LevelGrinding. On top of that, she's a Druid with A-rank Tomes, meaning even a little combat will bring her up to S-rank and allow her to wield Apocalypse to boost her magic to an unrivaled 26. Her weakness of poor durability can be fixed by simply giving her an Angelic Robe and maybe a Body Ring or a Speedwings, both of which are fairly common, because she can wield the [[LifeDrain Nosferatu]] tome to render herself basically immortal as long as she stays out of one-shot range. She has bad growths and joins severely overleveled, but at that point, who needs either?

[[folder:''Awakening'']]

* More examples can be found on [[GameBreaker/FireEmblemAwakening this page.]]
* One Manning or using few units in general. ''Fire Emblem'' is a massive case of quality over quantity, however, thanks to a lot of factors such as massively buffed growth rates and high stat caps, you can snowball your character MUCH easier than every other game in the series, even on Lunatic and sometimes, Lunatic+. Which means all you need to do is to pick 2 pair of characters who, for optimal decision has early availability, grows fast enough, and performs well at its base level, hopefully have Chrom support to make the game even easier, throw in some [[CrutchCharacter Frederick]] assistance, and watch as your one and only pair breaks the entire game in half.
* The Nosferatu dark tome has the effect of {{Life Drain}}ing half the damage it inflicts, and can be bought from quite early in the game. A reasonably powerful character with Nosferatu will have the healing they receive outpace the damage they take, making them effectively immortal. On top of that, Sorcerers (which are the only advanced class capable of using dark magic to begin with) learn the Vengeance skill as early as level 5. This skill has a very high chance of activating, and when it does, it adds half the damage the user has taken into its attack's power, which is unaffected by the enemy's resistance, and increases the healing Nosferatu provides. A paired-up Sorcerer with Vengeance and Nosferatu can effortlessly take out an entire army with essentially no risk to themselves.
** It gets even more JustForFun/{{egregious}} with [[RareRandomDrop Aversa's Night]], which trades half its durability for being just over twice as powerful and having 10 points more accuracy. Paired with Armsthrift and a forge, its user is effectively invincible.
* The Avatar is generally considered the single most superior character in the game, and in the running with Sigurd and Seth for being the strongest in the franchise. A short list as to why:
** Customization. Unlike the other characters, who start with only three base classes[[note]]while children characters can get more, they are restricted to their parents' classes or the gender-based replacements they get, meaning most children can get no more than six potential base classes[[/note]], the Avatar can change into ''any class in the game'', except for special classes and those exclusive to the other gender. Since skills are tied to classes, this allows the Avatar access to a ridiculous range of skills, letting the character do almost literally anything.
** Speaking of skills, the Avatar gets an exclusive class with some of their own, none more convenient than the one they ''start with'': Veteran. This skill multiplies the Avatar's experience point gain by 1.5X when s/he is Paired Up with another unit, turning the character into an overleveled juggernaut very, very quickly. Combined with [[DiskOneNuke Frederick]], it is quite possible to solo the entire game with the Avatar, even on the hardest difficulty — especially as the Avatar can simply class change to a Sorcerer and abuse Nosferatu, as listed above.
** On top of that, there's ''another'' great skill exclusive to the the Avatar's class line: Rally Spectrum. Rally skills add 4 points in a single stat to all allied units within 3 spaces of the Rally user, but these boosts last only one turn and don't stack with other units using the identical Rally skill; not exactly massive by itself, as 4 points is a noteworthy boost, but it's only in one stat and has a tendency to fall short of being very effective. Until you add Rally Spectrum into the mix; it gives the 4-point boost to '''all stats'''. And because Rally Spectrum and the individual stat rallies are different skills, they ''do'' stack. An Avatar with Rally Spectrum and other Rally skills gives enormous +8 boosts to key stats of the player's choice and +4 stats to everything else all at once, resulting in a full army of gamebreakers.
** If all of this is somehow not enough, consider that the Avatar is capable of having children. Child units inherit all class options available to their parents, which means that the Avatar's child Morgan becomes basically a copy of everything that made the Avatar so superior almost from the moment of recruitment, except slightly ''better'' due to higher stat modifiers and maximums. Pairing the Avatar with someone also capable of having a child themselves effectively results in two "Morgan" units. Alternatively, since the Avatar is capable of supporting with every other character in the game, you can have the Avatar support with a child character to give Morgan obscenely good stat modifiers, or a character like [[spoiler:Aversa]] so that Morgan can inherit the amazing ability otherwise exclusive to them, Shadowgift, which in Morgan's hands can easily break the hardest DLC maps into a million pieces. And to cap it all off, since Morgan is always the opposite gender of the Avatar, the Avatar can easily pass down a gender-exclusive skill that Morgan could not obtain otherwise.
** There is also a Water Trick for chapter 1 where you can put the Avatar on an unreachable water tile and snipe every single enemy on the map gaining tons of experience in the process, which, when done properly, completely breaks Lunatic Mode in half. On certain difficulties, this is almost required, though it loses a little of its reliability. Lunatic+ aside, this game is by far the easiest game in the series, and every abuse of Avatar's advantages is one of the biggest reason.
** In addition to this, the player can download streetpass teams, and if they win, they can recruit the members of older games; this doesn't seem like much ''until'' you realize that they are all avatars and have access to everything the Avatar would, letting you literally get an army of Avatars, and therefore gamebreakers.
* The Rescue Staff makes a return for this game, and it's just as good as it's ever been...but this time around, it's ''buyable in stores''. This means it's easily possible to spam it endlessly and eliminate any risk whatsoever to your attacking units by taking them out of harm's way after they've taken out an enemy. On top of that, Rescue is an E-rank staff, meaning even a unit with no experience in staff use whatsoever can use it, as long as they have a reasonably good Magic stat. With enough Rescue staves in the hands of a few staff users (or in the convoy, since Chrom always has access to it), even the most challenging maps can be reduced to "kill something, use Rescue, repeat until everything is dead".
** On top of this, allied units can be targeted with Rescue staves as well. This means you can recruit potential allies far earlier than you're expected to, or ensure the units being protected in an EscortMission avoid any danger. Using multiple copies of Rescue quickly eliminates the need to split your army for the sake of protecting the allies, since you can easily corral them all together inside a wall of your strongest units.
* Lucina comes with a personal weapon, [[spoiler:the Parallel Falchion]], which is one of only two UnbreakableWeapons in the game and by far the better of the two, with more than double the power of Chrom's Falchion, among other benefits. She is also the only child unit to join automatically via the storyline, which means she gets the benefits of child units [[note]]better stats, better stat caps, more classes, and better growth rates[[/note]] without needing to go through the trouble of recruiting her through a Paralogue. On top of that, she joins with a semi-unique class and an excellent skillset, and due to being a child unit, you can choose one of the skills she gets, potentially increasing her power even further. Almost all of her potential parent units can give her very good benefits, but one that truly brings her effectiveness UpToEleven is the Avatar, who can pass down Veteran and combine everything that makes her great to begin with with everything that made the Avatar so great. The only real downside to Lucina is a fairly late join time; however, most of the game's harder chapters occur after she joins and when she is most useful.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:''Fates'']]

* More examples can be found on [[GameBreaker/FireEmblemFates this page.]]
* The Replicate skill is generally earned very late (sans Logbook shenanigans), requiring a promoted L15 unit, but once you get it, all hell breaks loose. Replicate lets you summon an exact duplicate of the character, thus allowing you to break the army limit, double the damage output of your strongest characters, create a wall of your tankiest characters, and otherwise just overwhelm your opponents with sheer numbers.
** For added value, get Replicate and Galeforce (which is only available via the Ebon Wing item exclusive to DLC) on the same unit. Provided the unit can fend for itself in combat (i.e an Avatar), suddenly Galeforce's nerf in ''Fates'' (can only be activated when a unit kills an enemy alone) becomes moot and maps become easier to sweep through.
* The Avatar's royal siblings. All eight of them have excellent stats and growths, the four girls all come with powerful multi-unit buffs, and the four boys all come with ''very'' powerful weapons that, unlike most of the other high-tier weaponry in the game, have no acutal downsides. Only exacerbated by the fact they can all support with each other, and really the only flaw is that some of them don't join until decently late in the game. The ability to recruit and field ''all eight'' of them in a single army turns the ''Revelation'' route from tense tactical action into a hilarious CurbstompBattle basically as soon as you can pull it off.
* Proper usage of Logbook and My Castle features would pretty much break the game into million pieces if you know how to use it properly. The online feature in ''Fates'' is much more diverse than ''Awakening'', due to the much easier early game levels compared to ''Awakening'', and its wide level of usage from the ability to buy skills and items much sooner than intended.
[[/folder]]

** Lysithea. While her GlassCannon nature is there, it's easily forgiven since she has a ridiculous magic growth and incredibly good set of spells. Dark Spikes is essentially an instant "kill cavalry" attack, making her one of the few units capable of taking on the Death Knight long before you're supposed to defeat him, which alone is great; however, her faith line makes it even better by giving her the bane of Demonic Beasts, Seraphim, as well as the ever powerful series GameBreaker Warp. Her personal skill Mastermind only furthers this by allowing Lysithea to master classes at a faster rate than others, allowing some experimentation in other classes to add to her firepower. Lysithea's hypothetical weakness is that she's locked to 2-range spells. But this is not a weakness at all if you give her the Thyrsus staff which gives her an extra ''2 range'', letting her engage foes more safely. She'll even get the boost from having the Crest of Gloucester for some free defensive skills. She's probably the most sought-after Mages in the game.

** If the player chooses the Black Eagles, Ferdinand, especially if the player [[spoiler: gets railroaded onto or chooses the Silver Snow route instead of Crimson Flower.]] While a JackOfAllStats (and even a bit of a GlassCannon), he compensates with his ''lack of skill weaknesses'' and personal skill, Confidence, which grants him +15 Hit and Avoid when at full health. While this ability seems bad on paper, it stacks with other evasion bonuses, which can literally make him impossible to hit. His lack of skill weaknesses combined with four starting proficencies (sword, lance, axe, riding) and budding talent (heavy armor) make him capable of reaching most non-magic classes without much difficulty, and his budding talent ability, Seal Speed, combines with his dodging ability to make him an excellent bait unit. His list of combat arts also includes ''Swift Strikes'' (see below), and his axe boon allows him easy access to Brigand and Death Blow. To top it all off, as he has a Crest of Cichol, he has access to ''two'' Sacred Weapons, granting him increased HP restoration, which keeps his personal skill active. On the Silver Snow route, he gets effectively the best of both worlds, as he gets the entire pre-timeskip minus the prologue to grow, but his main competition either leaves ([[spoiler:Edelgard]]) or never joins ([[spoiler:Jeritza]]), allowing him to shine. [[note]]He's more of a "both" TierInducedScrappy if recruited out of house, however.[[/note]]

** It's possible to acquire the Lance of Ruin at the end of Chapter 5 if Sylvain is in your house, and with his Crest of Gautier, he can unlock its unique Combat Art, Ruined Sky. This is an amazing DiscOneNuke for that point in the game, as not only is it a very powerful attack that boosts Sylvain's Avoid in combat, but it's effective against flying and dragon enemies - which can be a huge annoyance in the early game due to their great movement and generally high Speed, but Ruined Sky can eliminate them with no trouble. The only drawback is that it consumes four uses of the Lance of Ruin, and it's quite expensive to repair.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:''Heroes'']]
* More examples can be found on [[GameBreaker/FireEmblemHeroes this page.]]
* [[Characters/FireEmblemFates Takumi]] was one of the game's early front-runners for Game Breaker status. One of the simplified mechanics of the game is that mages and dagger users are relegated to being purely ranged units alongside archers; characters are either melee or ranged fighters with no overlap. Takumi was one of the very few characters who broke this rule at launch. His Rank 5 skill, Close Counter, allows him to counterattack a unit that attacks him at melee range. However, the advent of Skill Inheritance knocked Takumi off his pedestal, and now he is one of the less desirable archers.
* [[Characters/FireEmblemTheBlazingBlade Hector]], the other launch character that broke the range 1 or range 2 rule by packing the skill Distant Counter, which let him throw his legendary axe Armads at range 2 on counters. Even better, his Armads had one of the absolute best passive abilities: it guarantees a follow-up attack on defense as long as Hector's HP is sufficiently high, canceling his low speed MightyGlacier nature. Unlike Takumi, Hector only got better with Skill Inheritance, and is still a perfectly reasonable unit.
* [[Characters/FireEmblemThracia776 Reinhardt]]. While not having the ability to counter attack at any range, unlike the aforementioned three, Reinhardt compensates with pure, unadulterated firepower. Let's just say that, aside from a few high-Resistance greens, there are very few units that Reinhardt will not kill in one round. Add in Death Blow, Moonbow, and Quickened Pulse Sacred Seal, and that list will shrink to almost nothing. So far, the only hero that was as meta-defining as Reinhardt is was pre-Skill Inheritance Takumi.

[[folder:''Heroes'']]
* More examples can be found on [[GameBreaker/FireEmblemHeroes this page.]]
* [[Characters/FireEmblemFates Takumi]] was one of the game's early front-runners for Game Breaker status. One of the simplified mechanics of the game is that mages and dagger users are relegated to being purely ranged units alongside archers; characters are either melee or ranged fighters with no overlap. Takumi was one of the very few characters who broke this rule at launch. His Rank 5 skill, Close Counter, allows him to counterattack a unit that attacks him at melee range. However, the advent of Skill Inheritance knocked Takumi off his pedestal, and now he is one of the less desirable archers.
* [[Characters/FireEmblemTheBlazingBlade Hector]], the other launch character that broke the range 1 or range 2 rule by packing the skill Distant Counter, which let him throw his legendary axe Armads at range 2 on counters. Even better, his Armads had one of the absolute best passive abilities: it guarantees a follow-up attack on defense as long as Hector's HP is sufficiently high, canceling his low speed MightyGlacier nature. Unlike Takumi, Hector only got better with Skill Inheritance, and is still a perfectly reasonable unit.
* [[Characters/FireEmblemThracia776 Reinhardt]]. While not having the ability to counter attack at any range, unlike the aforementioned three, Reinhardt compensates with pure, unadulterated firepower. Let's just say that, aside from a few high-Resistance greens, there are very few units that Reinhardt will not kill in one round. Add in Death Blow, Moonbow, and Quickened Pulse Sacred Seal, and that list will shrink to almost nothing. So far, the only hero that was as meta-defining as Reinhardt is was pre-Skill Inheritance Takumi.
[[/folder]]

** Dimitri has exceptional growths, with 40% Def, 50% Spd and Dex, 55% HP, and a whopping ''60%'' Str. His Mag and Res are low, but he doesn't need magic, and he can rely on his HP and Spd to just tank oncoming damage. His lance, Areadbhar, has the unique combat art Atrocity, which deals effective damage (3x damage) to all foes. He also packs the unique combination of Battalion Vantage and Battalion Wrath, which lets him attack first and with greatly increased Crit on the enemy phase if you set him up with a low health Battalion. Give him the Retribution Gambit for long-range counterattacks, and watch as Dimitri ''kills every last one of 'em''.

** Byleth has amazing stat growths that allow them to excel in whatever role you want to put them in. Their exclusive class, Enlightened One, is Mortal Savant [[TierInducedScrappy but good]], granting Byleth a versatile set of spells and plenty of physical offensive options. Meanwhile, their exclusive Relic is a ranged sword with a high critical hit chance -- and because it can be repaired simply by taking a rest, it isn't relegated into TooAwesomeToUse territory.