Fire Emblem Heroes / Tropes A to E

Fire Emblem Heroes tropes: A to E | F to L | M to R | S to Z

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This game has examples of:

A

• Action Initiative:
  • Combat order is resolved with the attacker going first, then the target (assuming their weapon's range allows for it or they have skills like Distant/Close Counter), and then, if one unit's Spd exceeds their foe's by at least 5, they get to perform a follow-up attack. However, several skills and weapons alter this.
  • There are skills that allows the user to counterattack first before their foe's attack, such as Vantage when the user is at 25%/50%/75% HP or below at the start of combat, Young Caeda's Feather Sword when she is at 75% HP or below at the start of combat or the foe either is an Armor unit or wields a Sword, Lance, Axe or Colorless Bow, and Kronya's Athame when the opponent is not at full HP at the start of combat.
  • There are skills that guarantee follow-up attacks for the user, and usually ignores the normal Spd rules, such as Brash Assault if the user is at 30%/40%/50% HP or under at the start of combat, they initiate combat, and the foe can counterattack, Quick Riposte if an enemy initiates combat and the user at 90%/80%/70% HP or above at the start of combat, Regular Tibarn's Hawk King Claw when he initiates combat and the enemy is at full HP at the start of combat, and Regular Marianne's Icy Fimbulvetr if she is at 25% HP or above at the start of combat and is within 3 spaces of a Cavalry or Flying ally.
  • There are skills that prevent follow-up attacks, usually for the foe, but if the foe has a skill that guarantees their follow-up attack, then they cancel each other out and follow the normal Spd rules, such as Wary Fighter preventing follow-up attacks for both the user and their foes if the user is at 90%/70%/50% HP or above at the start of combat, the pre-7.7.0 Cavalry Beast weapons denying any of the foe's follow-up attacks if the user is transformed and initiates combat, Nah's Oracle Breath denying any of the foe's follow-up attacks if she has a [Bonus] applied to her such as from Rally and Hone skills or the [Dominance] status effect, and Legendary Edelgard's Aymr denying any of her foe's follow-up attacks if she is not adjacent to an ally during combat.
  • There are skills that allow any of the user's follow-up attacks go before the foe can counterattack, but still have to follow the Spd rules to perform any follow-up attacks, such as Desperation when the user initiates combat and is at 25%/50%/75% HP or below at the start of combat, Regular Thrasir's Killing Intent when she initiates combat and the foe is either not at full HP or has a [Penalty] inflicted on them at the start of combat, and Tsubasa's Mirage Feather when she initiates combat and an ally has already moved on the same turn.
  • There are skills that allow the user to attack twice in one round of attacks, while also following normal Spd rules and potentially even attack up to four times in total if their Spd is high enough, such as Brave and the In The Moment weapons allowing their wielder to strike twice before the opponent can counter if the user initiates combat, the exclusive refinement for Laslow's Blade for Laslow allows him to attack twice, regardless of phase, if there are 2 or more allies within 3 spaces of him that have 10 or more total field stat buffs on them, and Erinys' Silesse Frost if the user initiates combat and is within 2 spaces of their support ally and the foe is at 50% HP or above at the start of combat.
  • There are skills that prevent counterattacks, such as Dazzling Staff, as well as refinements for inheritable staves preventing the foe from counterattacking, Firesweep weapons, as well as Roderick's Steady Lance completely preventing counterattacks for both the user and the opponent, and Regular Shamir's Survivalist Bow allows her to preventing the foe from counterattacking if she is not adjacent to an ally and the foe's HP is at 80% HP or above at the start of combat.
  • There are skills that modifies the Spd needed to perform a follow-up attack, such as Diamant's Fair-Fight Blade, where it increases the Spd needed to make a follow-up attack for the unit and foe by 20, going to 25 Spd needed to follow-up instead of 5, if the user is at 25% HP or above at the start of combat, and Wyvern Rift, where it increases the Spd needed to make a follow-up attack for the foe by 20 if the user's Spd+Def is no less than 10 under the foe's Spd+Def during combat.
  • There are skills that triggers [Potent Follow X%], such as the Potent skill and Attuned Ivy's Obsession, where it allows another attack after the follow-up attack, or becomes a follow-up attack if the user cannot perform one, where X% is the percentage of the normal damage dealt with the extra attack, but the extra attack is treated as a follow-up attack for certain interactions, as well as being unaffected by prevent follow-up and attack twice effects.
  • There are skills which neutralizes some of the above skills during combat, such as Null Follow-Up negating skills that guarantee a follow-up attack for the foe, as well as skills that prevent the user from performing any follow-ups attacks, Null C-Disrupt allowing the user to ignore skills and status effects that prevents the user from counterattacking, such as from the Firesweep weapons and the [Counter Disrupt] status effect from sources such as Candlelight(+)/Flash(+) and Kempt's Venin Edge, and the Hardy Bearing Sacred Seal negating the user's and foe's attack priority changing skills such as Vantage and Desperation.
  • There are skills that combine two or more of the above, such as the "[Weapon]-breaker" skills allowing the user to perform a guaranteed follow-up attack and prevents the foe from performing a follow-up attack depending on the latter's weapon type, as long as the user is at 90%/70%/50% HP or above at the start of combat, the Dragon's Ire skill allowing the user to negate any skills that deny the user's follow-up attacks and guarantees the user's follow-up attacks if the user is at 100%/75%/50% or above at the start of combat and the foe initiates combat, Legendary Celica's Soul of Zofia having the effects of both Null Follow-Up and Desperation, and Regular Catherine's Thunderbrand allowing her to ignore any skills that prevent any of her follow-up attacks, as well as have any follow-up attacks go before the foe can counterattack if she initiates combat, if the foe is at 50% HP or above at the start of combat.
• Actor Allusion:
  • In the Feh Channel introducing Resplendent Heroes, the heroes Fehnix hopes get Resplendent versions all share his voice actor - Hector, Sirius, Brady, and the Death Knight for English voice actor Patrick Seitz, and Saber, Niles, Navarre, and Lon'qu for Japanese voice actor Takehito Koyasu.
  • In Kagetsu's Forging Bonds event, all of the characters who appear (including Kagetsu himself) are voiced in Japanese by Takehito Koyasu. Additionally, in his S-rank conversation, Kagetsu says he has a kinship with Wolt and Nils, who share his English voice actor.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: Fallen Edelgard from Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which is based on her Hegemon Husk form in Azure Moon. When she isn't in combat, Hegemon Edelgard in Heroes has her appear to be in a Partial Transformation, with only her eyes changed and parts of the husk grafted to her body. She only transforms into her Azure Moon boss form when she attacks her opponent properly or when she's without allies nearby.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Jagen and Gunter were Crutch Characters who were quickly obsoleted in their home games, but are now great cavalry support units.
  • Cecilia from Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade is also one of the units that were Overrated and Underleveled in the original game. Here, she is capable of becoming a deadly cavalry mage.
  • Ninian and Nils in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade are purely Support Party Members that could only give extra turns, and the former's dragon form only existed to be (temporarily) killed by Eliwood. In this game, they're both now full-blown Manaketes who can use their dragon form to kick some tail.
  • Tethys and Larum, other dancers from the GBA titles, weren't able to fight in their respective games without the use of glitches, but they are relegated to use daggers in this game.
  • Karla was given a bad case of Can't Catch Up from Lyn and Karel in The Blazing Blade, who did her job better and were around longer. Here, time is no object and her kit made her one of the best swordmasters available when she was released.
  • Elincia in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn was more of a healer than a fighter, despite having the legendary weapon Amiti. Here, she is nearly all fighter with very high Attack and Speed with said legendary weapon, and Death Blow 3 to add to it.
  • Several characters have notable stat distributions which may not correspond with their home game. For example, Innes is a great Mage Killer with respectable Res, even though in The Sacred Stones his Resistance isn't too impressive.
  • Deirdre in Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War is a normal Light mage saddled with overall bad stats and limited availability. Come this game, she is equipped with a souped-up Naga tome when canonically she never got the chance to wield that tome (Julia would wield that instead).
  • Several Est archetype characters were derided back in their home games because of their late availability and limited room to train. Here, some of them become great offensive units when availability becomes a non-issue. In particular, Nino and Tailtiu, since both of them have the powerful -Blade tomes and solid stats. Tailtiu is later given a customized Tome of Thoron, which not only replicated her old play style of using Wrath skill, but also it also packs a greater punch, making her basically something of a discount-Ishtar (originally an unrecruitable powerful enemy) on your side.
  • The herons from Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn were completely incapable of fighting without using cards, which are items instead of weapons. In this game, they can fight back by using their wings to create gusts of wind.
  • Leila in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade was just an NPC who was killed after her encounter with Jaffar (by orders of Ephidel), but in Heroes, she is not only made playable, but can kick some serious ass, even being able to outperform her killer in her home game.
  • Eyvel in Thracia 776 suffered a major case of being a Crutch Character who Can't Catch Up due to her limited availability due to plot reasons and carrying over her stats when she is recruited again, but does not suffer that in Heroes as she can be on par with other heroes from Thracia 776.
  • Merlinus in The Binding Blade is downplayed example. In his home game, he was pretty much a defenseless slow Transporter that players need on the map if they want to access the convoy, and can only level up if he was attacked and survive 100 times, although he's also the only unit that can never truly die, as he can just get deployed again if he's defeated. In Heroes, he becomes a combatant, being a colourless dagger cavalry unit that can fight, but with his awful Atk, he's more of a Joke Character, barely able to scratch any unit he goes up against without a huge deal of support first.
  • August in Thracia 776 was a non-combatant and mainly served as an advisor and tactician to Leif akin to Jagen in (New) Mystery of the Emblem. In Heroes he enters the fray as a Combat Medic that also gives great buffs to his support partner, especially if one of their allies has fallen in battle on the map. Said buffs synergize perfectly with Legendary Leif, granting an Atk, Def, and Res buff, along with guaranteeing a follow up attack, which are all effects that Legendary Leif puts to great use.
• Adaptational Curves: Not that Petra in Three Houses wasn't already voluptuous, but Heroes turns it up a notch.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Downplayed with Edelgard. Three Houses frames Edelgard as someone who started a war in part on the basis that humans must be free to determine their own path, and that is impossible as long the Children of the Goddess have authority over humans, referring to them as "beasts" who shouldn't have "power over the people". Her brave alt in Heroes, meanwhile, shows her beef with the Children of the Goddess as something that has less to do with them being not human, and more of their attributed godhood, as her Forging Bonds interaction with Lissa states, and how her dialogue in My Castle has her uncomfortable with the idea of gods and mortals working together, while not expressing dislike over the non-human members of the order or how they have to work with them. Justified, as in Three Houses, Rhea has used her Church and influence over the people to paint Sothis, the Children of the Goddess, and the Crests as of divine nature, which is Edelgard's main point of contention with her and the source of her biases. Plus, by focusing on this angle, Heroes can have Edelgard retain this aspect of her characterization without causing any dissonance when being allied with non-human and non-divine members of the order.
• Adaptational Skill: The Emblems in Fire Emblem Engage weren't able to fight on their own, but here; they're not only capable of fighting individually, but are able to engage with other people simultaneously and with each other. They're also capable of consummation, presumably as to not lock them out from the Aether Resort's Dinning Hall, something that both Emblem Ike and Marth lampshade.
• Adaptational Weapon Swap: Several characters have their weapons changed, typically to add more weapon diversity.
• Adaptational Wimp:
  • Lucius in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade was a light mage who started out using a tome and could become a powerful end-game unit. In Heroes, he's solely limited to a staff, which prioritizes healing units over damaging enemies. Lachesis from Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War suffers the same fate; she started as a pseudo-Lord class (Princess) and became a very powerful Master Knight, but here she is relegated to being a mere staff user.
  • Many legendary weapons are weaker than their home games because they lost their stat boost, like the Omega Yato's +4 to attack, speed, defense, and resistance, and the Tyrfing's ridiculous +10 Skill and Speed and +20 Resistance and only give certain attributes. Some of the legendary weapons, such as the Binding Blade, lost the ability to attack from range for melee weapons or from melee for ranged weapons due to how Heroes' mechanics works.
  • Downplayed with the Book of Naga (and Divine Naga). It's still a powerful weapon on its own, but its niche of being the sole counter of the Loptous tome is heavily reduced in effectiveness since it's now using the Weapon Triangle system (previously, Light and Dark tomes were unaffected by the Magic Triangle in Genealogy) and is a Green Tome, and therefore loses out to Loptous (a Red Tome). Although its dragon-slaying effectiveness still remains against it, it's not quite the anti-Loptous weapon anymore (especially since there are dragon-slaying swords like the Falchion variants and Loptous cannot counter at close range unless given Close Counter). Later averted with Legendary Julia and her Virtuous Naga, which is Blue to dominate Loptous' Red, as well as being effective against dragons, bypassing Loptous' Atk reduction.
  • Downplayed with Caeda at launch: Heroes turned her into a swordswoman when she's primarily known as a lance user and stuck her with the Armorslayer sword while her low Atk really hampers her otherwise excellent Spd. While Skill Inheritance can turn her into something at least decent, this is by far one of the weaker renditions of Caeda when compared to the days she used a spear in Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem (able to snatch Jagen's Silver Lance right at the beginning) or Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem (thanks to her Wing Spear). The update giving her the Wing Sword turned her into a subversion as she has become a solid unit all around.
  • Fallen Takumi was the insanely difficult Final Boss of Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest that could multiply himself(which meant he had the advantages of being paired up with a unit and having a unit next to him while not being paired), took half damage thanks to Dragonskin, and had an absolutely ludicrous 1-4 range thanks to his unique bow Skadi. Here, he's a rather mediocre Master of None, and that same Skadi is gimmicky, situational, and has the AOE effect activate once with the unrefined version.
  • Azama from Fates had ridiculous strength growths and was a far better physical attacker than a healer once promoted in his home game. Although he can attack and heal in his base class in this game he has one of the lowest Atk stat of any unit and is strictly a bulky healer with good Def and decent HP.
• Added Alliterative Appeal:
  • The April 2018 Voting Gauntlet was called the "Bunny Battle Ballot."
  • The announcement for the 2023 Grand Hero Battle Revival for the Brigand Boss calls him a "larcenous leader of a league of looters".
• All There in the Manual: The official website includes some non-combat voice clips from regular Veronica.
• Alone Among the Couples: The seasonal event "A Splendid Soiree" features couples Berkut and Rinea along with Reinhardt and Ishtar, with Nephenee joining the event without a partner.
• Alternate Continuity:
  • Brave Camilla is from a version of Nohr in which she became its queen. In Fates, however, none of the paths end this way: Xander is crowned king in the Conquest and Revelation routes, while she was offered the crown but declined it and passed it off to Leo in the Birthright route.
  • Ascended Ishtar hails from a version of Jugdral in which she defies Julius's orders and saves the children that Julius was going to sacrifice. In Genealogy of the Holy War, she was struck down by Seliph's forces.
• Alternate Self:
  • Being Avatars with no canonical gender, the male and female incarnations of Robin, Corrin, Byleth, Kris, Shez, and Alear exist side-by-side as separate units. Both Robins are mages, but Male Robin is Blue while Female Robin is Green. Male Corrin is a swordsman while Female Corrin is a Blue dragon, being able to fight in her dragon form. Both Byleths are sword wielders, but their default kits make both of them have different focuses on their builds. Male Kris wields a Sword while Female Kris wields a Lance. Male Shez is a dual-wielding Sword Infanrty while Female Shez is an Axe Infantry. Similar to the Byleths, both versions of Alear are Sword Infantry, but the difference is with default kits that they have.
  • Outside of the Anna from Askr (i.e. the playable one), there are Annas in the Worlds of Awakening and Conquest that indirectly interact with the cast via letters. Also, the Awakening incarnation of Anna is also summonable, as well as the New Year's version of Askr Anna.
  • Tempest Trials boss units are noted as not being the "correct" versions of the characters. In the aftermath of Tempest Trials: Moment of Fate, Ike notes that the Black Knight you fought didn't feel right.
  • Spring Alfonse, Spring Sharena, Brave Veronica, Adrift Mikoto, and the summonable Generals of Múspell and Loki are not the ones you are familiar with, but ones from different worlds.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: All character artwork and sprites are simply mirrored to face the other direction. It's particularly noticeable with Niles, Saber, Nailah, Haar, Kiria, and post-Time Skip Dimitri, whose eyepatches switch eyes.
• Anachronic Order: Book VII features a villain who controls time, and the story starts with the last chapter (chapter 13). When Seiðr saves the Summoner from being erased from history, they jump to chapter 5.
• An Ass-Kicking Christmas: The Tempest Trials "A Gift of Peace" takes place during the Ylissean Winter Festival and sees Winter Chrom, Robin, Lissa, and Tharja team up with Masked Marth to save it from the Tempest. The three other Christmas-themed Tempest Trials so far, "Life Is But Fleeting," "For a Smile," and "Burden of Gifts," also feature their respective themed focus units in their stories.
• Ancestral Weapon: Certain characters can unlock legendary weapons that can only be equipped by them. Some, like Tyrfing or Siegmund and Sieglinde, were passed down from generation to generation in their respective home games.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: As of the 2.6.0 update, units can be equipped with cosmetic accessories, including a Feh doll and a variant of Bruno's mask. Golden versions of already existing accessories are rewarded to players who clear Legendary, Mythic, or Grand Hero Battles on Abyssal.
• Anti-Air: As in the series proper, fliers (sans units with Iote's Shield or similar skills) take extra damage from bows. The wind tomes Excalibur, Grafcalibur, and Winds of Change also deal additional damage to them, as does Cecilia's Tome of Order.
• Anti-Armor: Units equipped with an Armorslayer, a Heavy Spear, or a Hammer deal extra damage to armored units (sans units with Svalinn Shield or the buff from Duo Idunn's Duo Skill, and Brave Hector with Maltet's special refine), just like in the main series. There are also their enhanced versions, the Armorsmasher, the Slaying Spear, and the Slaying Hammer, as well as the Sky Maiougi, Kinshi Hinoka's Warrior Princess, Nephenee's Dauntless Lance, Bartre's Axe of Virility, Florina's Lance, Est's Whitewing Spear, Young Caeda's Feather Sword, Harmonic Caeda's Dolphin-Dive Axe, and Duo Hinoka's Mermaid Bow. Caeda's Wing Sword, Regular Micaiah's Thani, Clair's Rhomphaia, Yukata Micaiah's Dawn Suzu, Brave Micaiah's Light of Dawn, Phina's and Young Marth's Rapier, and Duo Ephraim's Reginleif are anti-armor and anti-cavalry weapons.
• Anti-Cavalry: The -wolf tomes, Keen -wolf tomes, Zanbato, Ridersbane, Poleaxe, and Dusk Uchiwa deal extra damage against horse-mounted units (sans units with Grani's Shield). Caeda's Wing Sword, Regular Micaiah's Thani, Clair's Rhomphaia, Yukata Micaiah's Dawn Suzu, Brave Micaiah's Light of Dawn, Phina's and Young Marth's Rapier, and Duo Ephraim's Reginleif are anti-cavalry and anti-armor weapons.
• Anti-Debuff:
  • Some weapons have effects that allow the user to ignore any penalties inflicted on them during combat. Examples include Regular Idunn's Demonic Breath, Brunnya's Fimbulvetr, Shannan's Balmung, Legendary Chrom's Randgríðr, Spring Duo Idunn & Fae's Zephyr Breath, and the exclusive refine for Sacred Memories Eirika's Gleipnir.
  • There are skills that have effects that neutralizes penalties on the user's stats during combat, but they still give boosts to foes with skills that depends on the opponent's penalties, such as Broadleaf Fan+ and Petal Parasol+. Examples include the Tier 4 Bond skills, the 2020 Spring weapons, and Spring Est's Eagle's Egg. However, update 4.6.0 later changed it to make it to ignore penalties instead like weapons above.
  • Restore allows the user to remove all penalties inflicted on the ally, and restores 8 HP to the ally, and restores HP equal to half of the user's Atk (minimum of 8) with the Restore+ version. Harsh Command+, in addition to turning stat penalties into bonuses, also removes other penalties on an ally such as Panic and Gravity. Legendary Micaiah's Maiden's Solace also has the same effect as Harsh Command+, on top of her allowing her to restore HP to that target ally equal to her current HP -1 and reduces her HP equal to the amount of HP restored to that ally. The only penalty that they cannot remove is the [Isolation] status effect, and that is due to how [Isolation] have support skills unable to work on them until the one inflicted with it ends their turn.
  • The Odd/Even Recovery skills allow the user at the start of Odd or Even turns to remove any debuffs and restore 20 HP to all allies within 2 spaces of the user.
  • Valentine Duo Alm & Celica's Duo skill, in addition to restoring 30 HP and giving +6 Atk/Spd to the user and all allies within 5 columns and 5 rows centered on the user, also removes penalties on the user and all allies within the same range.
  • Fallen Ike's Chaos Ragnell, Regular Dagr's Skinfaxi, the Unity skills and the unique refine for Legendary Marth's Exalted Falchion are a strange example, in that when the user has stat penalties, they gains double the stats equal to those penalties during combat, essentially reversing it, even if they has the Panic status effect, but the Unity skills only boosts 2 of the selected stats instead of all of them. For example, if they has -5 Atk and -7 Def/Res, they gains +10 Atk and +14 Def/Res during combat, effectively gaining +5 Atk and +7 Def/Res during combat. They are still vulnerable to other penalties such as Flash+/Candlelight+ and Gravity, though.
  • Regular Sara's Kia Staff, in addition to granting +6 Atk/Spd to the target at the start of the user's turn, allows the user to remove any penalties on the ally with the lowest HP within 4 spaces of the user inflicted with a penalty.
  • The [Null Panic] status effect allows the user to be unaffected by the reversing field stat buffs of [Panic] during combat, but still has the [Penalty] be active on them (and as such activate skills and weapons that rely on the user to be affected by a [Penalty]).
• Anti-Frustration Features: A lot of these to the point where it has its own page.
• Anti-Grinding:
  • Characters won't get any experience or SP if they defeat an opponent that's at least five levels lower than them. An update toned this down so characters can still gain some experience after defeating a low-level enemy, with more experience gained the lower the character's star rating is.
  • There's a limit on how many times a healer gains experience for healing allies per map, with experience gain dropping for each use. Once that limit is reached, the healer stops gaining experience or SP through healing until a new map is started.
  • Experience gained by damaging enemies, but not defeating them, will gradually lessen the more a character attacks, until they won't get any experience by attacking at all until a new map is started.
  • Maps reward less experience if they're beaten on a difficulty they were already cleared on. This doesn't apply to the Training Tower or the Arena though, and was even later removed in the 2.5.0 update.
• Anti-Infantry: The Poison Dagger weapon is effective against infantry units, and even reduces their Defense and Resistance.
• Anyone Can Die:
  • Book II is when the deaths start, with the Queen of Nifl being killed by Surtr when he conquers the kingdom of ice. Then Gunnthrá comes next when they are ambushed by the Múspell army. And when they finally get to the Múspell stronghold, Laegjarn is the first to go, succumbing to Múspell's flames in place of her sister. A few battles later Helbindi dies via an offscreen Suicide by Cop/You Shall Not Pass! trying to exact revenge on Surtr, who ravaged his hometown, killing his family. And in the ultimate battle of the book, Surtr's Rite of Flames is nullified and he is killed by Alfonse's army.
  • In the interim after Book II, it is revealed that Fjorm only has a little time left due to the Rite of Ice using her life as a sacrifice to nullify Surtr's Rite of Flame. She chooses to live what little time she has left with the Order of Heroes.
  • With Darker and Edgier Book III dealing with the realm of the dead, this should not come as a surprise. Gustav is killed not long into the story in an attempt to save Alfonse from Hel.
  • While Book IV has it initially be Lighter and Softer compared to the previous Books, Dream-King Freyr dies at the hands of the Orders of Heroes via Suicide by Cop, as a way to both allow them to escape Freyja, as well as weaken her by barring her access to Freyr's power of Dreams.
  • Book IV gets even darker when it's revealed that someone very important died. Alfonse, the Prince of Askr, met his end after he killed Hel, and the Summoner dreamt that Alfonse was still alive and happy. However, this proves to be a fakeout - Freyja was lying her ass off.
  • Book VI has perhaps the most significant deaths yet, as Zacharias/Bruno, who'd been a significant character since Book I, is killed off, as are Askr and Embla, the patron deities of their respective countries, and new villain Letizia.
• Apologetic Attacker: Some characters, such as Alfonse, Palla, and Celica, have a Pre-Mortem One-Liner in which they apologize to their foe.
• April Fools' Day: Starting with 2019, a video to celebrate April Fool's Day is added to the uploaded to the Nintendo Mobile YouTube channel (along with another prize given out):
  • For 2019, a mock trailer for a Legendary Feh was released. The other eleven slots were Feh reenacting various signature weapons. In addition, a wearable Orb was given out as an accessory.
  • For 2020, a Feh Channel was uploaded - showing maps that are done in an 8-bit style. However, the Bait-and-Switch was stylized as if every aspect of Fire Emblem Heroes would be done in 8-bit.
  • For 2021, a techno remix of Howling Gears with Reginn and Fáfnir dancing to it.
  • For 2022, although released 3 days later, a remix of the Book VI map theme with the Summoner playing the Tamborine, Ash playing the Bass Guitar and Veronica playing the Violin.
  • For 2023 (also released a day late), an exercise show hosted by Askr called "Mooving with Askr", featuring Kiran, Seiðr, Alfred, and Timerra^note Who was not added to the game at the time.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit:
  • On most maps, you can only deploy up to four units due to the smaller map size. However, the computer is not subject to this restriction.
  • Rival Domains allow you to deploy eight units at once plus twelve reinforcements.
  • Relay Defense has 5 units on your side with 15 in reserve, switching out with the next 5 units within your brigade every 2 turns.
  • With higher tiers, Aether Raids lets you use five units for raiding parties and six for defensive teams. However, if you're using a specific Mythic Hero released after Book IV on either your raiding or defense party, the limit goes to six for the attacking team and seven for the defense team, with the limitation that the extra hero must be either another Mythic Hero of the same matching season, a Legendary Hero matching the co-running season, or a hero with the matching Mythic Blessing.
  • Heroic Ordeals restrict you to two units, one of which must be the featured unit.
• Arbitrary Mission Restriction:
  • Some maps, like Grand Hero Battles and Blessed Gardens, require your entire team to remain alive; let one unit fall, and you fail.
  • Brigades can only have one unit that has Sing or Dance and are not allowed to have duplicate units.
  • The character-specific Heroic Ordeals not only requires no casualties, but also the featured unit to personally KO at least two enemies.
  • Limited Hero Battles take place on prior Grand, Legendary, and Mythical Hero Battle maps and bring the same no casualties requirement, but also restricts usable units to those from particular games and may also limit the number of refreshers allowed.
• Arc Hero: All of the books past the first introduce a new character that serves as a major protagonist for that book. Book II has Fjorm, Book III has Eir, Book IV has Peony, Book V has Reginn, Book VI has Ash, Book VII has Seiðr, and Book VIII has Ratatoskr.
• Arc Villain: Each book has their own separate Big Bad for the duration of that book. Book I has Veronica (with Bruno taking over for the final four chapters), Book II has Surtr, Book III has Hel, Book IV has Freyja, Book V has Fáfnir (actually Eitri), Book VI has Embla, and Book VII has Gullveig.
• Area of Effect:
  • The Smoke Dagger, Dark Breath, Gloom Breath, Clarisse's Bow, Sniper's Bow, and the unrefined Grima's Truth inflict stat debuffs on enemy units within 2 spaces of their target. The Smoke Dagger lowers Def and Res while Dark Breath, Gloom Breath, Clarisse's Bow, Sniper's Bow, and Grima's Truth lower Atk and Spd. Refinements for all aforementioned weapons sans Grima's Truth make the debuffs affect the target as well.
  • Daggers released since 2.0.0, including refined ones, inflict stat debuffs on the target and enemies within 2 spaces of the target, with certain daggers also applying field buff to the user and allies within 2 spaces.
  • The Rising, Growing, and Blazing Specials deal damage to all enemies in specific tile formations (differing depending on the individual Special) when the user has the charge ready and they initiate combat.
  • The "plus" upgrades for staves causes their debuffs to also spread to other enemy units within 2 spaces of the targeted unit instead of just that unit, with only Gravity+ affecting units adjacent to the target.
  • Many buildings in Aether Raids provide specific effects in an area. For example, the Bolt Tower, at the start of turn 3, deals 10 to 40 damage to all enemies within 3 columns with the building in the middle, while the Catapult destroys all destructible buildings in a single column (excluding ornaments, traps and Aether resources) if they're the same or lower level than itself.
  • Traps in Aether Raids affect all units, including enemies, in its area of effect whenever a player unit stops on them. The Heavy Trap inflicts the Gravity status on all units within 2 spaces of the trap if they're at or below a certain HP threshold (from 40 up to 60 HP), while the Bolt Trap inflicts damage on all units within 3 spaces of the trap (from 10 to 50 damage done).
  • Many Duo Skills have an Area-of-Effect that can target allies and/or targets foes. For example, Halloween Duo Hector and Lilina's Duo Skills have the user deal 20 damage to all enemies within the 3 columns they are centered in.
• Armor-Piercing Attack:
  • Moonbow, Luna, and Aether all treat the foe's Def or Res as lower when they activate. Moonbow pierces through 30% of the foe's defenses, but has a quick charge time. Luna and Aether pierce through 50% of the foe's defenses, but have a longer charge, especially Aether since it also has a Life Drain effect.
  • The Black Knight and Zelgius have a variant of the Luna skill aptly titled Black Luna that pierces through 80% of a foe's Def, which is enough to cause some immense damage to their opponents.
  • Lethality pierces through 75% foe's Def and Res, as well ignore any non-special Damage Reduction skills when it triggers.
  • Legendary Eirika's Lunar Brace deals damage equal to 50% of the enemy's defense when her special activates, but increases her special's cooldown by 1. The damage can also stack with Moonbow or Luna (the former incidentally being her default special), so she can basically have up to 100% of the enemy's defense ignored when her special activates.^note The truth is more complicated, however: Lunar Brace has the "deal" keyword, meaning that 50% of the enemy's Def is used as true damage, so if Eirika has 20 Atk but the opponent has 50 Def, she would deal 25 damage when her special activates, so activating with Luna with that Atk would make her deal 25 damage, instead of 20 damage if the 100% piercing damage is assumed
  • All dragon breaths released at update 2.0.0 and after, including refined ones, target the lower of an enemy's Defense or Resistance if the enemy's attack range is 2 spaces. Weapons and skills such as Regular Felicia's eponymous Plate, Valentia Palla's Ladyblade, and Inf. Hexblade have the same effect, except they work on every unit regardless of attack range.
  • The +10 damage on combat skill activation effect on weapons and skills has the extra damage be added after defensive stats and triangle advantage and disadvantage are calculated, which means the user will deal at least 10 damage to their foe when they activate their special, even if they would have dealt less damage if the addition was reduced by the foe's defensive stats.
  • Weapons such as Regular Leif's Light Brand and the Shining Bow(+) will deal +7 damage if the enemy has 5 or more Def than their Res, which means that they will always deal a minimum of 7 damage for every attack they do, even if they're at a weapon triangle disadvantage and the enemy has very high defenses if the activation requirement for the +7 damage is met.
  • Weapons such as Karla's unrefined Vassal's Blade and Regular Naesala's Raven King Claw will deal damage equal to 70% of the difference in the user's and enemy's Spd if they have higher Spd, up to +7 damage done, which means that they will always deal damage for every attack they do if they're faster than the enemy, even if they're at a weapon triangle disadvantage and the enemy has very high defenses.
  • Legendary Alm has two exclusive skills that have this effect:
    • His weapon Luna Arc, in addition to giving him +3 Spd, when he initiates combat, deals damage equal to 25% of the enemy's Def, which stacks with other Special skills such as Luna, which on activation would ignores 75% of the enemy's Def.
    • His special Lunar Flash, in addition to boosting his damage equal to 20% of his Spd on activation, reduces the enemy's Def/Res by 20%.
  • Skills such as Brave Alm's Scendscale and Legendary Dimitri's Atrocity has the "deal" keyword, meaning that they will deal 25% of their Atk during combat as true damage per attack, even if their Atk is lower than the enemy's Def during combat.
• Armor-Piercing Response: Before the final fight of Paralogue 10, Seth comments that he sincerely hopes Veronica can become a good ruler, both for her people and for her own sake. It startles Veronica enough to make her ask Loki if their king is a good ruler, before revoking her question and saying it doesn't matter.
• Arrange Mode: Hall of Forms is a mode that mixes up the Heroes gameplay. You have a fixed team of four units that you use for the duration of the event, and instead of learning skills through SP and gaining merge levels through duplicate units, the unit that gets the first KO on a map will have the chance to learn a skill from a randomly selected set, gain a Sacred Seal or gain a merge level.
• The Artifact:
  • While "Shurikenbreaker" has been renamed to "Daggerbreaker" to reflect the (initial) lack of shuriken in Heroes, the Skill's icon still depicts a throwing star due to being recycled from Fire Emblem Fates.
  • Any duplicate Sacred Seals you receive are converted into 300 feathers instead. This was more useful back when special quests and Tempest Trials were the only ways to get seals and sometimes awarded the same ones in different events to give latecomers more chances at getting them. Since then, however, the Sacred Seal Forge was added and a promise was made that future Tempest Trials would have no repeat rewards, so it's highly unlikely that you'll get a duplicate seal now.
  • The 8 Heroes^note Marth, Lucina, Male Robin, Camilla, Young Tiki, Takumi, Roy, and Lyn featured on the pre-2.5.0 downloading screen and on the first-ever focus banners (Legendary Heroes and Deep Devotion) were given special summoning movies. However, since launch, no other hero has gotten one. According to some sources, plans were made to have more videos put into the game, but it proved too time consuming for it to be done, and the developers didn't want the movies to take too much space in the game's files.
  • The 1-2 star rarity for heroes was used to be the rarity that heroes were given out as rewards, the main one being Hero Battles. Later on, however, the 3 star rarity became standard for the lowest rarity a hero can be gifted.
  • In Virion's 5* level 40 conversation, he claims to be the first Hero you ever summoned. While this is true for players who started playing before version 2.5.0, that update replaced him in the tutorial with Takumi, so for newer players his claim is now out of date.
  • In many of the heroes' lines, they mention the Summoner having their hood up and unable to see their face, as well as mentioning that the Summoner is unable to battle. With Character Customization being available and the Summoner can fight in Mjölnir's Strike since update 5.2.0 and in Heroes Journey, unless the player has the hood up option for the former, those lines are not going to make sense now.
  • Fallen Dimitri and Fallen Orson have the standard purple Battle Aura for fallen heroes on their sprites even though their respective descents into insanity were both caused by completely conventional Trauma Conga Lines and have no supernatural elements whatsoever.
  • The Meet some of the Heroes website was first created to host information for a select number of heroes (including every Legendary hero released at the time), but eventually more heroes from before the site's launch were being added alongside the ones added after, to the point that almost everyone (up to, and including the most recent additions to the game as of writing) has a page there. Ironically, the word "some" still remained in the title, even though the ever-increasing additions of older heroes to the site caused it to go beyond that definition.
• Artifact Alias:
  • Even though Prince Bruno's identity was revealed in Chapter 10 of Book I, the in-game data still lists him as "???" and uses the Mysterious Knight description, with no reference to his status as Emblian nobility. The description still doesn't change when Chapter 13 confirms he's Zacharias. After that chapter, the characters continue to refer to him as Zacharias rather than Bruno, even Prince Hríd.
  • The "Fell Reincarnation" and "Fell Vessel" Robins, while called "Robin" in gameplay, are quite clearly Grima's Hierophant meat puppets and outright state their true identity when summoned, complete with their usual character quirks displayed loudly and proudly. Not even the manga bothers to hide their true identity.
• Artifact Title: Though Regular Male Corrin uses the Yato, and Legendary Marth has the Binding Shield and his exclusive special, Heroes has yet to introduce a plot-relevant Fire Emblem.
• Artificial Brilliance:
  • Enemy units will focus on heroes weak to them on the weapon triangle and also utilize their movement skills to keep themselves out of reach of your stronger units, such as shoving a flier away from your archers.
  • Enemy units will also ignore weaker units that pose almost no threat to them, in favor of attacking your stronger units if they are capable of finishing them off.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • The enemy will always attack any unit within their reach. This can lead to downright suicidal moves such as attacking a hero they will deal little damage to at the cost of their own life in the counterattack, or set themselves up for a deadly ambush.
  • Enemy units tend to prioritize attacking units they have weapon triangle advantage against, sometimes even ignoring grey units who can't counter them at close range.
  • If an AI-controlled unit has more than one enemy in range that they can kill, they will prioritize the one that takes more damage, despite it being unnecessary. More often than not this results in the ignored, stronger unit immediately killing someone in retaliation, when the weaker unit would've posed no threat.
  • When no opposing units are within attack range, certain Assist skills can cause the AI to get stuck in an endless loop unless and until interrupted by player interference, since the AI favors using a Assist skill over taking no action even when the Assist skill provides no immediate advantage. It's not uncommon to see an enemy unit advance only to be Repositioned back the other way by one of their allies, or for a pair of enemy characters to get stuck endlessly buffing one another rather than moving toward your characters.
  • The AI can potentially get itself trapped if a ranged unit is sandwiched between two melee units in a tight space and doesn't take any damage. The AI for whatever reason won't move the ranged unit out of the way, grinding everything to a halt if you're using the Auto-Battle mechanic.
  • The AI also has a habit of doing things that can nearly break the game, or at least the map. For example, if a unit has a skill that allows them to move to where another, friendly unit is, but the location is isolated due to a flier unit being present, said unit that moved will become stuck and unable to move. If the player lacks a flier unit to go after them, this will require the player to forfeit the fight.
  • If you set the game to auto-battle on maps with Hopeless Boss Fights such as Ike or Surtr, you can point and laugh as the AI has your units derp right into the jaws of death at the hands of your immortal foe.
  • The AI is perfectly willing to use Rally skills on an ally that has the Panic status, which reverses stat buffs. Staff units with potentially devastating abilities also have higher priority in healing units with very little health damage or even debuffs if they have Restoration in their belt.
  • Tempest Trials bosses that involve an Armor March setup can be easily broken up due to how the units behave. Sometimes, they'll just spread throughout the map, making the boss a lot less threatening.
• Art Evolution:
  • Applies to the majority of characters from any game predating the GameCube or DS. In older Fire Emblem games, any character who wasn't a lord had a headshot for their profile as the extent of unique art. All map and combat sprites were just a Palette Swap of a basic unit. Here, though, every character gets a full-body profile artwork, a 'healthy', 'special', and 'wounded' combat portraits, and a unique chibi map sprite.
  • A notable example occurred with regular Chrom, whose art was done by Ebila. Regular Chrom's art was somewhat infamous for being a bit Off-Model due to his arms being extremely thin, even though Chrom himself is very fit. Ebila later produced art for Chrom's spring and winter alternates, both of which are marked improvements over his regular self's art. Here is an side-by-side comparison for context◊.
  • Some of the artists have their artstyle change overtime, especially if they done the same characters with their variants. For example, kaya8's artstyle originally has flat shading and simple detail, but has added more dynamic shading and details from 2019 onwards, especially with the character's faces and eyes, which you can see the difference with Lethe's Regular and New Year variants, and Katarina's Regular and Plegian variants.
  • Early in the game's life, most of the maps resembled typical castles, plains, or deserts, the aesthetics of which would just get repurposed for Grand and Bound Hero Battles. While they still do this for the most part, some of these maps are styled after specific areas from the main series, complete with a lot more detail. For instance, Micaiah and Sothe's Bound Hero Battle map just resembled a generic castle in terms of design but was structured after Part 1 Endgame's map of Radiant Dawn, while Legendary Micaiah's Grand Hero Battle map does that and actually resembles the castle of Daein.
• Art Shift:
  • As the character artwork is done by many different artists, the art style for each unit is all over the "realism vs. cartoony" spectrum. Of particular note is Arthur from Fates, who is drawn as if he came straight out of Code Name: S.T.E.A.M, another title by Intelligent Systems. This can also happen when two artists with clearly different drawing styles draw versions of the same character, such as the regular and Halloween versions of Jakob.
  • The character icons for the first batch of special Fire Emblem Warriors maps use the 3D models from that game instead of Heroes' standard 2D art.
  • Arden is realistically drawn in terms of his appearance compared to the anime-influenced characters, to match his Gonkish appearance.
  • The cinematic videos that tie-in to the Book stories are all rendered in 3D, but occasionally feature 2D animated artwork, such as the flashback to Peony and Triandra's childhood in the Book IV midpoint, Triandra's memories of her and Plumeria first meeting Freyja in the Book IV epilogue and the introduction of the Jötunheimr sisters in the Book V opening.
• Artistic Age:
  • Lachesis's exact age is unknown, but in Genealogy of the Holy War, she has the appearance of a late teen or young adult, which is reflected by her voice actor giving her a mature voice. However, her artist, Sakura Miwabe, makes her Regular variant look more like a preteen or at most in her early teens in Heroes, as seen here.
  • Downplayed with Regular Elincia, who was drawn by Kippu. While not as extreme as Lachesis, Elincia still looks a bit younger than her 18 year-old self from Path of Radiance thanks to her head and eyes being bigger and her more cheerful demeanor contrasting the more reserved expression she has in her home game. Later averted with her Resplendent version, which is drawn by Hayashi Niji, in which her proportions are more accurate for her age.
• Ascended Meme:
  • Brave Roy and Brave Ike each say a line that references a popular Super Smash Bros. meme — "Roy's our boy!" and "You...like Ike?", respectively.
  • Arden in Genealogy of the Holy War was infamous, to the point of being a meme, for being benched as early as the first level due to his horrible speed and movement, as well as the fact that his best job was to stay put and defend the castle he starts in. In Paralogue 13 Veronica criticizes him for how slow he is and has him dismissed after losing, and his character description mentions him being good at defending castles.
  • Dorcas from Blazing Blade and Lute from Sacred Stones scored very high in the Choose Your Legends event due to their Memetic Mutation. They got into Heroes together (along with Joshua from Sacred Stones and Mia from Path of Radiance, who are by default popular without the meme factor), breaking away the trend of 'non-seasonal banners usually consist of heroes from the same game'. Additionally, some of Dorcas' lines refer to Blazing Blade's hilariously misaimed advertisement that was the source of his memetic popularity, including "Trust nobody" and referring about eating some 'bad mutton'.^note At least it's not poisonous.
  • Innes has a signature weapon in the form of Nidhogg, which supplies boosts if you're surrounded by allies. This is a reference to the obscure Japanese meme "Save me Eirika!", referring to how Innes tended to get surrounded by enemies.
  • Lysithea in Three Houses is notorious among the game's fanbase for being the bane of the Death Knight thanks to learning Dark Spikes, a cavalry effective spell, which allows her to defeat him without breaking a sweat. This lead to many memes about her and how the big bad Death Knight is scared of a little girl. Fittingly, Brave Lysithea not only comes with Dark Spikes, but she was shown off in the Aug 2020 Feh Channel annihilating the Death Knight, smiting him in pretty much the same way as she can in their home game.
• Ass-Kicking Pose: Each player-controlled unit assumes one at the beginning of every player phase. Bladed weapon wielders brandish them at the ready, mages take a casting stance, Manaketes and dragons (with the exception of the Adrift Corrins, who hold their dragonstones close to them) hold up their dragonstones, while other shifters with default weapons lacking a visible stone strike attack poses. Some earlier seasonal units have more unique poses, like Summer Robin, who shields her eyes from the sun. And certain units generally strike poses that are based on their idle or attack CG's; these started out few and far in between, but more and more have cropped up and continue to be added, perhaps becoming most prominent starting with units added at the beginning of Book V.
• Audience Participation: Every year during late January there is a Choose Your Legends where fans can vote which characters they want to have a special "Brave" alt-unit. Following the vote, the top two male characters and the top two female characters are selected and their "Brave" incarnations are released in the following August. For the first two years, there was a quirk where if a character appeared in multiple games, the individual appearances would be considered separate characters and not the same person, meaning the votes would be split.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Generally, Specials with a cooldown charge of 4 or 5 are rather impractical. While they often have flashy effects and can be quite helpful when they activate, their long charge time hardly makes it worth it due to how short maps can be, alongside other factors. The only way this is averted is with skills like Steady/Warding/Fierce/Darting Breath, Bold/Vengeful/Special Fighter, Heavy/Flashing Blade, and weapons that accelerate the cooldown of specials, but they only work in certain situations and do not stack.
  • The AOE Specials (e.g. Growing Light and Blazing Flame) allow their user to hit all enemies caught in a certain area for up to 1.5 times what their Atk would have done before combat begins. Unfortunately, this otherwise useful effect is hampered by the Special's high cooldown of 4, meaning that a lot of effort is needed to precharge them before the intended use outside of a few heroes, and the affected area being odd patterns like diamonds, lines, and crosses that may not actually hit too many enemies at once. Furthermore, as the damage is done before combat, this can bring down enemy HP to certain thresholds, allowing a skill like Vantage to activate, which can let the opponent get the jump on the player. Damage done through these AOE specials also can't directly KO an enemy, always leaving them with at least 1 HP.
    • However, this is becoming increasingly averted with the rise of Damage Reduction mechanics. Since the specials only take into account the user's base Atk and the enemy or enemies' base Def or Res, it means that they can essentially ignore damage reduction... although there are certain effects that can reduce damage from AOE specials, such as Fallen Lyon's Blood Tome, and ones that can reduce damage from attacks and AOE specials such as Spurn, Dragon Wall and Spring Harmonized Myrrh & Nah's Lilac-Jade Breath.
  • Galeforce allows the user to take another turn, letting them perform another action. However, it has its drawbacks: first, it can only be used by units with melee weapons (barring breaths), so a unit has to get up close and personal to build their charge. Second, the user has to initiate combat for it to activate, meaning it can't be used on the enemy phase. Lastly, the users that engage in the most rounds of combat tend to be fragile, but hit hard, and thus are unlikely to survive multiple attacks. Use of skills such as Brave Weapons, Heavy and Flashing Blade, and Bold Fighter can make this special more usable, but for most units, it's not worth it.
  • Any skills or effects that require you to be at less than full HP for them to activate, such as the Brazen skills. Brazen skills can offer up to +7 to two different stats, but you need to be injured enough for them to even activate, meaning you're almost never going to have them available at the start of the match unless you find some way of inflicting damage on your own units like with Winter Bernadetta's tome.
  • Certain character builds can be very hilarious and ridiculous in performance but there are some setbacks that prevent them from being useful in certain scenarios. For example, a build which gives Lon'qu, Raven, and Linus very high Atk and Spd but very low Def and Res, all thanks to the Life and Death skill built into their weapons, granting +5 Atk and Spd at the cost of -5 Def and Res, which can stack with itself in the A and Seal slots, to a grand total of +15 Atk and Spd at the cost of -15 Def and Res. Without some support and skills like Close Call or Spurn, it really will be Life and Death as they'd be able to dish out good damage but not be able to take anything in return.
  • Skills that rely on you being debuffed, such as Fallen Ike's Chaos Ragnell, Atk/Spd Unity, Dagr's Skinfaxi, and similar skills, can all yield great stat swings if you're debuffed. How they usually work is that they grant you an in combat buff equal to double any debuff that you currently have, basically reversing it, and these skills can also stack, further amplifying the in combat boosts. However, the key word is if, because you can't guarantee your opponents having debuffing skills, which would mean such skills would be good but not at their full potential. There are a few units that can willingly inflict debuffs on your own units like Thrasir's Ífingr or Valentines Chrom's Duo Skill, but such units are hard to come by.

B

• Back from the Dead: The very nature of how the Breidablik works allows the Summoner to summon certain characters that have been canonically killed in their home games.
  • A couple of Regular and Legendary Sigurd's lines have him talk about his betrayal and Seliph's responsibilities, implying that you've somehow summoned and recruited him after his death in Genealogy of the Holy War. Similarly, Greil's lines about how he used to command a mercenary troop and that he told Ike to forget about revenge indicate that he comes from after his death.
  • Annand is another example. Right at the start of Forging Bonds: Enduring Legacy, she outright states that her last memory was falling downward towards Silesse while feeling the chill wind and floating endlessly into the water, heavily implying that she was summoned just moments after her death in her home game.
  • Mustafa is another one. From his castle and voice quotes to his dialogues in the Renewed Resolve Forging Bonds, it's evident that Mustafa was summoned after his demise.
  • Regular Lyon and Regular Sacred Stones Selena have certain lines that allude their intended fates in their home game. In the Peaceful Ends and Driven by Vision Forging Bonds respectively, it confirms that both of them were summoned after their deaths.
  • In Book III, Chapter 13, after Hel is defeated for good, "Líf" and "Thrasir" are shown alive with "Líf" telling "Thrasir" about a dream he had. Xenologue 5 revealed they came back to life.
  • Arval mentions that they have already died twice and are outside the cycle of life and death, but the Breidablik gave them a new body upon summoning them.
• Badass Adorable: The cast is full of all kinds of badass warriors... shown as incredibly cute chibi sprites.
• Badasses Wear Bandanas: The 6/27/2019 Voting Gauntlet focuses on badasses that wear bandannas (Olivia, Sanaki, Mia, Sue, Tibarn, Gray, Barst, and Jeorge).
• Bad Luck Mitigation Mechanic: There are several mechanics as part of the summoning to mitigate really bad luck.
  • For every five heroes where a 5-star hero is not summoned, the chances of summoning one increases by 0.5% for that specific banner while also reducing the chances of other rarities by a bit, split between the on focus 5-star and off focus 5-star.
  • If somehow a player summons 120 heroes without a 5-star appearing on a single banner (outside of the guaranteed 5-star hero certain banners have after 40 summons), the next hero summoned on that banner will be a guaranteed 5-star hero.
  • Some banners give a free pick of a 5-star unit after summoning 40 times. On special occasions, another free pick is given at 80, 120, and 160. The free picks do not affect the above pity rate.
  • When an off focus 5-star is pulled, it drops the pity rate by a maximum of 2%, instead of automatically back to the baseline, thus preserving some of the pity rate to try again.
  • Some of the 5-star units were removed and added to a special 4-star group; pulling one of these units causes the unit to immediately upgrade to 5-star after the summoning happens. Therefore, the player gets a 5-star unit, but the pity rate keeps going up because the unit was summoned as a 4-star.
  • Pulling an off focus 5-star on a banner earns a focus charge, getting three charges will change the odds on future summon sessions to replace the off focus 5-stars with the focus 5-stars. This lasts until a focus 5-star is finally pulled.
• Bag of Spilling: No matter how strong Heroes are in their games of origin, when you first summon them they all start off as level 1 weaklings.
• Bait-and-Switch Boss:
  • The 80th floor in most Tap Battles have one unit appearing to be the boss, but get taken out in 2-3 hits. The actual boss comes afterwards. It's taken up a notch with the fourth Tap Battle "Formidable Foes," which has Bartre (who was the first boss in the first Tap Battle) as a boss, who gets easily offed. Then comes Arthur, who lasts only slightly longer, with the true boss, Dorcas, showing himself afterward.
  • October 2018's "Heir of Light" Tap Battle in particular has all of the first generation parents of Genealogy of the Holy War be this for their children. However, unlike most of the other Bait-and-Switch bosses, it's not Played for Laughs, due to the circumstances of why the children take over the fight in their home game.
  • The Extra Stage 2 of the "Heartstring's Ties" Tap Battle is notable with Fallen Celica being the boss, who has slightly lower than average HP of a Tap Battle boss at that point, and then Regular Celica shows up... who has even less HP.
• Balance Buff:
  • The Weapon Refinery system was created for this purpose. It allows the player to buff weapons with either extra stats or an additional effect unique to that weapon. Refines roughly come in four forms: refines that only give extra stats (typically generic weapons), refines that give characters who lacked a unique weapon one, refines that give a secondary effect while leaving the base effect the same, and lastly refines that adjust/fix the base effect on top of a secondary effect. For an example of each: Fredrick received Frederick’s Axe that gives him extra damage against armored units, with the refine giving a built in Death Blow effect, Elincia’s Amiti was buffed to give +4 Atk/Spd when attacking, and L’Arachel’s Ivaldi has the effect changed from requiring the enemy to be at max HP to gain +3 Atk/Spd to now only requiring them be above 75% to gain +3 to Atk/Spd/Res, while the refined effect gives a Lull Atk/Res effect and minor healing effect if the above conditions are met.
  • The Book II update gave all 5-star staff units new offensive and healing staves with stronger effects, and access to Weapon Refinery upgrades. The update also reduced the cooldown for Area of Effect Specials, Daylight-based Specials (Sol, Noontime, and Daylight itself), and Night Sky-based Specials (Astra, Glimmer, and Night Sky itself) by one.
  • Each new "Generation" of units gradually increases the amount of base stats and growth points compared to previous ones. While some get less over time due to balance reasons, every archetype has since been buffed overtime to keep up with the meta, such as Dancers slowly gaining higher total stats as the game has gone on.
  • The February 2019 update buffs Legendary Azura's Prayer Wheel. Before the update, the weapon was bugged so that when support animations are on, Prayer Wheel's effect takes place before stat-boosting skills like Earth Dance, meaning the target gets +5 Def and nothing else. With support animations off, the effect takes place after said skills, meaning the target gets +5 to all their stats. While the version with support animations on was the intended effect, the update makes the version with animations off the standard.
  • The January 2020 update buffs Regular Igrene's Guardian's Bow. Before the update, the weapon allowed the user to inflict -5 Atk/Spd/Def on the opponent during combat if the user was faster. However, the ambiguous wording confused players, when the effect would actually activate if the user was faster before the start of combat. The update now changes it to check if the user was faster before and during combat, favoring the initiator if both users during combat use the same weapon if the initiator was faster before combat, or during combat after in-combat Spd boosts are calculated.
  • Each Resplendent Hero gains a flat +2 to each stat when purchased, giving them overall more raw power across the board. Since each hero with a costume has been a year one unit, this brings their stats more in line with later stat lines.
  • Updates since 5.2.0 gives Legendary Heroes and since 6.0.0 Mythic Heroes 2 new skills, which are sometimes stronger than their base ones, such as Legendary Ike gaining Joint Drive Res and Radiant Aether II, where it has the same effect as Radiant Aether, with the addition of giving him -2 special cooldown at the start of turn 1, and Legendary Ryoma getting Atk/Spd Rein 3 and Bushido II, which removes his flying weakness, grants +7 damage per attack, and 4% damage reduced from foe's attacks and non-Røkkr AOE specials for every point of Spd he has over his foe, up to 40% damage reduced, as opposed to +10 damage when the user triggers a damage special from Bushido.
  • Update 6.5.0 buffs the Erosion and Effulgence Captain Skills in Summoner Duels, where, in addition to prevent the foe from counterattacking and inflicts -4 Def/Res on the foe during combat if they trigger [Savior], also allows the Captain to prevent the foe from triggering [Savior] before the start of combat for Erosion, and, the +4 Atk/Spd and ignore any field stat buffs during combat to affect the Captain as well as all allies within 2 spaces of the Captain with Effulgence.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: All but a couple of the male characters have nipples when they go shirtless; the exceptions are Mustafa, Darros and Fargus.
• Barely-There Swimwear: The bikinis Loki and Thórr wear in their Summer variant don't leave much to the imagination, but they weren't Loki's first choice. She says that the suits she originally picked out were made of "even scanter material". Thórr didn't approve and glared at her until she got something more modest.
• Battle Aura: All but a few select of the Fallen Heroes have purple miasma in their map sprites.
• Battle Butler: Beside the actual butlers Frederick and Jakob, the August 2023 Special Hero banner "Invitation to Tea" features this as well as Ninja Maids, with Sigurd and Ferdinand wearing butler attire to serve tea to guests, with it not being the first time Ferdinand wearing a butler outfit.
• Beach Episode: The summer banners each feature four to five units dressed in swimwear, in addition to Anna trying to turn a profit for the summer in the former six. Paralogue 22 is notable in that the generic enemies are also in their Holiday Mode, as they are wearing goggles and snorkels over their helmets and hoods, and even wield the weapons that come from the previous two summer banners, such as the Deft Harpoon and Melon Crusher.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Despite the typical Clothing Damage, there are only a few units whose damage art actually shows them getting dirty in a fight. Aversions include characters drawn by Kozaki Yusuke, particularly Spring Alfonse and Spring Sharena, whose pristine white rabbit outfits are visibly stained with grime in their damage art.
• BFS: Alm's artwork shows his Falchion as disproportionately large. The blade is wider than it needs to be and the hilt is notably over-sized.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • "Feh Channel" is written as "フェーちゃんねる" in Japanese, which can also be interpreted as "Feh-chan neru," or "Feh-chan sleeps" in English.
  • A few of the character artworks have writing in the fictional language from Fire Emblem: Awakening.
    • Tobin's sword has the phrase "Doma o theos tou polemou prostatevei ton ploiarcho tou spathiou" inscribed onto it, which translates to "Doma, God of war protects the owner of the sword". This refers to Duma, the War Father who was worshiped as a god in Fire Emblem Gaiden, the game where Tobin is from.
    • Brave Lucina's Geirskogul has the phrase "Anime Project Success" inscribed onto it.
• Birds of a Feather:
  • In Paralogue 24, Ephraim and Hector quickly hit it off due to their shared love of fighting and lack of tact.
  • In Paralogue 26, Loki and Aversa quickly hit it off due to their shared love of manipulation with their feminine wiles.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • Book II. Surtr dies, but Gunnthrá is dead, countless innocents from both Nifl and Múspell are dead, Laevatein is devastated and traumatized by the deaths of her family, Embla and Loki are still threats, and Fjorm has only months to live due to a gambit that was necessary to remove Surtr's Múspellflame.
  • Book VI. Embla is slain and her curse is broken, but it came at the cost of the god Askr and two of Veronica's family. Despite this, she promises to rebuild her kingdom and now can have what she really wanted: to be friends with the royals of Askr.
• Bizarro Episode:
  • In-Universe. Paralogue 27 is easily this to the Askr Trio. The whole thing is all about a young Azura's dreams calling forth her visions of friends and family to reality, spurned by Loki, who sees great potential into such a method and exploits it for her amusement.
  • For much the same reason as the paralogue, Book IV is also this, being a massive Mind Screw arc where Alfonse is merely the Summoner dreaming themself as Alfonse, and almost the entire story takes place in a dream.
• Black Bead Eyes: The chibi sprites use a variation, the eyes are simple, beady, and doll-like, but rather than just being black, they come in a wide variety of colors.
• Black Comedy:
  • Regular Quan's weapon effect grants him buffs against every type of enemy movement type except fliers. This references the fact he is murdered by fliers in his home game.
  • Flora's weapon is a red dagger type - heavily associated with fire and dark elements - despite the fact she is from a tribe of ice and said weapon is blatantly named after ice. The color references her suicide by burning alive in Birthright.
• Blatant Lies: Spring Kagero says in one of her voice lines that she has nothing to be ashamed of, being dressed the way she is. Her words betray her, however; in her idle art, she seems to be trying to suppress her breasts with her right arm, has her left arm at her side, is clenching her left hand, and is blushing.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation:
  • The lance equivalent of the Wo Dao sword in English is called "Harmonic Lance". This is because of the Japanese name is "倭鉾", translated as "Japanese Lance", but "倭" could also be translated as "harmony". While "Harmonic Lance" is fitting for the hero that came with the weapon, Shigure from the "Wings of Fate" banner, who is a singer, it is a mistranslation, as if it fitted with the Chinese pronunciations of the weapon name, then the more accurate name for that weapon in English would be called "Wo Móu". The fact that the axe version of the Wo Dao is called "Wo Gún" reinforces that it was a mistranslation, but was too late to change it.
  • Mae's exclusive weapon name is called "Book of Orchids". Mae however has little relation to flowers, so the "orchids" part of the name makes no sense. This is because the Japanese name is called "金蘭の書", translated as "Tome of Profound Friendship", where it is more accurate to her personality, and her friendship with Celica. The "orchids" part come from "金蘭", where it is literally "gold orchid" in Japanese, where that can also be figuratively read as "profound friendship".
• Blow You Away: A number of Green Tomes let the user attack with wind magic, such as Elwind and Excalibur.
• Book Ends:
  • In the Book III opening cinematic the Alfonse that would become known as Líf is forced to watch Hel kill Sharena, with Sharena and him both doing a Futile Hand Reach towards each other before the fatal blow. In the ending cinematic, the exact same thing happens again with our version of Alfonse and Sharena, though this time Hel is stopped by Eir. Interestingly, Hel attempting to kill our version of Sharena is not something that happens in the story itself.
  • Book IV ends with you fighting a slightly souped-up version of Loki and the team she fought you with at the beginning of the book, on the exact same map to boot.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Free units. These can include units from the story, given out as events, Grand Hero Battle units, and units from the Heroes Path quests, and are usually pretty helpful in clearing the in-game PvE content. They will always start with Normalized Traits, so while they don't have any beneficial boons, they also have no detrimental banes, while you always risk getting a unit a bad stat combination when you summon for one. From Book II and onward, a unit from the story joins you for free, with all of them being Mythic Heroes from Book III and onward. Helpful free units in particular include the regular versions of Fjorm, Ninian, Peony, and Reginn, with Fjorm having a Distant Counter lance that can be refined, Ninian and Peony being refreshers to grant their allies an Extra Turn with their Dance abilities, and Reginn having great Hit-and-Run Tactics thanks to her weapon and movement.
  • Seals that simply increase a stat, such as Atk Spd 2 or the Squad Ace seals. All they offer are visible stats and nothing else, but those stat boosts can patch up banes, help a unit eke out a one-shot KO or survive and otherwise deadly blow, and some weapons and effects rely on visible stats to be checked, which these seals would help with.
  • Merging up low rarity units. These can include ones that were around since launch, units that have been demoted, or Grand Hero Battle and Tempest Trials units. The former two require summoning, but due to their ease of access, it's easy to acquire many copies of them to merge up. The latter two require Grails, which can be saved up for and earned, but will allow you to max out a unit without even having to use Orbs to summon for the extra copies. Plenty of the older launch units also have Resplendent versions to help make up for their lower stats as the game went on, while also giving them an art upgrade, and many, if not all of the launch units have an exclusive weapon that can be refined. Units like regular Chrom (who even gets his Sealed Falchion from his cavalry version), regular Reinhardt, and regular Fae are all easy to acquire but have high end potential once merged.
• Boyish Short Hair: Shanna, Amelia, Katarina, and Hinoka, who were the "Short-Haired Ladies" of the "Short-Haired Ladies vs. Long-Haired Gents" Voting Gauntlet.
• Boss in Mook's Clothing: The Grand, Bound, Legendary, Mythic Hero Battles usually include nameless mooks that are just as bad, maybe worse than the particular heroes in question. A lot of them are extremely powerful and generally have skills that will screw you over if you make a wrong move. Doesn't help that you have to have all of your allies survive the whole battle.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Most Heroes under the service of the Emblian Empire are heavily implied to be brainwashed as part of the contract they were forced to agree to. Many will act like aggressive enemies, only to become friendly after being defeated. Some of them are aware they are under contract and inform the protagonists that the only way to free them is to defeat them in battle.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Faye mentions that her interests include sewing, flowers, and sewing flowers.
• Breaking Old Trends: There's so many trends broken throughout the game's life that it needed its own page.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Some characters will talk as if the player is messing with them if they are tapped in the status screen. However, special mention goes to Normal Loki and Ninja Shinon, with one of their voice lines:
  Loki: Looking forward to what I'll say next?
  Ninja Shinon: You're so clingy. How'd you like it if I kept tapping you all day?!
• Breath Weapon: To fight, Dragon units fire magic attacks of various elements from their mouths.
• Breather Episode:
  • Paralogue 4, "Spring Festival" - Rather than fighting to free heroes under the spell of an Emblian contract, the Order of Heroes participates in a competition to celebrate Spring's arrival. The prize for winning said competition? A year's worth of carrots.
  • Paralogue 6, "Bridal Blessings" - As in the Spring Festival, the characters aren't fighting to free anyone or to oppose any villainous deeds. Instead, they're competing for a magical bridal bouquet that guarantees the recipient a happy marriage, with the Order of Heroes involved at Anna's insistence because she wants to auction the bouquet and blessing off to the highest bidder.
  • Paralogue 8, "Ylissean Summer" - Anna takes the Order to the beach so that she can take pictures of Heroes in swimsuits to sell off. Even though the Heroes are being compelled to fight, they all treat it as nothing more than a nuisance getting in the way of their beach day. Notably, this comes right after two of the more serious paralogues: "The Brink of Chaos," which introduces Loki and the Tempest Trials, and the Character Development-heavy "Echoes of Mystery." This continues into Paralogue 9, which is the same thing Recycled IN NOHR!
  • Paralogue 14, "Trick or Defeat", continues the trend of seasonal paralogues with a Halloween-themed "Harvest Festival", where the prize is pumpkins and possibly a legendary candy.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory:
  • Players can spend real life money to purchase orbs to spend on gacha pulls for better units. Orbs can also be used to buy the following items:
    • Stamina Potions, which fully restore Stamina.
    • Dueling Crests, which reset the number of times players can use the Arena.
    • Light's Blessing, which can be used in a map to completely heal every ally, revive fallen allies, ready every ally's special, and allows every ally that moved to move again. However, they can't be used during battles against a Grand Hero or in the Arena.
  • Players who have linked their MyNintendo accounts can also purchase these items using reward coins. However, the Light's Blessing can only be obtained this way a maximum of three times, and the gift of ten orbs can only be obtained once.
  • There are several packs you can purchase that give you bonus items along with orbs. These include a Starter Support Pack which gives Stamina Potions, Light's Blessings, and a 5-star Black Knight unit, and two limited-time New Year's 2019 packs which gave Aether Stones, Heroic Grails, and a specific 5-star New Year's 2019 unit.
  • Starting in April 2018, monthly special Orb promos are put up for sale, which include a bonus like feathers or Sacred Coins along with the orbs.
  • Mythic Heroes provide substantial benefits for Aether Raids. They boost lift gain depending on how many times they've been merged and how many allies have the corresponding blessing conferred to them. This encourages summoning multiple Mythic Heroes in order to get far in the mode. Later downplayed in 3.1.0, where Legendary Heroes sharing seasons with Mythic Heroes will be treated as if they received the Mythic Blessings.
  • Legendary Heroes from Roy: Blazing Lion onwards are capable of pairing up with other units in certain modes. They can switch even after they've taken their action, leading to plenty of shenanigans that can be performed. It's a pretty good incentive to keep pulling for Legendary Heroes.
  • Starting in early February 2020, a monthly subscription service called "Feh Pass" allow players to gain the following benefits:
    • Free Resplendent Heroes given out on every 10th and 25th on every month, which are skins for existing heroes in the game that wear attire from the world of Zenith as well as new voice lines, but can change freely between their regular and Resplendent art, and gain +2 to all of their stats to the original one when players receive them. Players can keep these heroes even if they cancel the Feh Pass.
    • Exclusive quests which refreshes on every 10th and 25th of every month that give Orbs, Divine Codes, Divine Dew, Heroic Grails, and Aether Stones.
    • Form Summoner Supports with up to 3 heroes instead of 1, and with the Loyalty Perks from update 5.8.0 onwards go up to 4 on the second consecutive month players are subscribed and 5 from the third onward, even counting the months players are subscribed starting from May 2021 when the Loyalty Perks were announced in late July 2021.
    • The Re-Act function, which allows players to rewind to the start of their previous turn if units didn't act on that turn, or rewind to the start of the current turn if a unit did act on that turn. This however cannot be used in certain modes, such as the Coliseum and Aether Raids modes. This function can be very useful in Grand/Bound/Legendary/Mythic Hero Battles ^note Which allow you to restart your turn if you happened to slip up so you could try to see what other positions could be effective, making them less time consuming in figuring out a strategy. and especially Hall of Forms^note Hall of Forms is very limited on the number of Torch usages, as every turn counts. Happened to mess up on that last turn or use an Assist Skill on accident? You essentially get another chance here.
    • The Auto-Start function, which allows players to automatically play certain maps multiple times in a row with the limit being how much stamina it would normally take to repeat those maps with their current stamina amount.
    • With the Loyalty Perks from update 5.8.0 onward with every Feh Pass monthly renewal players can log in to get 20 Dragonfruits and each Dragonflowers from the second month, and raises that to 40 each from the third month onward, even counting the months players are subscribed starting from May 2021 when the Loyalty Perks were announced in late July 2021.
    • With Legendary Female Byleth's Legendary Hero banner in December 2021 onwards, Feh Pass players can get a guaranteed focus summon alongside a Celestial Stone after 40 summons from Special Hero, Legendary and Mythic Hero, and Double Special Hero banners just like with the New Hero banners.
    • With the 7.2.0 update onwards, Feh Pass players can have the Focus Charge feature on Special, ω Special and Hero Fest banners as well as the other banners that feature a 5* and 5* focus rate.
  • A Forma Soul, beyond the quest reward from the 4th Anniversary quests, one of the Summoner Duels rewards, and trading in 3 Celestial Stones for one from the Celestial Stone Shop every several months, can be purchased every month (and an extra one since May 2022), which lets you take a Forma unit from the Hall of Forms mode into the main game, with skills and levels intact on top of their default skills. However, a Forma unit won't retain merge levels or Sacred Seals, can't be used as skill inheritance or merge fodder, can't be exchanged for a Combat Manual, and always starts with the Normalized Trait. Even so, it's still a potentially powerful unit, but it's a Luck-Based Mission to find the desired skills for that unit without resorting to inheriting skills to them.
  • Starting from May 2022, the Customization Support Pack, in addition to gifting Orbs and a new Castle Design every few months, also gives a big bonus for a limited time when purchased and a smaller one after the duration has expired, where for example with the Askr Castle Library in May 2022, it gives a x5 multiplier for SP gained for 90 days since purchase and a x2 multiplier afterwards.
  • Starting from December 2022, players can purchase an Otherworld Bond, which allows a player to create a Forma from one of the heroes switched into in Binding World, with the additions of keeping Skills and Traits on those heroes and the Dragonflowers boosts will be at maximum at that point, with the limitations that only one hero can become a Forma from each Binding World event, no Ascended Traits, merges or blessings are kept on those heroes and that only heroes released before Book Vi can become Formas.
• Broken Win/Loss Streak: Since its induction, the Voting Gauntlet has had female characters from either Awakening or Fates as the victor. This was cut short in the Choose Your Legends Gauntlet, in which Ike, from the Tellius series, defeated Fates's Camilla in the finals, making him not only the first male victor but also the first victor hailing from a pre-Awakening title.
• Brutal Bonus Level:
  • Special Maps can be ridiculously difficult on occasion, especially the Grand Hero Battles and Bound Hero Battles. They often employ units with impossibly inflated stats and dangerous skill loadouts, have map layouts designed to make approaches difficult, and some throw in reinforcements to prevent the player from having any breathing room. However, these maps usually yield good rewards, like a few Orbs, Feathers, or even a free unit.
  • The Abyssal difficulty of Legendary, Mythic, and Grand Hero Battles is certainly this trope taken to its logical conclusion. The stat inflation is taken to ridiculous levels, with some units reaching the HP cap, and those same units will even have Sacred Seals equipped just to rub it in. To put it into perspective, the lowest HP possible in Infernal is 41 HP, being around the average HP of player units; in Abyssal, it's 65 HP, where only a select few can even reach 60. What is your reward for clearing the maps? A golden version of an existing accessory (some of which are already golden themselves).
• The Bus Came Back:
  • Some obscure characters from older games return to the franchise here. The characters with the longest absence from the franchise to return in Heroes are Febail and Patty, who hadn't appeared in-game in over 27 years.
  • With the release of Micaiah, Light magic as its own separate category returns after a little under 11 years.

C

• Call-Back:
  • When Sharena mentions the prize for the Harvest Festival being a year's supply of pumpkins, Anna says "We've been eating carrots every day...", the carrots likely coming from the Spring Festival.
  • Talking to Halloween Nowi will have her point out that witches did exist a long time ago. Her home game Awakening takes place many, many years after the events of Fire Emblem Gaiden, where witches were one of the many enemies that Alm and Celica faced off against.
  • At the end of the Spring Festival Paralogue, Spring Camilla tells Sharena that she needs to "wear a springy costume" since she was the winner of that year's festival, embarrassing Sharena. Come the Hares at the Fair Paralogue, we see her costume, and she's still embarrassed about it.
  • Brave Celica and Alm's art are an homage to their Gaiden attire, except done in Hidari's style.
  • Tempest Trials+: Familiar Faces is named as such because the Mia and Dorcas seen here are the same ones from Tempest Trials: Less Than Heroic. "Marth" recognizes them and remembers how Dorcas wanted to get paid last time, and is especially grateful to Mia, who convinced the other Farfetched Heroes to help "Marth" for free.
  • 2019's Valentine units, like 2018's Valentine units, feature:
    • 2 Cavaliers units (Roy and Lilina, Mist and Soren), and 2 Armored units (Hector and Lyn, Greil and Ike).
    • A Father and Daughter pair that is an Axe and a Green Tome user (Hector and Lilina, Greil and Mist).
    • The Axe unit being the Father who also died in their home game (Hector and Greil).
    • One unit with Distant Counter who also takes the festival tournament seriously (Hector and Ike).
  • The connecting themes from all the Valentine units from 2018 to 2021 and 2024 feature:
    • At least 2 Armored units on the main banner (Hector and Lyn for 2018, Greil and Ike for 2019, Faye and Rudolf for 2020, Gustav, Henriette and Alfonse for 2021, Myrrh, Ephraim and Vigarde for 2024).
    • At least 2 Cavalry units available during the event (Roy and Lilina for 2018, Mist, Soren and Titania for 2019, Conrad and Silque for 2020, Veronica and Duo Líf & Thrasir for 2021, Selena and Duo Lyon & Eirika for 2024).
    • A Father and Child/Children relationship (Eliwood and Roy, Hector and Lilina, Greil and Ike/Mist, Rudolf and Alm, Gustav and Alfonse, Vigarde and Lyon).
    • One of the Armored units being the Father who wields a melee weapon and also died before or during the events in their home game (Hector, Greil, Rudolf, Gustav, Vigarde).
  • 2019's Spring units, like 2018's Spring units, feature:
    • A sibling pair of Heroes original characters (Alfonse and Sharena, Bruno and Veronica).
    • A Whitewing sister (Catria and Palla).
    • A flying dagger unit (Kagero and Palla).
    • A unit voiced by Connor Kelley (Catria and Marisa).
    • A flying, colorless ranged unit who's quite buxom (Kagero and Loki).
    • A 3:1 female-to-male unit ratio on the banner.
  • 2021's Choose Your Legends banner is similar to 2019's in a few ways.
    • Both have a lance cavalier with dual effectiveness who hail from a GBA title, drawn by Wada Sachiko (Eliwood and Eirika).
    • Both have an sword infantry Lord with dragon effectiveness (Alm and Marth), both of whom incidentally exist in the same setting.
    • Both feature a Lord drawn by Kita Senri (Micaiah and Marth).
    • Both feature a female Lord with dual effectiveness (Micaiah and Eirika).
    • The male winners are both voiced by Kyle McCarley and Yuri Lowenthal, right down to the same placement (Alm and the Gatekeeper, Eliwood and Marth).
    • The colourless unit is distinctly not a Lord (Camilla and Marianne).
    • Both feature a green tome wielder whose artwork and sprite are a bit more involved (Micaiah has Yune, the Gatekeeper has the actual Garreg Mach monastery and various characters from Fodlan).
    • The free unit hails from Tellius (Sigrun and Pelleas).
  • Ronan's Forging Bonds conversation series features the same village built in the prior event "Path to the Future" by Eyvel, Mareeta, Osian, and Tanya.
  • Choose Your Legends 2023 shares plenty of similarities with 2022's edition:
    • The first place women are long-lived individuals donning attire from a prior stage in their lives (Tiki and Gullveig).
    • The first place men are main characters from Awakening with a weapon class accessible to them in their home game that differs from their base versions (Chrom and Robin).
    • The second place women are avatar characters with colorless weapons for their Brave versions (Byleth and Corrin).
    • The second place men originate from before the 3DS era and use the same weapon class in their Brave versions as their base versions (Seliph and Soren).
    • The Grand Heroes originate from Three Houses and are affiliated with the Church of Seiros (Jeralt and Cyril).
  • Brave Gullveig's Forging Bonds conversation series contains her reminiscing moments from Book VII, from when she was Seiðr.
• The Cameo:
  • Before Lilith appeared in Heroes, Nohrian Summer Xander wielded a floatie of her dragon form as a weapon. Lilith eventually gained another cameo as a mask being worn by Yukata Xander. The mask would soon enough go on to become an accessory that can be worn by any other unit, barring Yukata Xander himself.
  • Jorge's special art features his brother, Daniel, who has not made a proper appearance as a unit in Heroes at the time.
  • Brave Gatekeeper uses a horn to call upon some members of the Three Houses cast. Some of them are, at the time of this writing, not official units yet: the Feh Channel presentation revealed normal forms of Sylvain, Lorenz, and Rhea, along with Cyril and Alois. Other characters that can appear include Manuela, Hanneman, and Aelfric.
  • Engage's Timerra was not present in Heroes at the time she made a guest appearance in "Moove with Askr", the 2023 April Fools' Day video.
  • Male Alear of Engage only appeared as a Retraux accessory that can be bought in the accessories shop at the time it was added.
• Camera Abuse: Bridal Charlotte carries a comically oversized spoon as a lance with an equally comically oversized spoonful of wedding cake on it. The icing splatters everywhere whenever she attacks, with some globs ending up sticking to the screen.
• Canon Name: The Summoner's name defaults to Kiran.
• Can't Catch Up: Downplayed. The game has several ways of boosting the power of older units, allowing almost every unit can be used and remain relevant. For example: Weapon Refines can give older units new weapons/buff out of date ones, while Dragonflowers can boost the raw stats of a character to let them be on par with the current standard statline. However, many units can struggle to stay relevant due to odd weapons, stat allocation, or process of acquiring, and the general powercreep of newer units tend to make older units less viable. So while an older unit like Stahl can fight newer units if invested in, he'll still fall behind compared to new units in the same general typing as him due to better stats, skills, or weapon effects right out the gate.
• Cap:
  • The maximum level for every Hero is 40, and every Hero can gain up to 10 bonus levels by being merged with copies of the same rarity. Getting a five-star Hero to level 40 also triggers a special conversation.
  • The cap for HP is 99.
  • The cap for SP is 9999.
  • The cap for Orbs is 9999.
  • You can hold at most 999,999 shards or crystals of one type.
  • Generally, the cap for Hero Merit is a multiple of a thousand, though this is raised through major updates. The current cap is 9000 HM.
  • The cap for the Barracks' size is 1100.
  • The cap for every consumable item in Arena Assault is 99.
  • A Hero that can be summoned with Heroic Grails can be summoned up to 20 times. The Grail cost to summon a particular Hero gets increased by 50 every time that Hero is summoned; it stops increasing after 9 summons of the same Hero, with the most expensive Grails summon costing 500 Grails.
  • All units can only move one more extra space beyond their base movement outside of warping, either by the Infantry Boots in Arena Assault and Resonant Battles, movement boosting support skills such as Annette's Crusher and Legendary Azura's Gray Waves, or skills such as Odd/Even Tempest, Armored Boots, Armor March, Armored Stride, or the Flying Beast when they're transformed.
  • Dragonflowers can be used to increase the stats of an ally (spread evenly), introduced before 3.2.0, with the limit up to 10 stats on Infantry released before 3.2.0, and 5 on Infantry released in 3.2.0 and beyond, Flying, Cavalry, and Armored, and the cap raised by 5 after the CYL reveal for units from the previous generations, and 5 on current generations units. The current cap is 30.
  • In Røkkr Sieges, the amount of damage you can deal to a Røkkr in one session is capped to 15000-25000 damage times the number of siege stamina spent, depending on difficulty.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Surtr, the Big Bad of Book II, spends all of his screentime trying to kill someone (sometimes succeeding) and loudly enjoying every minute of it. In terms of playable "heroes", Grima (as Fallen or Legendary Robin) makes absolutely no effort to hide their true nature as a hope-crushing Destroyer Deity and they want everyone to know it.
• Cartoon Meat: The Bone-In Meat EX accessory resembles a lot like Manga Meat with a visible bite mark on top, whereas its regular counterpart is a generic drumstick.
• Cast from Hit Points:
  • Fury grants a character a flat boost to Atk, Spd, Def, and Res, at the cost of losing a few HP after every combat. The bonus to stats and the HP lost depends on the Skill's tier: "Fury 1" boosts by 1 and costs 2 HP, "Fury 2" boosts by 2 costs 4 HP, "Fury 3" boosts by 3 and costs 6 HP, and "Fury 4" boost by 4 and costs 8 HP. The 2019 Halloween weapons have the "Fury 3" effect as well. Keep in mind that the HP cost this skill inflict stacks with any of the weapons listed below.
  • The Push Skills grants boost to the user during combat, but deals damage to the user after combat if they attacked, with the Tier 1~3 versions only inflicting 1 damage after combat, but need to be at full HP to gain the effects, and the Tier 4 versions inflicting 5 damage after combat, but needs the user to be at 25% HP at the start of combat to get the effects.
  • Close Salvo and Distant Pressure/Storm allows the user to counterattack against melee and ranged foes respectively, as well as granting +5 Atk for Close Salvo and Distant Storm and +5 Spd for Distant Pressure during combat if the user is at 25% HP or above at the start of combat, but deals 5 damage to the user after combat if the user attacked.
  • Ardent Sacrifice gives the owner the ability to heal an ally for 10 HP without needing to be a Staff user, but it costs 10 HP per use to do so. Micaiah's Sacrifice takes this further, wherein it drains Micaiah's current HP until she only has 1, and restores an ally's HP equal to the amount that Micaiah lost. Sacrifice can also turn debuffs on that same ally into buffs, though this does not cost Micaiah any HP.
  • Inverted with Mystic Boost, which allows the user to negate skills and weapons effects that target the user's lower defensive stat and calculates full damage for staves, and allows the user to counterattack regardless of the user's status effect or foe's skills if the foe wields a Staff weapon with Mystic Boost 4, and gain 6 HP after combat with Mystic Boost 3 and 10 HP with Mystic Boost 4, even if the user did not attack. Notably, it can even counter the HP costs of skills and weapons, sometimes even allowing the user to gain HP instead of losing it.
  • The 2019 Halloween weapons and the exclusive refinement for Regular Eldigan's Mystletainn, Regular Bartre's Axe of Virility, and Regular Hinata's eponymous Katana essentially gives the user Fury 3, with the same boost and HP cost. With Fury 3 also equipped on their A slot (which is included in all of their default skill kits), they gain +6 Atk/Spd/Def/Res, but also lose 12 HP after combat. This can be amplified further with the Fury 3 Seal, for a total of +9 Atk/Spd/Def/Res but at the cost of 18 HP after combat.
  • Valter's unrefined Cursed Lance grants him +2 Atk/Spd and -1 special cooldown, but he loses 4 HP after combat, while his refined Cursed Lance increases that to +3 Atk/Spd/Def/Res, but loses 6 HP after combat, like Fury 3.
  • All the Ylissean Summer weapons gives the user +2 Atk/Spd/Def/Res during combat if the user is at full HP at the start of combat, but the user loses 2 HP after combat if they attack.
  • Regular Celica's tome Ragnarok gives her +5 Atk/Spd during combat if she is at full HP at the start of combat, but she loses 5 HP after combat if she attacks. Refining her Ragnarok removes the full HP requirement, so she always has +5 Atk/Spd during combat, and loses 5 HP after combat if she attacks.
  • Fallen Celica's unrefined Beloved Zofia is similar to the Ylissean Summer weapons in that it gives her +4 Atk/Spd/Def/Res if she is at full HP at the start of combat, but she loses 4 HP after battle if she attacks. The refined version removes the HP check, making the stat boost and HP cost active regardless of the user's HP.
  • The exclusive refinement for Regular Alm's Falchion allows him to attack twice if he initiates combat and is at full HP at the start of combat, but he loses 5 HP after combat.
  • The Push skills are a Downplayed example, increasing 2 stats by 5 when starting combat at full HP, and costing the user 1 HP if the user attacked. Played Straight with the Tier 4 version, where if the user is at 25% HP or greater at the start of combat, they gain +7 to two of their stats during combat, but lose 5 HP after combat if they attack.
  • Brave Celica's Double Lion is another Downplayed example, which allows her to attack twice consecutively no matter what weapon she's wielding, but only if she is at full HP at the start of combat and if she initiates combat. She then loses 1 HP afterward.
  • Regular Líf's Sökkvabekkr and Valentine Duo Líf & Thrasir's Þjálfi are a unique case. The wielder gains +4 Atk/Spd/Def/Res in combat as well as a guaranteed follow-up attack for the former, and +6 Atk/Spd/Def/Res, halving the foe's Damage Reduction, and a guaranteed follow-up for the latter if the wielder is within 3 spaces of an ally, but 20 damage is dealt—not to the wielder, but the ally nearest to the wielder.
  • Fallen Berkut's Kriemhild is another unique case. If the enemy is a ranged attacker and initiates combat, the wielder is able to counterattack them as well as deny any of their follow-up attacks if there is an ally within 2 spaces of them, but 20 damage dealt—not to the wielder, but the ally nearest to the wielder.
  • Regular Eir's unrefined Lyfjaberg gives her, if she's at 50% HP or above at the start of combat, +4 Atk/Spd during combat and if she initiates, negates any enemy follow-up attacks, but lose 4 HP after combat if she attacks.
  • Fallen Delthea's Death and Barst's Devil Axe, in addition to granting +3 Res for the former, grants +4 Atk/Spd/Def/Res during combat, but loses 4 HP after combat if they attack.
  • Brave Alm's Scendscale makes him deal 25% of the user's Atk as damage, but loses 7 HP after combat if he attacks.
  • Limstella's Morph Fimbulvetr allows them to inflict -8 Atk/Res on the foe, deny their follow up attack, and allows Limstella to deal damage equal to the highest Atk and Res buff on any ally within three spaces, but after combat, the closest allies within three spaces lose 15 HP as a result.
• Casting Gag:
  • Young Marth is voiced by Yuu Kobayashi, who also voices Lucina, Marth's descendant who disguised herself as him for.
  • Julian is voiced by Shannon McKain, who is the basis of the Lovable Rogue character archetype throughout the series. Ashe from Three Houses is based partly off this archetype, and is also voiced by Shannon McKain.
  • During the August 2022 Feh Channel which showed off that year's Choose Your Legends units, Feh wonders what Sothis would think of Byleth's outfit, as she's dressed exactly like Sothis, which is a nod to how both Feh and Sothis are voiced by Cassandra Lee Morris.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The first several chapters of Book I were fairly lighthearted and somewhat humorous, having you break the contracts of characters from various Fire Emblem games, all controlled by what is pretty much a young brat. However, by Chapter 10 and onward, it shifts to a more serious story involving the mysterious Bruno — and even Veronica gets more serious. This goes full throttle by Book II, where very dark and dangerous villains and an Anyone Can Die fervor start to show up.
• Challenge Run: The Limited Hero Battle maps that occur monthly since April 2020, which lasts only for a week. The maps include a selection of Grand, Bound, Legendary, and Mythic Hero Battle maps, with the restriction that players can only use units that originate from a specific game or two, such as characters from The Blazing Blade for one map, and Genealogy of the Holy War and Thracia 776 for another, with the only game excluded being Tokyo Mirage Session: ♯FE, due to only currently having 5 characters from that game available in Heroes. The Limted Hero Battle maps also restrict how many refreshers players can deploy on the maps, with maps 1, 3, and 5 allowing only one refresher, while maps 2 and 4 not allowing any. However, the Limited Hero Battle maps also remove the restriction of players needing to deploy 4 heroes from the original maps, so some of those maps can be completed with even one hero if players want to further challenge themselves.
• Character Class System:
  • There are four main movement classes: Infantry, Cavalry, Flier, and Armor. Each one has its own strengths and weaknesses:
    • Infantry: Has 2 movement and is slowed by tree tiles. The only class without any dedicated Status Buff support (outside of Infantry Rush and Infantry Flash), but only one Anti-Infantry weapon exists compared to the other classes having several dedicated anti-unit weapons, and have families of skills either exclusive to them or share with one other movement type.
    • Cavalry: Has 3 movement, cannot cross tree tiles, and slowed by trench tiles. Stat totals are slightly smaller than other classes to compensate for their movement advantage.
    • Flier: Has 2 movement, is not slowed by tree tiles, can cross otherwise impassable tiles like water with no penalty, and have access to mobility increasing, damage-decreasing, and in-combat debuff skills. Weak to bows.
    • Armor: Has 1 movement, but is not slowed by trees and has exclusive access to powerful skills, such as the Fighter and Near/Far Save skills. Has the highest stat totals of all movement types to compensate for their lower movement.
  • Units are also divided into different weapon types, with 2 attack range units having lower Base Stat Total than 1 attack range units to balance their larger attack range. Certain skills are exclusive to each attack range, as well:
    • Sword/Lance/Axe: Physical weapons that have 1 attack range. Divided into the 3 primary colors and target the enemy's Def.
    • Breath: Magical weapons that have 1 attack range and are categorized as Dragons. Available in all colors, not restricted to color for weapon inheritance, target the enemy's Res if they have an attack range of 1, and the lower defensive stat if they have an attack range of 2^note Without refinements, breath weapons released before 2.0.0 target the enemy's Res only for all attack ranges. Like the non-infantry movement classes, breath users have unique skills such as the Goad and Ward class skills.
    • Beast: Physical weapons that have 1 attack range and are categorized as Beasts, and currently all Beast weapons are unique to each Beast character in Heroes. Available in all colors, target the enemy's Def, and if the user either starts their turn only adjacent to other Beasts or Dragons, or alone, they transform, gaining +2 Atk and specific effects: +1 movement for Flying beasts, +10 damage for combat specials pre-6.0.0 and +7 damage for combat specials and ignore skills that inflict -1 special buildup on the user and grant +1 special buildup on the foe post-6.0.0 for Infantry beasts, denies any enemy follow-up attacks and inflict -4 Atk/Def to the enemy during combat if the user initiates combat for pre-7.7.0 and inflicts -3 Atk/Def and -1 additional Atk/Def for each space the initiator moved, and reduces damage from the foe's first attack by 30% if the initiator moved 2 or more spaces post-7.7.0 for Cavalry beasts, and can counterattack regardless of range for Armored beasts. Like the non-infantry movement classes, beast units have unique skills such as the Goad and Ward class skills.
    • Tomes: Magic weapons that have 2 attack range. Available in all colors and target the enemy's Res.
    • Bows: Physical weapons that have 2 attack range and are effective against flying units. Available in all colors, not restricted to color for weapon inheritance, and target the enemy's Def.
    • Daggers: Physical weapons that have 2 attack range and apply stat debuffs after attacking. Available in all colors, not restricted to color for weapon inheritance, and target the enemy's Def.
    • Staves: Magic staves that have 2 attack range, can inflict certain negative effects effects after attacking or at the start of their turn, or have effects that supports other allies, and have healing assist commands. Currently only colorless, deal halved, rounded-down damage without modification effects like Wrathful Staff; and target the enemy's Res.
  • There are unique units with gimmicks that determine their Level 1 and Level 40 Base Stat Total (compared to their current Gen average BST):
    • Veteran: Units that have higher Level 1 stats than the average unit, but have less stat growths and have lower average Level 40 stats as a result.
    • Trainee: The opposite of Veterans, having lower average Level 1 stats, but have more stat growths and have higher average Level 40 stats as a result.
    • Dancer: Units that can allow an ally to perform another action (unless that ally has Sing, Dance, or Play), have lower average Level 1 stats and no changes to their stat growth.
• Character Roster Global Warming:
  • At the launch of the game, there were only five Armour units out of almost 100 characters. Not only that, but one of them is the super-rare Hector, and the daily hero rotation does not include any of them, making it fairly hard to get even one of them. The first new Armoured unit was released in late April 2017 in the form of Grand Hero Zephiel. Another dry spell happened afterward, until a new Armour unit, Amelia, was added in August 2017. While Armoured units have been released a little more consistently since then, they are still far and away the rarest movement type.
  • While there were a few red and blue dragons at launch, one of each being available at 3*, Fae used to be the only green dragon in the game until Myrrh was added nearly a year later, and Male Fallen Robin was released sometime afterward. While Myrrh and Male Fallen Robin are 5* exclusive, Fae was slightly uncommon, being 4-5* until the 2.4.0 update made her 3-4*, making her as common as the other dragons (barring regular Young Tiki, who remains 5* exclusive).
• Character Select Forcing:
  • Certain quests require players to use a certain weapon type, usually axes, swords or lances, within certain story and paralogue chapters on Lunatic to earn rewards. Monthly quests also have party requirements, but are more lenient since they typically require certain weapon colors. The only difficult monthly quests are the Tenth Stratum movement type quests.
  • The Blessed Gardens only allows teams of units with blessings or affinities of the same element. To compensate, the stat boosts from Legendary Heroes are always active in Blessed Gardens battles.
  • Arena, Aether Raids, and Tempest Trials have bonus units that the user at least needs in their team to gain extra score or lift, with extra stat boosts to those heroes for compensation. In Arena, the bonus heroes also need to defeat foes for the player to get more score. All three modes can be played without the player using those bonus heroes, but they will score less if they do so.
  • Grand Hero and Bound Hero Battle revival quests require using either Alfonse, Anna, Sharena, or Fjorm^note or in the case of GHB revivals, the Grand Hero whose battle is being rerun to defeat certain enemies who are at level 40, have them at least participate in the specific Hero Battle, and use only a certain movement type to beat Lunatic difficulty.
  • The first GHB Elite quests require players to clear the respective rotation maps^note Narcian, Navarre, Female Robin, Ursula, Lloyd, Michalis, and Xander on Infernal with teams consisting of a single movement type to earn quest rewards. To compensate for the challenge due to the high demand of the player and their luck pulling units, the quests are available for a year since their addition.
  • The second GHB Elite quests require players to clear the second Grand Hero Battle rotation maps^note Zephiel, Camus, Legion, Clarisse, Berkut, Valter, and Arvis with teams of units that share the same elemental blessing or affinity to earn quest rewards. These quests are also available for a year since their addition, but they only require Lunatic clears (unlike the first GHB Elite quests), and the teams can consist of whatever movement types the player desires.
  • In Aether Raids, in order to maximise gaining lift, while also lose less lift on defeat on Aether Defense in order to reach the higher tiers, players need to use Mythic Heroes on the right teams, with Light and Astra Mythic Heroes on the raiding teams, while using Dark and Anima Mythic Heroes on the defense teams, alongside with units with either the matching blessing on the same team, or Legendary Heroes with the matching Season they're currently sharing with the Mythic Heroes.
  • Heroic Ordeals has heroes that have specific maps catered to them and as a result must be included in that battle, have only one other ally, and get at least 2 KOs to earn rewards. To compensate, the first Heroic Ordeal battle after the daily reset will give both units +10 HP and +4 Atk/Spd/Def/Res until the player wins a Heroic Ordeal battle.
  • Allegiance Battles give additional score if the player defeats a green foe with a red unit, a red one with a blue unit, a blue one with a green unit, and a colorless one with a colorless unit, and more so if the user was paired up, so to get a good elimination score, they need to build a balanced team with at least one of every color, or need at least one Legendary Hero pair up with another ally of a different weapon color and the last ally being a different color of the previous two paired up with a friend's ally of the last remaining color to potentially get the maximum elimination score.
  • The Limited Hero Battle starting from April 2020 has players limited to using heroes from a specific game to complete all the difficulties, with Grand, Legendary, and Mythic Hero Battle maps limiting the amount of dancers on their team to one, and the Bound and early Grand Hero Battle maps restricting that to no dancers on their team. To compensate, the difficulties for Limited Hero Battles were actually one tier lower in terms of stats, such as enemies units in Infernal difficulty actually having stats from the Lunatic difficulty, as well as giving the option to have players not use the 4 unit requirement from the Hero Battles, even letting just one unit be used in the Limited Hero Battles. However, from June 2020's Limited Hero Battles onwards, the enemy stats on the original Hero Battle difficulties remains unchanged. Notably, as the developers are well aware that titles like Gaiden, Elibe, and Sacred Stones aren't as plentiful in viable options as the rest of the titles, expect any of these to be forced on you for the Legendary/Mythic Hero Battles for added difficulty in variety.
  • Resonant Battles allow players to deploy any 4 heroes to take down 6 Thieves before they escape to the top of the map. However, the mode also give 10 bonus points for each hero from the same games as the bonus titles within the same season, with one of the titles alternating between two games with the recently released Harmonized Hero, with said Harmonized Hero multiplying the bonus points of each hero, and being inflicted penalty to points if they deploy more than one dancer. So to get the maximum score, you need at most 2 Harmonized Heroes from the same games as the current season, as well as 2 other heroes from the same games while also not deploying more than 1 dancer. To compensate, heroes from the bonus titles of that season get +10 HP and +4 Atk/Spd/Def/Res within that mode.
• The Chase: Resonant Battles has the player attempt to chase and take down 6 Thieves in a large map who are trying to escape to the top of the map, where the Thieves are unarmed and there are other enemy heroes on the map to delay players to reaching some of them, but all the enemies are limited to 1 movement.
• The Chessmaster: Alfonse is always revealed to be at least three steps ahead his enemies. He's able to successfully trick people such as Hel, Letizia and Hræsvelgr (almost getting himself killed in the last one's case too) and still make it out.
• Chromatic Rock Paper Scissors: The weapon triangle returns; swords are color-coded red, axes green, and lances blue. The various colors of offensive magic have the same relationship to each other: Red beats green, which beats blue, which beats red, etc.
• Classy Cat-Burglar: The Risk and Reward banner in August 2022 has the female units be this, with Cath, Leila, Nina & Kagero dressing up as classical thieves in mostly skintight catsuits, with the latter two be a Duo unit as well. Bonus points for all of them being literal thieves in their home game, as well as Cath not only having cat features on her costume, but is one letter away from her name being one as well.
• Cliffhanger: Since the story mode has an episodic release schedule, some chapters end this way.
  • At the end of Book III, Chapter 11, Lif sets off a trap to kill Alfonse, even at the cost of his own life. The Order of Heroes' fate is not revealed until the start of the next chapter.
  • Book IV, Chapter 12 ends with Freyja claiming that Alfonse is already dead.
  • At the end of Book VI, Chapter 3, Letizia reveals that she was the one who framed Veronica.
  • In Book VI, Chapter 8, after Letizia dies, Embla declares that there are two other people with her blood she can possess- Veronica or Bruno- and decides on one of them, but the chapter ends before she reveals which one.
• Clothing Damage:
  • When a character is brought down to more than half of their HP, their artwork changes to show them with their clothes ripped and tattered. While some of these pieces qualify as fanservice, most of them show the characters covered with dirt, cuts, and/or bruises to show how bad the damage is.
  • When Prince Bruno, aka Zacharias is dying in Book VI, he has a unique sprite in which his shirt is ripped off, exposing his chest.
• Coat Cape:
  • Female Robin drapes her tactician robe over her shoulders in her summer variant, so she can show off her swimsuit.
  • Day of Devotion 2019: Ike drapes his coat over his shoulders for battles. Downplayed with Soren; he's wearing the left sleeve of his dress robe while leaving the right sleeve empty.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
  • Each weapon is associated with a color and a shape. Red weapons are represented by a red square, green weapons are represented by a green pentagon, blue weapons are represented by a blue square, and colorless weapons are represented by a gray circle. Each character is also represented by a color, based on what their weapon is.
  • Each element for the seasons and Legendary and Mythic Heroes have a color associated with them: Red for Fire, Blue for Water, Green for Wind, Orange for Earth, Yellow for Light, Purple for Dark, Pink for Astra, and Grey for Anima.
  • Dragonflowers are colorcoded depending on movement type: red boosts infantry, blue boosts fliers, yellow boosts cavalry, and green boosts armors.
  • In general, each stat has a certain colour assigned to it, which are reflected in the skill icons. Atk is red, Spd is green, Def is yellow, and Res is Blue. For example, Sturdy Blow (which boosts Atk and Def) is red and yellow, Darting Breath (which boosts Spd) is green, and Atk/Res Rein (which debuffs Atk and Res) is red and blue.
• Com Mons: Units that are summonable at 3 or 4 stars. You will inevitably summon lots of these, such as Regular Bartre, Wrys, and Virion, though they can be easily merged into a more powerful unit.
• Combat Medic: Unlike the main Fire Emblem games, staves can be used to cast magical attacks in addition to healing. However, staves have their damage cut in half and rounded down, unless the unit has the Wrathful Staff skill or upgrades their staff to negate the penalty. To compensate, many staves have additional effects to make up for their reduced damage.
• Comeback Mechanic:
  • During Voting Gauntlets, if a character falls far enough behind their opponent, their point gain is given a multiplier for an hour. The multiplier also gets bigger the later into the round it's received, topping out at x7.5 during the final hour, then later x12. The March/April 2019 Voting Gauntlet added an inversion in the form of an endurance bonus for the team in the lead, although it's not as effective as the disadvantage bonus, topping out at x3.25 during the final hour.
  • In Grand Conquests, if one team has significantly less areas than the others, the areas the losing team does have will start with higher defense scores than usual.
  • In Pawns of Loki, a second consecutive turn lost and beyond will multiply the amount of War Bonds you receive next turn by x1.5 until you win a turn.
• The Comically Serious:
  • Kagero remains stoic and focused on her task no matter what she's wearing or doing. She says things like "Ninjabbit attack!" with stone-cold seriousness while wearing a bunny outfit, and completely gets into the Harvest Festival mood, treating trick or treat like it's a life-or-death situation.
  • The Harvest Festival variations of Grima makes it very clear that they're not enjoying the festivities.
• Competitive Balance:
  • Cavalry units and singers/dancers have lower overall stat totals than regular infantry to balance out their various perks.
  • Version 2.1.0 introduced trenches to combat the dominance of all-cavalry teams in Arena. Trenches are to cavalry as forest tiles are to infantry in that cavalry can only travel one space moving through a trench.
  • Armor units often have an exceptionally high stat or two to compensate for their low movement.
  • Ranged units have lower overall stat totals compared to melee units of the same movement type, to compensate for their larger attack ranges.
• Composite Character:
  • Eliwood appears to be his younger self from The Blazing Blade, but talks about how he believes that his son Roy surpasses him as a warrior, which wouldn't happen until Eliwood was his older, sickly self in The Binding Blade.
  • Arvis's art is based on his appearance from before Genealogy of the Holy War's Time Skip and is a regular mage instead of his unique armored mage class, but mentions Deirdre and Julia if killed, the latter who is born years later after that point.
  • Downplayed with Lyon, who is mostly based on his appearance in Ephraim's route, where he is an Anti-Villain and not truly possessed by Fomortiis. However, he still has some elements from his appearance in Eirika's route a la his acceptance of the Demon King title. "Peaceful Ends" Forging Bonds reveals that the summonable Lyon was summoned after his death the end of Sacred Stones, meaning that he isn't a true composite character and instead he got reverted back to before he is fully possessed by Fomortiis.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • On higher difficulties, enemy units can have impossibly inflated stats.
  • Prior to the implementation of Skill Inheritance, enemy Heroes could have impossible skill combinations.
  • On some Grand Hero, Bound Hero, Legendary Hero, or Mythic Hero battle maps, some enemies (usually the boss(es) in question) have their Specials nearly or fully charged immediately. While the player can do this as well (through the use of Pulse skills and similar effects), most of the time, these enemies don't have the appropriate skills for this set up. Fallen Male Robin and Fallen Female Corrin's Bound Hero Battle released in May 2020 takes the cake, as on Hard and Lunatic difficulty Robin has his Ignis at 2 cooldown, while Corrin has her Dragon Fang at 1, where both of them should be at 4 cooldown, while on Infernal difficulty Robin has his Ignis at 1 and Corrin has her Dragon Fang at 0, meaning that she will always have it ready, while at the same time they don't have any skills in their loadout that lower it down at all, and what's worse is that skills that raises enemy special cooldown such as Pulse Smoke or inflict the Guard status effect such as Melancholy+/Witchy Wand+ don't work at all on Female Fallen Corrin, making her alongside Fallen Male Robin reach SNK Boss levels. This was rectified when their map returned in January 2021, as while they still had their Specials precharged, their max charge are at their proper levels, meaning Pulse Smoke and similar skills will actually work as intended.
  • Inverted by Legendary Leif's weapon. His bow, Meisterbogen, denies his foe from making a follow-up attack if he initiates combat, but this effect is only active when he's under the player's control, and is nowhere to be seen if he's under the AI's control.
• Continuing is Painful:
  • Despite Permadeath being excised from the game, the high stamina costs and loss of experience for defeated player characters (prior to version 2.5.0) will be supremely annoying. Unless you use stamina potions, the rare Light's Blessings (which cannot be used in any of the Coliseum modes or any of the Hero Battles), or use Orbs (which more can be obtained using real-life cash) to continue. Or, of course, wait—for 8 hours and 15 minutes at most if you're willing to wait on a fully-depleted stamina bar to be completely restored.
  • Also applies to an extent in Arena Duels, where your potential score drops for every felled ally. For those gunning for a high score/ranking, losing too many units may jeopardize their score to the point where they may as well intentionally throw their next battle to reset the win streak. The relative scarcity of Dueling Crests and limit of 3 tries per day without them doesn't help, either.
  • And then there's the Tempest Trials, where you're pitted against up to 7 consecutive rounds of enemies, ending with a battle against a specific unit and four other Heroes with inflated stats. Any allies that get defeated are unusable until you beat the final map or get a Game Over, and if you're reckless (which you're encouraged to be, since you get more points for clearing rounds quickly) or just unlucky and your best Heroes get taken out early, you might as well just throw in the towel and start over. This also applies to Chain Challenges, except they have preset enemy units, and up to 10 maps.
• Cooldown Manipulation:
  • Killer/Slaying weapons reduce the charge time of their wielders' specials by 1. Some unique weapons also have this effect, like the Hauteclere, Mystletainn, or Audhulma. On the other hand, -blade tomes, Lightning Breath(+), and staves like Rehabilitate (but not the + versions) increase the charge time of their wielders' specials by 1. Legendary Eirika's Lunar Brace (but not Lunar Brace II) also increases special charge time by 1, and is the only passive skill to do so.
  • There are multiple skills that give a faster way to activate specials, either outside of combat or during combat, such as the Pulse skills, Heavy/Flashing Blade, Special Spiral. These skills allow the unit to either get specials out before a fight quicker, help get them during battle quicker, or allow them to prevent enemies from doing so. As part of this, some characters have versions of these skills baked into their weapon, such as Ares and Eldigan's Dark Mystletainn having Special Spiral built in, allowing them to throw out specials quickly.
• Cosmetic Award:
  • Starting with Legendary Marth's Battle as well as Female Grima's rerun, a new difficulty was introduced to top Infernal: Abyssal. After clearing these incredibly challenging maps, the only rewards they give are gold versions of accessories that already exist. Averted with the Limited Hero Battle versions of Abyssal difficulty maps, where clearing that rewards 20 Divine Codes. However, those maps are available for a limited amount of time and players are forced to deploy heroes from specific games to get those Divine Codes, such as being limited to The Blazing Blade charaters in Legendary Ryoma's Legendary Hero Battle for the June 2020 Limited Hero Battles.
  • The Røkkr Remnant is a fiery accessory that covers one of the user's eye that can be rewarded if players deal 150000 to the Røkkr in one battle, which can only be reached on the Intermediate or Lunatic difficulties and spending all your stamina. Not round, battle.
• Counter-Attack:
  • While counterattacks are par for the course for Fire Emblem, this game introduces skills and weapons that can allow units to counterattack enemies regardless of range, with Distant Counter allowing melee heroes to counterattack ranged ones, while Close Counter allows ranged heroes to counterattack melee ones.
  • Distant and Close Ward allows the user to gain +5 Atk/Res and counterattack enemies regardless of range if the enemy wields a tome, staff, or dragon weapon, with Distant Ward restricted to melee units and Close Ward restricted to ranged units, the latter also having the effect of negating any of the foe's skills that allow them to target the user's lower defensive stat during combat.
  • Distant and Close Foil allows the user to gain +5 Atk/Def and counterattack enemies regardless of range if the enemy wields a sword, lance, axe, bow, dagger, or beast weapon, with Distant Foil restricted to melee units and Close Foil restricted to ranged units.
  • Close Salvo and Distant Pressure/Storm allows the user to counterattack against melee and ranged foes respectively, as well as granting +5 Atk for Close Salvo and Distant Storm and +5 Spd for Distant Pressure during combat if the user is at 25% HP or above at the start of combat, but deals 5 damage to the user after combat if the user attacked.
  • Distant Dart and Stance are stronger versions of Distant Counter, where it allow the user to counterattack ranged foes as well as gain +5 Spd for Dart and +5 Res for Stance during combat if the foe initiates combat.
  • Close Reversal is a stronger version of Close Counter, where it allow the user to counterattack melee foes as well as gain +5 Def during combat if the foe initiates combat.
  • Distant Counter is also included in weapon skills (most of the time being the weapon's only effect), such as Rajinto, Ragnell, and Lightning Breath+, as well as Armored Beast weapons when the user is transformed. Other weapons also have conditional Distant Counter alongside other effects and drawbacks, such as Osian's Vouge and Say'ri's Amatsu having Distant Counter if they are at 50% HP or more at the start of combat, Fallen Berkut's Kreimhild having it alongside denying any of their follow-up attacks if he has an ally within 2 spaces of him, but deals 20 damage to the nearest ally after combat if he counterattacked a ranged foe, and the unique refine for Saber's Golden Dagger, where if the user has their special ready at the start of combat, gives Distant Counter as well as +3 Atk/Spd/Def/Res during combat. Regular Julia's unique refine for her Naga allows her have the Close Counter effect, but is only restricted to counterattacking dragons, Boey's unique refine for his Inscribed Tome has the Close Counter effect, but it excludes him from counterattacking dragons, and Regular Shinon's Double Bow has the Close Counter effect as well as +5 Atk/Spd/Def/Res during combat if he is not adjacent to an ally.
  • Regular Fjorm's Ice Mirror and Ice Mirror II, and Legendary Female Corrin's Negating Fang allows the user to reduce damage taken and counter with higher damage with their next attack until the end of combat, with Ice Mirror reducing damage by 30% from ranged attacks and boosts the user's damage equal to the exact amount of damage reduced, Ice Mirror II reducing damage by 40% from ranged attacks and boosts the user's damage equal to 40% of the user's Res, and Negating Fang reducing damage taken by 30% from all attacks and boosts the user's damage equal to 30% of the user's Atk. Nyx's Ginnungagap and Eitri's Divine Recreation allows them to reduce damage taken from the foe's first attack and boost their damage on her next attack equal to the damage reduced if either the user initiates combat or the foe wields a Tome or Staff weapon and initiates combat for the former, and if the foe is at 50% HP or above at the start of combat for the latter.
• Creepy Twins: The Fallen Morgans have this vibe. They're Half-Identical Twins who single-mindedly serve Grima, and have no other interests. Even though in their Forging Bonds event, they reconcile Fallen Edelgard and Fallen Dimitri, the last scene of the event reveals that they regard both as pawns, and their true motivations are mysterious.
• Crippling Overspecialization:
  • While the Poison Dagger(+) does extra damage against Infantry units, its low Might compared to other weapons and inability to inflict debuffs on other unit types means it's not very good against anything but Infantry.
  • The Armorslayer+, Heavy Spear+, and Hammer+ deal extra damage to armored units. However, they only have a Might of 11, and compared to other weapons, they're not quite as effective against everyone else. Fortunately, this can be compensated for through weapon refinement by evolving them to Armorsmasher+, Slaying Spear+, and Slaying Hammer+, which boosts their Might to 14, and even further with more refinement.
  • The Hone, Fortify, Ward, and Goad movement and weapon type skills provide substantial buffs to allies with the matching skills, but only works on them and not the other movement and/or weapon types. For example, Fortify Armor will give adjacent armor allies +6 Def/Res at the start of the user's turn, but will not give units in the other movement types the same buffs, while Goad Dragons will give +4 Atk/Spd to all Dragon allies within 2 spaces of the user during combat, but not the other weapon types. Normally, this would not be an issue with team building focusing on having the same movement and/or weapon type, but some factors can often require other movement and weapon types to be mixed into teams, such as Quests or needs of some battles such as the Hero Battles.
  • Windsweep and Watersweep allow units to prevent counterattacks if they initiate combat, but they need to be faster than the enemy unit during combat, go against the matching weapons to not get counterattacked^note swords, lances, axes, bows, daggers, and beast weapons for Windsweep, tomes, staves, and breaths for Watersweep, and can only perform one attack on initiation without an extra effect to negate this. However, they can still perform follow-up attacks when the user is counterattacking.
  • The Hardy Bearing seal stops anything that changes attack priority from working (e.g. Vantage or Desperation). Against few heroes that use those in their builds (such as Ares, Kronya or Brave Ike), the seal utterly ruins them. Against everything else, the seal is completely useless.
  • Triangle Adept, as well as the Gem Weapons, increase the strength of their wielder's Weapon Triangle bonuses by a flat percentage. This makes them extremely effective at fighting units they have a weapon advantage against, but in turn makes them extremely vulnerable to a weapon type they are weak against. Unless the player is using a Raven tome to counter colorless units, Triangle Adept is not bery often used.
  • Regular Brave weapons are extremely good on the Player Phase, but are outright horrible on the Enemy Phase. This is because of the -5 Spd a Brave weapon inflicts on the wielder, and the fact the wielder can only attack twice if they initiate combat. The inheritable Ninja weapons and Tailwind Shuriken are much the same way, except these weapons grant their users +4 Speed and inflict -4 Def/Res. Some characters have unique versions that try to balance this to make them strong by allowing the unit to strike twice regardless of if they initiate combat or their opponent initiates combat.
  • The AR-O and AR-D A skills can potentially give massive (up to +10) boosts to two of the user's stats during combat, but will only activate if the units is within the Aether Raids mode, as the value of said stat boosts on the amount of defensive structures still standing.
  • Skills and weapons that have effects that heavily rely on having the user having a support partner becomes this, as while the players can use this to their advantage on their attacking teams, it does not apply when it is on their defense teams. For example, Regular Lilith's Astral Breath allows her to warp to an adjacent tile of her support partner, as well as gain +5 Atk/Spd/Def/Res during combat if she is within 3 spaces of her support partner, but if she doesn't have one or is under the enemy's control, then it is just a +Spd refined Flametongue+ without the HP boosts.
• Crisis Crossover: Serves as one for Fire Emblem, as this game pulls characters from throughout the entire franchise.
• Critical Status Buff:
  • The Vengeance skill returns from Awakening and Fates, increasing a unit's damage based on their current missing HP. Heroes also has its weaker variants, Retribution (the base form) and Reprisal (has the same potency as Retribution, but with lower cooldown). The unique refine for Owain's Missiletainn has a similar effect, which allows him to deal damage equal to the current HP missing whenever he activates a damage special during combat if he is within 3 spaces of an ally, up to +30 damage dealt.
  • Several passive skills trigger only when a unit's HP falls below a certain threshold, like Defiant X (greatly increase one of Hero's stats once they fall below 50% HP), Brazen X (greatly increases two of the Hero's stats in battle once they fall below 80% HP), Desperation (if Hero is fast enough to double their enemy and below 25/50/75% HP, both attacks hit before enemy can counter), Escape Route (when unit is below 30/40/50% HP, they can instantly warp to any ally on the map), or Wrath (if Hero is below 25/50/75% HP, Specials gain a charge at the start of each turn and deal +10 damage).
• Crossover: Most of the paralogues involve characters from two or more games hanging out.
• Crutch Character:
  • Alfonse, Sharena, and Anna possess skills or support abilities that can carry you through the early game. However, before update 2.5.0, they're two-star units, so they become outpaced in later chapters. If their potentials are unlocked, though, they become formidable in their own right.
  • The usual Crutch Characters (Jagen and Gunter), though far more useful in this game than their home series by being great support units, still suffer from having lower base stats at max level compared to others of their class, while having the highest starting base stats.
  • Heroes that can only be obtained without Orbs, like from Grand Hero Battles or the Tempest Trials, can be pretty strong early on, but their initial lack of Traits means they can be outclassed by units that can be summoned normally without the use of Trait Fruits, since those units have a chance to get certain Traits right from the start to optimize their stats.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Any battle between Lucina and any of her opponents in the first Voting Gauntlet. The same applies to Camilla and any of her opponents in the second Voting Gauntlet. Their overwhelming popularity outright destroyed any chance that their opponents could have against them. Since then, a Comeback Mechanic has been implemented where the losing side would have a score multiplier to help them catch up, which would at least reduce the massive score disparity.
  • The Múspell side of Nifl vs Múspell Voting Gauntlet ended up being on the receiving end of one, with all four heroes losing in the first round (with Surtr, Laevatein, Laegjarn and Helbindi losing to respectively Fjorm, Gunnthrá, Hríd and Ylgr).
• Cute Owl: The little critter that gives mail and is on the loading screen. Her name is Feh. Units can wear a doll of Feh as a hat, and a Feh statue was available to place in Aether Keeps for a limited time.
• Cute Witch: Nowi, a youthful manakete, has a witch getup for the first Halloween banner. In the second, Mia also dresses as a witch for the occasion.
• Cutting Off the Branches: As some of the units come from games with some form of route split or divergent choices, the developers do their best to stick to one for the characters. Specific games below include:
  • The Genealogy of the Holy War, Awakening, and Fates second generation units are all kept to their default art or specifically only allude to the mandatory parent by name while being vague about their other parent to avoid giving them a canonical set of parents. Only units who canonically have a set of parents like Seliph, Ares, and Altena avoid this. Notably, the base version of Ced hails from Genealogy of the Holy War rather than Thracia 776 (in which his father is canonically Lewyn, which would make him Forseti's inheritor); the base Ced's father is never revealed and he instead just wields a tome made up for this game, while the Thracia 776 character Karin does refer to him as the prince of Silesse and the Ascended version of him is packing Forseti.
  • Games with a clearly defined Golden Ending (Mystery of the Emblem, The Binding Blade, Awakening, and Fates) almost uniformly favor that ending as canon. The only unambiguous exceptions are Fallen Takumi, Legendary Female Corrin, and Legendary Hinoka, who are clearly only compatible with the events of Conquest.
  • Three Houses handles this a bit differently. Since each house has their own plotline that Byleth fights for, the units from each house avoid mentioning Byleth in any way to avoid implying one route is canonically the one they hail from. The timeskip forms of the characters instead go with the route that matches the house selected pre-timeskip, as shown by the Brave alts coming after they have won and referencing their respective plotlines, and Legendary Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude respectively being from Crimson Flower, Azure Moon, and Verdant Wind. This is Lampshaded during the Forging Bonds for the Choose Your Legends Four banner, where Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude/Lysithea discuss how they come from different timelines. Some timeskip characters are more vague in placement, such as Fallen Dimitri (who incidentally is incompatible with Crimson Flower due to not going through Sanity Slippage on that route), Legendary Byleth, and Brave Marianne, but most characters will generally follow that trend. The only major exceptions are Fallen Edelgard and Fallen Rhea, who are only compatible with the events of the Azure Moon and Silver Snow routes respectively.
  • From Warriors: Three Hopes:
    • In the original game, Monica is rescued from those who slither in the dark by whichever of the three houses Shez joins. Her "Meet some of the Heroes" profile and 5* level 40 quote state that Edelgard personally rescued this Monica, indicating she hails from the Scarlet Blaze route (as that's the one where Shez joins the Black Eagles and Edelgard is personally involved in her rescue).
    • All three routes allow you the choice of whether to kill or recruit Jeralt. Fallen Female Byleth is only compatible with the routes where Jeralt dies.
• Cutting the Knot: A majority of Hold the Line maps in certain Books have an enemy with a Sacred Seal that makes them take 0 damage. The few exceptions either have no invulnerable enemies, or have one show up as a reinforcement on a later turn. With those maps however, if one routs all the enemies on screen before they arrive, they instantly win the map without the hassle of evading those enemies.

D

• Damage-Increasing Debuff:
  • Penalties, or field stat debuffs, decrease a unit's stats for an entire action, but only the highest value will apply, and will wear off after that unit performs an action. Such common sources include Daggers, the Seal, Threaten, Menace, Smoke, Ploy, Chill, Feint, Ruse, Sabotage, Cantrip, and Snag skills. There are other weapons and Secret Art skills that inflicts this, such as Arvis' Valflame, Regular Surtr's Menace, and the unique refine for Walhart's Wolf Berg. Such penalties on the foe can also activate other effects on skills and weapons such the Catch skills, Regular Thrasir's Killing Intent and the unique refine for Valter's Cursed Lance.
  • Combat penalties, or combat debuffs, decrease the foe's stats during combat and can be stacked. Such common sources include the Lull, Near/Far Trace, Pegasus/Wyvern Flight, Rein, and Feud skills. There are also weapons and Secret Art skills that also inflicts this, such as Ashnard's Gurgurant, Legendary Micaiah's Prescience, and the unique refine foe Bridal Tharja's Múspell Fireposy.
  • The [Panic] status converts field stat buffs on afflicted foes into field stat debuffs, unless the foe also has the [Null Panic] status. Such sources include Panic Ploy, Panic Smoke, Legion's Axe(+), Aversa's Night, and the unique refine for Regular Mist's Elena's Staff.
  • There are other skills that basically reverses any field stat buff the foe has during combat, such as Azelle's Sparking Tome, Legion's Sneering Axe and the unique refine for Linus' Fanged Basilikos, where for example with Azelle's Sparking Tome it inflicts -6 Spd/Res, as well if the foe has +6 Spd and +4 Res, the user inflicts -12 Spd and -8 Res on top of the -6 Spd/Res, effectively inflicting -12 Spd and -10 Res on the foe during combat.
  • There are other skills that amplifies the field stat debuffs the foe has during combat, such as the Desert Ritual weapons, Plegian Katarina's Flame Flambeau, and the unique refine for Regular Morgan's Grima's Truth and Regular Gunnthrá's Blizzard, where for example with the Plegian Bow+ if the foe has -5 Atk and -6 Def at the start of combat, it will inflict -5 Atk and -6 Def on the foe during combat on top of the -5 Atk/Def, with a total of -15 Atk and -17 Def inflicted on the foe during combat.
• Damage Reduction:
  • Some Specials mitigate damage from attacks based on their range. For instance, Sacred Cowl and Aegis reduces damage taken from a distance, while Escutcheon and Pavise reduces damage taken from close range. Regular Fjorm's Ice Mirror allows the user to reduce damage taken by 30% from ranged attacks, and boost her next attack by the exact amount of damage reduced until the end of combat, and Ice Mirror II reduces damage taken by 40% from ranged attacks, and boost her next attack equal to 40% of the user's Res until the end of combat. Legendary Female Corrin's Negating Fang allows the user to reduce damage taken by 30%, regardless of range, and boosts her next attack by 30% of the user's Atk until the end of combat.
  • The Hardy Fighter, exclusive to Armor units, is an unusual example, where not only will it allow the user to ignore skills that guarantee the foe's follow-up attack and granting -2 special cooldown at the start of turn one if the user is equipped with a defensive special, but also allows the user to trigger defensive specials twice on top of the extra 5 damage reduced, where with Sacred Cowl and Escutheon granting effectively 51% damage reduced and Aegis and Pavise granting 75% damage reduced.
  • Weapons such as the Divine Tyrfing, Winter Bernadetta's Hrist, and the unique refine for Brave Ike's Urvan and Ayra's eponymous Blade reduces the first attack of certain weapons by a certain percent with different activation requirements, with the Divine Tyrfing reducing Tome damage by 50% from the first attack, Hrist, in addition to giving the user +6 Atk/Spd during combat, reduces damage by 30% from the foe's first attack if the user is not at full HP at the start of combat, the unique refine for Urvan reducing damage by 40% on the foe's first attack, and the unique refine for Ayra's Blade reducing damage by 20% on the foe's first attack if the foe is at 75% HP or above at the start of combat.
  • The Deflect Seals mitigate damage from consecutive attacks by up to 80%, like from Brave weapons or Desperation users. They are all dependent on the type of weapon; Deflect Melee only works against Swords, Lances, and Axes, Deflect Missile only works against Bows and Daggers, and Deflect Magic only works against Tomes. Brave Ike's Urvan also has this effect, and will work against any weapon type, whereas Regular Sigurd's Crusader's Ward only reduces damage from consecutive ranged attacks.
  • The Guard Bearing skill allows the user to reduce the damage from the foe's first attack by 50% if the foe initiates combat, but can only activate on the first combat the user participates in for each enemy phase.
  • Nagi's Ethereal Breath reduces damage taken from non-Røkkr AOE specials by 80%.
  • The tier 3 versions of Close Call, Repel, Spurn, Frenzy and Velocity as well as the [Dodge] status effect, Legendary Ryoma's Bushido II and Yen'fay's Carnage Amatsu allows the user to reduce damage taken from both attacks and non-Røkkr AOE specials if they're faster than their foe, with 4% damage reduced for each point of Spd the user has over their foe, up to 40% damage reduced. Legendary Dimitri's Areadbhar, Nótt's Moon-Twin Wing and Summer Freyja's Brightmare Horn has the same effect, except it only activates if the user is at 25% HP or above at the start of combat, and even then if the foe's AOE special reduces the user's HP to under 25% at the start of combat, the damage reduction will not activate during combat. Dragon Wall, New Year Selkie's New Foxkit Fang, New Year Lethe's Guardian Fang, Regular Freyja's Nightmare Horn, Brave Dimitri's Blue Lion Rule, Julius' refined Loptous, and the unique refine for Brave Eliwood's Ninis's Ice Lance also has this effect, but Dragon Wall, Selkie's New Foxkit Fang and Julius' refined Loptous compares Res, and Dimitri's Blue Lion Rule compares Def, instead of Spd. The Tier 4 versions of Close Call and Repel has a stronger effect where not only they inflict -4 Spd/Def on the foe during combat and grants +7 Spd when comparing the user's Spd with the foe's or ally's Spd, has a stronger effect where it allows the user to reduce damage taken from attacks and non-Røkkr AOE specials by 5% for every point of Spd the user has over their foe, up to 50% damage reduced. The unique refine for Legault's Hurricane Dagger has a weaker effect, where it allows the user to reduce damage taken from attacks and non-Røkkr AOE specials by 3% for every point of Spd the user has over their foe, up to 30% damage reduced.
  • Fallen Lyon's Blood Tome reduces damage taken from non-Røkkr AOE specials by 80% and reduces damage taken during combat by 50% if the foe uses a ranged weapon. Dancing Duo Sigurd & Deirdre's Gilt Goblet has a similar effect, with reducing damage taken during combat and from non-Røkkr AOE specials by 50% if the foe uses a tome and either initiates combat or is at full HP at the start of combat.
  • Brave Edelgard's Black Eagle Rule reduces damage taken from any of the foe's follow-up attacks (not to be confused with consecutive attacks) by 80% if the foe initiates combat.
  • Flayn's Caduceus Staff and Elimine's Holy Ground allows them to grant any allies within 2 spaces of them to reduce damage taken by 30% during combat.
  • Nemesis' Dark Creator Sword reduces damage taken during combat and from non-Røkkr AOE specials by 15% damage for every ally that has 90% HP or more at the start of combat, up to 45% damage reduced, but can only activates at the first combat the user participates for each player and enemy phase.
  • Legendary Claude's Fallen Star, in addition to reducing damage from the foe's first attack by 80% if the user initiates combat, also grants the user the [Fallen Star] status, where the user will gain 80% damage reduced from the foe's first attack in the first combat the user participates in each player and enemy phase for one turn.
  • Spring Harmonized Myrrh & Nah's Lilac-Jade Breath allows the user to reduce damage taken from attacks and non-Røkkr AOE specials by 40% if the foe either initiates combat or is at full HP at the start of combat.
  • Fallen Edelgard's Armored Wall allows her to reduce damage taken by 40% from the foe's first attack during the first combat she participates in at each player and enemy phase if she is at 25% HP or above at the start of combat and she is transformed.
  • Elm's Fang of Closure allows him to reduce damage taken from the foe's first attack by 20% for every foe within 3 spaces of him, up to 60% damaged reduced.
  • Young Duo Ike & Mist's Sturdy War Sword allows the user to reduce damage taken from the foe's first attack by X%, where X is equal to 10 x the maximum special cooldown value the user is equipped with if the user has a Special that triggers with the user's attack such as Glimmer and Radiant Aether and there are at least two other allies within 4 spaces of the user.
  • Medeus' Asurred Rebirth, in addition to having the Dragon Wall efffect, allows the user to reduces damage taken from non-Røkkr AOE specials and attacks during combat equal to 20% x the amount of Staff or Dragon allies within 3 spaces of the user, with the maximum damage reduced being 60% from both effects combined.
• Damage-Sponge Boss: The Røkkr from Røkkr Siege is this, starting at 200000 HP, which must be removed in multiple battles, and other players share the same Røkkr as yours, meaning it's a group effort to deal as much damage as possible against 3 rounds of Røkkr Sieges, with limit of 2 days real time to defeat as many as possible each round, and their HP increase with each successive Røkkr defeated. They're also equipped with weapons that allows them to counter-attack regardless of range and will deal a minimum of 1 damage, Specials with long cooldowns that damages their target and foes within 2 spaces of them and swap places with that target after combat, and are equipped with the Røkkr Sacred Seal, which prevents them from taking damage after combat (but not before). To compensate, you have a damage multiplier that increases by either dealing damage to the boss, or by eliminating enemy reinforcements, and the battle ends when either 7 turns has elapsed, all your units are defeated, or you dealt 15000 damage on Beginner, 20000 on Intermediate, and 25000 on Advanced on the Røkkr for each Havoc Axe used on that battle.
• Dances and Balls: One of the themes for seasonal events would involve a dancing festival, where units who are usually unable to Sing, Dance or Play in canon would get variants that can use those skills.
  • 2017's "Performing Arts" banner features a mother-son bonding event starring Azura and Olivia along with their respective sons, Shigure and Inigo. Notably, Azura and Olivia could already Sing and Dance in their regular forms.
  • 2018's "Festival in Hoshido" banner is themed after the Japanese summer festival, where Xander, Ryoma, Elincia and Micaiah wear yukata for the event.
  • 2019's "A Splendid Soiree" banner is themed after ballroom dances, featuring Reinhardt, Ishtar, Nephenee, Berkut and Rinea.
  • 2020's "To Stay Dreaming" banner is also ballroom-themed, centering on Lachesis, Eldigan, Quan, Ethlyn, and Duo Sigurd & Deirdre.
• Darker and Edgier: The main story takes a dark turn after Chapter 9 as we find out about the Demonic Possession of the Emblian Royal Family, what actually happened to Zacharias and even one instance of Veronica trying to kill the Summoner, and nearly succeeding. This is especially true for both Tellius chapters (10 and 13) in the main story, as they have a sense of urgency and important revelations regarding the plot. Book II as a whole is darker than Book I, seeing Surtr replace Veronica as the Big Bad, upping the stakes to life-and-death for all characters, and killing a major character on-screen. Cue Book III turning it up a notch with a theme revolving around the forces of the dead coming to kill the Kingdom of Askr and overall white and dark tone (not to mention the heavy metal song, a first for Fire Emblem).
• Dark Horse Victory:
  • The winner of November 2017's "Short-Haired Ladies vs. Long-Haired Gents" Voting Gauntlet is... Shanna, who beat several characters that placed in the Top 12 of the first "Choose Your Legends" poll, whereas she didn't place anywhere near the Top 12.
  • The winner of the June 2018 "Heroes and Legends" Voting Gauntlet is... Gunnthrá, who was little more than a one-shot original character in the game's story who beat characters like Ryoma and... Ike. Especially Ike.
  • The winner of September 2018's "The Chosen Ones" Voting Gauntlet is Ephraim. While all participants were popular characters, Veronica's popularity was at its peak around that time, skyrocketing like no one could imagine. Most people expected that Veronica would be the one to win the Gauntlet, and yet Ephraim persevered and ended up winning (and he had previously beaten Roy and Ike, instead of going after the second male CYL champion, Hector).
  • The winner of the October 2019 "Dance Competition!" voting gauntlet is Rinea, an extremely minor and underfocused NPC character from Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, notably scoring victories over mega-popular Olivia and Inigo from the extremely popular Awakening.
  • The 5th Choose Your Legends event was a twofold example. On the women's side, Eirika and Byleth-F were beaten out by Marianne, who was 3rd during the midterms and barely made it into 1st by less than 2,000 votes.^*Eirika managed 2nd, but Byleth-F was 3rd. But the men's side was even more shocking with Marth and Chrom, both hot contenders in previous CYLs, both getting blown out by the Three Houses NPC Gatekeeper of all people seizing 1st by a whopping 25,000+ votes after leaving the midterms in 2nd.^*Marth was 2nd, Chrom was 3rd.
• Deadly Ringer: Two examples.
  • Winter Lissa uses a handbell as a melee weapon.
  • Bridal Haromized Catria wields a "Wedding Bell Axe", which is a bell on a pole that acts like an axe.
• Death by Childbirth: Defied in Lena's Forging Bonds conversation. One of Lena's peers is having a child, but hasn't been well, to the point where there's debate on who to save. Intervention via Midori's medicine helps save both lives.
• Death Is Cheap: According to Anna, the Summoner's powers let them revive anybody that falls in battle.
• Deconstruction: Elements of Book V serve as something of a deconstruction for the game's premise. Eitri attempted to recreate Breidablik to summon heroes to Niðavellir. However, in her experiments these heroes' souls were shattered, leaving them shells of their former selves. Essentially, she's done the exact same thing the Summoner does, summoning heroes and using them as a means to an end. The Book V ending movie drives this point home by having Eitri outright call the Summoner out for criticizing her when they're guilty of essentially the same thing. And then there's Fáfnir who was one of those heroes Eitri summoned. In his dying moments, he remembers having a wife and daughter and a life in his homeworld. The Summoner has brought heroes who have royal obligations, sworn duties, and lives in their homeworlds that they just uprooted from in order to fight Askr's war.
• Defeat Equals Explosion: A Røkkr reaching 0 HP results in a large dark explosion.
• Defeat Means Playable: On Grand Hero Battles and certain special daily maps, clearing the map has the featured unit join your side.
• Deliberate Injury Gambit:
  • Winter Bernadetta's Hrist and Spring Bernadetta's Bow of Repose allow her to inflict 1 damage to the user and all allies within 2 spaces of her at the start of her turn if she is at full HP and is within 2 spaces of an ally. This in turn allows her to activate Hrist and Bow of Repose's other effects, which includes buffs and Damage Reduction. The 1 damage can also help her allies if they have a similar effect, such as the Sealed Falchion, her regular variant's Persecution Bow, and the unique refine for Peri's eponymous Lance and Arthur's eponymous Axe or even deactivate the foe's weapons or skills that depend on the opponent having full HP, such as Shannan's Balmung and Legendary Female Corrin's Primorial Breath.
  • A variant, but Legendary Male Robin's Master's Tactics and Valentine Duo Chrom & Male Robin's Duo Skill allows them to inflicts -4 Atk/Spd/Def/Res to himself and -6 to the highest and second highest stats of all allies within 2 spaces of him, and -5 Atk/Spd/Def/Res to themselves and all allies within 2 spaces of the user (as well as grant the [Follow-Up Denial] status effect to themselves), respectively. This in effect allows them and those allies to trigger the [Grand Strategy] status effect, which they also grant to everyone within the same range, as [Grand Strategy] allows the user to effectively reverse any field stat buffs during combat, which includes the field stat debuffs, and any field stat debuffs on them still remains until [Grand Strategy] wears off. The field stat debuffs can also activate other similar effects of other allies, such as any ally with the Unity and the 2021 Winter weapons, Fallen Ike's Chaos Ragnell and Regular Dagr's Skinfaxi, especially with the former combinded with the latter two, where if they have Atk/Spd Unity alongside their weapons, the [Grand Strategy] status effect and -5 Atk/Spd/Def/Res inflicted on them, with just the debuffs alone, they effectively gain +30 Atk/Spd and +15 Def/Res during combat until [Grand Strategy] wears off.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • When using the Aether Resorts kitchen, characters will always make the same meals if they succeed, but the name of the dish will slightly alter itself to reflect the game the character is from in some way.
  • The Frontline Phalanx mode has players working together to defeat three increasingly difficult bosses over the course of 10 days, and there are also bonuses for playing each day for 5 days. In case the bosses are defeated too quickly, the daily bonuses would be given out as part of the final boss reward. In the first run of the event, the final boss was defeated in 2 days and 7 hours, making this a wise design addition.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • Regular Celica's unrefined Ragnarok. At full HP, she gets +5 Atk/Spd, but after combat she loses 5 HP and needs to restore herself back to full HP to gain that boost again. She can't do this with her natural skillset, so she needs skills like Renewal and Mystic Boost or an ally to heal her up afterwards. However, when refined, it just became much more straightforward with a permanent +5 Atk/Spd and 5 HP recoil, and a special effect that complements this where she gains an additional +7 Atk/Spd when she's at 80% HP or under.
  • Brave Celica's exclusive B skill Double Lion allows her to attack twice consecutively when initiating combat, as if she was wielding a Brave weapon, but only at full health, and she takes one point of damage afterwards. Since the damage occurs after combat, skills like Sol won't heal the damage immediately, so she needs constant healing to stay topped off and have the effect be active. The Mystic Boost Seal helps alleviate this greatly, by restoring 5 HP after combat, undoing the penalty, but she still has to be very mindful of stuff like Savage Blow or other forms of chip damage that can affect her. Her refined Royal Sword also does away with the problem by also restoring 7 HP to her after combat, but only if she is at 25% HP or above at the start of combat.
  • Weapons that rely on enemy placement. This includes Walhart's unrefined Wolf Berg, Brave Alm's unrefined Dracofalchion, (Legendary) Ephraim's unrefined Flame Siegmund, Legendary Eirika's unrefined Storm Sieglinde, Regular Edelgard's Victorious Axe, and the exclusive refine for Gray's Laid-Back Blade where they grant the user an effect (+4 Atk/Spd/Def/Res for Walhart, +5 Atk/Spd/Def/Res for Brave Alm and Gray, a follow-up attack for Ephraim and Edelgard, and +3 Def/Res and special buildup +1 for Eirika) if there are more enemies than allies near the user. This encourages a more reckless playstyle, and it requires the player to keep allies away from the aforementioned unit to get the most out of the effect, usually meaning they'll be without buffs or support.
  • The Tactics skills gives all allies within 2 spaces of the user +6 to a specific stat at the start of their first turn and gives specific allies of a certain movement type a benefical status effect, but only if the ally does not share more than one other ally with the same movement type. Building a team with 2 or less of the same movement type each is easy; building a balanced team composition is the difficult part, with summoning specific heroes being the main problem, and especially so in Aether Raids where teams can go up to 6 units for offense and 7 for defense. Accomplish this, however, will allow team-wide buffs and easier positioning of allies for the next turn due to the wider range of the skill, compared to teams using Hone and Fortify skills as their buffing skill of choice needing to stay close together.
  • Building a team with Legendary or Young Eliwood as their support unit. They has a gimmick that they give buffs to allies with the highest Atk at the start of their turn, regardless of their position, where Legendary Eliwood's Ardent Duranral gives the [Bonus Doubler] status and Vision of Arcadia II giving +6 Atk/Spd/Def, [Null Panic] and [Canto (1)] and Young Eliwood's Inborn Idealism granting +6 Atk/Spd/Def, [Null Panic] and [Bonus Doubler] to themselves and the highest Atk allies. Giving one or two allies with the highest Atk the buffs is easy; it's make sure that all of them on the same team have the same Atk is the difficult part, due to the effects being shared on all allies who match the same high Atk, and especially moreso on Aether Raids teams, and Legendary Eliwood's Visions of Arcadia (II) and Young Eliwood's Inborn Idealism also needs a Dragon or Beast ally to be both on his team and be alive in order to activate, so having at least a Dragon or Beast unit adds to the complication. Manipulating all the Atk of all your team san Legendary or Young Eliwood requires skill inheritance of Atk increasing or Atk decreasing skills and weapons, Sacred Seals for the same reason, weapon refines for the Atk versions, a certain amount of Dragonflower boosts, RNG with the gacha or using Trait Fruits to gain the right Atk with them being an asset, flaw, or even neutral, and/or not getting Resplendent boosts for certain heroes. Do this, and you get team buffs that are not only massive, but also require no positioning limitations.
  • Units using Galeforce as their focus and fully charging it in one turn while also eliminating enemies along the way eventually leads to this. Special buildup increasing skills such as Heavy Blade and Bold Fighter makes building special charges easy if they fit the requirements, so units with both high Atk and a way to get guaranteed follow-up attacks, either through their weapons or skills or even just high Spd, are the recommended users who would use Galeforce as their Special, but the main problem is that the attacker could potenially deal too little damage if they're up against Stone Walls or Mighty Glaciers and thus don't acomplish their goal of eliminating foes, although Hit-and-Run Tactics come into play if that happens, One-Hit Kill the enemy with their first attack if their Atk is too high, go against enemies that reduces special buildup for their foes, such as Guard, the 2018 Halloween and Guard weapons and the Tempo skills, or even go against enemies that either deny your follow-up attacks or have skills that negate your guaranteed follow-up attacks, therefore they will not be able to activate Galeforce for the latter three, and even if you strike the right balance with picking and eliminating your foes, unless they got repositioning support or have [Canto], they might be stranded near other enemies who could potenially eliminate them on their turn. In short, players with a Galforce machine should both pick their targets carefully, as well as make sure their positioning is right when they finish their turn, and using Hit-and-Run Tactics instead of going for the next foe.
    • Regular Edelgard, Legendary Edelgard, Harmonized Summer Edelgard & Altina, and Fallen Edelgard, takes this up a notch if they have Galeforce equipped, thanks to Legendary and Harmonized Summer Edelgard two's unique skill Raging Storm (II), Fallen Edelgard's weapon Twin-Crest Power and the unique refine for Regular Edelgard's weapon Victorious Axe, as they have the potential to gain 3 actions in a single turn, and with some assistance, could even potentially perform a Total Party Kill on the opponent in certain modes. Regular Edelgard, Legendary Edelgard and Harmonized Summer Edelgard & Altina have to be completely alone to activate all of their effects, while Fallen Edelgard has to be healthy enough and has to transform for her effects (which would mean either being next to Beasts, Dragons, or being alone as well). Since their unique skills occupy the B slot for Legendary Edelgard and Harmonized Summer Edelgard & Altina, while the Extra Turn is built into her weapon for Regular Edelgard, all three have to rely on a skill like Heavy Blade to accelerate their Special, as well as some Pulse support from their team, or switch to a different weapon for the former, while Fallen Edelgard has to rely on her Armored Wall and also be transformed to ensure her Special acceleration. Careful positioning and even team composition has to be kept in mind, but if it is, those Edelgards will be able to smash through their opponents and continue to get extra actions.
• Discard and Draw:
  • While many base refines upgrade the effects for weapons, some of the unique weapons that can be refined have the old effect replaced with similar or new abilities, or even evolve their weapons to gain new weapons with different effects. Most Beast Units have their weapons almost entirely adjusted for refines due to being different in playstyle from other units, so they need to be adjusted to fit in the games meta as time goes on.
  • Legendary & Mythic Hero Remixes often replace out of date skills with newer ones, or upgrade them to better versions to keep them relevant in the meta, alongside the units featured being given a refine. Sometimes these changes are to help them stay relevant in the role they had originally, while other times it's meant to make them play closer to how the meta shifted. For example, Legendary Roy original had Renewal 3 for his B slot, but for his Remix was given Spurn 3 instead, since Renewal wasn't considered very helpful on a rare unit, while Regular Eir had her A skill go from Swift Sparrow 2 to Atk/Res Unity, to better reflect her strengths as a counter to magic units.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • 4 and 5 Star units are summoned with their second strongest or strongest weapon equipped, giving them a huge Attack advantage over other units. If you get one early from a lucky Summon session, they will easily carry you through the first parts of the story. Fjorm, Eir, Peony, Reginn, Ash, Seiðr, Legendary Ike, Brave Lyn, Regular Reinhardt, and Regular Xander in particular are all easy to get (Fjorm, Eir, Peony, Reginn, Ash and Seiðr as rewards for clearing the first chapters of Books II - VII respectively, Ike for clearing Xenologue 3, Brave Lyn if you shell out 4 bucks for the Starter Support Pack, and Reinhardt and Xander for completing Heroes' Path quests). All save Peony are powerful combat units, while Peony is one of the best refreshers in the game.
  • In 2020, new players can both summon from a special banner with a focus on powerful units (Fallen Tiki, Regular Tibarn among them), and being able to choose one 5 star brave hero from two sets. The Brave Echoes set has Brave versions of Alm, Camilla, Micaiah, and Eliwood with Alm, Micaiah, and to a lesser degree Camilla being of note. The Arrival of the Brave set has Brave verisons of Ephraim, Hector, Celica, and Veronica; out of that Veronica's noted. All the mentioned Heroes can be use well without any sort of Elite Tweak, though that can make some like Brave Alm much stronger.
• Dishing Out Dirt: The generic colourless tomes, Stone, Elstone and Atlas, are earth-based tomes that involves using rocks to attack foes with.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Summer Robin and Summer Ursula purposefully go into battle in bikinis to distract their opponents.
• Divergent Character Evolution:
  • There are at least five Falchion wielders in this game, not including the other Falchion variants such as Exalted Falchion and Dracofalchion. Chrom, Marth, and Alm are all Jacks-of-All-Stats in their home game, while Lucina and her masked variant are Lightning Bruisers. These traits are all carried over into this game except for Chrom, who is now more of a Mighty Glacier to help differentiate himself from the others. Additionally, while he and Lucina both get access to Aether, Lucina's Aether is preceded by Luna while Chrom's Aether is preceded by Sol. An update later allowed the Falchions to be refined, with new abilities that varied depending on which Falchion it was. One is exclusive to Alm, one is exclusive to Marth, and the last is shared between Lucina, Chrom, and Masked Marth.
  • Jagen and Gunter both serve the role of Crutch Character in their home games, and both serve the same effective role, right down to being a promoted mounted unit. To differentiate the two here however, Gunter is given an axe (even though usually his Lance rank is his highest weapon rank) and is more physically defensive, while Jagen keeps his lance proficiency but becomes more magically defensive (even though his defense in his home game was higher than his resistance).
  • A few characters are changed from their home games due to being nearly the same as another character in their home game that made it into Heroes. For example, Eldigan and Ares are father and son, but the later is basically just a playable version of his father, so when they were added into Heroes, they were given different roles to fill in combat by having different stats, base kits, and initially different weapons. Similarily, characters who use the same weapon are sometimes given unique variants of it to account for the difference between characters; Quan and Altena both have the Gáe Bolg in their home games but the two are different in roles in the story and also different movement types, so their playable versions here have different effects to account for the differences in the two's stats and playstyles.
  • Characters who have different appearances or identities in their home game often have their alts use different stats or weapons to make them different from each other. For example: The Black Knight and Zelgius are the same person, come with the Special Black Luna, and have the same general stats, but their base stats and base kit differ—if only slightly, to make both different enough to not feel the same, such as Zelgius having a unique B skill and having more attack, while the Black Knight has more speed. The most notable case of this is with Camus, who has three different canonical forms due to having amnesia and then returning under a different name after he regains them, so his alts (Camus, Zeke, and Sirius) have different weapons, different stats, and different skills, all to make each one feel disinct from each other (Camus being a Jack of All Stats, Zeke being a Mighty Glacier, and Sirius is a Lightning Bruiser).
  • Since Avatar characters have two different genders, and often have access to multiple classes, the game often gives the two genders different weapons, kits, or even skills when released to make both feel unique. For some examples: Male Kris is a red sword unit while female Kris is a blue lance unit, male Robin is a blue tome unit while female Robin is a green tome unit, male Byleth is more defensive stat wise while female Byleth is more offense focused, and male Shez is a sword unit while female Shez is an axe unit.
• The Dividual:
  • Duo Heroes are two (or more) heroes in one that are not only stronger, but also score higher in Arena modes and have special abilities called Duo Skills that they can only activate once outside of Aether Raids, such as Halloween Duo Hector & Lilina dealing 20 damage to all enemies within 3 columns where the unit is in the center one. The downside is that they cannot use their Duo Skill if they are Paired Up with another ally.
  • Harmonized Heroes are two heroes in one that also have special abilities called Harmonized Skills, but only affect allies that share the same games as either of the heroes, such as Summer Harmonized Mia & Masked Marth giving [Resonance: Blades], which gives +4 Atk/Spd during combat for one turn, to allies from Radiant Dawn and Awakening, and can activate them again every third turn. Like Duo Heroes, they cannot use their Harmonized Skill if they are Paired Up with another ally.
  • The Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE characters have them paired up with their Mirages in their home game, such as Eleonora being paired with Virion, but do not impact gameplay like the Duo and Harmonized Heroes.
• Don't Try This at Home: In the 2023 April Fools' Day video "Moove with Askr", Kiran lifts a stone slab with Seiðr on top of it. During the stunt, "Please do not try any of this at home" appears in the lower left corner.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The third episode of Brave Soren's Forging Bonds involves Ike ending up looking after Soren's younger self. Ike decides to feed Young Soren by offering him his meat, and what comes next is just a bit too bizarre:

  Ike: That's it. Nice and easy. You don't want to choke.

• Double-Meaning Title: The Forging Bonds event "The Orb Case". It starts off as a detective case as to who took the Orbs, then it gets another meaning in the end: Anna was crafting a case to hold the Orbs.
• Double Unlock: Once you put inherited skills onto your desired hero, they still need to be learned, and that costs 1.5x the usual SP.
• Dragons Are Divine: Besides the playable divine dragons, Askr, Embla, Nifl, and Múspell are known dragons in Heroes and are worshipped by their royalty.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Pick a character who is fated to die in their game. Watch them talk casually without knowing the approaching doom and you as the player being the only one who knew. Especially those from Genealogy of the Holy War, and especially Tailtiu, who's still at her Genki Girl phase, and all of her dialogues do not refer on how in the future she will be utterly broken to hell and then dies in sorrow and depression.
  • The Principled Acts Forging Bonds event has young Zephiel meet adult Guinivere and express hope that he grew up to be The Good King. Adult Zephiel is the Evil Overlord Big Bad of The Binding Blade.
  • In Halloween Hector and Young Lilina's Duo Conversation, there is one point in their conversation where Hector says what will happen if something bad happens, such as getting hurt, which Lilina complains that she didn't want him to get hurt nor does she want to lead, only for Hector himself to say that he won't go away anytime soon. However, for those familiar with the plot of The Binding Blade, Hector dies early on anyway.
• Dreams vs. Nightmares: The central story of Book IV, that sees the Order of Heroes in a Dream Land being antagonized by entities that give mortals literal nightmares.
• Dual Boss:
  • The Fallen Takumi Grand Hero Battle has you fight two copies of Takumi, just like in his own game.
  • Bound Hero Battles have you fight two heroes who have some special relationship with each other.
  • Some Legendary and/or Mythic Hero Battle maps feature two Legendaries, two Mythics, or one of each for players to fight at once, with such examples include Triandra and Freyja, Thórr and Eitri, Legendary Veronica and Embla, and Fomortiis and Gotoh.
• Dualvertisement:
  • In mid-2017, Heroes saw tie-in banners related to the release of Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia.
    • April 14th, 2017 the "World of Shadows" banner debuted, featuring Alm, Clair, Lukas, and Faye, ahead of the Japanese release of Echoes on April 20th.
    • Following that was the "Rite of Shadows" banner featuring Celica, Boey, Mae, and Genny on May 15, which was before the North American and European releases of Echoes on May 19th.
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses has several tie-in events in Heroes before and after its worldwide release on July 26, 2019.
    • On July 22, the first Three Houses banner debuted, featuring Female Byleth, Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude.
    • On July 29, 2019 (through to June 2020), purchasing Three Houses on the Switch tied to the same Nintendo account as Heroes will give the player a free Male Byleth.
    • On July 31, Sothis was released as a Mythic from Three Houses, with the banner allowing players to also get a Male Byleth outside of purchasing Three Houses.
    • On August 3, the antagonist Kronya was made available in a Grand Hero Battle.
    • On August 7, the second Three Houses Banner "Changing Winds" debuted with Hilda, Hubert, Mercedes, and Petra.
    • On August 12, the Death Knight was featured in a Grand Hero Battle.
  • January 2020 saw an unexpected tie-in banner to Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE, a Spin-Off game in the franchise, following the release of the Switch version of the game on the 17th of that month.
    • On January 20, the "A Star is Born" banner debuted, featuring Eleonora, Kiria, Mamori, and Tsubasa with their respective Mirages. They also received English voice acting, in contrast to the original game being only voiced in Japanese.
    • On January 21, Itsuki would be make available via the Tempest Trials.
  • Heroes would have its first Fire Emblem Engage themed banner on January 17, 2023, three days before the release of the game in question.
  • Starting on January 19, players who have Heroes linked to a MyNintendo account can get a code for Engage that grants them a Heroes-themed item set.
• Dual Wielding: While some heroes wield two weapons in their art, Regular and Winter Altina and the In The Moment heroes actually dual wield weapons in gameplay. Altina wields both Ragnell and Alondite, while Ninja Laevatein dual wields the Twin Star Axe, Ninja Hana dual wield the Ninja Masakari+, Ninja Zihark dual wields the Ninja Katana+, Ninja Navarre dual wields the Ninja Yari+, and Ninja Duo Lyn & Florina dual wield the Tailwind Shuriken, allowing them a double attack as if they're wielding a brave weapon, and in the former two's cases, regardless of which phase it is.
• Dub Name Change:
  • Fjorm's elder sister is known as "Slidr" in the Japanese version of the game; in other languages, she is named "Gunnthrá". Both names refer to rivers in Norse Mythology.
  • Alfonse's younger sister goes from "Sharon" in the Japanese version to "Sharena".
  • The Summoner's default name in the Japanese version goes from "Eclat" to "Kiran". Both have an etymology referring to "light".
  • Triandra's name in the original Japanese is "Scabiosa", a genus of honeysuckle, keeping with the alfar's names relating to flowers.
  • Osian's exclusive axe in the Japanese version goes from "Puji/Pugi" to "Vouge".
  • Larcei's twin brother was initally localized as "Ulster", but was later changed to "Scáthach", which is closer to his Japanese name "Skasaha/Skasaher", due to Miranda from Thracia 776 having her homeland's name changing from "Alster" to "Ulster" when she was released in Heroes.

E

• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • Faye, a character added to the remake of Gaiden, was part of the Echoes-themed summoning focus released April 14th, 2017, nearly a week before the remake's release in Japan, and over a month for the rest of the world. Heroes is also the first game to feature the new designs for Clair, Alm, and Lukas.
  • The Three Houses hero banner featuring Edelgard, Dimitri, Claude and Female Byleth was released on July 22nd, four days before the game's release date.
  • Kronya, the GHB character from the same banner, also earned a cameo in the game before she was officially released. She was the boss from the 100th floor of the Three Houses Tap Battle that was released on July 28, a week before her GHB's release on August 3.
  • The 3rd anniversary Feh Channel segment shows Lysithea's sprite. Notably, there weren't any news about her being on a new banner and only was shown outside game assets.
  • Felix from Three Houses appeared in the art of Annette's "Meet the Heroes" page back in early March 2020, over nine months before he became playable himself in mid-December 2020, albeit in seasonal form before his regular version's release in April 2023.
  • A month before he was announced to be a Grand Hero, Aelfric was among the possible characters to appear when Gatekeeper uses his Charging Horn. Manuela was also among the possible characters before she became playable as a seasonal unit in December 2021.
• Early Game Hell: Because the game averts Healer Signs On Early, unlucky players could go for a long time without a healer. Additionally, in version 2.4.0 and earlier, all of the characters you started with were only 2-stars, which made them rather limited and weak compared to a summoned Hero, who are always 3-star rank at minimum.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Has its own page.
• Edible Ammunition:
  • Ylissean Summer Gaius has a bow that shoots arrows tipped with popsicles instead of arrowheads.
  • Happy New Year! Takumi throws mochi at his foes.
  • Hares at the Fair Kagero throws carrots like daggers.
  • Summer Noire wields a bow that shoots arrows tipped with coconuts.
• Edible Bludgeon: Spring Xander uses a giant carrot for a lance, Summer Adult Tiki uses a watermelon on the end of a stick as an axe, Halloween Dorcas uses an axe made out of hard candy, and Spring Fir uses a giant carrot for an axe.
• Egopolis:
  • Askr, Embla, Nifl and Múspell are named after the dragons that rule over their kingdom.
  • Like in Norse Mythology, Hel is named after its ruler.
• Elemental Powers:
  • The elemental blessings give users who equip them stat boosts, with the condition being that they have to be on the same team as the matching legendary heroes with that element, and, outside of Blessed Gardens, have the matching elemental season on.
  • Some offensive Specials provide a percentage of a certain defensive stat as damage. The fire themed Bonfire and Ignis adding damage based off of Def, and the ice themed Iceberg and Glacies adding damage based off of Res.
  • Some skills focus on a specific stat to boost. For example, there are the X Boost A-skills, of which there are four; Fire Boost raises its user's Atk, Earth Boost raises its user's Def, Wind Boost raises its user's Spd, and Water Boost raises its user's Res.
  • Thunder, Fire, Wind, and Light are used for the AOE specials as they follow a specific shape when they activate.
  • Book III introduces four new elements for the seasons and Mythic Heroes: Light, Dark, Astra, and Anima.
• Elite Tweak: Done through Skill Inheritance, which allows you to select up to four passive skills from one unit (or that unit's Combat Manual) and give them to another unit, at the cost of the skill supplier permanently leaving the barracks (or inventory). There are class-based restrictions on what skills a unit can inherit, but what they can receive from the selection can change any unit from "good" to "amazing".
• The Empire: The January 2020 Voting Gauntlet focuses on Kingdoms vs. Empires, with Hardin representing the Holy Empire of Archanea, Brave Veronica representing the Emblian Empire, Edelgard representing the Adrestian Empire, and Walhart representing the Valm Empire.
• Enemy Mine:
  • Due to the vast array of characters you can summon, some of them will be enemies in their home games yet allies in your army. Some particularly stand-out examples include Ike and the Black Knight, Minerva and Michalis, Sigurd and Arvis or Hector and Zephiel (Sigurd and Hector are fighting alongside their own murderers), Eirika and Valter (Eirika fighting alongside someone who has a nasty lust over her), and Fallen Takumi and any Nohrian (a zombified killing machine fueled by Fantastic Racism and the people he hates). The Support system means you can even pair them up.
  • Some Hall of Forms intentionally invoke this too. There's Leif, Finn and Olwen teaming up with Reinhardt, and we have one with Chrom and Lucina with Grima (who was responsible for destroying Lucina's timeline) ... and Walhart (who was actively trying to avoid Grima's resurrection and was also trying to conquer all of Ylisse).
• Equipment Upgrade:
  • You can upgrade Sacred Seals at the Sacred Seal Forge by using Sacred Coins and Badges.
  • At the Weapon Refinery, you can upgrade your units' weapons to give them increased stats or extra effects. Regular weapons^note those with '+' at the ends of their names, such as Dancer's Fan+ and Slaying Lance+ can be upgraded using Arena Medals and Refining Stones, while Special weapons^note weapons that can only be equipped by their original units, such as Sieglinde and Aura can be upgraded using Arena Medals and Divine Dew.
  • Early Legendary and Mythic Heroes gain an extra tier to their Secret Art through updates that only costs SP to unlock, where for example Legendary Ryoma goes from +10 damage when his special triggers with Bushido to +7 damage, removes his flying weakness, and reduces damage taken from attacks and non-Røkkr AOE special by 4% for each point of Spd he has over his foe, up to 40% damage reduced with Bushido II.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Laegjarn may lead an army out to raze other lands to the ground, but she treats captured people humanely and shows mercy to anyone who surrenders.
  • Hegemon Edelgard might be representative of Edelgard at her absolute worst, but she still shows nothing but contempt for Kronya, as she even talks to Mila with less disdain.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": When the Gatekeeper of Garreg Mach was voted into the game, he is still referred to as the Gatekeeper, even by the game itself.
• Exact Words: In the "Ice and Flame" Tempest Trials series, the Twilit Runes foretold that "Ice melts while the flame remains, Pierced by frost, the Flame Gem rekindles, the champion renewed". Múspell took this as Laegjarn winning leaving his as the victor. Which does happen, but the champion renewed wasn't Laegjarn but Fjorm, completely blindsiding Múspell and leading to his defeat.
• Excuse Plot:
  • The "contracts" that insert enemy heroes that aren't Xander or any of the original characters are these. Initially, Veronica invaded numerous kingdoms, but it starts making less sense once Veronica is betrayed by Surtr and makes even less sense when Brave Veronica herself mentions about being trapped in a contract. It makes less sense than that when Story Veronica forms a temporary alliance with Askr and the Order of Heroes, facing contracted troops under "Líf" ironically an alternate self of the heroes. Besides of a mention by Reyson in Book III Chapter 3, the word "contract" seems to have been dropped from the Story mode altogether, considering there has been no mention of it at all in Book IV onwards. However, the "Start of It All" paralogue (made during Book IV) does make mention of contracts involving Loki and Veronica.
  • The side event "Lost Lore" begins after an incident in the Askran castle library in which cleaning solution got onto the pages that talked about the Heroes' lore and wiped it clean.
• Experience Booster:
  • Upgrading your castle will boost Exp earned up to a maximum of 100%.
  • Occasionally, there are events that boost Exp and/or SP gained by x1.5 or x2, and x5 in very special events. SP gain is regularly doubled on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, but does not overwrite the event multipliers. Some Customization Support Packs purchasable in the Shop also give SP multiplier when purchased, where it gives x5 for a limited time and a permanent x2 afterwards, and stacks with the previous multipliers as well.
  • "[Weapon] Exp." skills increase the experience earned for users of that weapon should they survive fighting an enemy.
  • "[Weapon] Valor" skills boost the SP earned for users of that weapon as long as the skill's user is alive.
  • The Elemental Blessings provide a permanent double SP gain to the user.
  • Bonus units allow them to gain double SP and experience in the modes they are in, which can be stacked with all the Exp and SP modifiers.
• Exposed to the Elements: Winter's Envoy Tharja wears only a bikini, boots, and cape, but she's just as unaffected by the snow as everyone else is.
• Expy: The beast units added in Book III follow the same movement archetypes as regular units, making them still their own summon option, but functionally like regular units. Which race the beast unit is so far the indicator of their class role and general stat functions.
  • Herons are dancers. Two of the three are fliers while one of them is a infantry unit (Rafiel) due to being unable to fly.
  • Hawks and Ravens are fliers.
  • Cat Laguz, Taguel, and Kitsune are cavaliers.
  • Tiger Laguz, Wolf Laguz, and Wolfskin are infantry units.
  • Lion Laguz are armored units.
• Extra Digits: Unintentional example, as one of Sharena's Meet the Heroes illustrations for Brave Soren gave him an extra finger.
• Extra Turn:
  • Some units have unique skills that allow them to continue battle after they have moved already. Often they are conditional, or require the character to do something specific, such as attacking or get a buff from a skill, but as long as the condition is met, the character can act twice in one round. Some builds, such as for Legendary Edelgard, capitailize on using this to attack multiple times in one turn.
  • Units with refreshing Assists like Dance or Sing can allow allies who have already acted to take another action. However, this does not work on allies who also have refreshing assists, even if their Pair Up partner has it as well. The Dancer's Veil item in Arena Assault and Resonant Battles allows a random unit who ended their turn to move again when used, including units with refreshing Assists.
  • Galeforce allows the unit to act again if they initiated the attack, but it only works once per turn, and is restricted to physical melee units (sword, lance, axe, and beast weapon users).
  • Downplayed with the [Canto] effect, where the user can move spaces equal to the amount of the number after Canto after attacking a unit or structure, or using an assist skill, but the user cannot warp more than the spaces allocated and can only use Canto once per turn, with Canto (X) using up to the allocated number, Canto (Rem.(+X)) using the remaining spaces the user did not use beforehand, plus X spaces if any, Canto (Unit X) within a fixed area around the user, Canto (Ally X) moving to an adjacent space of an ally within the allocated space, Canto (Recall) moving back to the starting space of the unit before the action, and Canto (Dist. +X; Max Y) granting movement equal to the amount of spaces the user moved beforehand, plus X spaces if any, while also having Y as a hard cap.
  • An unusual example in Summoner Duels, but the Quick Draw Captain skill allows the player equipped with it on their Captain to gain two actions instead of one at the start of the second turn onwards before the foe performs their first action if the opposing player does not have Quick Draw equipped on their Captain and has equal or less actions than the Quick Draw player at the end of the last turn, and with Quick Draw also decreasing the opposing player's actions per turn by 1 from the second turn onwards, there is a high chance this can happen.
• Eyepatch of Power: Grandmaster Tactics Drill 85 focuses on heroes with eyepatches: Saber, Haar, Legendary Dimitri, and Owain (the last of whom borrows one from Brave Dimitri's connected accessories).

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