Experience Stealing

Experience Stealing is the process by which a character causes loss of useful experience. It comes in several varieties.

Overlevel Experience Stealing
Overlevel Experience Stealing occurs when a character of a level far higher than the enemy it is fighting kills the enemy. Due to the way experience in the majority of Fire Emblem games works, a character of a much higher level will receive a lot less experience from killing the enemy than a character of a comparable or lower level than the enemy.

For example, from the opening chapter of Eliwood's Route on Fire Emblem: The Blazing Sword:
 * Killing the brigand closest to the start of the chapter with level 2 Cavalier Lowen gives Lowen 30 experience points.
 * Killing the brigand closest to the start of the chapter with level 20/1 Paladin Marcus gives Marcus 3 experience points.

Here, 27 experience points have in effect been lost, or 'stolen' by Marcus from Lowen, if Marcus is made to kill the brigand.

This is the kind of Experience Stealing most commonly associated with Jeigan characters.

Wasteful Experience Stealing
Wasteful Experience Stealing occurs in two situations. Firstly, when experience is given to a character the player does not intend on using. Secondly, when experience is given to a character which is subpar compared to other characters.

Unlike Overlevel, Wasteful does not imply that any experience is lost, merely that it has been given to a character when other characters would have made better use of it.

Further unlike Overlevel, Wasteful is not always detrimental. In the first case, the player may not be using the character on their team but instead using them as an experience sponge to help bouy EXP rank in games where that is applicable. In the second case, a player has the right to use whichever characters they choose, and the opinions of external parties on which characters they should be using should have no say in the matter; further external parties are often biased.

Indirect Experience Stealing
Indirect Experience Stealing occurs whenever loss of experience was out of the players control. For example, on a Defeat Every Enemy chapter, on the enemy's turn before reinforcements have arrived, the last remaining enemy attacks a unit that wouldn't normally kill it, but is criticalled on a 2% chance, thus depriving the player of the experience they could have earnt from the reinforcements.

Why is Experience Stealing bad?
In general, experience stealing is bad because it reduces the amount of experience and thus the amount of levels your main character team gets.

Also, it can have the effect of reducing EXP ranking, for those who play for rankings. Note that as mentioned, Wasteful experience stealing is often used to help with the EXP rank in ranking games; it is mainly Overlevel and Indirect varieties which are detrimental to these.

Some play styles aren't affected by experience stealing at all. These mainly consist of play styles where the player abuses any sources of infinite experience in the game, such as an Arena, and also play styles where the player is using some form of cheating device.