A Level Up Screen in Fire Emblem Engage
Level (レベル, Reberu) is a measure of the proficiency a character has in combat.
Overview[]
Character Level or Level are synonymous terms for a character's overall combat capability in quantitative form. As characters experience combat, they gain valuable Experience points, eventually acquiring Stats when they Level Up.
Levels are not necessarily a hard measure of overall capabilities or strengths as the Fire Emblem series utilizes Random Number Generators in its various systems from combat calculations to Growth Rates. Between playthroughs, characters may have wildly different stats even when reaching the same Level. In some respects, Levels can be used as an assessment measure for a character's capabilities compared to other units both in the player's army or the enemy forces.
Maximum Level[]
In most Fire Emblem titles, the maximum level for a character is 20. Upon reaching this cap, a character will no longer gain EXP. Depending on the character's current class tier, the player may reclass, usually through Class Promotion, to reset their current Level to 1. In most games, classes come in two tiers with a vast majority of the cast being recruited in a Tier 1 class comprised of fledgling classes and a promoted class of experienced units. This allows most units to go through up to 40 Levels of experience.
Some games treat some classes as special classes without any promotions. Some of these special classes retain the Level 20 cap depending on their native game. In some games, like Radiant Dawn and Fates, these classes have a maximum Level cap of 40 to compensate.
Some entries feature a level cap of 30 either on a universal or class-specific basis. In Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, all characters have a level cap 30. In Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, specific classes including Lord, Thief, Manakete, and Ballistician can also reach level 30. Similarly, in Fire Emblem Awakening, Dancer, Manakete, Taguel, Conqueror, Dread Fighter, Bride, Villager, and Lodestar have a level cap of 30 as well.
In Fire Emblem Fates, the maximum level is 20 for base classes. Promoted classes also have a standard level cap of 20, but with the use of Eternal Seals, a promoted class's level cap can be increased to as high as 99.
In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, character level is not tied to class, and thus a character's level does not reset to 1 when promoting or reclassing. The maximum level cap for all characters is 99.
Class Promotion Requirements[]
Julia promoting in Genealogy of the Holy War.
In most Fire Emblem titles, a character is not allowed to promote to a higher tier of class until they have reached a minimum level required in their current class. In most games, the level requirement for promotion is Level 10, at which point a promotion item such as a Master Seal may be used.
As an exception, Genealogy of the Holy War, with its previously noted level cap of 30, bars promotion until a character has reached Level 20. In Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, units capable of class promotion will automatically promote upon gaining enough experience to reach Level 21 of their current class and resetting their class to Level 1 without use of a promotion item. In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, there are four tiers of classes, each with a minimum level requirement. Promotion into Beginner classes is allowed at Level 5, Intermediate at Level 10, Advanced at Level 20, and Master at Level 30.
Leveling Up and Stat Growth[]
A level up in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones.
When a character levels up, their core statistics have a chance of increasing. The specifics of how this is determined varies between games, but most commonly, stat growth is determined by a random number generation roll applied to the character's growth rates for each stat. Any stat that does not have a 100% growth rate therefore does not have a guaranteed chance of increasing when the character's level increases. In some games, it is possible for a character to level up and receive no stat growths at all. This event is sometimes described by series fans as an Empty Level Up or a Blank Level Up. Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn was the first entry in the series to enforce a requirement that at least one stat increase with each level up, preventing such an event from occurring.
In the Game Boy Advance games, there is a pseudo-fail-safe. If a unit gets an Empty Level the game will re-roll up to three times to get them at least one stat. However, this fail-safe will not trigger if the unit has already reached the stat cap for at least one of their stats.
In Fire Emblem Engage, the first run through the game on the Maniac difficulty setting enforces fixed stat growths, meaning that stat growths at leveling up are not randomized.
Beginning with Awakening, units that level up comment on their stat growths. The more stats that increase, the more upbeat or enthusiastic their commentary, while a level up with only one stat growth is commonly regarded with disappointment or self-depreciation.
Other Effects[]
In Fire Emblem Gaiden and its remake, when units in magic-using classes level up, they will also at certain levels unlock new White Magic or Black Magic spells. Each character capable of being a magic-using class has their own unique spell list with each spell assigned to unlock upon reaching a specific level.
Trivia[]
- There is an item called Juna Fruit in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones which can be used to decrease a unit's level. This item is not available in-game via normal means, however, and can only be acquired through cheating.
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