Unit Design 101 - Pegasus Knights

Pegasus knights are fantastic units, but their combat often leaves a lot to be desired at base. This is part of the appeal - making a combat utility unit who is worth investing into, but can also do important jobs without much training.

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[lapsis]

Interesting how Peg Knights, Archers, and Mages sort of form a weapon triangle of their own. Pegs can one round mages, mages are capable of counter attacking archers at range and attacking adjacent to not risk enemy counter attack, and archers deal effective damage against peg knights.

[drunkdemoman]

I love how people characterize Pegasi as "living in the shadow of Wyverns" as if Pegasi aren't A tier at worst compared to Wyvern's eternal S tier

[Laezar]

Pegasus knight are just really cool. I think they are a lot more interesting than wyverns both in term of vibes (and we're competing with dragon riders here, they're amazing aswell) and in term of gameplay.
The low con and low strength combined with the high speed makes for a very modular unit, you can weight them down with heavier lances to try and fight the lack of strength but it usually comes at the cost of their doubling ability. And the fact they are so frail and mobile also makes it a high risk high reward gameplay.
Wyverns tend to have enough con to wield heavier lances and don't see as much risk flying into ennemy lines with how bulky they are, it makes them very strong but a bit less interesting to play.

I feel like a typical first time experience with fire emblem is to just randomly lose your first pegasus to an archer and then feel scared away from using them and learning with wyverns how strong flying is which then lets you play your pegasus better when you play the game again and with that early training let it outshine wyverns. I think that's pretty cool.

I will say though pegasus tend to profit a lot more than most other unit from having prior knowledge and in particular a game having ambush spawns or not really affects pegasus as ambush archers are something that can be extremely painful and pegasus tend to fly in the areas where reinforcement could spawn and because of how mobile they are they are even likely to trigger them.

[serpifeu]

In addition to beating wyverns in utility I would say Pegasi also beat them in availability, usually being part of the early game squad and then as training projects potentially reaching a power spike upon a relatively early promotion when they can power spike due to just physically reaching many foes early on a map and then being stronger than their wyvern counterparts for a while until they catch up and become better than the Pegasi at combat

[Khrene]

Honey, the new unit design 101 just dropped!

[ThiefofRPGistheWanderingSoul]

The class that defines if you know what you're doing you can break the game over your knee. Yet you tend to only see 1 maybe 2 used by most people in their playthroughs.

[cyndit]

I like pegasus knights. I feel like I tend to use them, especially since you usually get wyverns way later in the game, so I have already gotten attached to one of the peg knights by then, so I just use both.

With respect to Gaiden/Echoes, there aren't wyverns, so the peg knights are your only fliers. Flying utility may not be great there, but I found it helpful for Celica's swamp maps and the like.

I also really enjoy dark falcon in Awakening and 3H. Flying mages are so fun. (I do also really like Fates' malig knight and Ivy's class in Engage, but magic wyverns just feel like less of a thing in FE than magic, or even staff, peg knights)

[elius]

Happy to see a unit design 101 for my fav class

[themarauding]

I'm a lunatic that usually tries to get the tiny pegasus knight to be a combat superstar because I know the wyvern flier isn't coming until about the halfway point in the game and I want good flying combat now dammit.

[tesnacloud]

I think one other thing to consider when designing pegasus knights is terrain bonuses. All high speed units can benefit more from terrain bonuses than normal. And, because they are flyers, Pegasus knights can reach said terrain before other units can. This makes the pegasus have an impressive ability to take and hold defensible positions ahead of your main force. They can also frequently skirmish an enemy, attacking and retreating more easily than other units using rivers and forests as cover.

[EduardoCeballos]

Fates promoted Falcon Knight is the best promotion for a Pegasus knight as they are basically all terrain healers

[OrlandoAguirre]

Just noticed the quiz, Ima give it a shot. Weapon lvl 10 I think is Sheeda from fe1 and the 5 str with 7 def I think is Thanny/Shanna. I'm a little unsure of these other 2, but I think the other one with weapon lvl 8 is Catria and the other 5 str with 6 def is maybe the Sacred Stones pegasus. I forgot her name.





Bru I thought Sheeda had higher weapon level. Seems like I mixed up her and Catria. Other than that, I guessed all the correct characters but not in the correct order

Edit: nevermind i read Tate and thought I got it right with Thanny. I did qorse than I thought...

[MommyRexacuse]

I love how most of this doesn’t apply to Chloé because she’s just cracked out of her mind.
What is in all that folk food she eats?

[finaldusk]

A sidenote to this class is one of its promotions unique to Fates, which is ironically also an archer promotion and possibly the only time in FE history an infantry class can promote directly into a flier, the kinshi knight.
Its raw combat potential is lower than that of the falcon knight and wyvern lord, and it lacks the malig knight's magic attacks. However it's a flying bow user with a dedicated anti-air skill, an archer that can easily chase and hunt down other flyers, with a passive AOE team healing skill to boot.

[Venomdrad]

Pegasus knights are probably the most iconic FE class, and you're guaranteed to have access to one in every game (yes even Conquest, if you class change). As a general rule, they have mid-low strength and defense but good speed, skill, and resistance. The last two stats tend to be seen as "lesser" stats by most players, but peg knights make it work just fine. It gave them a genuine niche of being physical fighters that are able to shrug off most magic attacks. This was hard to find in many games. The early game pegasus knights needed more player skill to use effectively due to their fragility and low strength. One wrong move and they could get killed easily by archers.

The Archanea games had peg knights promote to wyvern knights. I have mixed feelings on this. While this doesn't matter as much in those games due to generic sprites, but I feel that the unit loses some of their charm if they ditch their pegasus mount like that. Same applies to the FE8 version of this. FE11 Caeda has the broken Wing Spear, though its brokenness is in part due to FE11's overabundance of cavalier and armor knight enemies/bosses. Stat-wise she is good but not ridiculously overpowered. She is probably the best early game unit to invest in.

Oddly enough, pegasus aren't that broken in the Judgral games, but you had very limited options for fliers. FE4 falcon knights used staves to moderate effect. In FE5 Karin is literally the only flier you get for a while, and I think she spends a good chunk of the Manster escape sequence dismounted...

In the GBA games, most of them were good honestly. The first joiners like Shanna and Florina had the whole early game to themselves and offered flight/rescue utility, so they were good investment units. The middle joiners like FE7 Fiora and FE8 Tana were good to go at base and still had good growth. If you lost or neglected your early game pegasus, you had an alternative. We had 2 pre-promotes who were not very remarkable. FE6 Juno, had low bases and growths, so she only really offered rescue/flight utility and the triangle attack. FE8 Syrene was ok, but she joined really late and had to compete with other fliers. FE7 Farina was not a pre-promote but joined later than the other 2 and had solid bases and a really high strength growth.

I dont have much to say on the Tellius games pegasus but in FE10 they felt outclassed somewhat by wyverns. Pegasus knights are weak to bows (crossbows made them go splat) and wind magic. Wyverns are only weak to thunder magic, and we all know by now that FE10 mages are weak, especially ones using thunder magic. Having high resistance isn't as notable in a game where enemy mages aren't as big of a threat.

The Awakening/Fates games brought back the idea of Falconknights using staves but lost swords. More notable was the new promotion option of Dark Flier. A versatile hybrid physical/magic attacker with flight. Not good enough? Let's give them one of the most broken skills in Galeforce! Fates also had the Kenshi Knight promo, which was a dedicated anti-air flier unit with bow access. They did they job rather well.

[skyboy]

What’s your opinion on dark-flyers? Personally I find a flying mage to be a really fun class, and gives then an interesting playstyle, but are always limited in some capacity (awakening the best magic candidates for the class don’t start in peg knight, so you gotta use a second seal and train an extra 10 levels, and in 3houses there’s only 1 flying battalion with a focus on magic per play though, meaning running more then one dark flyer will leave them with sub-optimal battalions)

[davey_rulez]

I’m gonna try at the bonus quiz

The upper-left has a weapon level stat and doesn’t have dismounted stats, so she’s from FE1. Judging by her low overall bases, I’m gonna guess Caeda.

The upper-right and lower-left are both GBA, as they have constitution and aid but no magic. They both have 5 con, and iirc the second pegasus knight always has 5 con instead of 4 in the GBA games. In the lower-left one there’s a dotted line under the speed stat, which may indicate it was changed in localization. That happened a lot in Sacred Stones, so I think that’s Tana. The upper-right one could be either Tate or Fiora, I have no idea. I’m just gonna guess Fiora.

The last one has weapon level again and has dismounted stats, so she’s from FE3. Her base stats indicate to me that she joins early, and since it’s not book 1 Caeda I’m gonna guess book 2 Catria.

[MorphBall]

What's interesting about the peg knights is that they tend to be very unpopular with beginners and very popular with experienced players. When I watch playthroughs of people who don't regularly play FE games I sometimes forget about this and am surprised when they bench their peg knight early saying they don't like the class due to how frail and weak they are. And it was the same with me when I first played FE7 too, I benched Florina for the same reasons.

[OrlandoAguirre]

I never use Pegasi. Too frail for my tastes and feel limited to move at times. I know they are technically way better when playing the game at a higher skill level for LTCs, ranked runs, and what not, but I just never use them. Only sucks when it comes to playing FE6 but oh well. Some fella in some other comment section has inspired me to actually use them for a FE6 Ironman as well as actually go for Echidna maps.

Nice seeing a Pegasi vid. It reminded me to get back to using em.

[noukan]

Oh, the class that single handedly make me hate early boosters because the optimal way to use them is always to brute force a trash combat unit into decency.