#how much edgy bullshit that robot thinks is cool can robot stack onto one grumpy side character? more than you think!

[ro-botany]

ACTUALLY. ACTUALLY. What are your extended thoughts on Henry's Harvest Scramble with Freddie? Mainly that Freddie has story potential to be a dark mage despite his shit Mag growths? What do you think this says about Freddie and dark magic?

(Link to said conversations, for convenience)

GOOD QUESTION THANK YOU

This conversation is interesting to me because it suggests several story things about dark magic, and about stat growths.

If you have DLC in Awakening, Frederick can reclass into precisely one tome-wielding class: Dread Fighter. (I know all male characters in Awakening can reclass to that, hush)

Of course, his magic growths are dogshit - as a dread fighter he jumps from 10% to 20% magic growth but like still - and he's got a -2 magic cap modifier. Getting his magic stat up so he can deal good damage with tomes is fighting a steep uphill battle, hours of work for something that a lot of more magically inclined characters are going to give you much better returns on.

But see. He's not incapable of magic. And it's not impossible to get him to a pretty decent magic stat; it'll be the last of his stats to reach cap, but if you put the work in, you theoretically could get that stat up there.

So we know for a gameplay-supported fact that Henry isn't lying when he says Frederick could make a decent mage. Given enough time and enough reclassing, he could. And what that suggests to me is that while stats are in part a reflection of one's natural and capabilities (cap modifiers), they're at least in part a function of a character's personality, interests, and what they're naturally talented at (growth rates).

If Frederick has low magic growths, story-wise that must at least in part be because magic is not something he's particularly interested in pursuing. He's a knight. A knight is all he really wants to be. So he pours his effort into acquiring the strength and melee combat skills that a knight needs to succeed.

Given sufficient motivation to pursue magic, it's possible he gets quite good at it, though. When you reclass him to Dread Fighter his magic growth doubles! If we gave him story reasons to take all that overachiever energy of his and direct it right at magic then I'm willing to bet that magic growth rate skyrockets.

Henry makes an interesting point about dark magic specifically; he suggests that to be truly good at dark magic, you need to be drawing on some kind of inner darkness when casting. Henry, presumably, fully indulges in his love of bloodshed when he's slinging spells... And he suggests that for Frederick, a desire to help others that spills over into self-destructiveness is a strongly dark trait, strong enough to fuel dark magic, if you can finely control how hard you lean into it.

I don't know if it would necessarily be healthy to encourage Fred to be even more of a self destructive workaholic... But the dark arts expert says Fred's got untapped talent for the dark arts, and leaning on how much he wants to protect people is a great way to motivate him into learning anything, magic included, so everything seems in order to me!

---

Now here's the part where I dive into the headcanon deep end. >:D

I don't know if Frederick would actually want to take Henry up on his offer, because dark magic doesn't seem particularly his style... Nonetheless, it's really fun to consider the precise form that Frederick's usage of the dark arts might end up being if he were to pursue it. How he might incorporate it into his fighting style... You can do some really fun shit with a man who's got a lot of melee combat experience, and who fuels his dark arts fuelled with a self-destructive desire to protect.

This is a weird example but the direction my mind instantly goes is to Kingdom Hearts 3's Rage Form mechanics. Sora is already a guy who sacrifices his well-being for the benefit of others, and Rage Form is one of the more direct ways that manifests; it lets him sacrifice his own HP to raise his attack power.

So. Steeples hands. Frederick but we make him a blood mage. He's sapping chunks of his own HP to enchant his melee weapons to do absolutely monstrous amounts of damage to whatever he hits for a few turns. Or hell, make it a fucked up healing spell. Saps his own health to heal others. Or maybe he learns to do both!

It's edgy as hell. It's reasonably in character. It's COOL. It's perfect. But also get him therapy and a stack of vulneraries while you're at it cause this is by definition terrible for his health.