Fire Emblem Skills Guide

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Katrina Dent

Kat started playing Fire Emblem on a whim when she saw Path of Radiance in a Blockbuster. Even her older brothers (who were, and still are, massive gamers) weren’t familiar with the Fire Emblem series, but she decided to try it after hearing good things about Path of Radiance in a magazine. She instantly took a liking to the series' difficulty, tactics-based gameplay, and colorful characters. Kat enjoys writing in-depth articles about gaming in general, but thinking up and jotting down unique Fire Emblem strategies is what she does best. Outside of gaming, Kat likes to cycle, do Muay Thai, and club hop with her friends. She runs an international anime figure company with her business partner, which takes her all across Canada and the United States. Kat loves to travel and play the piano.

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Fire Emblem (FE) isn’t a static series, especially when it comes to how it presents its skills. The Skill system is a Fire Emblem series gameplay mechanic that centers around special abilities that grant additional physical or magical powers to its characters. Skills created in the first Fire Emblem game, Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, subvert the normal flow of gameplay.

Learned by player characters, allies, and enemies based on class, level, character, and items, Skills possess a wide variety of effects that either helps characters or hinder their performance. Both playable characters and enemies use skills to change the course of battle.

Although Skills weren’t a defined mechanic until Genealogy of the Holy War (GoHW), the concept of Skills is present in every FE game, including Three Houses where skills are called abilities.

Fire Emblem Skills Overview

Most Fire Emblem games universally use three types of systems: A Class + Personal Skill system, an Offensive Skill system, or a Restriction system. Most games use a combination of the three, like Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn. Let’s take a look at these systems in-depth.

Classification: Class and Personal Skills

Most Fire Emblem games will divide skills into two categories: Class Skills and Personal Skills (“Solider” or “Citizen”). A Class Skill is a skill denoted to a specific class, whereas a Personal Skill has no association with a class but is person-specific and can be inherited.

Thracia 776 has Weapon Skills, which are present in other games but are only shown as a visible stat in Thracia 776 and Echoes: Shadows of Valentia.

Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn introduced Mastery Skills, which are class-specific skills that are only usable by advanced classes and are more powerful than ordinary skills.

Except for Echoes: Shadow of Valentia, a remake of Fire Emblem: Gaiden, all games from Awakening onward don’t distinguish Class Skills and Personal Skills as much as the other games. Most playable characters have distinct skills, which they learn by leveling up. If a character changes their class, they still keep the skills they’ve learned and are equipped.

In Awakening, some characters have access to Personal Skills that can’t be learned from any other class. Bonus units often have at least one skill outside their default class or gender. Rally was also introduced, an additional action that will boost one stat.

In Fates, true Personal Skills were reintroduced, but some of the duel systems remain from Awakening. However, every normal playable character has one Personal Skill that can’t be removed and can access any skills they learned from a previous or current class.

In Three Houses, the GoHW and 766 systems are back, but characters also have the option of adding additional skills (or abilities). Abilities are learned by increasing Skill Levels.

Since Awakening, Fates, and Three Houses focus heavily on class skills described in length within the other games’ Skill lists, their Skill lists won’t be available on this page.

Classification: Sword and Offensive Skills

Introduced in Genealogy of the Holy War, offensive, special sword, trigger, or proc skills are skills that have a percentage chance of activating derived from a specific stat. An activated offensive skill augments a user’s next attack, usually by making it more powerful.

Offensive skills are often treated differently than regular Skills because they specifically use the Skill stat to activate. Although non-offensive skills with offensive use augment the user’s ability to attack, typically in a passive way like with Wrath (Critical boost) or Resolve (Stat boost), offensive skills only augment one attack. For the most part. The definition for an offensive skill still applies to Adept, which is a non-offensive skill, but there are a few distinguishing features.

For one, offensive skills won’t stack with each other when multiple offensive skills are taught to one character. More often than not, the difference between a regular skill and an offensive skill is style over substance. Offensive skills are significantly flashier, brighter, and grab your attention.

Stats That Affect Skills

To activate skills, the game will often use a character’s stats to calculate if the skill will be completed successfully. Once the skill initiates, the game may pull from other values, like the characters:

• Strength (STR): Damage from weapons using the formula Strength + Weapon Might. Players typically want their Weapon Might be as high as possible unless they wish to keep an opponent alive to recruit them. Slim Weapons have the lowest Might.
• Magic (MAG): Damage from Magic spells or attacks using the formula Magic + Tome Might. Similar to Weapon Might, players typically want Tome Might to do more damage. Several Tomes have no Might, like Eclipse, but it can reduce the enemy’s HP by half.
• Skill (or DEX): Also called Dexterity in Three Houses, your Skill stat affects a unit’s Hit Rate and Critical Hit Rate. Skill can also determine an ally’s chance to Dual Strike and the event of an offensive skill activating, like Astra and Aether. Formulas:
  • Hit: ((Skill x3 + Luck)/2) + Weapon’s Hit Rate
  • Critical Hit: (Skill/2) + Weapon\s Critical
  • Dual Strike: (Lead Character’s Skill + Allies Skill)/4
• Speed (SPD): Speed determines your chance to Avoid using the formula (Speed x3 + Luck)/2. The higher your Speed, the better chance you have of activating Speed skills. Any character with a Speed 5 points higher than another will be able to attack twice.
• Luck (LCK): Luck is beneficial for all skills, even those that don’t calculate hit percentage based on this stat. Luck slightly raises your Avoid and Hit while also reducing the foe’s chance of critting. Plus, Luck determines if Defense skills will activate.
• Defense (DEF): Defense lowers the damage dealt from weapons/physical attacks while also determining the likelihood of an allied character activating a Support Block successfully. Support Block Strength formula: (Lead Character’s DEF + Allies DEF)/4.
• Resistance (RES): Resistance lowers damage dealt from Magic attacks. RES also determines how likely an allied character successfully activates a magic-based Support Block. Support Block Magic formula: (Lead Character’s RES + Allies RES)/4.
• Charm (CHA): Also introduced in Three Houses, Charm affects the characters Gambit Might, Gambit Hit, and Gambit Avoid. Although gambits aren’t skills, having a high Charm stat can activate other Skills and earn you the Dancer class in Three Houses.

All formulas ignore bonuses from Skills, Weapon Triangle Advantages (3 characters attacking at once), Weapon Rank Levels, Support Bonuses, and more. Weight may also play a role in some skills (Shove) because it determines how far you can move an opponent based on how heavy they are. Some Skills won’t even activate if you’re not in range or under a status effect.

Skill Restrictions

Some Fire Emblem games will limit how many skills a character can have at once, but Thracia 776, one of the first games with the Skill system, doesn’t.

In Thracia 776, a unit can learn every teachable skill using the game’s Skill Manuals with no restrictions. However, since there are only a few Skill Manuals in the game, this practice is discouraged. Characters can’t learn a Skill Manual taught skill more than once.

The Capacity stat is the best example of a skill restriction. In Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, all characters are given a set Capacity for the number of skills they can have based on class. Basic classes tend to have a lower Capacity than advanced Classes, and Laquz units have the highest Capacity of any class. Mandatory Class skills, like Canto and Shove, do consume Capacity points and can’t be removed.

In Radiant Dawn, a character can’t learn more than six skills at once.

In Awakening, characters can only have up to five skills active at a time. Surplus skills are put in a pool available to the specific characters, but all characters can swap skills at will.

In Fates, characters can have up to six active skills and a Personal Skill.

In Three Houses, characters can have five player-assigned skills, three inherited skills, and one personal skill. Since Awakening, each game adds to the same skill restriction pool.

Predating the Skill System: SD&BL, Gaiden, and MoE

Fire Emblem games Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light (SD&BL), Gaiden, and Mystery of the Emblem (MoE) did not use the skill system but were still called “skills.”

Skills are class-specific, as they are in other games, but they aren’t inherited and are listed as “skill-light” mechanics. Characters could still use skill-type abilities but lacked the Capacity mechanic, meaning characters don’t have a cap for how many skills they could learn. Although Capacity wasn’t present in Genealogy of the Holy War, the Skill system was introduced by then.

Several skills in these games are used in sequels, like how Blessing is a skill that Heron Laguz can use in Path of Radiance. Skills worked differently in the first three FE’s and didn’t appear again in this fashion after Mystery of the Emblem (not counting remakes).

The Introduction of Skills in FE: Genealogy of the Holy War

The skill system was introduced in FE: Genealogy of the Holy War, the 4th Fire Emblem game in the franchise. Skills were divided into Soldier skills, which are class-dependent. 64 total class skills were present in Genealogy of the Holy War, 44 of which could be chosen by the player.

Other skills, called Personal (Citizen) skills, are inherent to the character and aren’t dependent on the class. From the off-set, skills could not be removed or assigned, but Personal Skills can be inherited by any children a character has. Skills could also be learned by wearing items. For example, the Pursuit Ring allowed anyone who could wear it to learn Pursuit.

Since Thracia 776 (776) has a lot of the same skills as Genealogy of the Holy War, I’ll also include them below. Thracia 776 skills work similarly to GoHW, but there are no second generations. Skills can be learned through equipped weapons or Manuals.

Similar to the modern post-Awakening Fire Emblem, Genealogy of the Holy War puts a lot of significance on inherited skills. Inherited skills are dependent on who a character has children with. If a character’s father has a unique skill, their children are guaranteed to also have it.

Although GoHW had skill components that would later make Fire Emblem iconic, Inherited Skills were not industry staples and didn’t appear again until Awakening. The series added light dating sim elements and lower difficulty settings to appeal more to casual audiences.

Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade and Blazing Blade remove the Skill system entirely. The Skill system doesn’t make another appearance until 776’s third sequel, The Sacred Stones.

Remember that Personal skills are person-specific and often can’t be learned by other classes or players. In older games, there are usually one of two characters who can learn a given skill because there are few units to choose from.

Reintroduction of Skills in The Sacred Stones

Compared to the Skill system in other games, Fire Emblem Sacred Stones isn’t as advanced and only includes seven skills. All skills are class-specific, meaning if you don’t have a member in your party who can learn a skill, you’ll never be able to use it.

The skills in Sacred Stones don’t have an interface that describes the skills’ effects. This can be confusing for first-time players who aren’t familiar with what each skill does.

Back to Basics: Skills for Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn

Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn introduced a biorhythm mechanic to roll for specific skills. Tempest and Serenity change your biorhythm’s effects. However, biorhythm is mainly used to predict how a unit performs as the battle goes on. The biorhythm mechanic gives bonuses or penalties to a unit’s Hit Rate and Avoid, stats that also affect the power or activation of a skill.

General Skills

In FE: Path of Radiance (PoR), skills were reintroduced similarly to GoHW and 766, but Skill Capacity was added, which limited the number of skills a unit could learn. Non-Mastery Skills or Regular Skills can be removed to free up capacity for new skills.

In Radiant Dawn (RD), most skills can be removed and given to other units for most of the game. When starting Part 2, units can no longer swap or remove skills. If a unit welcomed into the party already had a skill,  this “innate” skill doesn’t take up any Capacity.

Capacity is unique to Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn and doesn’t appear in another game.

Beast companions play a bigger role in Radiant Dawn than in Path of Radiance. Skills like Beastfoe, Birdfoe, and Dragonfoe show just how much beasts matter in the gameplay. There’s also more emphasis on Passive Skills, like the Critical + Skills and skill-based items.

In Path of Radiance, Smite and Canto/Galdrar are replaced by Shove and Dance, respectively, in Radiant Dawn. Some skills rely on the biorhythm, which is why Canto was renamed Galdrar in Radiant Dawn, as it allows for biorhythm alteration.

Mastery Skills

Path of Radiance also introduced Mastery Skills, which were class-specific and could be learned through Occult Scrolls. Occult Scrolls are one-use items that correspond to their class. Only a few copies are available in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn.

In Radiant Dawn, Master Skills reappeared but were learned naturally on 3rd tier Beorc units, which look and act similar to humans. Laguz units could use Satori Sign at level 30 and learn other Mastery Skills after level 15 by equipping them with an Occult Scroll.

Master Skills now take up Capacity and can’t be removed.

Several Mastery Skills are downgraded in Radiant Dawn. For example, Blessing, Boon, and Cancel are treated as normal skills. At the same time, many skills don’t appear in Path of Radiance at all, despite them being in the same universe, like Ire, Eclipse, Tear, Savage, Rend, Corona, Bane, and Impale.

Last of the Old Era: Shadows of Valentia

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadow of Valentia is the first and only remake that includes a skill system in a game that previously didn’t have one. Shadows of Valentia has a unique Skills system that centers around equipment, HP draining skills, and Passive arts.

There are two primary skill types in Echos: Combat Arts and Passive Skills.

Combat Arts

Combat Arts are skills learned through skill points (SP) while a weapon with said skill is equipped. The more a character uses a weapon, the more Skills they obtain.

Combat Arts cost HP and usually grant Hit Rate and Might bonuses as well as additional effects.

Since skills are weapon-specific, they also automatically become class-dependent. Players should switch weapons often to make sure their characters are well-rounded fighters. For example, if a bow user equips an Iron Bow to learn Curved Shot but earns enough SP to learn the skill, they can unequip the Iron Bow, and Curved Shot will still be accessible while using another weapon.

* Brave Strike allows a user to attack twice the amount of times they’d be able to.

** Provisions are healing items.

Besides weapon-specific/Class-dependent skills, characters could also inherit skills associated with specific classes apart from weapon skills that require a class to use.

For example, Banish is a Passive Skill that can only be learned by the Falcon Knight and Harrier class, but they can also equip Lances to learn Combat Arts like Wrath Strike. Although Skoguls and Gold Knights can equip Lances, they don’t have access to the Banish Passive Skill.

Passive Skills

Unlike Combat Arts, Passive Skills are always active. Passive Skills aren’t used to attack foes directly. Still, they apply an assortment of abilities that lower a foe’s stats reinvigorates users/allies, inflicts status conditions, or deal more effective damage against foes.

Many players call Combat Arts Passive Skills once learned by a character. Passive Skills are specific skills that aren’t learned through weapon use but are unique to classes.

Icons define skills in Echoes. Sword, Lance, Bow, Shield, Ring, Personal, Class Skills, and Defensive Combat Arts have their icons based on equipment type.

New Era: Fire Emblem Awakening, Fates, Three Houses

Awakening, Fates, and Three Houses add more Skills to the franchise than all the other games combined. For this reason, the following section will look at what each game changed in the Skill system, but most of the newer Fire Emblem games use features from past games or pull from each other. For example, the trait system is present in Awakening, Fates, and Three Houses.

Fire Emblem Awakening

See: Fire Emblem Awakening Skills

In Awakening, skills are solely level-dependent. All recruited units arrive in a class group that can’t be changed without a Promotion Item. The Reclassing system was reworked to allow the player to try out different classes and acquire specific skills. To reclass, a unit must be level 10 or higher in a first-tier class or any level in a second-tier class.

After reaching a second-tier class, the user can promote further. For example, Lucina can turn into a Great Lord by using a Master Seal after reaching Level 10. All base-level classes can promote with a Master Seal. Once this happens, they can access Level 15 Skills.

Through reclassing, units can access a vast pool of skills from their reclassing options. To balance this feature, only five skills can be equipped by each unit simultaneously. Players can pick from their library of skills to mix and match their units.

The Skill Inheritance system was reworked for Awakening. Children characters inherit one skill from each parent’s 5th equipped skill slot; even if it’s from a class the child character can’t reclass into due to their gender. DLC skills aren’t inheritable to child characters.

There are eight enemy-exclusive skills, seven of which only appear on Lunatic+ difficulty. Skills like Vantage+ and Pavise+ are upgrades of unit skills, whereas Rightful God is its own unique skill with a +30 Skill activation rate. Enemy-exclusive skills make the game much harder.

Fire Emblem Fates

See: Fire Emblem Fates Skills

In Fates, there are two types of Skills: Personal Skills and Class Skills. Some skills are taught via an item, but most skills are locked to a person, class, or both.

Every playable (including children) and non-captured unit in Fire Emblem Fates has a unique skill. For example, only Shura can learn Highwayman, and only Charlotte can learn Unmask. Although characters have six equitable skill slots, they can only access five skill slots since their Personal Skills can’t be removed, given to another player, or re-equipped.

Class Skills work similarly to how they do in Awakening, except that units at level 15 or higher in a promoted class can learn a Class Skill from its first tier. When a character levels up, they’ll learn a new skill from a different class after reaching level 15 or higher. After level 35, special class units will learn an extra Class Skill.

Fire Emblem Three Houses

See: Fire Emblem Three Houses Skills

In Three Houses, Personal Skills (unit-specific and can’t be unequipped) and Class Skills (granted if the unit is in a certain class and/or if they’re equipped with abilities from a previous class) are both available. Up to nine skills can be active on a unit at once: three Class Skills, one Personal Skill, and five equipped abilities.

“Skills” were renamed “Abilities” to avoid conflicting with the new Skill Level system. Previously called “Weapon Levels,” the Skill Level system combines weapon proficiency, Rally proficiency, Passive Skill proficiency, and terrain advantages. Three Houses also adds a “+” level that unlocks before reaching the next level.

Weapon Levels virtually remained the same in all games, where a weapon’s level would range from E-SS tier. The weapon’s tier determines damage output, which is necessary to activate certain skills or deal more damage in general, whether it’s an Attack or Skill.

On top of level progression stat increases, Three Houses also add additional Skill Level abilities for weapons and skills. Here’s an example of Sword Prowess, a Passive Skill.

Some Skill Levels are static, like Swordbreaker, while others are higher depending on the unit. For example, a D-level Rally Charm is equipable by Dorothea and Manuela, while an S-tier Rally Charm is only available with Clause, Dimitri, and Edelgard.

While most abilities are obtainable by raising a unit’s Skill Level, you can also achieve Class Mastery. When a player enters into a battle, uses a gambit, or white magic, they’ll gain one mastery point. After maxing out their class, they earn a mastery ability or combat art.

Spin-Off: Fire Emblem Heroes

See: Fire Emblem Heroes Skills

In the spin-off Fire Emblem Heroes, skills belong to five separate categories:

• Weapon Skills: Based on their class, characters are locked into a specific weapon type. Legendary Weapons are fixed to certain characters and can’t be inherited.
• Assist Skills: Non-combat skills that can activate and affect other allies.
• Special Skills: Skills that activate in certain intervals and are determined by the skill itself. Once activated, skills will need to go through a cooldown phase.
• Passive Skills: Classified by A, B, or C skills, most Passive Skills will provide beneficial effects to the player and stay active while the character remains in play.
• Seals: Seals are universally equitable skills that can be swapped between characters.

All characters come with a predetermined set of skills based on the Heroes themselves, not the person who summons them. Most characters have one Passive Skill and will come summoned with the highest rarity skill and weapon. In Heroes, Passive Skills are taught, but the Rarity of each skill is Hero specific. Some units will learn a skill at a lower level than others.

A Hero can learn a skill by inheriting them directly. Skills may activate differently depending on how they interact with each other. For the most part, skills are separated by field and combat.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Conclusion

With over 400 skills across almost 20 games, it’s easy to say that Skills play a significant role in Fire Emblem’s mechanics. What’s more, each game changes how each Skill system works, which adds variety, but can make the Fire Emblem games hard to get into on the first try.

Still, Fire Emblem and its in-depth Skill system are digestible if you focus on specific games. With a bit of time, you’ll have no problem equipping, engaging, and leveling up your skills.

For more interesting readings about Fire Emblem check out:

• Fire Emblem Archer
• Tiki Fire Emblem Guide
• Felicia Fire Emblem Guide
• Lissa Fire Emblem Guide