Name: Charlie Onion Wu (Yes that is my middle name)
Age: 19
Occupation: Computer Science and Engineering major (AKA, the bastard child of the School of Information and Computer Sciences and the School of Engineering) at UCI
AIM: ask me for it.

List of my pride and joys:

Kiyoko's Ambulance Driving Skills
Fourteen Days
That seven rules video
Anything I do that's remotely artistic

Silent Springs Staffing/Relationships

Name, Age, Class - Position

Main Staff
Charlie, 17, Swordmaster – Innkeeper
Sonia, 22, Sniper – Shopkeeper
Lulu, 20, Pegasus Knight – Restaurant owner
Fae, 18, Mage – Restaurant chef
Kiyoko, 14, Assassin – Police force
Brian, 18, Bishop – Priest
Kate, 19, Bishop – Hot Springs manager

Supplementary Staff
Fureal, 27, Sage– Magic Teacher
Dias, 24, Swordmaster – PE teacher
Glenn, 34, Druid – History/English teacher
George, 27, Myrmidon, Math/Science teacher

Alan, 16, archer – Mountain hiking guide
Kevin, 20, Druid – Librarian
Erimus, 29, Assassin – Postal worker

Samantha, 17, Cleric – Priestess
Lizzie, 25, Civilian – Naturalist
Hitomi, 15, Swordmaster – Psychologist
Louisa, 14, Mage – Student
Max, 14, Mage– Student
Aminec, 27, Pegasus Knight - Janitor
Delphi - Aminec's Pegasus
Lucas - Lulu's Pegasus

OC Staff

Karen, 24, Civillian – Headmistress of public school
Kramer, 19, Mercenary – Assistant on the restaurant farm

Relationships:

Sonia – Lulu – Fae: Sisters
Dias – Sonia: Couple
Aminec - Fureal: Periodic dating
George – Karen: Married – Eliza (5): daughter, Ben (infant): son
Glenn – Christina (30): Married – Melissa (11): daughter, Glenn Jr. (9): son
Erimius – Lizzie: Married – Erika (7): daughter

Charlie – Alan – Kiyoko: The Three Musketeers (Don't ask)
Louisa - Max: Mage-y Twins

Foreign Staff

Aeros, 18, Assassin – Border Patrol
Nightmare, 19, Swordmaster – Border Patrol
Lee, 19, Swordmaster – Border Patrol

Charlie's Guide to What Makes a Good Fire Emblem Character

All right, I'm sick of yahoos telling me I should go have sexual relations with a tree because I like or dislike a certain character they seem to think is uber. SO I'm making a guide to why I think certain characters are good and others just plain suck. This is not personal opinion. This is after playing the game more times than I can think as every affinity in existance. Before you ask, yes, I've gotten EVERYONE to level 20 at least 5 times, INCLUDING Marcus. Such are my observations and from my observations, I used inductive reasoning to make my claims.

What makes a character in general:
-Stats: General. How good is a character? How much damage can he/she do?
-Weapons: What can a character use to hurt his/her enemy? How proficient is he/she in weapons? I subscribe to quality rather than quantity.
-Time: How long do you have character? Do you get him/her early so you have time to invest? Or does he/she just pop in for no apparent reason near the end of the game.
-Growths: How much do the stats of a character increase? Do they do so consistantly?
-Starting Stats: How good is the character when you start with him/her? Does their growths justify their starting stats?
-Stat Caps: How good can a character get?
-Starting Level: How many chances does a character get to get better?
-Effectiveness: How good is the character at killing someone of EQUAL level and equipment?
-Extraneous Abilities: Anything extra this character brings to the table?
-Misc:

Now... what about these points that seperates the broken from the good from the mediocre from the poor from the Marcus's

-Stats: This point is very very easy to understand. If a character has good stats, then a character is good. There are a variety of stats as follows:
HP: Hit points. When this hits zero, your character dies. There's no such thing has "too much HP" but there is such a thing as "too little." True other stats will make up for it, but honestly, would you risk YOUR life to a random number generator?
Str/Mag: How much damage can a character do? Without a high str/mag, your character is rendered useless. I don't care if you max out everything else. If you can't do damage, it doesn't really matter. Remember, 3x0 is still 0 so don't depend on criticals to bail you out.
Speed: Affects your dodge as well as your attack speed. A very good stat to have a lot of. You don't need to worry as MUCH about it as a tank, but it's always good to have it. If you're a dodging character, then it is vital for your survival... literally. Also speed allows you to double hit which is much better than single hits.
Skill: Another important stat. Yes, all the very important ones are on the left side. This determines how well you can hit your enemy. Again, I don't care if every other stat is uber, you can't really do anything to anyone if you can't hit them.
Luck: Luck affects various things. I still don't quite understand how luck formulates into equations. All characters cap this at 30. They affect many things. It's generally preferable to have high luck, although many characters seem to have a propensity to having low luck. Either way, this stat isn't one that will save or break your game.
Def: Defense, damage reduction. Doesn't get simpler than that. Be aware of what your character is good against though. One extra point of defense on say Lucius. Oh yeah, that'll do loads. Don't depend on it. If your character is NOT meant to be on the front lines, don't PUT them there. It's a sad day if you require that extra point of defense just to keep your healer alive because for some reason you were forced to put him/her into a direct line of fire.
Res: Same as Defense, only for magic. Again, varies, but a tad more useful than defense. A tank could always use resistance while a caster with an extra point of defense is rather pointless. I justify this because usually, my tanks are on the front lines, so they're hit by everything. Meanwhile, I keep all my casters back and have them use range to hit. So hopefully, if you're good, your tanks will get hit by magic more than your casters will be smacked by weapons. Even so, make sure you don't try to rely on this stat. Don't let Oswin take hits from fifty mages. He won't survive.

-Weapons: Weapons are what your characters use to kill enemies. I hope I don't need to go further than that. Rather, I will go into the intricacies of the weapon triangle. More often than not, people look at say paladins and go "ZOMG! THEY CAN USE ALL THREE WEAPONS! THEY'RE UBER 1337!" No, sorry, doesn't work that way. See, each weapon also has a proficiency level, which determines how good of a weapon you can use. So being a jack of all trades means you spend less time devoted to each weapon, weakening your proficiency. Another thing is, take advantage of reaver/slayer weapons. The reaver weapons require a C proficiency which will probably be higher than your third weapon's proficiency anyways. Plus reaver weapons are powerful and give a +5 crit. They're awesome. USE them. Secondly, there is no S level staff weapon. When Priscilla and/or Serra promote, keep them from healing. Frankly, with staves, you only need it at B for physic. Stuff like sleep, silence whatever, yeah, they don't work unless your mage can one shot the enemy ANYWAYS. They're as useful as the silence/sleep/blind spells in Final Fantasy. The only monsters those spells work on are monsters your characters can overkill. Same principle here. And remember, when mages, druids and monks promote, they can use staves too. Try to get them to level their staff level. Finally, some characters have special weapons. Those weapons are generally very very good. Use them.

-Time: The longer you have with a character, the more time you get to train them. There are a few characters that come really late in the game. At that point, you should already have a base team well trained and it pretty much the new characters start to really suck and become generally useless and a waste of effort. And usually, late game characters are prepromoted and generally start with cruddy stats. Be wary.

-Growths/Stat Caps/Starting Stats/Starting Level: This is one category because they're all related. Starting stats are the first thing I look at. If a character has a good starting stats, then I generally will take a liking to that character. HOWEVER, that's not all I look at. Good starting stats mean nothing, if the starting level of the character is really bad. So starting with 8 str. That's really good, but if I'm already at lv 16, then it's really bad. Next is growths. How fast and how much can your character's stats grow? One thing I stress here is consistancy. Just because a character has ONE game of insane growths doesn't make that character good. If he/she has five games of insane growths, then we can induce that the character is pretty good. Another note on growths, are they in the right places. A healer with a good def growth? Why the hell would I want that? If I'm constantly in a position where my healer is getting skewered, then I fail at life and should go renounce video games. Finally, stat caps. Everything else would mean nothing if your stat cap was crappy. Oh yay, I start with insane stats and they grow almost exponentially, but they cap so low that with all my stats capped, I still suck. That doesn't make a good character. Generally, I expect at least one of either str/mag, skill or speed to be capped from 28-30. Something vital needs to have a high cap, otherwise, a character's growths and starting stats would really mean nothing.

-Effectiveness: This really gets to me. People keep going "ZOMG HE'S SO GOOD! LATER LEVELS HE BLOWS THROUGH ENEMIES!" You mean the incompetent blobs of sin against god that Nergal sends at me who are killed by light breezes? ANYONE can blow through those. The story enemies are really USELESS. They're weak and if you're not completely moronic will NEVER win against a well trained character (not even Marcus). But, can your character match up against someone his level with his weapons? Yes, Matthew armed with a killing edge and will eventually kill a Hector armed with an iron or steel axe. Sain wielding Rex Hasta will rape Florina wielding an iron sword. But if you even the match ups, can they still win effortlessly? Not so much. If a character can win against another character wielding decent to good weapons, then that's a feat. If they can rape another character who's holding a toothpick to you, then well... whoop-de-doo. I've seen Marcus with a killer lance murder Lyn with an iron sword.

-Extraneous Abilities: Extra stuff that gives a character oomph. The triangle attack for the sisters, OHKOs for assassins, post movement for mounted units. They're all very useful. I find though, being mounted and being able to move after performing an action is much more useful tactically than any other ability. It gives you a wider range of options for attack and retreat. The triangle attack is nice and flashy, but you need all three sisters and they need to be in a specific formation. When you can only have a few characters on the map at a time, it's a bit of a waste. But against a boss, the triangle attack is quite fun to use. OHKOs are just about the most unreliable skill I know of. It activates on 1/4th of the critical chance? Seriously, even with a killing edge, on enemies that won't die without a OHKO, most assassins only have a few percent chance of criticalling normally. Dividing that minimal chance by four just makes OHKOs a joke. Half the time, they'll activate just because. There's no way you can strategize around it. With normal criticals, espcially swordmasters, you can plan for it, because a 50+ chance crit means your character will critical more often then not. A 10/4 chance of a OHKO means your character will pull off a OHKO every 1 out of 25 times. Uhh...yay?

-Misc: Ninian and Nils are very useful for their rings. Make sure you use those rings. Most people want to save them, but end up just wasting the rings by not using them. You should start using the rings on every boss the minute you get them. you have fifteen uses, use it all up. Secondly, stat up items. Do NOT make arguments about how a character can be good if you give it every stat up item. No, that's NOT how it works. I remember back when every Matthew fangirl and their mother would tell me Matthew was good, and they gave me a formula: 1: Give him every boss kill, 2: Give him all the secret books and the angelic robe and energy ring from Lyn's story 3. use Dragonshields on him to give him survivability and the second Angelic robe too and hopefully he'll survive long enough and he'll OHKO everything. No, stat up items are used to make your good characters even better. Using a Dragonshield on Lucius...why would you do that? Using goddess icons on someone with terminally low luck, just why? You use the items to make your already good characters even better. Give Hector that extra defense boost to make him even more of a tank. Give Lyn that extra str so she can rape easier with the Mani. Give Farina that extra resistance so she can take bolting hits for you better. Don't waste every item on one bad character in attempt to make him good. You get to use a team. Make your TEAM good.

Remember, a good character is not one who's cute or whatever. I'll admit, some of the characters I think are horrible are good looking. But that really means nothing to me when I have to restart a chapter over and over again because they're more worried about their make up than being run through with a lance. If you JUST care how cute the character is, don't play the game. Go to a fanart site and just stare at the chars all day. Don't come bitching to someone who actually plays the game when your video game lover is denounced as a bad character for being incompetent. Secondly, make sure you take advantage of support bonuses. They're hard to pull off, but if you plan it right, they will really make chapters go much smoother and faster. Finally, having the same affinity as a character is nice, but it won't make the character uber. The bonus is qutie small and pretty much isn't noticeable until you play it for millions of times and graph the results. I'm saying it's nice, but again, don't depend on it.

Wow, that was long. Hope this will help (and shut some people up)

Is it just me, or does every ff.net do to make our lives easier end up making everything much less efficient? I mean that little button that supposedly makes a break in the page? Yeah, it stopped working.

But anyways, this isn't about my gripes on FF.net's so called "upgrades." Someone asked me about the RNG I used or something to make the Fourteen Days couple. I tried finding the e-mail of the person, but, FF.net in their infinite wisdom and updates, made THAT not work either. So...here is the source code. Enjoy. By the way, once again, FF.net in their infinate wisdom, for some reason saw fit to remove certain symbols. WHY, I don't know... but some hallucinigin drove them to this. So until I they stop making shit difficult for us, you'll have to figure out where braces go. If you really want the actual source code, pm me your e-mail address so I don't have to put up with the shit FF.net throws at us.