How would you make Robin for fire emblem?

[Trickster]

I'm not a hardcore fire emblem fan, hell I've never even played one, but I own super smash bros ultimate and picked him up.

After playing around with his tactical magic + sword fighting style, I fell into that grove of trying to figure out how to make him in dnd, 5th edition would've been easy (Dancing wizard) but 3.5 makes complexity shine.

TL;DR How would you make Harry Potter with a sword?

[Remuko]

I'm not a hardcore fire emblem fan, hell I've never even played one, but I own super smash bros ultimate and picked him up.

After playing around with his tactical magic + sword fighting style, I fell into that grove of trying to figure out how to make him in dnd, 5th edition would've been easy (Dancing wizard) but 3.5 makes complexity shine.

TL;DR How would you make Harry Potter with a sword?

Duskblade? Seems the simplest analogy to Robin's Tactician (i think thats what its called) class from Awakening. You can sword. And You can spell. All in one neat little base class. No assembly required.

[Silva Stormrage]

Seconding Duskblade. Probably the best and easiest representation of Robin. Plus shocking grasp is great at early levels to fit the flavor with Robin's electric themed Levin Sword and Thoron. Here is a good handbook if you are not familiar with the class.

https://dictummortuum.blogspot.com/2011/08/duskblade-handbook.html

If you want more utility casting, wands UMD and or runestaves should be able to help. Fluff some runestaves as tomes and it works out pretty well flavor wise as well.

[Maat Mons]

At higher levels, Wizard or Archivist with a Skillful weapon could work. There's also Archivist with Persistomany Divine Power. Could also go for either Wizard into Jade Phoenix Mage or Archivist into Ruby Knight Vindicator.

[Prime32]

https://fireemblemwiki.org/wiki/Robin
https://fireemblemwiki.org/wiki/Tactician
https://fireemblemwiki.org/wiki/Grandmaster

In Awakening we've got:

Can wield both sword and tome weapons (i.e. straightforward elemental blasting; doesn't include healing or debuffs). As in most FE games, weapons break after a certain number of uses, and you need to level up your proficiency with a weapon type in order to wield more powerful weapons.
Slightly higher Strength than Magic, and slightly higher Resistance than Defense.
Typically depicted carrying a thunder-element tome of some type, along with a regular sword and a Levin Sword (JP name "Thunder Sword"). The Levin Sword is wielded like a tome (it uses Magic and Resistance in its damage formula, and can attack at both melee and range) but is still treated as a sword for the purpose of effects based on weapon type (e.g. more effective against axe-wielders, less against lance-wielders; skills which boost swords apply to it).
Veteran: Gain +50% more XP each time you attack while "paired up" with another unit.
Ignis: % chance of adding half your Strength stat to magical damage, or half your Magic stat to physical damage. The odds are calculated using the Skill stat (which also determines critical hit rate) but unlike crits they're not affected by the type of weapon wielded.
Rally Spectrum: Grant all allies within 3 squares a boost to all stats for 1 turn. Other characters in the game can get similar skills which boost only a single stat.


And when Robin returns in other games there's:

Solidarity: (JP name "Magic Square") Grants adjacent allies incrased critical hit rate and reduces the chance of crits against them by the same amount.
Tactical Advice: While paired up with another unit, the other unit gains increased accuracy
Giga Levin Sword: Engage's interpretation of his Levin Sword as his "Noble Phantasm" more or less. A special attack that causes a normal sword attack to deal extra damage and target Resistance instead of Defense.


In Smash Bros. they carry over the FE "destructible weapon" mechanic - he can lose his tomes from overuse, and overusing the Levin Sword downgrades him to a regular sword.

Something like Duskblade or Crusader seems like a natural fit for Robin... but only in a Fire Emblem context, where resource management isn't something unique to him. If you want to focus on tactical use of resources like his SSB playstyle, then I think Artificer best captures that out of any class in the game. They even have the option to overcharge wands by consuming more charges (something which Robin can do in Smash Bros but not his original game).

[Fizban]

I stat Fire Emblem's 'casters' as Warlocks (for which I have a greatly expanded list of invocations): they have effectively unlimited basic magical blasts (no more limited than actual weapons, so in DnD that's infinite or '50 arrows'), and when FE does have other magics they're generally either at-will or continuous, or extremely limited magic items or rituals. Upgraded classes use staves? Hello Deceive Item. Ability to walk over bad terrain and notice buried treasure? I can write an invocation for that.

My 'Emblem Mage' Warlock variant specifically requires that they cannot use their blast without an essence (which means they probably ought to take one for their first invocation pick), and to do so they must have a 'tome' corresponding to the essence they're using, the basic versions of which are 15gp (same as empty spellbook) with 50 uses and more powerful versions are priced as bundles of arrows. The tradeoff is that they can buy enhanced 'tomes' with weapon properties on them instead of using traditional warlock items, and they also get the invocation for walking on sand and such for free. Further, anyone can trade Deceive Item for Emblem Staff Wielder, which is just guaranteed activation of spell trigger specifically rather than taking 10 on all sorts of items.


Thus, I would stat Robin/etc simply as a Warlock with some combat feats and appropriate invocations, probably with a dip of Fighter or Commander for combat or commander (think Inspire Courage but scaling with skills/feats) feats, or some PrC depending on what exact build you're going for.