The summary is that your units will gain buffs from eating food, and reaching certain weight groups. However, all units are unique in that not all benefit as much from being overweight or obese (though the player can still choose to make most of them this big without too much penalty, so enjoy!).
Imaged below is an example of weight classes for a character. This is one of the more stricter ones.
On top of familiar stats there are also weight gain stats (dubbed “Apperance Stats”) such as Appetite which are used in calculating how much a unit can eat, and how much weight they will gain/lose between chapters.
While there are a lot of stats, for the most part these are pretty simple mechanics and players are not punished too heavily as I have attempted to avoid too much chore-work (e.g. ingredient collecting) or heavy calculations to make the game beatable.
Bond Events between characters would be unlocked by reaching certain goals / achievements (e.g. Have X be Obese while X is Chubby or lower).
Characters Skins would also be unlocked via the same method (e.g. Use the “fatten” spell X amount of times on X character).
Mostly all achievements would be public knowledge to make them fun to go for and unlock different skins and bond events with CG art.
Below is an example character, at 2 different weight classes and with different character skins.
This is very well thought out, it’s great to have a plan like this before launching into something with so many possibilities regarding stats and interactions, pretty solid base to build from. The bonding system looks interesting too, reminds me a bit of Miitopia (is there something similar in Fire Emblem? I’ve never played one).
This is more of a minor nit pick, but I see numbers so I must analyse them. I know that stat sheet you’ve shown is meant to be one of the stricter ones, but looking at that I see no reason for Goldwin to ever go beyond Chubby from a battle perspective, the higher stages are just straight debuffs. And unless there’d be some niche use case for the extra defence instead of the dexterity and resistance then there’s no reason for him to ever be lighter either. Obviously there’s a whole horde of other things to consider if we were to try and balance this in a full game but on its own that sheet railroads Goldwin into being chubby and staying chubby. Again just a minor note but it does make the other weight stages seemingly redundant, and I’m sure there’s plenty of people who’d like to see him put on a few more pounds without the game punishing them for it.
Hello, honestly nit pick away. Love constructive criticism.
But regarding the first point, I’ve never played Miitopia, but Fire Emblem does have a bonding system. It differs how units bond together but I figured it would be too complicated to include an in-battle way or adding an extra chore between battles to help units bond so I thought achievements or reaching goals (e.g. complete the next level) would be a nice simpler idea meaning you’re surely get a lot of bond events by just playing the game and most of the chorework then is just feeding your units (which could also be achievements too)
Also regarding the stats, yeah they were rough for now just to demonstrate but keep in mind that when eating food units gain stat buffs, and increasing their weight also increases their appetite, meaning they can eat more food meaning more stat buffs. I didn’t want to make just being Overweight or above as too strong cause it stacks up when you consider the amount of food they can now eat as well.
You may wonder how much of the appetite capacity food uses up and honestly have not thought that far ahead. I’d likely need many opinions on balancing.
(I do want to make it so players can choose units to be any weight class and not suffer for it. But I also did want to reward players A LITTLE BIT who account for the unit’s preference regarding their weight / body. Also just gives the cast more diversity.)
Honestly thanks so much for commenting and spending time to read everything! Hadn’t been able to reply last few days, so excuse the wait
I was worried about potential limitations when using a pre-existing template intended to resemblem fire emblem as I would need to have additional code to account for weight gain buffs and give a menu for feeding your units etc.
I’ll need to look into this and it’s limitations to know if it’s possible to even create the game with this as a template.
.
! Of course if such a thing happens I would post more.