Toggle Background Color
Game Mechanics: Turn Order
During a battle, the game has to decide what order the units in the battle will attack, with faster units being more likely to get the first strike in. How the game calculates this is pretty simple, so let’s just get right into it.
Turn Speed
Turn speed is the statistic the game uses to determine who gets to move first. The game calculates it in this way:
Turn Speed = SPD * 20 * Skill Speed Factor * Mastery Speed Boost * Random Factor
The units with the highest turn speed gets to move first, and the game moves things along like that to the next highest turn speed until it reaches the unit with the lowest turn speed.
This formula does result in some rather comically large numbers. A unit with 80 SPD and using a skill with a speed factor of 100 will end up with a possible turn speed from 144,000 to 176,000. Oh well, whatever works. As for what these factors actually mean...
SPD: The user’s SPD stat. This is directly affected by SPD buffs and debuffs. The only SPD buff players have access to is the Samurai’s Iai Arts, which only affects the user, and they have no SPD debuffs they can inflict. Enemies on the other hand, have quite a few ways to buff their own SPD, or lower the players’ SPD stats.
Skill Speed Factor: The Speed Factor from the skill the user is casting. A Speed Factor of 100 is generally on the high end of things, with very few skills going above that value. Most player skills tend to have Speed Factors of 80 or 100, averaging out at around 92. And most enemy skills tend to have Speed Factors of 80 and 90, averaging out around 88.
With those statistics in mind, 80 is generally the average Speed Factor, with skills that go below it being rather slow, and skills that go above it being pretty fast.
Using a regular attack, swapping rows, using items, and escaping all have a Speed Factor of 100. Guarding technically has a factor of 100 as well, but more on that a bit later.
Mastery Speed Boost: Some mastery skills come with a speed boost that increases the casting speeds of skills tied to that mastery. Enemies don’t have such a boost, so this is always set to 1 for them. This can make learning masteries give quite the speed advantage, especially since there’s only 1 buff the player can use to boost their turn speed.
Random Factor: A random number between 0.9 and 1.1 inclusive, in increments of 0.01. So you can get multipliers of 0.93 or 1.07, but no nonsense such as 1.034243 or anything like that. This pretty much makes it so that units with close speed stats and speed factors aren’t guaranteed to have one unit outspeed the other in all cases. You’d have to have a big enough speed advantage to be guaranteed to outspeed something.
If there happens to be a tie in turn speeds, then the game just picks the units with the same turn speeds to act in a random order.
That being said turn speed isn’t the only factor that determines how fast a unit acts. Some actions have priority and allow a unit to act sooner, regardless of turn speed.
Priority
Priority is the other part of turn order calculations, and can let units with bad turn speeds act first if needed. The mechanics of priority are as follows:
If any unit is guarding, the guard will instantly take effect at the start of the turn. The actual message saying that the unit is guarding has a speed factor of 100, but it doesn’t matter as the actual effect has absolute priority and cannot be stopped or disrupted.
Then the game checks for setup skills. Setup skills are things like defensive skills like Shield Front, counterattacks, or even the Fighter's Link skills. The priority and speed of any active setup skills are calculated as well. Though no setup skill has innate priority, but can be given priority through the use of EX.
Priority brackets are checked for next. There are 4 priority brackets checked for, with units in earlier ones getting to act sooner than units in later brackets. Anyone within each priority bracket will have their turn speeds checked for. Then the game checks to see if anyone within that priority bracket got Stunned, and will have them act last. Then the game goes onto the next priority bracket to repeat the process, until all the priority brackets have been checked for.
Then all of those steps are repeated, this time with the units that didn’t have any setup skills active. If you had a little trouble keeping track of that, here’s a little chart that illustrates how the game goes about checking the order of actions.
Active Setup Skills
-Priority Brackets
--Turn Speed
---Stunned Units
No Setup Skills
-Priority Brackets
--Turn Speed
---Stunned Units
Now as for the priority brackets themselves...
1: Priority
2: EX Active
3: Default Speed
4: Goes Last
No enemy in the entire game has access to priority brackets 1 and 2, as they don’t have any skills or mechanics that allow them to be placed there. So that’s a pretty big advantage player units have over enemy units. That being said, enemies do have access to setup skills, so they can outspeed player units using priority in that regard. Something to be very mindful of if you’re up against an enemy that can use counterattacks.
Priority: These skills will act first. They can only be outsped by setup skills, so you can’t bypass counterattacks or other defensive skills with these. Only Rogues, Samurai, and Princesses have access to skills with priority. No enemy in entire the game has access to a skill that has access to this priority bracket.
EX Active: Using EX will give skills priority, though not as much as skills that have innate priority. The effects of EX does not stack with priority brackets 1 and 4, and in fact, are overridden by those. Only skills in the priority bracket of 3 can be placed in this priority bracket of 2. Enemies obviously don’t have access to EX, therefore they don’t have access to this bracket.
Default Speed: Basically what most skills will be placed in. Most enemy skills are stuck in this bracket as well. You can raise the priority level of these skills by using EX.
Goes Last: Pretty self explanatory, but it’s not really a priority bracket that sees a lot of use. Only 2 skills in the entire game are placed in this bracket (Out of a whopping 670, mind you.) Said skills are the failed attack from the Rogue’s Sonic Shot if the initial setup fails to counter anything, and one skill belonging to an enemy.
Now as for the remaining mechanics that can interact with turn order...
Hustle is a skill that has innate priority and forces the party member the Rogue targets with it to immediately act after they cast this skill, no matter what priority bracket they are placed in. This is the only skill that has the ability to bypass priority brackets entirely, essentially dragging any skill in the game into the priority bracket of 1, and can let a party member who doesn’t have EX active that turn to outspeed a party member who does.
Stun is a status effect that doesn’t deny a unit their turn like in Etrian Odyssey, but instead forces them to act last within a given priority bracket. Stunned units are not shifted down a priority bracket, as Stunned units in the priority bracket of 3 will still act before any non-Stunned unit in the priority bracket of 4.
Stunned units don’t even have a turn speed rating. Whatever turn speed was calculated for them before is completely discarded in this step. And no, that doesn’t mean turn speeds are set to 0 for them. A non-Stunned unit with a turn speed of 0 will still act before a Stunned unit. Instead after all non-Stunned units have acted, the order that Stunned units act are prioritized from left to right. Stunned party members are also prioritized first and will always act before Stunned enemies.