Hey everyone,
I couldn't stand running into fic after fic where the MC is supposedly super intelligent and like the series, doesn't use the evil pieces their boosts correctly.
So I decided to list my views as a creative type on this here, instead of making authors want to pull out their hair at the character ruining realisations they might have when they consider these points.
Let's start with evil pieces and how they work.
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Pieces
The strengths, talents, and skills of the being to be reincarnated plays a large role in determining how many pieces will be used for reincarnation. Different Evil Pieces cannot be used together. Evil Pieces can also be exchanged between top-class Devils with peerages.
Queen
Queens are worth 9 Pawns. Queens possess all the characteristics of Rooks, Knights, and Bishops, making them the most balanced piece as well as the most powerful. Within individual peerages, Queens typically act as their master's second-in-command, overseeing the rest of the peerage.
My input:
Since they contain all characteristics, its a waste to use them on a one trick pony. These pieces are for multirole fighters, of the warrior variety.
Aka those who can fight in any role but aren't specialised in sneaking around. They're your Executive officers, your second in commands, your right hand.
(you'll want to use Pawns for those so they can upgrade to queen's or whatever suits the situation best when they enter the enemy base in rating games.)
It would be a waste to use it on a magic only specialists or regular mage type. Just like it would be a waste to use on a regular swordsman.
Ideally you will use them on Battlemages, Magic swordsman, spell warriors, and other such crossover types.
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Rook
Rooks are worth 5 Pawns. Rooks gain superhuman strength, leading to high offense and defense. However, they are not very quick, and can get beaten easily by a high-speed opponent. It was mentioned in Volume 2 and shown by Rias in Volume 4 that the King can perform Castling with a Rook piece.
First off what's castling?
Essentially it's a replacement teleporting swap. The king and one other peeragemember of choice can instant teleport to the location of the rook but send the rook back to the former location of the King.
My input:
Rooks are what Saber and Berserker are in the nasuverse. Juggernauts and tanks that hold their own against many.
Super human strength is only useful for melee types. So who would you use here ideally? If we do not bring magic into the equation, then the ideal rook is a sword and shield or Hoplite type. Someone who can block without relying on special powers and can strike effectively.
Think of a spartan from 300. Or an RPG game warrior tank. You want this to be their main focus, with ideally enhancement type magic and some ranged abilities.
Think of pyrrha from team jpnr or some other character you know that fights with sword and shield.
Add simply ranged attacks to it like a fireball spell launched from the top of their sword, or something like the raikage's lightning armor and its a monsterous rook to deal with that can tank almost anything and slowly take all its attackers apart piece meal.
Another option would be a berserker type like a verocious werewolf that's insanely fast and powerful and hard to kill already, and can play the wrecking ball to your enemies defences as some sort of unstoppable suicide jaugernaut like the similarly named mutant from the X-men or Hercules from the Nasuverse, or just a 2h warrior from wow in full pvp gear and an insane skill to rapidly close the distance.
What you absolutely don't want is a unit that can easily be kited by a ranged type or assassinated.
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Bishop
Bishops are worth 3 Pawns. Bishops gain enhanced magical abilities which they can use to conjure up a multitude of spells (offensive, healing, etc.). However, more powerful spells consume most of their magical power, which takes a long time to regain, forcing them to use their power carefully or risk becoming vulnerable to physical attacks.
My input.
Bishops are your long ranged artillery, aka glass canons and healers. Whilst you could use them on a magic swordsman type or a multi role talented fighter that would be a waste of such a specialised piece.
Bishops are magical arm of your army. You don't want them to be frontliners, tough being able to hold their own is a smart thing to train, you want them to be your magical specialists who can do what truly matters, such as bombing the enemy from afar with powerful or suppressive magic, or healing your folks infront.
They are the best type for traditional mage, priest and other caster types you have come to love from your video games.
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Knight
Knights are worth 3 Pawns. Knights gain increased speed and mobility, enabling them to perform high-speed attacks and maneuvers. However, their main weakness is their low defense, making them vulnerable to powerful attacks if they are not careful. Another weakness among knights are their legs; if their legs are injured, their mobility is greatly reduced.
My input.
Anyone featuring a need for physical movement speed of your front liners is a good fit.
These are your archers, your combat rogues, spearmen
And even Harry Potter style wizards with wand magic. (because the movement speed of the want dictates their casting speed of spell chains.)
Once again these people are also fantastic for crossover types, with a physical emphasis, and a lack of ability to ensure successful infiltration or penetration methods into the enemy base during rating games.
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Pawn
Pawns are worth 1 Pawn each. The traits of Pawns is the ability to promote into a Queen, Rook, Knight, or Bishop in enemy territory (as seen in the anime when Issei enters the church to save Asia) or with the permission of their King (as seen when Issei asked Rias for permission to promote before fighting Riser to break off the engagement).
My input:
These are essentially where you want your multirole fighters who can sneak behind enemy lines one way or another.
Magic swordsmen, battlemages, anyone who would fit in a queen position with melee and magic as a large staple in their reportoire.
But more importantly, those with covert abilities. Think of magical assassins, feral druids, Teleporters and rogues of various types. Anyone who can enter the base undetected and has the talent to fulfill multiple roles.
Think about it. Dobby the house elf from Harry Potter, he can be invisible when he wants to and teleport wherever he wants. He'd easily make it into the enemy base undetected and promote to a queen if every piece is needed or a bishop if ranged artillery is needed or a Knight if he's good with a sword and needs to go hack and slash somewhere.
You get the drift. It's like solo dungeon diving with your stealth classes, or using your mage to do it with invisibility pots, blink and invisibility skill to get to the raid boss and kite him to death in an hours long fight.
These are the people you want for your pawn pieces. Magical ninjas, assassins and rogues, you name it.
Someone who can infiltrate swiftly and efficiently to promote and conform to the role required for the situation.
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That's just the logical part of how to consider your peerage and the evil pieces used on them...
How on earth could an intelligent person make Akeno, Kuisha, Yunabel, or ingvild a queen?
The latte of which is almost as much of a pacifist as our favorite little nun. As for what she brings to the table in combat power?
Control over the ocean, the ability to drown the world and control dragons? How often do you encounter a dragon in a rating game or out in the world? How many supernatural beings cannot fly?
The truth is, compared to someone like Koneko in the roll of a queen, who can fight long and close range, she's useless and lacks the tactical mindset to even function as a second in command.
So why the hell would anyone claim for their character to be intelligent and take her as the queen to their peerage?
I honestly don't know other than that they're like issei and only think with their dicks.
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Another thing to consider is personalities. A lot of people have their mc's family bring in the supposed perfect queen, a nice subservient girl with more heart than talent and usually a total caster type...
Are they insane?
They claim to have an intelligent character yet they let their parents arrange a complete unknown person to enter the role of Queen to their peerage, that isn't even suited for the role in neither mindset nor ability?
We just established that queen's are your multirole fighters, your crossover types that lack a stealth skill but make il for it in sheer prowess...
And then they let their parents arrange a caster, usually a mage or priest type with a subservient goody two shoes personality as their queen...
You need a commander not cumdumpster slave who doesn't understand the first thing about battle or war. They need to be leaders when you're inconvenienced not the...
'Oh i dunno what to do guys our supreme leader is away.... Maybe we should talk about what we can do to train... Does anyone know how we can train? I hope master comes back, he's good at this sort of thing' Type.
You need someone who is okay taking the reigns in an emergency but doesn't want to lead full-time. Or in a sexual term, one you might understand better, is that you need a switch for your queen piece.
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Sacred gears...
I honestly think most people place them in too high a regard or lack the creativity to make them invincible.
The ones who have creativity will swiftly realize the potential of Kiba Yuuto by comparing him to Emiya Shirou from the nasuverse.
In all honesty, if you've seen enough anime you'll realize most sacred gears offer almost as much brokenness as that.
Compared to ingvild her longinius, something like Sword Birth is infinitely more useful in a supernatural sense. Because it provides more versatility in its use.
Even twilight healing is more useful, a healing ability is a fantastic training tool and can help you break limits of yourself and your team at speeds beyond compare.
Instead of having to weight for your muscles to get stronger by naturally healing after excersize, you can just heal them and speed up the process.
Likewise, you can likely use Hots or heal over time techniques to become an invincible jaugernaut. Think Kabuto from naruto or just look at how your healers fight and survive everything in your games.
I used to tank due to a lack of tanks with a priest in wow inside the level 30 to 50 range dungeons. I did it by timing my hots, shields and attacks right.
Then I made a druid and solod the damn thing due to good mana management.
What's to say that someone with twilight healing cannot find broken ways to make a longinius look like a child's rubber toy in comparison?
I could go on forever, but the essence remains the same. I'm DXD the characters are written by someone who is completely brain dead when it comes to figuring out how to best bring out the best possible results in each character.
That is why, whenever someone boasts that their character is super intelligent inside the story, by being labeled a genius and such, and they make these mistakes...
I cannot help but think I'm reading the story of someone who is far out matched by the intelligence he claims the MC has.
The result of which, being that the MC acts as if he has a below avarage intelligence and sounds like a little kid making up excuses why his action figure is going to beat the one his friends holds.
Ranging from adding that the regular arrows have rambo arrows with explosives to making them all out reality destroying super weapons...
That is why I recommend that people never have their character claim his own super intelligence, for they can never match it with their own to make it seem true.
Even reality bending plot armor doesn't help in changing this.
I hope that someone out there will read this, before or while writing a fic and thinks... Heck! This guy is right! And uses the evil pieces more appropriately as a result.
Otherwise, I hope it was an entertaining insight for you to read :p