Weapons and Initiative

Yeah, this really doesn't make any sense. The best way (according to traditional fantasy lore anyway) to cast spells is standing still with a robe and maybe a staff, chanting some evil shit. Not kiting enemies around the battlefield while wearing plate armor on a +6 initiative warg with a +4 initiative dagger.

Agreed!

Agreed; with the OP's suggestion as well.  This is also an area in which addressing initiative will assist in appeasing the imbalance between it / movement / and range (and dodge).

I really wish we would go in the first direction - standing still with a mage robe and a mage staff.

Although I don't mind armoured mages in the current system, since mages aren't mages in FE

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I was just about to bring this up again. 

Modifiers on weapons should only be negative.

There should also be a couple more encumbrance categories, and encumbrance should negate dodge as well as initiative.

Haste also needs a good beating with the nerf stick.

So does Slow.  

Yup.

Another option would be to cause spells to simply add or remove any benefits provided by weapons. So, if a caster had a huge hammer, casting would be faster, whereas a caster with a fast dagger would cause the spell casting to be slower. Both scenarios would cancel any benefit to weapons. It wouldn't interfere with the combat system, but the downside is that it's use isn't so intuitive. You would also need some indicator that casting would speed up or slow down initiative.

We've talked about this before and I've asked Derek about this in the past.

Here's the deal on this and it makes sense from an actual fun factor even if it seems less elegant on paper:

All units always have weapons.  Therefore, the balance on initiative is achieved by looking at what the average weapon does. 

The idea being that, from a percentage change to initiative, you are better in having a middle starting point and go up and down than to have everything take you down.

So the way to look at it is that the short sword is +3 initiative better than the average weapon.

Obviously, modders can do what they want. But I will be the first to tell you that the "Fun" effects of having everything apply a negative initiative might make things a lot less enjoyable than you might think because of the large changes you'd need to make through the whole game to make this all balance nicely.

Thats what I am thinking anyways.
Meaby you could give staves some initiative boost too, just to give them some stuff for mages.

I don't mind that it is NOT the best tactic for my mages to run around without weapons, would seem weird, just think about all daggers as having cast haste upon them and they're wearers

But if every weapon have a "penalty" to initiative, it would seem as the player is being punished by wearing weapons, instead of rewarded. Even though its less realistic.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Makes sense, but what doesn't make sense is why spells could be cast more quickly/slowly because of the weapon you hold. Right now the system can be "gamed" by giving your spell casters faster weapons just to speed up their casting.

This is the problem inherent in the system. 

If you wanted to "fine tune" initiative drawbacks, why not start at 100 instead of twenty?  That way, a dagger could be -2 init and a great warhammer could be -30 init, and haste could be +3,+1/AS and things might fall in line a little more nicely.

Personally, I don't think it's more fun to have to give a mage a Skath Claw or some such so that I have to game the system.

Poor choice, imo.