# 14 - Franz (Sacred Stones)

                    You know, from the perspective of this list Franz and Lex have quite a bit in common game play-wise. Both cavaliers are the second best combat units in their games, both cavaliers have FANTASTIC availabilities from their games and both units are super outclassed by a godly unit in their respective games (Sigurd and Seth).

                    Franz is known by many Fire Emblem fans as "Seth-lite" and for good reason: Give Franz enough levels up and he will wreck face like Seth, he just needs some extra levels to do so. As I mentioned before he has most of the game to grow and he'll generally be your first unit to promote. The first Knight Crest you get is in Chapter 7 and it's basically got Franz's name written all over it. When it comes to Franz's early-game I found a particular quote from a page in the Serenesforest.net page that I think sums up how well Franz does in the early game:

                   "For a unit that joins in Chapter 1, his bases are decent enough. 7str/7spd isn't the greatest in the world, but he is 2HKOing fighters in his join map with iron sword, and ORKOs soldiers regardless of weapon. Against 24HP/4def brigands in C2 and C3, he still takes 3/8 of their HP off. Not bad. 
                   His durability is decent overall. 20HP/6def is getting 3HKO'd at worst by anything that isn't a boss, and has WTC in his favor to get himself out of fluke 2HKO's. 80HP/25def is about the same as Garcia and he can get full def from Gilliam, so it's not like he's going to be frail ever." (Smiley Jim: Rate the Unit - Franz  http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=30319&page=2)

Franz also has some pretty good growths too:
HP - 80 %
Strength - 40 %
Skill - 40 %
Speed - 50 %
Luck - 40 %
Defense - 25 %
Resistance - 20 %

                       His Defense and Resistance growths aren't the best, but everything else is alright. Like any GBA cavalier Franz starts out with partial weapon triangle control before promotion, and then will get access to the third weapon (axes) after promotion. (In this particular case it depends on which class Franz promotes to. It's still worth noting that even if he promotes to Paladin he still has partial weapon triangle control, high movement and awesome stats) That's a nifty perk if you ask me. Mekkah (a prominent, hard-core Fire Emblem veteran) also pointed out that Franz " starts ORKOing with just 2-3 Str + Spd procs (40% and 50% growths respectively)" [Mekkah - "Top 30 Fire Emblem Characters OF ALL TIME Countdown: http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=29384#entry1781433)

                    I know I said this before but Franz's biggest problem is that Seth outclasses him so much it makes his contributions seem less important. Like the case with Lex this doesn't make Franz a bad unit at all. It just means that his contributions in his game compared to other units in their games doesn't seem as significant. I'll end by quoting Mekkah again in the same link from above:

               "In a run with Seth, Franz isn't really obsolete but even he has a very hard time getting ample level-ups to show his potential. But without Seth, he can usually eat more than half of the map on his own and sort of become Seth by himself, it just takes around eight chapters or so. And anyone that can kind of become Seth himself deserves a spot in this top 30." [Mekkah - "Top 30 Fire Emblem Characters OF ALL TIME Countdown: http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=29384#entry1781433)

(^ Replace "top 30" with "top 20" and that's how I feel.)