Must stat-topic the only game cool enough to reference Airplane! in dialogue. Yes. This effort was aided considerably by some of the best in-game documentation ever: the start-button menu has a section that gives HP/MP/damage figures for every creature in the game. You can even toggle on and off what the damage looks like when creatures are hitting a weakness, and what your units would look like wihout whatever upgrades you've currently got on them. The in-game counter also facilitated figuring the durations of status effects. Nice, thanks N1. Despite the side-view aspect, gameplay is pretty much standard RTS fare, so I doubt I need to explain much in the way of technical details. A couple notes, though:
Status in Grim Grimoire: All status hitrates are 100%. If a creature is immune to a particular status attack (happens a lot with astrals), you will simply be unable to target that familiar. Durations vary and will be listed for each individual ability.
Schools of Magic: Familiars in Grim Grimoire are broken down into four schools. These are: Glamour (summoning nature spirits and the like); Necromancy (which deals with the undead); Sorcery (summoning demons and other underworld denizens); and Alchemy (creating artificial lifeforms). Each school is strong against one of the others; creatures of one school will deal 50% more damage to creatures of the school they are strong against (though regardless of what one might assume, there seems to be no matching defensive advantage against the enemy school). The progression is as follows: Glamour -> Necromancy -> Sorcery -> Alchemy -> Glamour.
As for what I'm allowing...I went with everything. There are really only two ways to take it: allow a creature every ability/upgrade that stems from the rune that allows you to summon it (for runes, think of any standard creature-producing facility in RTS games), or allow a creature every ability/upgrade available to their school of magic. The latter made more sense, since some creatures get specific ability upgrades from runes other than the one that produces them (see: Demons and Black Curse). Although you're unlikely to have every rune and every upgrade anywhere in-game except for the last few battles, allowing everything better reflects the uniqueness and potential of the units.
Stats ("Hold on a minute, 'cause I gotta explain a couple things..."):
Type: Familiars in Grim Grimoire can be either Substance types (made of physical matter) or Astrals (spiritual beings). Some attacks and abilities can affect both types, while some can only affect one type or the other. Most units will deal less damage to astrals and some can't hurt them at all.
HP: Lose this and you die. HP regenerates at a rate of 1HP every twenty seconds or so. This fails to matter in the midst of combat.
MP: Lose this and you...can't do stuff. MP regenerates at a rate of 1MP every three or four seconds. Sort of matters in a protracted raid, but not one-on-one.
Substance Attack: Damage the familiar's standard attack deals to substance types. For some creatures, an attack consists of multiple hits in a string. This will be represented by, for example, 15x2 (the creature deals fifteen damage a hit, and gets in two hits with its attack sequence).
Astral Attack: Damage the familiar's standard attack deals to astrals. For some creatures, an attack consists of multiple hits in a string. This will be represented by, for example, 3x2 (the creature deals three damage a hit, and gets in two hits with its attack sequence).
Armor: Reduces damage from incoming attacks by the number stated (for multi-hit attacks, each strike in the chain suffers this damage reduction). Note that few creatures actually have armor and thus many will show zero for this stat.
Movement speed: Straightforward. How good the familiar is at getting around. Grim Grimoire plays out in side-view, and some creatures ignore floors and walls. These will be listed as Flying. I'm not up to comparing attack speeds yet, so movement will have to do for now.
Abilities: For critters that can do things other than bash heads, this explains...uh, what they can do. Yeah.
Comments: The Cid's mostly unbiased appraisal of the familiar's worth in-game and alone. The former is surprisingly balanced.
Glamour Familiars
Elf
Type: Substance
HP: 40
MP: 30
Substance Attack: 0
Astral Attack: 0
Armor: 1
Movement Speed: Average
Abilities:
Heal: 10MP. Heals target substance creature for 10HP. Cannot self-target.
Comments: Puny. No damage + no self-healing = Gaff and company lose to Jogurt. They're resource-gatherers, so what would you expect?
Fairy
Type: Substance
HP: 45
MP: 50
Substance Attack: 5
Astral Attack: 5
Armor: 1
Movement Speed: Above Average, Flying
Abilities:
Astral Shift: 25MP. Changes the Fairy into an astral. They will deplete 1MP every few seconds while in this state, and revert to being a substance type when their MP hits zero. Astral Shift can also be terminated manually for no MP cost.
Comments: Kinda scrubby, but Astral Shift gives them a boost in terms of staying power. They're best used as scouts, or in swarms against Necromancy enemies. One Fairy isn't much, offensively. Light.
Unicorn
Type: Substance
HP: 55
MP: 50
Substance Attack: 16
Astral Attack: 16
Armor: 1
Movement Speed: Above Average
Abilities:
Holy Barrier: 20MP. Reduces damage from incoming attacks to 10% the normal value for approximately thirty seconds. Sufficiently weak attacks will do zero damage. I can't tell if armor is also factored into this or not, but it doesn't really matter. As long as Holy Barrier's up, the Unicorn is an ubertank.
Astral Hold: 30MP. Stuns target astral for approximately forty seconds. This is long enough for the Unicorn to get in at least ten hits (I tested this aspect on a Morning Star and the Unicorn killed it before the status wore off).
Comments: Wow, I've been selling these guys short. The HP count's kinda bad for a frontline fighter, but they are still immensely difficult to kill while Holy Barrier's up. I haven't tested every move against it, but so far I haven't seen any damage that ignores it. Their own damage output is decent enough. Middle of some sort, probably a high one.
Morning Star
Type: Astral
HP: 150
MP: 0
Substance Attack: 51 (AoE attack)
Astral Attack: 51 (AoE attack)
Armor: 1
Movement Speed: Average, Flying
Abilities:
Star Light: Morning Stars need to stock starchild bullets in order to attack. They can carry up to ten at a time. They can charge up new ones while attacking without suffering any negative impact to their attack speed, and the process of creating one takes only marginally longer than it does to use one up.
Comments: Evil. Evil damage, evil HP for an astral unit and oh yeah, flying and has AoE attacks. Did I mention status immunity? That too. One Morning Star can outtank a Dragon, despite having lower damage and less than 20% the HP. The question is whether or not to allow them to enter a fight already stocked on starchilds, since they have none when newly summoned. Honestly, I'd allow it--in-game, there's no way you're sending them into battle unarmed, after all. If you don't allow it, she pretty much just loses her first turn for stocking ammo. High Heavy, if not Godlike.
Talisman
Type: Substance
HP: 70
MP: 0
Substance Attack: 15
Astral Attack: 12
Armor: 0
Movement Speed: None (stationary)
Abilities: None!
Comments: Light. For something that's supposed to be defending your HQ, they really can't take much punishment.
Necromancy Familiars
Ghost
Type: Astral
HP: 16
MP: 0
Substance Attack: 0
Astral Attack: 0
Armor: 0
Movement Speed: Above Average, Flying
Abilities:
Charge: Kamikaze attack; using this ability destroys the Ghost. 11 damage to substance types, 35 damage to astrals.
Comments: Kyaiiieee! >.> If you count a suicide attack that kills the enemy as victory in a duel, then...they beat Jogurt. And nothing else. Puny. Again, resource-gatherers. You pretty much only use Charge in-game if you've exhausted the map's crystals and have nothing else to do with your leftover Ghosts, or if they're in enemy territory and obviously about to die anyway (they make decent scouts, at the least).
Phantom
Type: Astral
HP: 35
MP: 20
Substance Attack: 20
Astral Attack: 4
Armor: 0
Movement Speed: Fast
Abilities:
Berserk: 10MP. Haste, basically. For the duration of about forty seconds, the Phantom can attack twice as frequently as usual. Movement speed is unchanged.
Comments: Solid offensive unit (as long as there are no Morning Stars or Homunculi around). A Phantom swarm will rip apart an enemy base built around Sorcery quite easily. I just wish the AI didn't go to shit once you put Berserk on. Alone...probably some form of Middle/Heavy despite the HP. The damage really adds up under Berserk, and if you take the most favorable view of astrals (in regards to their physical resistance/immunity) they definitely earn the division.
Skullmage
Type: Substance
HP: 30
MP: 100
Substance Attack: 0
Astral Attack: 30
Armor: 0
Movement Speed: Slow
Abilities:
Astralize: 25MP. Target substance type creature becomes an astral for approximately forty seconds. This is more than enough time for the Skullmage to either kill or be killed (usually the latter). Cannot target the larger enemies (Dragons and Chimera).
Comments: Failure. Their most significant use in-game is torching Morning Stars, and even then they're likely to get OHKOed before finishing the job. If you really want to be nasty with them, you can Astralize one of your own offensive units and toss it in the midst of a hapless swarm of Sorcery enemies or something, but that's obviously irrelevant in a duel. One-on-one, they have to waste their first turn on Astralize before they can even start dealing damage. Puny.
Charon
Type: Astral
HP: 120
MP: 0
Substance Attack: 0
Astral Attack: 0
Armor: 0
Movement Speed: Very Fast, Flying
Abilities:
Load/Unload: Picks up or drops off friendly creatures. Obviously game-breaking. Charon can carry up to five allies, though the larger creatures (Dragons, Chimera, Morning Stars and other Charons) cannot board.
Anima Drain: Charon fires one of his passengers at the enemy. The ally used is destroyed in the process. Deals 125 damage to substance types, 41 damage to astrals.
Comments: Charon's your transport unit, and as such a natural Puny. While he has the nastiest single-hit damage in the game (Anima Drain will 2HKO enemy runes, which makes him ideal for surprise raids considering that he's also the fastest unit in the game), he's worthless in a duel. Letting Morning Stars come in with ammo stocked is a judgement call, but Charon's Anima Drain requires the presence of allies and is thus blatantly illegal. Since that's his only source of damage...
Obelisk
Type: Substance
HP: 50
MP: 30
Substance Attack: 0
Astral Attack: 0
Armor: 0
Movement Speed: None (stationary)
Abilities: For 5MP, heals friendly astrals in range for 10HP. A quirk is that Astralized allies (and Astral Shifted Fairies) will also get healed.
Comments: Puny. Another non-self-targeting healer, but at least the Elf can run away!
Sorcery Familiars
Imp
Type: Substance
HP: 40
MP: 0
Substance Attack: 2x2
Astral Attack: 0
Armor: 0
Movement Speed: Above Average
Abilities: None!
Comments: Resource-gatherers for the Sorcery school. And hey, these ones can actually attack! Not for a great deal of damage, but their actual attack speed is reasonably fast and it adds up in a swarm (the computer likes to Zergling Rush you with these guys). Low Light.
Demon
Type: Substance
HP: 270
MP: 0
Substance Attack: 15x2
Astral Attack: 3x2
Armor: 0
Movement Speed: Fast
Abilities:
Black Curse: Passive ability. The demon's standard attack inflicts a poison effect on the enemy regardless of its body type. Afflicted creatures lose 1HP every couple seconds, total duration being around forty seconds. Black Curse will wear off after dealing about twenty damage but is reapplied with each new attack, so it basically won't go away as long as the Demon keeps on slugging.
Comments: Demons are the heavy cavalry of Grim Grimoire. Great speed, great HP, brutal damage output. Black Curse doesn't look like much, but it being constantly reapplied with every attack means it'll add up in a long fight. Low Heavy.
Grimalkin
Type: Substance
HP: 50
MP: 150
Substance Attack: 0
Astral Attack: 0
Armor: 0
Movement Speed: Below Average
Abilities:
Sleep: 50MP. Target goes to sleep! For approximately thirty seconds the target is immobile and cannot attack. Also makes some targets look silly (see: Homunculus and Blob). Taking damage during this time will not wake the target. Cannot target astrals.
Mana Burn: 50MP. Sets target's MP to zero and deals damage equal to the amount of MP lost by the target. No effect on targets without MP.
Comments: Mage-slayer! ...Unfortunately, they can no longer deal damage if that first hit doesn't kill--all they can do is Sleep the target and hope it regens enough MP before waking for another Mana Burn to finish it off. Puny, loses to Jogurt. This really sucks, because they're invaluable utility players in-game. OHKOs a lot of the nuisance units and even Golems if the opponent hasn't got the Alchemy HP upgrades yet, and Sleep is priceless for shutting down a marauding Dragon or Chimera (gooo perfect status hitrate). Also...c'mon, kitty with a magic wand. How can this fail?
Dragon
Type: Substance
HP: 800 (this is not a typo)
MP: 0
Substance Attack: 10x6 (AoE attack--everything in melee range of the Dragon's front half is hit)
Astral Attack: 2x6 (AoE attack--everything in melee range of the dragon's front half is hit)
Armor: 0
Movement Speed: Glacial, Flying (well, it's more that they completely ignore terrain, but same effect)
Abilities: None!
Comments: The Dragon is obviously the resident 300-pound gorilla in the room. Wipes out swarms of mooks with a single breath attack, absurd HP makes them the most obnoxious unit to kill in the game. Total status bait in-game (the computer can and will reserve its Grimalkins for use on these guys), but they still take ages to kill even with an army hacking away at them. Heavy/Godlike
Guardian
Type: Substance
HP: 130
MP: 0
Substance Attack: 15
Astral Attack: 12
Armor: 0
Movement Speed: None (stationary)
Abilities: None!
Comments: Probably the best of the stationary defensive units. An annoying roadblock in large numbers, but Light/Middle alone.
Alchemy Familiars
Blob
Type: Substance
HP: 70
MP: 30
Substance Attack: 0
Astral Attack: 0
Armor: 0
Movement Speed: Below Average
Abilities:
Gum Drop: 10MP. Dramatically slows down target's movement and attack speed (I'd guess it halves both). Lasts approximately twenty-five seconds. Also deals 1 (!!!) damage. Cannot target astrals.
Comments: Mainly resource-gatherers, but very useful for tying up the enemy's heavy-hitters. Also, fear the damage output. Fear it! ...Yeah, Puny. Probably beats Suikoden V's scrub trio, though.
Homunculus
Type: Substance
HP: 90
MP: 150
Substance Attack: 0
Astral Attack: 0
Armor: 0
Movement Speed: Average
Abilities:
Clairvoyance: 30MP. Emits a flare that affects an area wide enough to encompass pretty much the entire portion of the map visible on the screen. For twelve to fourteen seconds, any astrals within the target area (or entering it after Clairvoyance has taken effect) can be attacked as though they were normal substance types. Quirk: creatures thus affected can also be hit with abilities normally ineffective against astrals (the Elf's Heal, the Grimalkin's Sleep, the Blob's Gum Drop).
Psychic Storm: 50MP. AoE attack that inflicts 4x15 damage to substance types, 8x15 to astrals, assuming the target remains in the affected area for the duration of the attack (the field lasts for around ten seconds, and many weaker enemies will be killed before they can escape).
Comments: Psychic Storm is hax and so forth. I have declared these little bastards public enemy number one in my game, because a Homunculus can wipe out an army of grunts if you don't frag him first. Clairvoyance makes him an excellent utility player in-game (take that, Morning Star), but has no purpose in a duel. Despite the awesome damage output, they probably don't manage better than High Light due to the crappy durability.
Golem
Type: Substance
HP: 130
MP: 100
Substance Attack: 18 (long-range only, consumes 5MP)
Astral Attack: 0
Armor: 4
Movement Speed: Below Average
Abilities: None!
Comments: The sniper unit, and excellent for cheesing out some obnoxious enemy setups...provided they have support units around. Golems are completely unable to defend themselves at melee range. That 4 in armor might let them last for a while (Fairies without the attack upgrade for Glamour will be unable to hurt them!), but they can't outrun much of anything so they're still roadkill if they get caught in the open. One of the slowest attack speeds in the game, too (it really stands out in their case). Low Light just for having some semblance of durability and damage, and glad I'm giving them the armor and HP upgrades (otherwise, they get shredded fast).
Chimera
Type: Substance
HP: 550
MP: 0
Substance Attack: 10x6 (AoE--everything within melee range around the Chimera is hit)
Astral Attack: 0
Armor: 0
Movement Speed: Fast
Abilities:
Consume: Chimera, unlike every other creature in the game, do not regenerate HP. Instead, they lose it at the same rate (1HP gone approximately every twenty seconds). They can counter this by consuming allies for self-healing. The amount of HP varies according to the creature consumed; I know Blobs give back fifty to seventy but I haven't tried much else yet. Honestly, testing it's impractical given how expensive the high-end familiars are and it'd be irrelevant in a duel anyway.
Comments: Shakes the controller when it moves! Clearly Godlike. Well, the mobility and damage output are great, but I've always been underwhelmed by these guys. Being weak to a school of magic that has Demons in it is bad news for a frontline fighter. Like Dragons, the computer likes to reserve its status attacks for Chimera, but these guys are much more likely to get pounded into the ground before waking. Still, personal dislike aside, the stats are solid enough and the HP loss is trivial in a duel. Heavy of some sort.
Gargoyle
Type: Substance
HP: 100
MP: 0
Substance Attack: 15 (AoE attack)
Astral Attack: 0
Armor: 4
Movement Speed: None (stationary)
Abilities: None!
Comments: Fairly reliable defensive unit. Loses to Musty, though. Light/Middle.
---
And now it's time for...stat averages! Grim Grimoire's stat spreads--especially HP--are broad, so the actual averages are going to be wonky as hell. For damage figures, I used whatever a familiar's best output was regardless of how many uses they have of it. In most cases, a creature whose damage stems from special abilities will be bereft of offense and dead in the water if they run out of MP anyway. The Astral Attack average could probably stand to have all the zeroes taken out of it, but I'll think about that later. I also did not include the Grimalkin in the damage averages, since Mana Burn can range from OHKO to zero depending on who the target is.
HP:
Dragon: 800
Chimera: 550
Demon: 270
Morning Star: 150
Golem: 130
Guardian: 130
Charon: 120
Gargoyle: 100
Homunculus: 90
Blob: 70
Talisman: 70
Unicorn: 55
Grimalkin: 50
Obelisk: 50
Fairy: 45
Imp: 40
Elf: 40
Phantom: 35
Skullmage: 30
Ghost: 16
Average: 132.05
MP:
Homunculus: 150
Grimalkin: 150
Golem: 100
Skullmage: 100
Unicorn: 50
Fairy: 50
Blob: 30
Obelisk: 30
Elf: 30
Phantom: 20
Chimera: 0
Gargoyle: 0
Dragon: 0
Demon: 0
Guardian: 0
Imp: 0
Charon: 0
Ghost: 0
Morning Star: 0
Talisman: 0
Average: 35.5
Substance Damage (includes full attack string and special abilities, regardless of how many uses a unit has of the latter)
Chimera: 60
Homunculus: 60
Dragon: 60
Morning Star: 51
Demon: 30
Phantom: 20
Golem: 18
Unicorn: 16
Gargoyle: 15
Guardian: 15
Talisman: 15
Ghost: 11
Fairy: 5
Imp: 4
Blob: 1
Charon: 0
Skullmage: 0
Obelisk: 0
Elf: 0
[Grimalkin: 0-150]
Average: 20.05
Astral Damage (includes full attack string and special abilities, regardless of how many uses a unit has of the latter)
Homunculus: 120
Morning Star: 51
Ghost: 35
Skullmage: 30
Unicorn: 16
Dragon: 12
Guardian: 12
Talisman: 12
Demon: 6
Fairy: 5
Phantom: 4
Chimera: 0
Golem: 0
Gargoyle: 0
Blob: 0
Imp: 0
Charon: 0
Obelisk: 0
Elf: 0
[Grimalkin: 0-150]
Average: 15.95
Armor
Golem: 4
Gargoyle: 4
Morning Star: 1
Unicorn: 1
Fairy: 1
Elf: 1
Chimera: 0
Golem: 0
Gargoyle: 0
Blob: 0
Dragon: 0
Demon: 0
Imp: 0
Grimalkin: 0
Guardian: 0
Charon: 0
Skullmage: 0
Phantom: 0
Ghost: 0
Obelisk: 0
Average: ...No, I'm not even bothering with this one.
