For the ability inThree Houses of the same name, seeAuthority (ability).

Authority (Japanese:指揮Command) is a stat present inFire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War,Thracia 776,Radiant Dawn, andThree Houses.

In the former three games, it measures the ability of an army's leader. Possession of points in authority, expressed on a unit's status screen as a number of stars (★), by the commander of an army will give small boosts to the performance of units under their command. The maximum number of authority stars possessed by any unit is five (★★★★★) inGenealogy andRadiant Dawn, and ten (★10) inThracia, primarily exclusive to late-game bosses.

Authority can be possessed by both player and enemy units, and with the exception ofGenealogy, all units even if they never actually function as a commander. For playable units, authority is completely fixed and cannot be directly manipulated by the player.

Authority inThree Houses functions entirely differently. It is askill level and is thus ranked with letters. It affects whatbattalions a unit can equip. Increasing authority level can also cause a unit to gainabilities such as rallies, depending on the unit.

Overview

InGenealogy, units who do not possess any authority stars will list their immediate commander in the authority field instead. This indicates the unit from whom they receive their authority bonus. For player units this is alwaysSigurd orSeliph, but individual enemy units are under the authority of one of several commanders in each chapter, including the mainbosses and generic commander units, and will only receive an authority boost from their specific commander. In addition to the hit and avoid bonuses, enemy AI on Normal mode will have a ([5 − (Authority of unit's commander)] × 5)% chance to change their target for attack to a worse target.^[1]

Thracia 776 changed the effects of authority to apply to all units in the field within the same faction, rather than just those within range of the commander. Note that not all units of the same affiliation are under the same faction. For example, inChapter 14Baldack's 3 authority only affects the units in his squadron, who are unaffected byPaulus's 4 authority, and neither boss affects theDark Mage reinforcements; in the same chapter,Deen andEda are part of their own faction and are unaffected by the rest of the player units's authority. The game's protagonist,Leif, gains one authority star for each of his tacticians (August andDryas) present with him in the story. Some other playable units also have authority stars when they join, which are also added to the main stat-boosting calculation.

While the stat is absent inFire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, thetactician's bonus serves a similar function.

Calculations

Authority bonus

The authority bonus calculated from a commander's possession of authority stars is used to provide a boost to thehit rate andavoid calculations of units under their command, with the specifics depending on the individual game.

Flavor text

Trivia

• InRadiant Dawn,the Japanese and North American versions' help descriptions for authority erroneously claim that the stat determines how manybond supports the unit can possess. The stat has no effect on bond support possession, with any unit able to possess them even if they lack authority. The PAL version of the game corrects this error.

Etymology and other languages

References

See also

• Charm
• Support