What Every Character Stat Actually Means

I am new enough to Fire Emblem that a character sheet full of abbreviations is not useful information yet. It is just a collection of numbers.

This is the translation layer I want beside me when I am deciding who should carry what, who belongs on the front line, and why somebody who looks "fast" on paper is suddenly getting doubled after I equip a shield.

One caveat matters because the game has only just released: Switch 2 software is not currently being data-mined in the usual way, and Serenes Forest is explicitly marking much of its Fortune's Weave data as work in progress. The basic meanings below are stable; the exact formulas that the game does not show are labelled as launch-week working knowledge rather than fake certainty.

There are also three different layers of numbers here: current base stats, growth-rate percentages, and calculated combat stats. Growth rates influence future level-up gains; calculated stats such as Attack Speed, Hit and Protection are outputs built from the current stats plus class, equipment and other modifiers. I split growth rates into their own guide because class choice can change those percentages.

Base character stats

Abbrev.	Stat	What it actually does	What that means tactically	Who cares most
HP	Hit Points	How much damage the unit can take before falling.	HP is a buffer, not armor. A high-HP unit can survive mistakes, but repeated large hits still hurt if Def/Res are poor.	Frontliners, tanks, anyone exposed on enemy phase.
Str	Strength	Raises physical attack power.	More Str means harder hits with physical weapons and physical Combat Arts. It does not make a unit more accurate or faster.	Spear, sword, axe, bow and most gauntlet attackers.
Mag	Magic	Raises magical attack power and supports magic-based effects such as healing.	This is the offensive stat for black/white magic rather than Str. Against high-Def armor, Mag matters because magic attacks the magical defense lane instead.	Mages, healers, hybrid magic users.
Dex	Dexterity	Improves accuracy and critical-hit rate and is used by some skill trigger chances.	Dex makes a unit more reliable. If a strong attack keeps missing, Str is not the first problem to solve.	Archers, inaccurate weapon users, crit/skill-trigger builds.
Spd	Speed	Feeds Avoid and, crucially, Attack Speed.	Raw Spd is not the whole story. Heavy equipment can drag Attack Speed down and turn a fast unit into one that gets doubled.	Almost everyone; especially lightly equipped attackers and dodge-oriented units.
Lck	Luck	Primarily helps protect against enemy criticals; current player testing also attributes smaller contributions to hit/avoid consistency.	Lck is usually a quiet safety stat rather than a role-defining one. Low Lck becomes noticeable when enemies start showing uncomfortable Crit percentages.	Everyone benefits; fragile units especially dislike surprise crits.
Def	Defense	Reduces incoming physical damage and feeds the derived Protection value.	Great Def does nothing against magic. A heavily armored unit can still be the wrong person to park in front of a mage.	Physical tanks and enemy-phase frontliners.
Res	Resistance	Reduces incoming magical damage and feeds Resilience.	Think of this as magical armor. A unit with mediocre Def but strong Res can be the safer mage bait.	Mages, healers and anti-magic units.
Cha	Charm	Its clearest documented use is improving Gambit effectiveness.	On my early Cai route this is not a stat I need to build around. It matters much more when a system actually uses Gambits/Battalions.	Gambit/Battalion users; low priority for my current Cai team.
Bld	Build	Cancels equipment Weight when calculating Attack Speed.	Bld means how much heavy gear I can carry without slowing down. Extra Bld beyond the total Weight does not create bonus speed.	Heavy-weapon users, shield/ring users, mounted builds carrying bulky equipment.
Mov	Movement	Number of tiles the unit can normally move in one turn.	This looks less exciting than damage, but it is one of the strongest tactical stats: more Mov means more targets reached, safer retreats and easier objectives.	Everyone; especially cavalry/fliers and objective runners.

The stat interaction I need to remember: Spd + Bld + Weight

A character can have excellent Spd and still have bad Attack Speed.

Current player testing describes the relationship as:

AS = Spd − max(0, total equipped Weight − Bld)

So if I have:

• Spd 12
• Bld 5
• weapon + accessory Weight 9

then four points of Weight are left after Build cancels five, giving an Attack Speed of 8.

If Bld were 10 instead, the equipment would be fully covered and AS would stay at 12. The extra one point of Build would not raise it to 13.

This is why a ring or shield can secretly be an offensive penalty: the bonus printed on the item may be smaller than the Attack Speed it costs.

Launch-week sources currently disagree over whether the ordinary follow-up threshold is +4 or +5 AS. Multiple current player tests report +4; another early explanation reports +5. Until that settles, the battle forecast is the source of truth. I do not need to memorize the disputed number to make the right decision: equip the item, look at AS and the forecast, and see whether either unit gains or loses a follow-up.

Derived combat stats

The character sheet's raw stats are ingredients. The combat screen turns them, the equipped weapon, accessories, skills, class bonuses and terrain into the numbers that determine an actual exchange.

Combat stat	What it means	Main inputs	How I should read it
Physical Attack	Expected physical power before the target's physical mitigation.	Str, weapon Might, skills/class modifiers.	Bigger is better, but compare it against enemy Protection rather than looking at it alone.
Mystical Attack	Magical attack power before magical mitigation.	Mag, spell/weapon Might, skills/class modifiers.	Compare against enemy Resilience. This is why magic can crack physical tanks.
AS — Attack Speed	Effective combat speed after Weight penalties.	Spd, Bld, weapon/accessory Weight, modifiers.	One of the first values I check in the forecast because it controls follow-up pressure in both directions.
Hit	Chance that the attack connects.	Weapon accuracy, Dex, smaller secondary modifiers, skills and terrain.	A huge Attack stat is irrelevant if Hit is unreliable.
Crit	Chance to turn a hit into a critical.	Weapon Crit, Dex and skills/modifiers.	Treat it as upside unless I have deliberately built a high-Crit unit.
Avo — Avoid	How hard the unit is to hit.	Spd/AS-related factors, Luck, weapon/class effects, skills and terrain.	Terrain can make a mediocre defender surprisingly safe; always look at displayed enemy Hit after positioning.
Ddg — Dodge	Resistance to critical hits, not ordinary attacks.	Primarily Luck plus skills/modifiers.	High Dodge keeps enemy Crit near zero. Do not confuse it with Avoid.
Protection	Effective physical defense used against physical attacks.	Def plus equipment, class, skills and temporary effects.	This is the number physical attackers are trying to punch through.
Resilience	Effective magical defense used against magic.	Res plus equipment, class, skills and temporary effects.	This is the number magic attacks target. A high-Protection armor unit may still have weak Resilience.

Avoid and Dodge are not the same thing

This naming is easy to misread.

Avoid answers: does the attack hit me at all?

Dodge answers: if it hits me, how well do I suppress the attacker's chance to make it a critical?

So a character can have excellent Dodge and still get hit constantly. They just do not get crit very often.

Defense and Resistance become Protection and Resilience

The other pair I want fixed in my head is:

Def → Protection → physical damage

Res → Resilience → magical damage

That is why "this unit is tanky" is incomplete. The useful question is tanky against what?

If an armored enemy has huge Protection and weak Resilience, sending another physical unit into it may be exactly the wrong exchange. A mage attacks the other defensive lane.

What I should care about for my current team

I do not need every stat to be high on every character.

For the first Cai run, I want to read stats through each person's job:

Cai: Str, Spd/AS, Bld and enough Def to stay on the front line. His mounted direction makes Mov increasingly valuable.

Peter: Dex and Str are the obvious bow stats, with Spd/AS determining how often that ranged damage turns into follow-ups.

Tialla: Mag is the core output stat. Dex helps offensive magic connect, Spd/AS keeps her from being doubled, and Res helps her survive magical exchanges. She does not need to win a Strength contest.

That is the larger Fire Emblem lesson I was missing:

A stat is not "good" in isolation. It is good when it helps the job I gave the character.

The three numbers I should check before committing an attack

When I am actually on a tactical map, I do not need to mentally evaluate eleven base stats every time.

I can reduce most ordinary decisions to:

1. Damage / defenses: what damage is the forecast showing, and am I hitting Protection or Resilience?
2. Hit: am I comfortable with the chance this connects?
3. Attack Speed / follow-up: who is attacking once and who is attacking again?

Then terrain, enemy ranges, Combat Arts and objectives decide whether the exchange is worth taking.

That is much closer to the Advance Wars-style thinking I enjoy: understand the numbers well enough that positioning becomes the interesting decision.