CONTINUED [1]
Some brief comments on the other possible scenarios:
[1] -> There is a small chance Jaffar ends enemy phase turn two with 21 HP and an even smaller chance he retreats to heal. The majority of the time, though, he will start enemy phase turn three with 28 health. Dying means getting hit by two swordreaver-carrying fighters and a mage, for a total chance of 7.76%. Considering how [1] happens less than one percent of the time, this possibility is statistically negligible, around .068%.
[2] -> In this scenario, Jaffar retreats to heal. Jaffar is safe.
[3] -> Complicated scenario. If the second fighter hits, Jaffar goes off to heal and is safe; if the fighter misses, Jaffar continues to the second part of [1]. Considering this scenario only occurs one-quarter of one-tenth of one-percent of the time, it’s probably not worth factoring into the odds, but the odds of death would be significantly smaller than .068%.
[4] -> In this scenario, Jaffar retreats to heal. Jaffar is safe.
[7] -> If the fighter and mage hit, Jaffar retreats and is safe. If the fighter misses, transition to scenario [5]. If the fighter hits on turn two [slightly more than half the time], transition to scenario [6] instead. Odds of getting this scenario and having Jaffar die are roughly .33%.
[8] -> If the fighter hits and the mage hits, Jaffar dies. If only the fighter hits, Jaffar retreats and is safe. If neither hits, this scenario becomes the same as [6]. Because the odds of an early retreat are higher than the odds of a turn two kill, this scenario actually improves Jaffar’s survivability overall compared to [6]. The odds of this scenario happening and Jaffar dying on turn two are .034%; the odds of this scenario happening and Jaffar dying on turn three are roughly .5%.
Strategies to Save the NPCs
I am limiting myself in three ways: first, no strategy can involve RNG manipulation; second, no strategy can involve the special tile glitch (mines / torch staff); third, no strategy can involve AI manipulation. You can read more about how Blazing Sword's AI functions here, and it's super interesting stuff. But because the game keeps this information hidden, I will not be relying upon it.
Pent Turn One Strategy [1]
Torch staff: Self-explanatory. Remotely lights up the southwest corner.
Flier: The idea here is to kill the wyverns before they can reach Pent, and the only wyvern the player can reach on turn one is in the southwest corner of the map. 26MT / 12AS is enough to one-round the wyvern. What does this mean in real terms? On average, all you need is a 13/1 Fiora or a 16/1 Florina to get the job done.
Secret book: Our target wyvern rider has 10 avoid. An average 13/1 Fiora will have 97 displayed hit against the wyvern, or 99.85% true hit. So if you want to avoid a one-in-a-thousand miss and make this strategy absolutely RNG-proof, you can toss Fiora a secret book. (Note that this is unnecessary for Florina, as a statistically average 16/1 Florina will have well over 100 hit.)
From here, move the flier one tile west of the village, have Ninian dance, cast torch, fly the flier next to the target wyvern, attack and kill.
Pent Turn One Strategy [2]
Sleep staff: Rather than fighting the southwest wyvern, this strategy puts him to sleep.
Caster: This refers to non-mounted staff users who can move through the desert, so we can choose between Serra and Lucius. On average, Serra reaches 16 magic by 20/8, making her an impractical choice on most playthroughs. Lucius, however, reaches 16 magic by 15/1 (or, if the player wishes to promote earlier to build up his staff rank, 13/3), a perfectly reasonable benchmark to reach by Ch.22. An average 15/1 Lucius is guaranteed to hit our target wyvern with sleep.
From here, kill the archer closest to the village, have the caster move up, dance, move the caster onto the tile where the archer was, cast sleep. If you’re willing to invest the Lyn Mode energy ring onto Lucius, an 18/1 average can cast sleep from the village tile, which is easier.
Pent Turn Two Strategy [1]
Nothing to this one. If Pent is hit precisely once on turn one (the only scenario where he can die on turn two), he’ll end his turn one tile south of the northwest fort tile (which can be seen here). That is just close enough for a promoted flier, with one dance, to reach Pent and rescue him before the beginning of enemy phase turn two.
Pent Turn Two Strategy [2]
The previous strategy is so straightforward that this one isn’t necessary, but I’ll include it for the sake of thoroughness, and because if a semi-competent player is so poorly prepared that they miss out on strategy [1] they still won’t miss out on strategy [2]. Pick up your 12+ magic caster (Serra reaches by 20/1, Lucius by 10/1), dance the flier, have the flier drop him/her off in a location safe from the wyverns and archers; next turn, move the healer closer to Pent and cast physic. Six tiles away is conservative, a player could go even closer.
Nino Strategy
Saving Nino could not be more straightforward. As you can see on this map, placing Pent on the rightmost deployment tile allows him, even at base magic, to comfortably reach Nino with a physic staff before enemy phase turn two. The game hands the player both Pent and a physic staff, for free, with no effort required. That miniscule chance of death is only relevant if the player is highly negligent and/or wasteful.
If you’re having Pent go to help Jaffar instead, most any Priscilla / Serra / Lucius will do fine. All they need is a B staff rank.
Jaffar Strategy
As with the Nino strategy, other casters can do this job fine; I bring up Pent to demonstrate that even for the semi-competent player, the game hands out all the tools you need to eliminate risk. And as with the Nino strategy, this is a simple approach: blitz the western corridor with mounts, have your mounts pick up and drop off Pent, and then have Pent cast physic. If you’re tiptoeing around Maxime (semi-competent player approach), physic can be cast comfortably by player phase turn four; if you have a unit who can distract / take on Maxime (competent player approach), physic can be cast by player phase turn three.
A few brief, but important, points about Jaffar’s survivability. If we assume that the semi-competent player reaches Jaffar with physic by player phase turn four, then the only scenarios Jaffar has a chance to die in are [1], [5], [6], [7], and [8]. If we assume that the competent player reaches Jaffar with physic by player phase turn three, then the only scenario Jaffar has a chance to die in is [8]. Yes, that’s right: in the hands of a competent player, Jaffar only dies .034% of the time.
By comparison, in the hands of a semi-competent player Jaffar dies 15.4% of the time. Quite the difference! This, I suspect, is where most of the frustration comes in: players approach Battle before Dawn with a four-turn Jaffar save in mind, but that leads to a drastic reduction in the odds of saving him.
Wrapping things up
As mentioned before, enemy stat rolls vary slightly from playthrough to playthrough. In this attempt, I suffered quite a few terrible rolls and still came out fine. The rolls I received could certainly be better and could possibly be worse, but this analysis should provide a gist of what the odds are and what the game expects of the player.
Speaking of, here is specifically what the game expects of the player to save its NPCs:
Is it reasonable to expect a player (who has played through ENM / HNM / EHM once each) to utilize these strategies on the game’s highest difficulty? I’ll leave that judgment up to you all, but I think the answer is obvious.