Question about losing characters in Fire Emblem: Awakening.

I am around Chapter 6 and I just lost four or five people in a battle. I have been going with the philosophy of saving over one save for the game and if I lose someone, that is my fault and I will not go back and load a previous save. Now with that said, will I be able to get other units later in the game?

This is my first Fire Emblem game and I just learned the importance of going into a battle with you mind sharpened, units ready and not half-assing it like I can do sometimes in other games.

You'll get plenty of characters over the course of the game, but you can definitely screw yourself over if you lose too many.

@mrpilkington: Barring the burst of characters you get in the first like 3 chapters, you get basically 1-2 new characters per chapter, though this basically stops after Chapter 13. There are also a couple of characters you get from paralogues (you've probably encountered Donnel and there is one other). After Chapter 13, the game doesn't really give you any more characters in the middle of story chapters, but there are more characters you can get through paralogues, though some of these characters become impossible to get if certain characters are dead.

It's hard to say at what point you become too screwed, but your situation sounds like you still have a chance. Chapter 6 is one of the first chapters where they throw a lot at you, so I can't blame you for getting overwhelmed. Still, losing 4-5 people is a lot, and it will take you several missions to gain that many people back; make sure you're getting everyone to join that you can (did you try to talk to Gaius in Chapter 6 to have him join your group?).

You can probably keep going, but do your best to make sure your team isn't suddenly missing an important element. If Sully died, start using Stahl a lot (or vice versa), since they're both cavaliers. If Miriel died, use Ricken (or vice versa). Lissa and Maribelle, etc. If Sumia died, don't worry, you will get another pegasus knight soon. If Virion died...then you won't be able to use bows for a while, because FE games hate giving you archers early game for some reason.

Frankly, the "I promise to not reload when I lose people" thing always sounds exhilarating...but when you lose somebody, you should probably reload. The characters aren't disposable like in XCOM:

1. the levelups are very gradual, so losing a unit is losing hours and hours it took to give them godlike stats. In XCOM, losing units sucks, but you're really just losing a couple abilities, because the "stats" of that game in terms of damage and HP are dictated by your equipment more than anything.
2. the game doesn't really seem to plan around giving the deaths meaning; they say like 2 lines, then they're dead and seemingly forgotten by the entire cast. So basically you're just screwing yourself in combat AND missing a bunch of cool support conversations around that character. I could at least see the appeal if after the mission they held a little Fire Emblem funeral for the characters that died, and maybe there were special support conversations depending on who was close to the deceased. But that's a writing budget nightmare, because that like doubles the amount of support conversations, and only like 10% of players would ever see it because FE players obsessively reset when someone dies.
3. sometimes there just isn't a good replacement for the character you lost because there are only so many units of each class. By comparison, XCOM always has rookies ready to become the class you need.

Yeah I have lost 3 people and 1 possible. Since 1 of the 3 was the one to talk to the new person.

Key thing is....they were my fave characters and wanted to see more story of theirs. yet I pressed on....but..I feel their loss all the time. Now its getting rediculus in how I can lose people.

early game 1 archer 3 wyvern riders rip him a new one. Later paired up team just in the back needing healed 5 teams attack and murder them. Most recent is another possible to recruit just need to the right person to talk to them...nope they fly straight into that person and is cut down.

I should have just put it to normal as I am missing story and time. 20hours in is too far to just restart. tis infuriating.

Loseing 5 people is harsh Id happily just reboot. I thaught I could carry on but as said already the game dosnt give any feeling of worth in loseing characters as strange a sentence as that was.

@bisonhero: This is pretty much my first venture in this franchise. My only experience with SRPG's is the Final Fantasy Tactics games, which I loved but I played those when I was young and never finished them. I have never really been very good with SRPG's and I thought Fire Emblem would be a good starter in this franchise. However, I see myself making the same mistakes and not thinking carefully when I play. These games require a lot of patience and I tend to be an impatient game player. I love RPG's but I tend to lean toward something a little more fast paced. I played thru Persona 4: Golden early this year and was absorbed in it every minute and that was about as slow paced as many RPG's I play.

@mrpilkington: Ah, then my XCOM comparison probably wasn't very helpful.

Fire Emblem is a fun series and the character interactions and support bonuses are neat, but like I said, I just don't think you get much out of choosing to not reload. I don't think it's a "truer" experience, and it's still very tense knowing that you have to find a way to tackle a mission such that everybody survives, even if you do allow yourself to reload.

As much as some people might say it's less "cheap" to never reload, I'd argue that it's taking the easy, lazy way out for short term convenience, but ultimately screwing yourself in the long term because you're losing good characters you've sunk time into. So I'm really encouraging you to be fine with reloading when a chapter goes really bad, because that's really the only way the game makes sense. Especially if you may not play the game a second time, then hey, you might as well occasionally reload a chapter so you actually learn something from it and how to effectively tackle it. And in some later levels, enemy reinforcements appear out of places that you can't entirely predict, which is a bit of a dick move, and those chapters all but require a reload once you realize the nature of the level.

I basically guarantee you could salvage your current save file if you stick with it, as long as you reload any time you lose more than like one character in a chapter (or if you lose your best or second-best character or something). Or if you really liked the characters you lost you could start a new file.

I've always save scummed and never even considered it might be a bad thing until Patrick brought it up while he was playing it. That being said I consider Fire Emblem one of my favorite series of all time, so obviously resetting hasn't diminished my enjoyment of the game at all. If you lost 5-6 dudes in one chapter you should just reset. You'll have to retrain a bunch of guys and you'll get deprived of all of their stories, that would certainly hurt your overall experience more than redoing the chapter.

You will continue to add units thorughout the game -- but at a cost. Most, if not all of the early units end up having better stats than the later ones. That's not to say it's impossible to get by with the later units, but you are sort of shooting yourself in the foot.

Also, if you've lost 4-5 units in a single battle, reset. The time you save by continuing without them isn't worth it.