I've heard that melee characters have 0% res growth and vice versa for mages... is this true?
Man, that's not even the worst of it, my Pirate, Draug (Who I class swapped to Pirate) has no defense growth at all. If you want a better look on stat growths go to:
http://forums.feplanet.net/index.php?showtopic=36786I don't know if you need to be logged in to click the links but, they're links to growths of all characters as all classes in FEDS.
Nothing in the original game had a resistance growth. The fact that the Amulet (now known as the Talisman of today) maxed out RES/MDEF made it among one of the best items in the game.
You shouldn't be so surprised, really. I know I wasn't... Only Lena/Maria/the prepromoted sages, iirc, have some noteworthy RES. And even then, only Lena's is the one that really sticks out.
I've also heard that it's impossible for mages to get 20+ magic unless RNG does its tricks. Ah well, stats themselves don't matter, it's how they match up with eachother. If the contrast between Resistance and Magic is the same as in all the other FE games, why complain? Aren't we all used to seeing magic users deal significant blows to physical units anyway? I think the damage that mages cause to physical units in Shadow Dragon is pretty similar in amount in PoR, RD, you name it...
You must not have seen the resistance of your own magic users, then. I lied before; not even Wendell and Boah have good MDef, so they get handled by magic almost like units such as, say, Abel, does. And Abel gets 6 RES upon promotion, which is actually high for this game. It's sticking true to the roots, though.
And, not typically: In FE7, I've seen the magic users do zilch damage to units like Hector and Oswin. In FE8, Gorgons and Arch Mogalls; yeah, they were pretty rape if they actually managed to hit more often. In FE9, no, I don't remember ever being done in by magic in that game at all. It seems to be more prevalent in the JPN games, especially the earliest few, where magic was really a dominant threat.
Physical weapon users are pretty optimized, too, though; once you head into late game, even in normal mode, Silver Lance Paladins/Generals put a good dent into units not named Wolf and Sedgar. The original game didn't even have it like that; by the time you got to the Sable Order/Dark Knight party chapter in FE1, you can notice the difference in power: you could rape it in FE1, but ten games later, it's not really the same... Though the chapter's still easy either way.