Adjutants are Fire Emblem: Three Houses' new take on the pair up system present in many other Fire Emblem games. They function as a way to get extra skill ranks and experience for units you don't want to expose to the frontline, a way to build up supports, and a potential means of giving their leading units an advantage in battle. Since they're new to this game and might look a little tricky to use, here's how they work in detail.

What Are Adjutants?

Adjutants are first unlocked when you achieve a Professor Level C, allowing you to assign one of these side-units per map. You can deploy up to three by raising your Professor Level further. There are three different classes of Adjutants in Three Houses, marked with sword, shield, and sparkle icons that denote offensive, defensive, and healing adjutants respectively. The type of adjutant any given unit will be is determined by their class.

RELATED: Fire Emblem: Three Houses - All Paralogues And Their Rewards

How To Use Adjutants In Fire Emblem: Three Houses

The way to use adjutants most effectively may depend on your playstyle, but there's a general consensus that the offensive adjutants offer the least combat utility, despite being the most common. This is because offensive adjutants are the only ones with an RNG-dependant chance to activate - you aren't guaranteed a follow-up attack. Defensive adjutants will always allow a unit to survive follow-up blows, and healing adjutants will always heal if their host unit drops below the HP threshold. For this reason, defensive and healing adjutants are best for combat value.

There are many other ways to get use out of adjutants, though. Most noteworthy is the fact that they have an equipped weapon, and will gain half of the EXP and skill EXP that their host unit is getting. If an adjutant is mounted or in an armored class, they'll also get EXP towards those ranks. This makes adjutants excellent for catching up students who haven't had as many tutoring sessions invested in them, or for helping units improve skills that grow slowly or are hard to raise in actual combat.

Adjutants also help provide gambit boosts, provide their support boost if they have support ranks with their host unit, and can even earn support ranks with other units on the map as if they were deployed. For example, if you had Mercedes assigned as an Adjutant to Ashe, and he gained support ranks with Annette, both Ashe and Mercedes could raise support ranks with her. This speeds up the process of unlocking friendships immensely.

Finally, adjutants also have a unique use for those who play Three Houses with an online connection thanks to the Online Liaison features. By selecting a visiting unit and looking at their skills, you should notice that some of them are marked with green arrow icons. If you borrow this unit and assign them to a character in the next battle, you'll be able to learn one of the marked skills (randomly) as long as the guest's host unit is MVP of the battle. This is an extremely fast way to learn skills and combat arts, although it does require an online membership.

Remember to use your adjutants wisely, and they can cut your grinding time in half whenever you're trying to catch a newly-recruited student up to speed - or save your life in battle.

NEXT: Final Fantasy VII Remake's Cat Zone Is The Best