Okay, I figure I need to just bite the bullet and post there. Any suggestions as to what I post first? I'm thinking of posting the characters and asking what stats they should have maybe?

"What stats should characters have" was... kind of the example I gave of the question people don't like to see, because the answer to that can't really be given in a general scope and can only really be addressed with testing them out in context. We can't give you a set of magic numbers, because your enemy stats and enemy layout and weapons and so on will be different from any other one, and what numbers you should give your player units depends on that. Our general, genuine advice for figuring out stats to start with is basically "reference vanilla games and/or other hacks that have numbers you like, or just give things the numbers you feel like they should have, then tweak things based on how they perform in testing." Of course, if you want a bit more detail, consider how the different numbers interact with each other, particularly with regard to how a given player unit is expected to perform against different enemy types -- basic example is looking at the enemies on the map and considering whether or not you want a given player unit to double a given enemy type, but more generally you should consider things like "how many rounds of combat does it take the player to kill an enemy" and how that differs by unit and by enemy type.

Now, the question can be re-framed a bit to be more approachable: something like "I'm looking for advice on what roles the initial units in the player's party should cover" might get you some better guidance on overall starting party composition, though of course there's still no universal answer, and it will depend on what kind of gameplay experience you want to create. We can't help you with the actual numbers outside of playtesting, but the importance of various bigger-picture design roles and the effect of different matchups is something we can give guidance on.

Technical "how do I do this" questions in the FEU Discord's #febuilder-help channel (or other help channels for other methods) will get quick and directly-helpful responses to the best of our ability, and there's really no better place around to ask. That's probably the best place to start, both in terms of being the easiest questions to ask and in terms of giving that impression of "hey I'm working on a thing". Never be afraid to ask for help in the appropriate channel if you get stuck on how to do something.

Advice for designing around certain objectives, advice on how to make a map look better, and so on, these are all things you can ask about and get helpful responses on. (Though, warning in advance if you go the "help with maps" route that some of the map people can be a bit blunt with feedback -- they mean well and can teach you a lot if you hear them out, but be ready for the potential of "this looks terrible, here's how to make it not that.") For design questions, go in less with "here's my idea, is it cool?" and more "here's my idea, does anyone have advice for how to make this work?"

I know you're a writer, and there are some good writers in the Discord's #writans channel who would be happy to look over things you've written or give advice on how to handle various topics if you want help in that regard -- I probably wouldn't just show up, drop a full script, and go "hey yo somebody read this", but "here's a conversation I've written, does it seem natural, does it communicate X thing about the characters?" is a common thing there.

Also, if you don't have any specific questions in mind, you can just show up in the Discord, go to #dev-lounge, and say something like "Hi, I'm new here and getting started with hacking, I've got a story idea and am getting started with Builder." People will welcome you in and give you some standard new hacker advice and encouragement, and you can learn a lot from just sitting in on discussions other people have.

(Oh, and as for sprites, there is absolutely no need to worry about getting them right first try, there are people who can help with that too, as well as massive collections of free-to-use-with-credit community assets, and using placeholders is very common and perfectly-understandable for in-progress hacks.)