Heroes and abilities

[Juffos]

I forgot entirely about Shadow, good point.

As Seravy said, there is no skill to increase bow damage (except blademaster, he he) and the archer hero bow damage is very negligible by my experience. Might increasing it could improve on that. It makes sense as well being able to pull the bowstring further back just as you swing harder with a weapon. I deny the existence of crossbows on heroes.

Do Slingers still have the rock icon for ranged damage? It is confusing and could be swapped off for the bow for clarity about game mechanics - Javelineers don't use bows either but have the same icon, and one would suppose that the Galley has a ballista or something like that firing arrows instead of one giant archer.

[Seravy]

Been thinking about bow heroes.
While I rather not change Might, there are ways to improve archer heroes.
The main problem is likely the range penalty. While magic ranged attacks ignore it, missile don't. That's less of a problem on a 6 figure unit but a hero is hit fairly badly - it only gets one chance to roll a good enough attack to deal damage instead of 6.

1. They could get +1 To Hit to compensate for the range penalty
2. They could get Long Range for the same
3. We can do both of the above albeit that'd leave them with a free +1 hit if attacking from short range
4. Or we can change the range penalty rules by saying they don't apply to hero units.

[Littlenog]

Ranged Heroes in basic we able to 1 shot Sky Drakes.

A lot of this was due to the + to Hit modifiers they could stack.

I think removing the range penalty is worth a try vs giving them more + to Hit.

Both Blade Master and Might have been changed to bring Ranged heroes back into line.  I would stay away from + to Hit unless I am not understanding it correctly.

[teelaurila]

To start conservatively, could bow items give Long Range the same way shields give the Large shield ability?

[Seravy]

Yes, that should be doable.

[Seravy]

There is a problem with Long Range though. I think it's not relevant to solving the problem.
It is fairly easy to position your hero so that the distance to the target is between 4 and 7 tiles. In fact that's probably the most common scenario. Long Range does nothing unless you are at least 8 tiles away.

The real problem is the -1 Hit penalty for being 4-7 tiles away, which Long Range won't take away but magic ranged attacks do not have.
The only way to attack without any penalty is to be 3 or less tiles from the enemy, but that is too close and gets the hero killed.

[teelaurila]

Speaking of archers, Elven archer seems to be a special case, using bow but having magic attack? Is she acting like any archer would under focus magic? Does that mean gaining weapon +to-hit to magic attacks (like holy weapon)? Would holy weapon, focus magic, alchemy longbows also have +3 to hit?

[teelaurila]

Well, magical ranged attacks on heroes are not THAT stellar either. It's the way multi-figure armor stacks up. So they are quite good with lightning and awesome with doom/illusion (haven't seen the illusionist much, so just presume on the latter). But magical ranged comes with caster, so generally it's secondary. For pure archers bow is (obviously) the thing.

Perhaps adding blademaster to primary archers could work better? Especially ones that do not have caster.

[Seravy]

It would work like any hero that has a magical ranged attack except that it gets raised by bow items instead of staves (both the hit and the attack strength).
Focus Magic might work differently, as it converts the type of the attack instead - I think we discussed this in the Sorcery thread.

[Littlenog]

Is there a way to remove the -1 to Hit for long range?

I think removing the existing penalty is better than added +1 to Hit.