LIFE Realm

[Seravy]

1) Raise Heroism upkeep to 2 and restrict it to non-heroes. Casting Heroism on a hero is silly, after all. The point is to turn ordinary troops into heroes, which it does.

That would be a massive nerf to the AI - a level 4 hero has a decent chance to survive against the human player in the early game, a level 1 does not.
I admit it's overpowered though. I feel this has been discussed before but I don't remember the details, I'll try to find it.

2) Merge Holy Weapon into True Sight, so True Sight gives +1 to hit and stacks with Holy Arms. Also let it boost magic ranged attacks. Remove Holy Weapon.

This is a good idea but leaves Life with no common attack buffs, and True Sight is a pretty powerful spell with several well defined purposes already - it counters Wall of Shadows, detects invisible units, allows shooting at invisible units, and blocks Illusion Damage, as well as Sorcery unit curses. I'm not sure I want it to be any stronger than that. I would like to keep being immune to illusions a player choice - if people start putting True Sight on everything for the To Hit buff, they'll no longer run into the "oh crap I should have traded for/cast true sight, now my hero is dead" situation. (The AI can and will summon their phantom warriors or beast directly adjacent to heroes to kill them, and aside from those, Mind Storm and Confusion are also excellent ways for the AI to kill a hero unexpectedly - not to mention an invisible enemy hero or night stalker)
Aside from no attack buffs (which is probably an acceptable change), no access to counter-Weapon Immunity spells in common is a greater problem and would make Life the only such realm. (also countering weapon immunity is meaningless for uncommon, by then you have built an Alchemist Guild)

Suggestion: Sanctuary. Costs 5 mana. Target unit gets -2 to hit and loses all remaining mana. If it dies and you win the battle, it returns to life. Can be used proactively against Crack's Call or other lethal spells.

This is indeed an AI incompatible spell - the AI will not be able to predict which of their units will die and unless you're 100% sure about it, the -2 to hit makes it a bad move.
Also, I'm not going to allow the player to raise units that were killed by irrecoverable damage for 5 mp at common rarity, that's too good even for a very rare.
In fact I dare to say this spell is more powerful than the current Raise Dead, at least for saving heroes - it costs 35 less MP and there is zero risk of losing the unit after it was raised (Raise Dead is once per combat per unit - if the unit gets killed again, it's gone) - and while -2 to hit is a lot, a top tier hero with +7 to hit does enough damage to not care about being reduced to +5. (and a hero with a Doom weapon can laugh at it because doom ignores To Hit entirely)

this is a good idea. also, i can't cast holy weapon on heroes when holy arms is up, it that fixable? (or: are heroes affected by holy weapon?)

You can't cast Holy Weapon on ANYTHING when Holy Arms is up because the effect of Holy Arms is : all your (nonfantastic) units already have Holy Weapon. Unless it has a bug to exclude heroes?

It was that Life was unbalanced internally in terms of spell rarity.

This is 100% true. Life, along with Sorcery, has a very weak Uncommon tier - a few very powerful spells surrounded by tons of medicore stuff. It's Common, Rare and Very Rare spells are all great though.
It isn't the only realm like this : Death is poor at Rares, unless your goal is using city curses for the win. (ok, probably not anymore but used to be)

For Sorcery this is less noticeable as Sorcery commons are not that good - it's weak until rares, and that's part of the design.

I think Stream of Life being uncommon will help Life with this problem, and if we decide to make Towers stronger (probably should) then the "planar" spells will be much more relevant.

For example, casting Fire Boly in combat should be quite cost efficient compared with, say, Warp Lightning but Warp Lightning should do damage much quicker. Fire Bolt shouldn't be rendered obsolete by Warp Lightning (you may want to conserve mana in easy battles).

I'm not sure about this pairing - warp lightning is a special purpose spell so the outcome greatly depends on the target - there was a post with average damage dealt for each but I don't remember the numbers anymore. It's definitely true for Life Drain vs Syphon Life and Healing vs Healing Charge however.

[Nelphine]

Personally, i think you need to keep a common attack buff spell (not just heroism) because life specifically doesn't have summons. They have to have ways to use that mana to create powerful units very early in the game. Basically holy weapon OR holy armor is their version of hellhound. (Using both is their version of sprites.)

[Nelphine]

On the topic of heroism on heroes - my current extreme game, reywind literally has more than 5 times my casting skill. When he's in the capital, my overland casting skill nearly doubles. Obviously that will change over time, but an item or two plus heroism makes a huge difference. (Sad I didn't get a sagemaster though.

[namad]

One reason common life spells seem overpowered compared to rarer life spells is that when you play life you always pick one of the top tier races for normal units, because life is afterall focused on normal units.

Normal unit based strategies start strong and don't always get that much stronger?

I do think life might be a bit overpowered though with very few books, very many retorts, a strong race, on an super hard difficulty.
I'm not sure how to fix it, but the other realms don't work that well without a heavier investment in books.

[Nelphine]

That's largely retorts, not so much life. Retorts start working on turn 1. Books don't kick in until you research the spells and have the mana/skill to use them. Life happens to have the strongest common spells.

High difficulties need maximum result from turn 1 - so life is the most obvious way to do that. Certainly not the only one.

[Seravy]

I have to agree that heroism on heroes is slightly overpowered. However, I feel the spell would be disappointing without that feature. Not because it would be too weak (it wouldn't) but because the effect would be, well, how do I explain it. It gives you something that you naturally get for free : levels on units. So it feels like a waste to spend mana on it in any case except when "I can't win this battle unless I buff the unit". Aside from early game wars, I pretty much never cast this spell on nonhero units overland because the units will gain those levels after a few battles anyway and/or start with them from barracks and war college. Then there is Armasmaster, with Life I usually have heroes and often have at least one of those.

[Catwalk]

Heroism is an excellent spell without being able to cast it on heroes. I'm honestly not sure why you feel it's a waste of mana. It gives you massive firepower right away. If it feels to you like you're wasting mana, then I suspect that your cost-benefit analysis is flawed.

Casting it on heroes, on the other hand, is extremely problematic. It's not slightly overpowered, it's a massive advantage that makes Life the hero realm of choice. I don't think it should be that way. Getting the first levels on your weak heroes is so much fun, and that fun is taken away with an overpowered spell.

[Seravy]

It gives you massive firepower right away.

That's what I'm saying. If I don't need the firepower "right away" then the spell is a waste, as the units gain levels on their own over time. If I cast any other buff on a unit, that stays around and continues being useful. If I cast Heroism, it literally disappears from the unit as soon as the unit reaches 180 XP on its own. So heroism feels a waste because it provides a temporal benefit while all other overland spells are "permanent". This is regardless of the spell actually being worth it or not.

[zitro1987]

In my case, I find 'endurance' to be the problematic one, because later in the game, it gives as much armor potential as 'invulnerability' with a ~20 armor hero. Once you combine endurance with prayer and invulnerability, you have those kinds of heroes that only v rare creatures can hurt.

I originally argued having 'endurance' back to its cheaper original form (+1 move), but maybe a better solution would be to disable casting it on heroes (so we can enjoy casting it on dragon turtles, angels, etc)

[Nelphine]

Seravy, even if it feels a waste, heroism is a common spell. It doesn't need to have a mind blowing effect. How many other common spells do you often just forget about, or only use in the most specific circumstances?

I agree on endurance as well. If that couldn't target heroes it would both help with massive invincible hero syndrome, but it would also help with crazy high movement windwalker heroes too.

I think both heroism and endurance should be disallowed from heroes.