Heroes and abilities

[frutagode]

Gunther the Barbarian should maybe have pathfinding, like all other Barbarians?

[Seravy]

Gunther the Barbarian should maybe have pathfinding, like all other Barbarians?

I considered that but it would make the rather common Mountaineer and Forester on other early heroes weaker, and the orc Warrior would be even more inferior to it as well.

[Catwalk]

I suggest that all economic abilities scale per level, so noble stops being a throwaway trait that's only useful early on. I don't think there's any flavour problem in doing that, but if you think so you can just rename it to Wealthy.

Proposed numbers:
Noble: 8 gold per level
Sage: 5 research per level
Ritual master: 3 power per level
Aether Master: 4 skill points per level

[zitro1987]

Agility - no suggestion
Arcane Power - no suggestion
Armsmaster - no suggestion
Blademaster - no suggestion
Charmed - Add a 'spell-lock' type effect to hero. This ability is fairly weak on its own, especially once hero builds up resistance
PrayerMaster - Add a starting +1 resist to all besides bonus
Constitution - no suggestion
Leadership - Add a starting +1 attack to all besides bonus
Legendary - Boost to +4 fame per level. Seems weaker than sage.
Lucky - above average and no suggestion
Might - no suggestion
Noble - +7 gold per level
Sage - +5 research per level (6 is overkill!)
Ritual Master - remain at +4 per level
AEther Master - +6 SP per turn (8 is overkill!)
Capacity - no suggestion
Divine Barrier - Add a starting +1 armor to all besides bonus
Guiding Beacon - I never got this I think, but +1 atk per level for both missing and magical is excessive. Maybe +1 per 2 levels 'and' long range for missile and +2/3 per level for magic?
Soul Linker - no suggestions? (but the generic +attack/defend/resist to all skills should have a fixed +1 boost, they are inferior to stuff like this)
Supply Commander - no suggestions
Logistics - can it also apply to overland movement?
Battlemage - double effect when initiating melee?

[Seravy]

Charmed

I considers this the most powerful hero ability in the game or at least in the top 3. It leaves your hero with several additional free slots on equipment (as you don't need Resistance or Resist Magic) and improves your choices when distributing existing equipment, on top of already being immune to curses even before having access to equipment or knowing if the enemy has those type of spells.
...I don't understand the request btw, "never fail a resistance roll" is guaranteed to protect your hero from Banish, Exorcise or similar spells, so Spell Lock's protection against them doesn't do anything for the unit anyway.

Noble: X gold per level

The list posted by zitro made me realize, we already have a scaling gold bonus hero ability. It's Legendary : 1 fame = 1 gold. While it wouldn't be the exact same thing, I believe it would be far too similar. (You will never want Legendary instead of Noble after you have over 40 fame.)
So we either remove the ability completely and come up with something new or it better stays as it is.

Logistics - can it also apply to overland movement?

I don't think I can do this and it opens all sorts of problems - wind walking was hard enough to fix, and this is worse as it's not preventing a unit from spending moves, but adds to the maximal.
If implemented it would have lots of weird side effects.

Guiding Beacon - I never got this I think, but +1 atk per level

It's +1 per 3 levels, like Leadership. At max level, you get +3 to any ranged attack.

Sage - +5 research per level (6 is overkill!)
Ritual Master - remain at +4 per level
AEther Master - +6 SP per turn (8 is overkill!)

I already said I'm going to consider this after I make a decision on Heroism, which will be later.

actually, changing ANY hero abilities before Catwalk starts to test heroes is a bad idea. We might end up having to overhaul the entire system depending on the result. (I hope not, but I don't see the future)

[zitro1987]

Guiding Beacon - my bad, it's therefore on the same level as the other +1 per 3 level skills. I find these slightly below average (though at least hero gets a bit of bonus from these)

Now this is slightly out of topic, but is a 'super' ability worth 2 points? It only grants 50% extra from the ability, not that noticeable for several abilities. I'd rather have two 100% bonuses than a 150% bonus, especially if it's one you don't quite desire in the first place. It would be more desirable if bonus is 75%
*you would obviously prefer say, sage master and ritual master as opposed to ritual master super.
*Might + agility is a lot better than super might (might + lucky too).
*Leadership + divine barrier/prayermaster is almost always better than a super of any of these.
and so forth ...

[Seravy]

Now this is slightly out of topic, but is a 'super' ability worth 2 points? It only grants 50% extra from the ability, not that noticeable for several abilities. I'd rather have two 100% bonuses than a 150% bonus, especially if it's one you don't quite desire in the first place. It would be more desirable if bonus is 75%

Stacking multiples of the same stat is better in many cases. Even at +50% most of these bonuses are ridiculously high. (like +13 from Agility)

I prefer these at super instead of 2 abilities :
Soul Linker
Agility
Prayermaster
Guiding Beacon
Divine Barrier

These at normal :
Might
Arcane Power

These I'm fine with either :
Blademaster
Logictics
Constitution

the others are either not scaling by level or I don't particularly care for having them at any level (or only in specific cases, like sage etc in the early game).

I want to keep the system consistent so it's +50% for all, regardless of my personal preferences.

Also, this is not a matter of "worth" or not. You don't get to select your picks or even your heroes, so they don't need to be of equal value. If a hero rolls an ability you don't like, you can refuse them and wait for another.
I rather have +50% to something my strategy needs, than 100% to something else I don't. So heroes with super abilities are often better, as the likelihood of two different abilities being both useful is much lower.

[Catwalk]

I agree that the super system works well, no need to change it.

[Arnuz]

A level 1 thief/undead djinn/2 decoys (2 undead lizards ) task-force has just cleared a 7 water elementals/2 fire giants lair. Fun combination, what were they doing together?? Kinky :D

Ehm! The point I'm raising is: a life-draining weapon helped the level 1 thief a lot, I don't have healing. However, despite the thief killing almost all the troops, without a single strength buff, and with a black prayer by the djinn - so they had only resistance 5, only 1 undead was formed. All in all I find life-stealing underwhelming: maybe it's just meant to work on normal troops perhaps, but even then the normal damage is very often more than the undead creation damage. Is this by design? Am I biased by the awesomeness of ranged 100% undead creation of ghouls?

[Nelphine]

I think life stealing is underwhelming as well. The only real ways to create undead are syphon life, and ghouls and zombies. My problem is that in the early game, this makes it seem like it happens a lot, but in the late game it effectively never happens for the player, except when you specifically use syphon life - and even then it only works on low resist units, or it takes a massive amount of mana to do so.

However, there doesn't seem to be any good alternative mechanic - either its 100% and demon lords and death knights are too good then, or its based on some percentage - and regular damage will always beat resist damage. I'd be tempted to change the whole mechanic to simply be a percentage chance based on the rarity of the units and spells you use, compared to the rarity of the units your opponent uses. But I don't even think that infirmation is stored anywhere, so I don't think it can even be done.

Tldr: ghouls are amazing and literally nothing replaces them.