Heroes and abilities

[namad]

Make it require 6 chaos books? so that you can only 100% assure the torin+ferocity combination with 6 life 6chaos no retorts?
or make it require 7 chaos books so you can never be assured of the combo?


Or how about this? maybe not doable but.... +2caster skill on the hero for the rest of combat for each 1hp missing below maxhp the hero has base (this might result in weird scenarios where casting healing on yourself puts your hero at negative caster amount, which... is probably a problem)? Or maybe +1 caster skill per damage taken (which could combo). You're right, a nearly dead hero on a chaos wizard will try to flee with their hero, not charge into more melee. So, randomly granting a non-caster melee hero 10 caster or 20 caster (adjust the math however seems best) when they're near death might be something they'd actually use/want (especially if they've splashed books of life/nature/sorcery/anything defensive). It would also make it so that even a caster hero could equip the item, cast a big spell turn1, then get nearly killed by enemy wizard spells, then on turn 2 use their nearly dead state to pop off another big spell they normally would've been a bit short on caster skill for?

I think that would fit for the theme of chaos... turning their rage or their inner flame into raw magical energy? Then again, maybe this would be even better on torin than your original ferocity idea

[Seravy]

Some more brainstorming...

1. Take no more than 5 damage from each attack.
Would be too good with healing and would work against doom damage so I think this is not a very good choice.

2. Gain X MP/HP each time the unit is targeted by a spell.
Again problematic with healing (either the mp will be used to target itself and heal more, or the hp gain is cumulative with the healed amount), so likely not the best

3. Gain X MP each combat turn. Kinda on the OP side (it's effectively +25X mana where X is the amount per turn, so even with 1 it's better than a +20 spell skill item - the catch is, it comes over time.) but matches Chaos (cast lots of combat spells) very well while still being useful for all realms. Downside is the redundancy - might as well use the slot for "Spell Skill+20" instead.

4. Mystic Surge - random buff (s). This should actually be not completely random, instead "randomly" calculated from the hero ID and turn count - we do want to have at least enough consistency for the effect to last one overland turn, otherwise it's far too unreliable to bother using it. It should be limited to item powers only, or stats, or both, as we don't want it to put dispellable effects on the hero.

Can't help thinking 4 is the best out of these, but 3 is not bad and it's much easier to implement - and random benefits are still not the kind of thing I'd want to equip on my hero as it's not reliable.

An effect that makes a single target spell "AOE" would be great for Chaos but it's far too overpowered to have it aside from the difficulty to implement such a thing. (and the annoying wait time for the spell effect animating 9 times - it can't be simultaneous)

[namad]

Hmm, the OP seems a bit out of date, if that matters at all. I just got the orc warrior.
He's called the orc archer in my game though has constitution supply commander and is an archer.
Oh also I just got the unknown as a prisoner, meaning he's not a champion anymore? Is that intentional? I forget.

[Nelphine]

I don't think unknown was ever a champion - I think he's the best hero.

[namad]

I don't think unknown was ever a champion - I think he's the best hero.

he was a champion in the base game master of magic, despite having a hero's fame requirement, so he was hero easy to recruit via beginning of turn but couldn't be a prisoner or come from summon hero... but based on your statement it's clear. unknown x was always non-champion in caster of magic.

[Seravy]

I don't remember well but Unknown was somewhat buggy, he counted as a hero for some purposes, and a champion for others I think. The cutoff between heroes and champions was inconsistently specified.

[Domon]

so many squashed bugs you can't even remember which ones were in the original game anymore.

[muxecoid]

This is the thread for item discussions, right?

The cost of casting skill on items feels low. For 750 mana (390 if artificer) you can get 60 mana on your hero guarding the capital. Which means 10 added casting skill. Increasing skill from 60 to 70 by normal means costs 1300. It takes 75 (39) turns to pay for itself, but since you can craft it during overland casting downtimes it is nice.

Planar travel also feels underpriced. Can we get it to 410? It does too much in human hands.

[Seravy]

While 750 is indeed cheaper than 1300, the former uses your overland casting time, in your example, 10 full turn's worth. So while you save 600 mana, you do miss out on 750 skill worth of summoning/buffing/etc, plus you must keep the heroes in your capital instead of using them. I don't think this is a significant problem.
(whether the price is fair for the combat skill the heroes gain is a different question but you don't seem to have a problem with that?)

If Planar Travel was 410, it wouldn't be available until researching Create Artifact, and by then it's pretty much obsolete and you have opened towers and/or learned the identical uncommon spell. At most it can go up to 399 but even that sounds overkill. Researching the Planar Travel spell isn't all that hard by the time you can have heroes and that costs 50 MP (although it does cost 640 RP) but doesn't require a hero and can allow your settlers or other units through.

[muxecoid]

The combat mana may be too cheap as well. Extra 20 mana is extra either confusion or healing or fire elemental or 2 webs for the hero in every fight.