First Strike

[Seravy]

As far as I remember, it's 5% per hit in the windows version and 10% per two hits in the DOS version.

[Seravy]

Currently working on this. The list of units I've given Negate First Strike to so far :

-The following units now have Negate First Strike :
Behemoth, Great Wyrm, Death Knight, Demon Lord, Great Drake, Sky Drake,
Beastmaster, War Monk, Golden One, Amazon, Priestess, Paladin, Necromancer, Black Knight, Chaos Warrior, Chosen

[Anskiy]

I wouldn't put it on Beastmaster, Golden One, Priestess or the Necromancer. They don't sound like experienced melee warriors to me.

[Seravy]

I would expect a Beastmaster or Necromancer to have some sort of a small familiar that can warn them or even interfere with the attacker - a bird, living or undead, something like that.
A Priestess might receive some divine guidance (intuition) to avoid surprise attacks.

I guess the Golden One doesn't make much sense though...being made from gold makes little sense to begin with either way.

The main objective was to cover a good percentage of the heroes most likely to be important for the AI though, as the human player will generally not rely on winning a battle by letting their hero die and deal retaliation damage in the process. (while also leaving a few out because we also don't want First Strike on the player's champions to become irrelevant at all times - for this reason the Swordsmen, Illusionist, Elven Archer, and most non-champion heroes didn't get the ability.)

[Suppanut]

I think Golden One could have defense stat buff such as innate large shield or increase armor growth by level, reference Shaolin martial art in wuxia novel called "Golden Bell" which is qigong equivalent to external skill "Iron Shirt".

[GMBarak]

IMO negate first strike was kind of a crappy trait to begin with,
because: if a hero is strong enough to single strike kill an strong opponent he is already strong enough to block or handle a few hits, and he if he is not strong enough to kill in a single hit , this trait is useless anyway.
if you add a cap or add negate to many units IMO it will make it even more undesirable, please don't add it to retorts you can find or get randomly for a hero...

[Slingers]

The idea for Negate First Strike was taken from the medieval combat tactic of countering a charging first striker with a wall of long spiky stuff. For flavor it looks a little stupid on single figure units, but hey. ;p They're supernatural superheroes.

[Naram_sin]

Anything that brings heroes peak closer to the strongest creatures is fine, a full Item stacked hero is way too strong currently.