Role of planes

[Seravy]

No particular death abilities come to mind. Maybe one that acts as soul linker but only for undead? (And applies to the owning hero as well)

Same problem as my idea, it would be the only item ability that doesn't work if you aren't a Death wizard.

So Shadow Demons+Earth Lore, would be interesting. The AI cannot use Earth Lore and doesn't have a scouting system so it makes sense they cannot use the ability at all.
Question is are we ok with the human using it?
It wouldn't trigger the AI researching Plane Shift and it would be too soon for it anyway. It would allow conquering the other plane and weakening the "final boss" and in a way that comes are zero cost in the home plane (shadow demons are on both planes at once and regenerate so they can afford to fight both planes too, that's why they are one of the greatest units in the game, actually.)... so we are probably not ok with that. They are also fairly hard to fight and have a 99% chance to be successful at causing serious damage to the Myrran plane, even if you aren't holding any cities (but if you conquer a neutral and even manage some settlers, even stronger).

So I agree the best option is requiring the Plane Shift spell. Easier to check than towers, too.
(will be funny to see the AI use Plane Shift to move their Shadow Demon stack instead of doing it for free but hey...in the end they get to reach the other plane so that's good, right? We can't afford them to shift one at a time without a stack...)

Some death ideas...
-Drain MP from enemy wizard (redundant with mana leak)
-Reduce enemy wizard casting skill for the battle where the hero participates (very useful for Life)
-Reduce own wizard casting skill for some benefit (bad for AI)
-Drain own wizard MP for some benefit? (could work, AI can afford it)
-Wizards targeting the hero with a spell lose skill or mana (not useful for Life, as it makes healing cost more, but useful for Death as enemy will run out of spells to throw at hero faster. Relevance dwindles in late game where everyone has high skill. Bad for AI though - will equip the item and then pay extra for healing the hero...)
-Reduce resistance of all enemy units (too op? Kinda like spell save -1 but this helps unit abilities and spells from other sources)

I don't really like any of these...

First Strike would suit Death but I think we didn't want that one... too powerful.

[teelaurila]

For death power I would (again) suggest reanimation as undead if died. It's powerful, but strictly worse than regeneration, as the hero won't gain xp anymore and no per-turn hp gain.
Call it e.g. Revenant.

Another idea in the same vein could be re-animating dead things after a battle. Either like local zombie mastery, or bring your own dead allies back as undead (so that death immunity would prevent being animated (again)).

[Seravy]

Either like local zombie mastery, or bring your own dead allies back as undead (so that death immunity would prevent being animated (again)).

I like these. Especially the "bring back dead allies" part.
Any suggestion for the name of the item power?

...oh btw we can make this so that it also works on the hero itself. We probably shouldn't, though, too overpowered and not AI friendly.

eh, let's be straightforward and call it "Necromancy".

I guess we want to limit it to nonhero units? Maybe even only normal units? No I guess we want summons included.

[Seravy]

Isn't this too powerful though? It's technically unlimited free Animate Dead, minus the benefit of being able to use the revived unit in the same battle (and minus the "Animated" buff on them).
I do think we should have some sort of limitation on this... no more than 140 cost worth of units per hero level per battle?

[Nelphine]

I don't think it should ever be as good as animate dead. Since it's permanent after combat? I don't think it should ever include rares, and only the last three hero levels should even get uncommons. Unless we make it outrageously expensive.

I'd be more inclined to limit it to not fantastic or heroes.

[Seravy]

Animate Dead is also permanent after combat, if used on your own unit. And it buffs your unit. And you can have the unit fight in the same battle where it died. So Animate Dead is better, the only advantage for the item is, no casting cost, and of course, no need for knowing the spell. Oh and you need your units to die in the battle but the hero has to survive which is quite a bit of an extra condition. If you lose the hero, the units aren't coming back.

However considering the cost of a rare won't even pay for two decent normal units, we can't have it that low. At the very least this should enable a max level hero to get an army of, idk, Jackal Riders back.

Ultimately it's a bit of a "lose less" item since it's doing nothing unless you have losses - so it won't benefit a strong enough doomstack. Yes using it in a weaker stack is risky because losing the battle means losing the item. Of course being able to resupply your doomstack with units without having to summon new ones is a great thing, but still not even half as good as Regeneration.

I suspect the main impact of this will be non-Death wizards gaining better access to Illusion/Death/etc immunity for their units, but since it's high cost and rare on predefined items, it won't be all that abundant.

[Nelphine]

Oh I didn't realize animate dead was permanent on your own units.

Ok, so it still shouldn't be as good as animate dead, or rather, to match something like haste on an item, it should have a similar cost to haste, and at best, only work on 1 very rare unit. Even getting 8 undead jackal riders (or far better, bezerkers) is amazing as it 'solves' the biggest weakness of them. I would purposefully pick battles just to kill my units so I could have undead bezerkers. Like attack 1 spearmen and refuse to kill it, allowing the AI to use spells to kill my bezerkers.

So I don't think that should be a thing either. So, it shouldn't be controllable. I'd say 25% of all units, instead of giving it a cost limit, and make it random so you COULD get 0 units even if you lost 8, but you could get a unit if you only lost 1 unit.

I'd be fine giving 100% to the hero wearing it, simce it can't work on undead units so can't he done multiple times to the hero.

Although I'd be tempted to give it a boost, say +15% to all units, if the hero wearing it is an undead.

And while it's worse than Regen for one unit, it's like giving limited Regen to a whole stack which is worth at least as much as Regen on 6 units.

[teelaurila]

"So I don't think that should be a thing either. So, it shouldn't be controllable. I'd say 25% of all units, instead of giving it a cost limit, and make it random so you COULD get 0 units even if you lost 8, but you could get a unit if you only lost 1 unit.

I'd be fine giving 100% to the hero wearing it, simce it can't work on undead units so can't he done multiple times to the hero. "
I like these, though not sure what a good % would be. Necromancy sounds good to me for a name. If you want to be more dramatic, maybe something like "Walk of the Dead"

[Seravy]

I don't want random chance on something that's not in the Chaos realm.
Also, 25% is unplayable. I need to lose 4 units to get one back? No thanks. Sure I'd still equip it if I found one for free but creating this item on purpose? Never. That's a lose/lose scenario, you either don't lose enough units to be worth equipping the item since you are never earning back to cost, or if you are earning back the cost, you've lost so many units it's already game over.
Assuming we keep the 1000 cost, I'd want to get back at least 2000 worth of units to care making the item (skill is precious, units are not). So I'd need to lose 8000 worth of them. So I'd need to lose 53 Jackal Riders for example. All in the same stack. Logistics problems aside, if the enemy is actually killing this many of my units, then I lost the game already. If they are not and I'm killing them on purpose, then they are part of the "cost". So my gain would be 2000 but my loss would be 6000 plus the item cost. Nah. Even at 50% it's still a net loss.

I agree however the undead immunities are a great deal and the revived units can be better than the original due to that except for one problem, they don't heal. So while the original units had the ability to be used multiple times (assuming they survived), these might be harder to kill but will get used up by doing battles even if the enemy isn't killing them with the spells. What's worse, since the enemy can't target them, they'll hit the hero instead, assuming they haven't already been doing that...
Also undead are a double-edged thing, not only are they immune to a lot of stuff but also weak to a lot of new spells : Banish, Holy Word, Great Unsummoning, Exorcise. On top of not healing.

I'm open to reducing the amount if necessary, and I'm also open to replacing it with something else if there is a better suggestion, but it has to be 100% up to a limited amount.

[Nelphine]

I want a way to ensure I don't take an invincible hero and farm undead bezerkers (which I'm making at around 3/turn, so I don't care if they get used up by battle damage - I care about confusion and possession because it makes me lose the battle, and those spells virtually never threaten a hero).

I'm not planning to go fight real battles with this hero, I'm literally just going to farm undead bezerkers by attacking settlers or magic spirits. I don't even need bless anymore or resist boosting units like unicorns. Sure, the spells you mention can now affect my bezerkers, but those only kill the targetted unit, and they're expensive. Since I already don't care about losses in my battle, they simply don't threaten me until the opponent can cast enough for the whole stack of 9 bezerkers (remember I'm not wasting time using the hero for real battles). Holy word is a good counter. Excellent. I'll use live bezerkers to kill the life wizard anyway.



Anyway, discarding the complete abuse this item may represent, I still compare it to the haste power. Which if I recall correctly, is about as costly as this. That's the same as casting one very rare combat spell once. This is almost the same as casting a very rare combat spell up to 8 times. It has some limits compared to animate dead, but not so many limits that I think it should work on multiple very rare units in one combat. 

And at 1000 cost, I want it to be as good as a very rare, even on my recruit hero. So it should work on that 1 very rare even on a brand new hero.

I'd rather see it work on a flat number of creatures, say, the strongest simgle creature you lose. Or since that's distinctly worse than animate dead, make it two creatures - the strongest one you lose, and the worst one you lose.

If you want to scale it, add an extra unit (second weakest) if the hero wearing it is undead.