Heroic Shout

[Seravy]

So Heroic Shout is our spell to make early hero use more popular, and it's fairly good for that, allowing heroes to kill the typical weak multifigure units. However it is redundant with Chaos magic and gets obsolete quickly - as soon as your hero has an acceptable defense stat, it can kill those multifigure units in melee safely.

So I've been wondering if maybe we need something else that actually helps non-hero realms use heroes more :

Heroic Heart
Cost 12
Target hero unit is healed for 3 damage.

Simple, straightforward. Strictly worse than Healing in Life but still good enough to be worth using in all other realms, who have no way to keep heroes alive in combat. Life is still better at it, and also has defensive buffs which the other realms don't. I've been hoping Shamans can do this job but they can't - their movement is too slow to go with heroes and they die in battle.

[Nelphine]

For the human o agree. For the AI, I'm not sure. Their offensive potential is more important. But then, I'm used to defeating the heroes on the first try. If so heroes are strong enough to win battles, or of this will make them that strong, then I agree.

Life (and sorcery?) will surely be sad at the offensive output though.

[Seravy]

Having both would be ideal but then we need another Arcane slot...

[vicwaberub]

Why not a +2 to hit and to block for heroes? I mean.. they are heroes!

[Nelphine]

Because heroes who can stack defensive abilities are already invincible, and your suggestion would add another such source. This is primarily life. In addition life can heal their heroes, making them even harder to kill. Other realms don't get this healing, so the difference between a life hero and a non life hero is extremely high.

By adding a healing spell that is weaker than life healing, life gets nothing, but other realms get some extra defensive power so they aren't as bad compared to life heroes as now.

[Seravy]

We have two options :

1. Must target a hero
2. Must have a hero in battle (like Heroic Shout)

The latter allows healing anything as long as you have a hero the former limits it to the hero only. Probably the former?

[Nelphine]

I would prefer the former, except for chaos. The biggest weakness of things like great drakes is they get whittled down far faster than any other realm because they have absolutely no defensive abilities.

[Seravy]

Any suggestion which sound effect and animation to use for the new spell?

[Nelphine]

Generic arcane spell, but I don't think there is one.. could actually use the heroic shout animation for it. No idea about sound though.

[Seravy]

Someone is suggesting to make Ressurrection Arcane instead of this new spell. I don't remember if we discussed that possibility before, maybe did. I believe we don't want to do that because that would make summoning spells obsolete? (Hero usually offers better value than a summon)
I also think it takes skill and fun out of the game, as making sure your hero doesn't die in the first place is a significant part of the game. Degrading heroes to the same level as a reusable summoned creature would be a bit sad.
Part of the suggestion is to make heroes weaker (no actual numbers are suggested, unfortunately), and resurrection a variable cost spell, and has some ideas how to make the variable cost work. (spell cost should automatically be the cost required to resurrect the highest level dead hero you have. Wasteful if that's not your target, but works. Their other ideas would not work as well unfortunately.)