[PvK]

* You exaggerate: heroes are useful as is. They just aren't as useful as (e.g.) the powerful summons which are cheaply available in the game.

* If you were to replace the current "hero potential" heroes with "already full-power super-heroes" then you would omit what they currently provide - which is people with unusual talent who can become powerful heroes with experience and magic.

* It's not hard to get a hero up to one or two stars of experience - it just takes patience and attention and a little luck. Heroes are more interesting if you actually see them rise to achieve their abilties during play, instead of just appearing from nowhere with bunches of abilities.

* You are of course correct that the experience system is weird in that everyone starts inexperienced when the scenario starts, even though some characters are described as having a history. Also weird is the effect this has on the Hall of Fame, with its heroic abilities coming easily at first, much harder later, and being a weird competition between nations, limited to a handful of characters, etc. I'd love to see that all make more sense and offer more varied development of experienced characters.

* I think there is room for even more talented heroes without being unrealistic or unbalanced - but I don't want to lose the middling hero-potential guys and end up with a great gulf between normal units and the heores.

* In fact, one very interesting thing about the existing values is that sometimes plain commanders can become "thug"-level champions through experience, heroic abilities, prophetizing, Arena victory, and/or magic items. Once I tried to kill off a cursed human indy priest by sending him to the Arena with a bottle of water, and he WON, giving him the Champion's trident and turning him into a semi-decent thug and a _very_ interesting character.

* SO, I think what might be a good way to address all that, would be to add more abilities that characters can attain through experience. Like minor heroic abilities, but not limited to one per character, and not limited by a hall of fame, but limited by something scaled, like overcoming great odds, so that it won't just make the super-powerful characters like Arch Demons more powerful, but will allow humans who survive against the odds to slowly become more and more capable, if they continue to survive. They could be logical consequences too, like making several hard MR rolls could add to your MR, defending against huge attack skill could eventually add to your defense, hitting against huge defense skill could eventually add to your attack skill, nearly dying of wounds could add to your HP or Prot, etc.