Big units and afflictions

[Taqwus]

One of the more brutal aspects is that large units also tend to be the ones targeted by the long-range, fairly common (lizard shamans, totem shields, others. Think twice before taking your pretender into an indy province controlled by lizardmen), unresistable, and permanent Curse spell which IIRC greatly increases the chance of afflictions per hit.

Then there are the attacks which have an unusually high, sometimes 100%, chance of causing afflictions -- the Black Bow of Botulf causes Feeblemind, Vision's Foe removes an eye, one of the scythe artifacts causes crippling... and whose owners are likely to have "fire/attack large monsters" or something like that.

[Windreaper]

Yup, it's devilishly easy to cripple supercombatants nowadays. Even crossbows can do it. I'm personally very fond of the Blindness -spell (Machaka starts with it, yay) even though it allows a mr. check.
I don't mind the current affliction system since I find it reasonably realistic (real combat veterans weren't scarred for no reason) and gives supercombatants something to be afraid of. There could be some positive battle afflictions like 'impressive scars' to increase ld or 'horrible scars' to give lesser fear or so, though. It however goes without saying that Pan and especially Arco got a huge advantage here. Faery Queen having this ability is very nice but it's so high in the tree that it's basically the priviledge of nature-heavy nations (Pangaea, Man etc) who go for Conjuration anyway.