Legendary Cruelty?

[Dana]

I've also seen an ability called Third Eye, which was both increased Precision and increased Magic Resistance. I was pretty pleased. I don't recall who got it, unfortunately, other than that it was a battlemage who ended up with 25 precision or so, was kinda silly.

[Edi]

Oh yeah, that one. It's so rare that I forgot it existed.

[Edratman]

B0rsuk said:
I suspect it's not tied to nation, but to unit stats instead.
My machakan sorcerers would often get heroic endurance, precision, quickness, etc. Heroic Obesity is often mentioned in context of giants (Jotuns, and now Hinnom). Warrior type commanders get strength, reflexes, obesity, toughness and other combat buffs more often.

I am sure that you are correct in that the traits have a distribution probability factor that is related to unit stats (somehow). That is why there appears to be a change in the set when you switch nations because there is a change in the units stats.

Edi, you also forgot Heroic Stupidity. It only appears rarely in the game because about 2 dozen of my employees have the trait and the game is rebalancing the global distribution.

[B0rsuk]

Last time I checked 'specialised' heroic abilities gave more bonus than ones that boost multiple skills. So Battle Prowess would give more attack bonus than Agility.


Some wild speculation:

The heroic ability a commander gets may be related to his actions in battle.
The only time (as far as I remember) I got Adept Researcher was with Black Duke of Ulm. It's a SC from 'epic heroes' mod. I don't like the mod, but that's not the point. If I remember correctly, the Duke attacked enemies in melee, which is quite unusual for a spellcaster. The Duke of Ulm has some magic skills in 3 or even more paths.

The following is completely ungrounded speculation. Heroic Stupidity may be granted to commanders who actually do something very stupid, such as accidentally killing lots of allies. If true, it should appear quite often on machakan/black sorcerers (it doesn't).

Perhaps some heroic abilities only seem less common because we don't know what triggers them ? Some ideas for tests:
- test a bunch of ordinary melee commanders (with and without leadership to see if it affects presence/awe like abilities; big and small thugs separately)
- test some evocation mages (I often see endurance, quickness, precision on machakans)
- test some commanders with ranged weapons like bows
- test smiting priests

I'm not familiar enough with map editing, so these tests would be too time-consuming for me.

About obscure heroic abilities: I believe pale ones get Second Eye :-).

[Twan]

I got awesome presence two times in a game with EA Atlantis Basalt Queens thugs (may be because they have holy magic ?) one got Battle Below (because they have innate fear ?).

I got one or two adept researchers with Utgard werewolves but most get heroic endurance or strength.

[B0rsuk]

Twan said:
I got awesome presence two times in a game with EA Atlantis Basalt Queens thugs (may be because they have holy magic ?)

Makes sense. I think awesome presence is somewhat common on prophets.

Edit:
It would be interesting if Heroic Stupidity was actually an affliction. Remember Minsc from Baldur's Gate ?

[MaxWilson]

B0rsuk said:
About obscure heroic abilities: I believe pale ones get Second Eye :-).

You're kidding! That's unspeakably awesome!

[Lingchih]

I tend to use my original scout for my prophet in most games, and I can't count how many times those units have recieved Valor (increased leadership). Kind of useless on a unit that can't lead troops.

[JimMorrison]

I have played innumerable SP starts (to turn 10 or 20ish) to test out different starting strategies with a VAST (nearly complete) range of nations and pretenders. In nearly every game, I start by prophetizing the initial commander, and setting him to Smitex5 for my initial expansion.

As far as that goes for "testing", I have noticed absolutely no correlation between being a prophet, or using smite to get mass kills, in what traits I get. Now, it is true, I am often jumping from nation to nation, to see how a certain factor affects them, but I also often play one nation 10x in a row to try to maximize the initial growth, and there is no strong correlation.

The only thing that I have noticed, is that I get the "common" traits more often, specifically the ones I see most on starting prophets are - Endurance, Battle Prowess, Strength, and Tough Skin.


A side note on that rough sketch of rarity, I personally see Toughness FAR more often than Obesity, which I barely see any more often than the really rare ones. Someone's theory above was that the combo traits give more total than the individual, so Obesity would be less common since it is Toughness + Strength, and gains maybe 60-65% as fast in both, as one would get if it were the single version.

[PvK]

There's also the one that gives increased Magic Resistance, fairly common for me.

Toughness is pretty common for me. My bet is it is mainly just random, though it seems to me that when multiple units get heroic at the same time (like when you send three commanders into the same battle on turn 2), they often all get the same ability as each other.