What Makes a Good Hero?

[analytic_kernel]

Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts.

I detected some recurring themes in the responses, such as mage heroes who provide a magic path that is unnatural for a nation. I will try to follow some of these suggestions in the mod that I'm working on.

[sector24]

I think if you want heroes good enough to warrant taking luck scales, they have to redefine the nation in some way. Things that do that are:

New magic path(s) or ability to forge new boosters
Forge bonus for non-earth nation
Stealthy preacher, or L3 holy for a nation with weak priests
Assassin with good default equipment
Hero that attracts chaff units each turn
etc.

For a slightly boosted human hero, most of the time I'd rather have someone with high leadership/high movement and possibly a standard to boost morale. Human units are just going to die, it's not very useful to have a hero who is basically an inefficient thug. Hope this helps.

[SlipperyJim]

How about a "support" hero? He's not going to do a lot of fighting on his own, but he's great to bring with your troops.

Combine any (or all) of the following:

• Supply bonus
• Standard
• Healer
• #onebattlespell a cool troop buff
• Summon Allies
• #domsummon

Many of these ideas have already been suggested, but not all of them. My point is to tie them together into a hero who should be out-and-about with your armies even though he isn't a Thug or SC in his own right.

[Burnsaber]

Also if you need any inspiration you can check out these heroes I did over a year back as an unofficial add-on to Worthy Heroes. It's amazing how the screenshots are still alive (xs.to is pretty good hosting site, it seems).

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=36670&page=3&highlight=Worthy+Heroes

But to give this post more purpose, here are some more ideas on how to make melee heroes worthwhile.

1) They come pre-equipped. Giving hero a simple "Enchanted Sword" & "Enchanted Shield" has a nice effect on combat stats. The hero also could be a bit of a pimp and have excess slots for some extra "bling".

2) Custom weapons & armor. If you have hard justifying the hero, give him a weapon that will make him scary on the battlefield. Just give a look to the modding manual and you will see a lot of stuff that really isn't in major use (dt-large, dt-small , dt-raise). Also remember that by chainin secondareffects you can create absolutely terrifying weapons. Example: A holy paladin-type hero could a magic sword that deals extra damage against big foes, and have that weapon secondary effect into something anti-demon, which then secondaryeffects into "small area holyfire" or "Holy Scrounge". With that kind of weapon, even tartarians will piss their pants.

3) Onebattlespell help. The hero is always accompanied by an elemental (summon elemental spell)? Valkyries (summon valkyries)? Undead chaff (raise skeletons)? Sprites? Swarm? Imps?

[SalsaDoom]

Originally Posted by Burnsaber

1) They come pre-equipped. Giving hero a simple "Enchanted Sword" & "Enchanted Shield" has a nice effect on combat stats. The hero also could be a bit of a pimp and have excess slots for some extra "bling".

Oh hell yes. Just to make things totally perfect, give him the crippled affliction to represent his pimp-limp-walk. If I ever make another nation mod thats totally going in.

[LDiCesare]

Originally Posted by Burnsaber

The hero also could be a bit of a pimp and have excess slots for some extra "bling".

That's a funny idea, but putting more items on a hero who's just likely to die due to lowish hp/mr isn't going to cut it. On a wizard, it could be awesome however: Imagine you get yoru typical national mage but with 4 misc slots? Room for more path boosters.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by SlipperyJim

Many of these ideas have already been suggested, but not all of them. My point is to tie them together into a hero who should be out-and-about with your armies even though he isn't a Thug or SC in his own right.

Ah. That brings back fond memories of MoM and Selena the Healer (+25% HP healed every turn) and Sir Harold the Knight (with that ability that gives tons of extra XP to all units in his stack), and all the other heroes whose function is less about going mano a mano with the bad guys (wielding a Flaming Axe +6/+2 of Magic Immunity) and more about supporting the regular units.

If there were a hero who had a #onebattlespell of Fog Warriors or Mass Flight I would consider taking luck just to get him.

-Max

[analytic_kernel]

Thank you all for the feedback. I really like some of the ideas that are being floated about.

For the initial release of the mod, my approach is going to be fairly conservative and I am avoiding domsummons and autosummons. I think they add some additional balance considerations, and want to tackle them later, if it looks like they are needed....
I will be providing a multihero with a high leadership and standard effect. So, I certainly do not oppose auxiliary roles for heroes ...especially for the 10 HP squishies known as humans.

Originally Posted by MaxWilson

If there were a hero who had a #onebattlespell of Fog Warriors or Mass Flight I would consider taking luck just to get him.

Useful information. This is definitely one of the things I am looking for: what is someone's threshold for considering luck just to get hero events, assuming the heroes are generally somewhere between "Oh cool, this is an useful hero" and "YES!!! This hero is wicked good!"[1] on the awesomeness scale?

[1] http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showp...58&postcount=5