Baffled by old age

[Thilock_Dominus]

Death magic does not increase the old age, but is supposed to (greatly ?) reduce the chance to get afflictions from it.

Well, if you're an undead, death magic will increase old age.
I have an undead Shadow Dragon Pretender (mod), with default old age at 2500 years. By taking 9 death in magic path the old age is set to 13750 years.

[Juffos]

As far as I know, death magic reduces the chance to get disease by 30% per level. D4-magi thus should be immune to disease, but they will still eventually become useless because of feeblemind.

[Anaconda]

So, practical example: to decrease the chances of Klaus the Mason to get afflictions, one needs to take growth scale, improve his dead magic skill and upgrade him, if possible, to master nature magic too?

Does luck item help? How about luck scales and/or shamrock icon(s) in particular province?

Does the increase in magic skill need to be permanent or does booster items do the trick?

Is there other ways to get hero younger than the blood spell where a hero bathes in virgin blood?

Does healing help units with age afflictions, or does it work only for combat and incident wounds?

[Quitti]

If Klaus the Mason is living creature, yes. And boosters will work. Luck scales don't affect it afaik, not sure about having luck from item/twist fate from bless.
T'ien Ch'i has several spells that reduce age over the eras, such as Thousand Year Ginseng and Internal Alchemy. Easiest way is still to give the leader an Elixir of Life or Boots of Youth. They stop getting the age afflictions completely, with the exception of magical aging such as Burden of Time.

[Thilock_Dominus]

Luck from spells or items do prevent a unit from afflictions, but I'm not sure how much % it is. Read it somewhere on the forum a while back.

[Anaconda]

Klaus is one of the MA Agathan heroes, very old and fragile.

[Quitti]

Ah, Mason of the Underworld. Right.