I remember playing D and D and having characters die. (Too much admittedly. :P)

Usually the party was too low level and didn't have enough $$$ to resurrect party members. Resurrect was a pretty high level spell and it was very expensive to get a high level priest to do it for you.

However, an alternative was reincarnation. It was lower level and a lot cheaper. The problem was, you'd get something totally random. Still, it was hilarious when you'd get a party member reincarnated as a bugbear or a kobold.

So, I'd like to see death made more permanent for champions. Perhaps a 25% of evading death with an injury if you won the fight or a 10% chance if you lost the fight. Then, I'd like to see reincarnate added to the spell list for kingdom players. For Empire players they could have some kind of undead raising spell that brought back the champion somewhat weaker than before but with some side benefits of being undead. (Immune to poison. fear, etc. Stuff like that.)

In my opinion, that would add to the fun factor in the game. It sucks having characters die but if there was the chance of them coming back as something pretty cool or flavourful, even if they were a little weaker, I'd be happy. Especially if they added a few creature types to the reincarnation table like faerie or satyr (or Elemental World equivalent) or some kind of undead like zombies or skeletons.

Oh and I agree that heroes should level slower as well and perhaps they can tone down the items a bit.

Agree. I think that they should die more often, particularly if they are far from home.

From what I have seen of the game so far, there really isn't much use for regular troops with champions the way they are.  Here are my suggestions:

• Make champion joining costs greater for lower level heroes.  "I'll join you for 9 gildar."  Duh.  No wonder there are stacks of 4-5 heroes sweeping the map.  If you have to save up 250 gildar for a hero, then you think twice about which of the nearby heroes you hire and which you leave for later.
• Make heroes have a maintenance cost.  Nothing too crazy, but again, make it a trade off between regular units that are cheaper or heroes that are powerhouses.  Free is not a trade off, it is a no-brainer.
• Make level experience more exponential.  Gaining a level every fight is silly.  6-8 battles of reasonable challenge early on to gain a level.  Regular troops can level faster, again making it a trade off.  Leveling at above level 5-6 should take some time.
• If a hero dies in combat, they disappear for a few turns (gone, not instant teleport) and then appear at the nearest town with some sort of injury, or not at all (dead, MIA).  Maybe they get fed up with you using them as a meat shield and quit.  It shouldn't matter if you won the battle or not.  Again, think twice about attacking that army with just heroes.
• Level restrictions or at least value levels on quest loot, so that you don't get "Oh look, I found the Boots of Butt-kicking in this box by the side of the road!"  Hard quest, good loot.  Easy quest, so-so loot.  It may be cool to find awesome loot, but it ultimately kills the game.  Delay that gratification and it will be that much more satisfying.
• No one is completely untouchable.  There should always be a chance that even the most awesome hero takes some damage, even if it is only 1 point.  It should be possible to be "pecked to death by ducks".

Level caps are not necessary.  Linking loot use to techs doesn't make sense ("Ooo a flaming sword!  I wonder how you use it?")  Leveling and loot just need to be paced to match the rest of the game development better.

I really like he idea of "soft limit" caps for hero levels. So, the cost to level-up rises a lot per level gained. You can get tech which then lessens this effect. So, there is no hard limit, as in "you can't get level 5 heroes before researching tech X". Instead it is somewhat hard to get to level 5 if you don't have tech X, even harder to get to level 6 and so on.

To me it seems there are two basic problems with heroes. One is disproportionally powerful and expensive items you can get for free just exploring the world. Make the middle tier items acquirable only through medium+ quests. The other problem is that when you get a stack of heroes to around level 5 you can begin killing the harder monsters. They give a lot of experience, you level up a lot, and you can kill even harder monsters. Repeat for a while and you have a killer stack. Whoever gets first to this stage wins (or so it seems).

It doesn't matter if the stack is powerful compared to late game units. It is powerful enough to kill all the AI factions early on. If you would need to research something, it would force the heroes to be somewhat balanced with rest of the game.

I just wanted to chime in from the other side of the argument and state that I really enjoy heroes as is. The joy of getting a hero to the point where he can solo big-monster armies and watch them lay waste to stuff is magnificent.

I also think that adding permdeath to heroes is just going to encourage save/reload. I think the mechanic they put in place was put there because save/reload is a part of 4X games, so they wanted there to be a consequence for failure, but not one so onerous that you'd automatically reload.

There might be some problem about the power of high-end heroes. The main problem isn't that. It is how quick they get that power.

Maybe I'm just bad at the game, but I've been playing non-stop since the beta was released, and I haven't felt that my heroes are overpowered at the beginning/mid game. They seem awfully squishy to me and I feel like I have to work to get them to the point where they can survive and contribute offensively.

I feel there should also be a limit to how many heroes you can have in an army, starting at one. Being able to group four heroes together is always going to be hard to balance.

I think you need heroes to be so powerful when playing on the highest difficulty level when the AI opponents' power levels skyrocket so quickly.

I think a level cap is better, because it is much easier to balance. If a player needs only gold to level up a hero he will get it sooner or later and the hero will be overpowered again.

Another option would be an item cap like in D&D. A hero can use only 1 magical item and a magic tech could increase the number of magical items to 2 and another magic tech to 3.

It seems to me that, in the normal course of playing, heroes become extremely powerful while techs, magic, and city builds are still in their infancy.

This is partly the speed with which levels are achieved.  It's great that a couple levels or so come quickly, but it seems to me that even weak heroes who get a couple +1 damages in during a battle level up after two out of three battles.  (Besides which, leveling seems to be very well designed in this game, but it cheapens the strategic decision if the levels come like a blizzard.  You need to feel the tension of the decision, rather than the sense that you can have all these things in a short time.)

More than that, though, the weapons heroes find get way out of hand.   When I've hardly dented the second level of techs and I still can't train any sort of army, I'm recovering weapons that are worth thousands and blow away anything I'm likely to encounter.

Also, the lack of consequence for a hero "dying" in a winning battle really unbalances things significantly.  I would say that that would be an excellent attribute of an easy level game, but if you want any real tension to battles in normal difficulty games, fallen heroes have to have consequences. 

One final reason why heroes level up too quickly:  it's kind of like a football passing game when not facing a decent pass rush...  I'm not perceiving a credible threat to my towns, so once I eliminate the threats right next to my borders, I can send all my heroes to roam, find more heroes, snap up experience points and weapons, etc.  No need to build explorers, at all.

I second the idea that heroes should be able to die. That would make you think twice before sending them into a fight. Some form of (expensive) resurrection or reincarnation like Thormodr suggested would be nice, but just let those champions die when they lose a fight.

Hum... and why not something like : your hero will die one day. You have to prepare for their replacement with some kind of "school of heroes" !

So when they are too old, they die, and then you can replace him/her with a new fresh champion (but with some stats boosted from the dead hero : his/her legend helps new heroes to get faster some killing machines)

This. Last game I got a girl (Ledanna, I think her name is) and she...can't fight. I mean, I might as well had an empty spot on the party.

Same for the person who said that a hero would join them for 9 gildar. Where? The girl who can't fight wanted 63. Another one wanted 150. Where's the under 10 gildar store at?

I think that would only lead to loading the save before the battle.

Remember two things : Equip them, and cast "Imbue champion" on champion that can cast spells (without "Imbue champion" those champion won't be able to cast any spell, even if they have any perks).

To equip them just research the first two thing in the military research up to leather. then put your champion/sov inside your boders. Then click on "shop" next to "settle, equip" etc. Then buy and equip. Casting spells requires mana. The spell meditation helps you get 1 more mana per turn. don't cast "Inspiration" too early, or you'll only get 1 mana per turn. Or choose at the start a sovereign with the perk that gives you 40 mana at start and +1 mana per turn.

It would seem that the earlier in the game you hire someone, the cheaper it is.  Also, I was exaggerating to make a point.  I did see one join for 29 gildar.

I honestly think that since some people think that heroes are OP and some that regulars are OP, that perhaps making heroes harder to get initially would solve the real problem, the invincible hero rush early on.  If you start with your sov and a couple hundred gildar and make the hero hire cost around the same amount for starter heroes, you will only be able to have two heroes early on.  You simply won't have the money to hire 4-5 heroes and make a free, immortal army out of them.  Two heroes plus some trained units is still enough to defend yourself and do some quests, but not enough to sweep the map without losses.  Combine that with consequences for your heroes dying in battle and I think a balance would be achieved between heroes and trained unit use.  You would have to use both types together.

Not for me at least, but for some people that might be the case. Currently it really doesn't matter since you'll have your super duper hero back in no-time with only just a scratch or fleshwound.

Itemdropping would be an idea too. Something that worked nice in AoW.

I rather liked the old mechanic from MoM. A Hero dies and you have to resurrect them, and it should actually have a cost to it that's variant on how powerful the hero is. The more powerful the hero the more it should cost to bring them back. Now the player is forced to play strategically to not loose their heroes and have something to loose if they die.

Level caps are boring and clumsy, period.  I'm bored just talking about it.

I would like to see Ragaldo die. That idiot is clumsy. He quite often will attack my own troops, but as long as he is basically immortal, I will use him as fodder. 

The movement from different sources makes heroes with ranged weapons or spells very powerful, because they can stay out of the range of melee units and can still attack. My ranged hero has a movement of 6, a dodge of 28 and can win most fights alone.

I think spears should inflict + 50 % damage against mounted units instead of ignoring 66 % of the defense.

I would suggest making some adjustments to the xp and leveling model. Currently I think heroes are leveling way to fast, especially at the higher levels. In my last game, I had six heroes at lvl. 10+ winning a battle where several of the heroes made more than one level from just that one battle.

My suggestion would be to adjust the xp gains from a battle according to the number of levels participating in the battle.

When lvl. 1. Magnar III kills a bear cub he gets 31 xp

When lvl. 1. Magnar III and a lvl. 1 hero kills a bear cub they both get 31 xp

When lvl. 2. Magnar III and a lvl. 2 hero kills a bear cub they both get 31 xp

I think xp gains in each scenario should be different, the easy way to do it, is to divide by the sum of levels of the units. So the scenarios would give 31 xp. 15,5 xp. and 7,75 xp. respectively to Magnar and his henchman.

In my opinion the above model would also make the game more interesting, because it would give incentive to have heroes in different stacks. Currently, at least on a small map, the only sound thing to do is make a stack of doom of all your heroes. If you split your heroes and go monster hunting you are wasting a limited resource, and your heroes will end up being lower level than if you stacked them.

As a side note, bears yield way to much xp, compared to other mobs. 

That would require some serious changes in the coding. I think that for now they should just make leveling a longer journey. It is currently a rather linear system. I would like to see some exponential values. 

I agree with Motile, though.. Some sort of variable XP allocation to control level growth.  I was thinking (using the bear cub) that if an enemy stack was worth 31 points, then the 31 points gets allocated across the surviving winning team. I like Motile's plan better, though..

Another plan might be to add some background number that says that the level 12 hero doesn't get any experience for slaying a bear cub. For instance, a bear cub is a level 1 monster (of 5) and your 10-15 level hero can only get exp from lvl 3 or better monsters..

Either way, Level Caps = bad.