[Suggestion/Balance] Path of the "...." Traits should be Exclusive

I support this. Because later in the game, your heroes can do anything. With some maluses for mages in armor, you have to protect them => more tactics required. Normally, weight should lower initiative, but I never had any of my heroes with too much encumbrance.

I don't see a problem with this, as long as they are not as good in any one area as someone who decided to specialize.

I don't care about the equipment really, without strength and offensive talents, a mage does no significant damage with that axe, and the armor is necessary due to the lack of defensive spells/traits - it's the only practical way to raise the defense on your heroes.

They actually already have a balance mechanic in place to prevent mages from loading up on heavy armor - encumbrance...

But then they break that mechanic immediately with mounts, who remove the need to worry about equipment load

The penalties for high encumbrance are also really minor (-1/-2 init iirc) relative to the insane init values heroes can acquire.

Get rid of the horse bonus to equipped weight for heroes (units may need it, I'm not sure), and change the -1/-2 penalties to -15%/-30% or something and you'd have a good reason not to load down your mage with full plate.

As for the multiple Paths... I'd be ok with restricting it only if they greatly expand each path's trait tree, otherwise you'd quickly run out of interesting levelup decisions to make, which would be less fun.

Well I think there are many ways to stop the gamebreaking heroes. At least one needs to be implemented

I totally disagree. Let choices to the player. A mage who can use two-handed sword won't be as good in magic as a pure caster. It's like multiclassing in D&D. And that was some of the joy from that game. Pure builds are often boring.

I don't see picking more than one Path as a problem. The more you pick, the less chances of getting specific stuff from them (unless you are uberlucky each time you level up). If my "tank" sticks to Path of the Defender(or was it Warrior?), he has more chances of Leadership/Tactician than if he dips also in Path of the Assassin.

Paths determining the gear you can use... no. Not enough and different gear to allow such thing. My "Mages" already have to use the best mundane armour I can give them if they want some defense.

Gear that requires a certain Path to be used, that sounds good to me(if we talk of special gear and not common one).

Yeah. That's the problem right there. Well, that's ONE of the problems. As others said, it also gets boring to be stuck with pure heroes.

Heroes are get too powerful too quickly, but I don't think it's because of multiple path selection.

However... I will concede that perhaps heroes should have a limited number of path selections, and should not be able to get all 5...

I think you should be able to cross classes. To me, the problem is that Path of [Class Here]  is the best trait in every category. The incentive to continue a path should be based on there being continually better traits as you go higher in a class. That is straight out of D&D (bible for leveling mechanics). 

<- this 

Agreed. As it stands now, you're better off choosing every single path rather than becoming flippin' awesome at just some stuff. Granted, the more bonuses you add the better, but having a very powerfully well-rounded character is sure helpful, too.

Agreed. The pure stat bonuses are too high for the 'path' talents. I would prefer to see some of the other abilities boosted a bit but require path(s) to be opened. I have zero issue with being able to select mutiples paths. It is fun!

The encumbrance point is an important fix. Since the encumbrance amount scales with strength, the penalty should scal with init... seems obvious really!

Great idea! If the Init. is a % penalty, the encumbrance starts getting vital to strategy. Horses would become very valuable and should be be nerfed IMO. I also am surprised that no one has noticed how difficult it is to actually become overencumbered. I think the amount one can carry should be lessened to a reasonable amount. It makes sense that a horse lets you carry more. It doesn't make sense to allow a weakling to carry so much. 

I completely agree with the OP. Those traits are strong and getting more should not be possible. Specialization of champions will also help balance them, and make more interesting aesthetically and tactically.