The Hero's Path

in the imperial stable, the owner should definitely mention when talking about the surroundings that there is a mercenary camp at the city gates.

Good point, I've adjusted this and updated the archive in the thread's header (without changing the version number, as the previous one has only been downloaded a few times).

if the Necromancer isn't supposed to start with any artifacts, then at least one dark or chaos spell wouldn't hurt.

If you take an artifact as a starting bonus, it will appear correctly regardless of the chosen hero. There shouldn't be any problems with that. I won't give him any magic yet; let the "bad guys" struggle. I also don't see the point in replacing the troops given in the dungeon – there are very few of them, and they don't play a significant role. Offering a choice between troops and money would seem forced in this case, and one of my main principles was to maximize realism (for example, this is why I try to describe not only WHAT needs to be done in all quests, but also WHY it is needed)