Five Schools of MagicNow magic is divided into 5 schools, strikingly resembling the “colors” from Magic the Gathering:
Nature - summoning creatures
Life - protection, blessing, and healing spells
Order - illusion and mind control spells
Death - weakening enemies and raising the dead
Chaos - direct damage spells
This is especially noticeable in the "blue" Order magic, which now includes a number of MtG spells that were not previously found in Heroes. (For example, there is now a Power Drain spell, exactly copying the name of one of the cards from the "blue deck" of MtG; the meaning of "energy drain" remains the same, only the specific action of the spell has naturally been modified according to the rules of Heroes.) However, for the most part, the spells have successfully migrated from Heroes III. It's just that you won't find particularly powerful spells like Dimension Door in the fourth "Heroes," which unbalanced the game (Town Portal remained, but in its weakest form).
Each school of magic is rigidly tied to the corresponding Castle:
The Stronghold castle does not have any magic at all. In each castle, you can learn in full only the magic of the "native" school and partially – two "neighboring" schools (neighborhood is understood as neighboring rays of the star in the diagram above). For example, if you attach libraries to the magical tower in the Preserve castle, then, along with Nature magic, some spells from the Life and Chaos schools become available (2 spells of levels 1-3 and one of levels 4 and 5).
Magic schools almost do not overlap: very rarely will you find two identical spells in essence in two different schools (although they are named differently there).
Show your documents!However, access to spells is limited not only by the types of castles but also by the abilities of the heroes themselves. Remember how simple it was in Heroes III: any hero could learn any spell of level 1-2, and it was enough just to acquire the Wisdom skill and pump it up a couple of times, and any magic would be within the hero's power! In Heroes IV, everything has become much stricter: in order to get a spell even of the first level, the hero must possess the corresponding magical ability. (For example, to learn a Nature spell of level 1, the hero must have the Nature Magic ability.) Furthermore, for example, to gain access to Death magic of level 3, you need to have Death Magic at the Expert level (i.e., also level 3); and to cast the most destructive Chaos spells of level 5, you need to reach GrandMaster in the Chaos Magic school.
Now watch this!There is also a problem with this because the Spell Power characteristic no longer exists. Again, everything comes down to magical skills. The fact is that the strength of magic is actually determined by one secondary skill of the corresponding school (although the strength of magic also increases simply with the growth of the hero's overall level, but very slowly). For example, to become a cool Chaos mage, you need to acquire and properly upgrade the Pyromancy secondary skill, and then at the GrandMaster level, the power of all your spells will double. And to have a decent mana reserve (and replenish it quickly), you need to take and pump up another secondary skill - Conjuration. The remaining third secondary skill improves the effectiveness of the "signature feature," which is usually not related to the application of magic itself (the exception is only
Chaos Magic). For example, Resurrection from the Life Magic group automatically revives from 20% to 50% of the fallen warriors of its army after battle (mana is not required for this, and no spells need to be cast).
The information was taken from heroes.ag.ru